Arrival

I arrived after a long and dragged out flight, hours late and exhausted but ready to start looking at the gendered spaces of the city.

I took notice of the flight and airplanes and the gendering I saw within. Mostly the airports are gender neutral, but on my second flight I noticed a slight masculine dominance, not because of the flight or atmosphere, but because I noticed the male passengers assuming the ‘male’ pose – legs spread wide and both arms using the arm rests while the female passengers sat cross legged attempting to take up less space in the crowded airplane space.

So far I haven’t seen any of New York except from a window, and the space we are in is a university space, I find it similar to University of Saskatchewan in the way that it is gender neutral. The bare rooms are canvases for gender and as you see, our rooms have become feminized. There are 9 women on this trip and one male, so our gendered presence will lean towards feminine. Tomorrow we head out to do a walk with Ellen Moffat and will get to see some of the public space of New York including the park that looks over Manhattan. I cannot wait to be exploring the usual tourist locations with an eye for the constructed gender within them.