Grey's Anatomy

In the last episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”, many of the gender and social themes discussed in class were made clear and reflected. Right from the beginning, the gender expectation of a male was defined to be a wild, dirty thing, with the group of men camping out in the wilderness to show their manliness. Women, in contrast, for example, told the guys to make sure they had sun screen, their repellent, and all of the other caring roles that women are socially generalized for. The episode even featured a man who had a sex change, who then wanted a penis inversion, all in order to recognize what he/she truly was; a woman. Eventually, she is told that the hormones she has been taking have stirred up what could be breast cancer, but she still goes ahead with the surgery and the hormones. The episode puts forward the idea that the need to express one’s inner gender is so great, that one would be willing to risk endangering one’s life for it.
Another idea discussed in class was the idea of homosexuality and the homophobic nature of today’s males. During one scene of the episode, the chief had no where to sleep, so he asked to sleep with the guys with the biggest tent. Each pair of men really looked away from the situation, all blatantly homophobic, except for the gay couple in the large tent. Once their relationship was established, the chief looked completely different at the couple, and seemed to disassociate himself from the idea of homosexuality.
One of the scenes involved men arguing and actually fighting over an argument, portraying that initially men can only solve conflicts by fighting. In contrast, the women seemed to want more discussion and talking to solve their internal wounds and conflicts, again portraying the gender act stereotypes. One of the scenes involved a dead baby, with the intern crying for the news she had to report, basically showing the compassion of women. In general, the episode represented and portrayed what our class has been discussing the whole semester, and basically strengthened the arguments which we discussed earlier.