Yara Alhusari                                                                                             Women Gender Studies 

Professor Hilarie Ashton                                                                          Brooklyn College

                                                      Personal Reflection                              

           I learned and obtained new knowledge and skills all due to taking this Women Gender Studies course. As a woman, I felt the need to not express my opinions, thoughts, or ideas out of fear of being shamed for having such ideas, but this class taught me that my emotions and opinions are valid and should be expressed without feeling like I am humiliating myself. This class taught me that gender is a social construct, The idea of being masculine or feminine is quite literally whatever you want it to be. You can express yourself and however, you feel and you don’t need to label yourself or feel the need to explain your sexuality to anybody. The biggest part of this class that stuck with me the most is how inclusive it was to all women, we focus a lot on the difference between white feminism and inclusive feminism and how it is so important to be inclusive. We learned about the history of black trans women and just women in general who made such a difference in our country. We were able to watch documentaries and hear the stories of women in our history who fought for our rights, and who fought to diminish these gender stereotypes that were bestowed upon us by men. I was also able to learn a lot from my peers who shared their own experiences and ideas about what we face in this world and they would mention things that honestly I would not even realize were happening. I found it so intriguing when my peers would share things about our society that I just let slip by as if it was not a big deal even though all these little things add up together and make misogyny and homophobia incredibly prevalent in our society.

            My experience doing the public writing for the blog post portion of our class taught me a lot about what I am most passionate about. I mainly focused on what religion says about being gay. I always find myself so passionate about this topic because I have looked into religions and wanted to see if there is any that excepted the LGBTQ plus community. I also realized a lot of religions changed their books to fit more into western ideas and culture in a part of that is excepting the LGBTQ plus community. I learn I am passionate about how culture and religion play a role in a woman’s rights and sexuality because it seems to have a great impact on the way society treats women and people who are not straight. I came from a culture where being gay and being a woman means that you were less worthy. We were deemed as weak and vulnerable in my whole life this is something that bothered me so much. I hated the idea that all I was meant to do in my life what’s bear children and be a mother and a good submissive wife. Even though that’s all I’ve known it never felt right to me I felt like there was so much more to me than to depend on another person and basically be a servant to them. I felt as though in my blog posts paper I focused on history because history has a lot to do with how things are in the present day whether things have improved or have gotten worse. History has shaped our modern world and religion, as well as culture, has a huge impact on the way society treats or deems people part of the LGBTQ plus community as well as women in general. but also has bothered me was how a lot of people used religion to justify their homophobia as well as transphobia so that was one of the biggest drives I had into uncovering what different religions have to say about being gay. I think no matter what religion believe in you should have empathy and respect for other people. No merciful God would ever condone violence against any of his creations.

            The group project was probably my favorite part of the entire semester. I was able to learn a lot from my peers and even learn a lot about myself. It is amazing to be able to feed off other people’s ideas and look at things from a different perspective because everyone feels comfortable enough to share their opinions and their thoughts on the topic. my group primarily focused on Reproductive Justice and that is so important to me especially in today’s society where we are letting history repeat itself and states like Texas are banning abortions. One thing I did not know about was the history of Reproductive Justice all I knew was that when abortion was illegal women used to die trying to abort the baby themselves. When I saw that abortion started back in the time of Ancient Egypt and Greece I was in such shock because everything in today’s society came from somewhere there was always a beginning to something. You can go in so many different directions when discussing Reproductive Justice and breaking it down to one Factor was incredibly difficult but I felt that my group did an amazing job at taking a portion and tackling it from every aspect in terms of the history of abortions, how abortions affect people of color, abortion social media, abortions in film, and have to access an abortion. I also loved listening to other people’s presentations in terms of gender stereotypes, queer parenting, and all the other amazing presentations I got to listen to I was able to relate to so many societal norms and gender stereotypes that are targeted at women that made me so much more intrigued in these presentations because we are all able to relate to at least one thing that is mentioned by a group. my group is so incredibly knowledgeable about abortions and having discussions with them was so eye-opening because I was able to learn so much from all of them. When everyone knows something and they come together to discuss it you got to learn from other people and spread that knowledge and it is important knowledge because this is something that should be discussed and made aware of because of how bad of a problem it has become that we are going backward. Finalizing my group presentation I honestly got a little bit scared because of how we are implementing religion into law which was the complete opposite of the basis that America was founded on. I am so glad I took this class because now I am the most vocal I’ve ever been tired in my life and I am so excited to share everything I learned with other people in hopes that they will also spread knowledge and make people aware of how important women gender studies are.

Mildred Pena

Professor Ashton

WGST 1001

19 December 2021

Final Personal Reflection

When I signed up for this course, I was not too sure about what I would be learning, but I was so glad I did. In this course, we talked about so many interesting topics that go on in the world today. It felt great to have a professor that is very kind, helpful and understanding. The professor always valued everyone’s opinions and that made us feel comfortable and confident all the time. Being that it’s my first time taking a gender studies course, I learned many new terms that I didn’t know about before. I loved how we were all able to feel comfortable sharing our opinions on different topics and learning from each other. I believe gender studies is so important in the world today because it helps us gain knowledge about gender identity. Gender identity plays an important part in relationships and love. We live in a world where everyone has different views or beliefs, and people are always being judged for being different.

One of my favorite topics to learn and write about was gender equality. Gender equality means equal responsibilities, opportunities and rights for all genders. I enjoyed writing a blog post about gender equality because it gave me the opportunity to share my feelings about this topic and receive feedback from my classmates. Gender equality plays a big part in love, marriage, relationships and family. One of my favorite readings of this course was the S.T.A.R interview because it brings up many valid points on gender equality that I agree with. For example, when Sylvia Rivera mentions that she doesn’t believe that a transvestite or a woman should do all the washing or all the cooking at home (12). In different parts of the world, men are given more power and what they say, goes. I believe everything in a marriage or relationship should be 50/50. Part of being married or in a relationship is supporting and respecting one another in every way. Both men and women can go to work and take care of the responsibilities at home, that’s what love really is. Gender equality shows unity, appreciation, and respect for all.

Another topic I really enjoyed talking about and doing research on was gender stereotypes. There are some jobs that are still gender stereotyped today. For our group presentation, I chose to write about women in firefighting because it’s not very common to see women as firefighters. Firefighting is seen as a masculine occupation because some feel that women aren’t physically strong enough to perform the duties of a firefighter. I enjoyed learning about other occupations that are gender stereotyped like teaching and nursing. I also enjoyed working in a group with my classmates because I feel like we all did a great job at communicating and putting together a great presentation with many important details about gender stereotyped occupations. I was very nervous when I had to present my part of the presentation, but it felt good to receive lots of positive feedback.

Being in this class was a lot of fun because even though we didn’t have class together in person, we all got to learn so much from each other and we had lots of good laughs. This is my first semester back in school after taking a long break and I was very nervous about going back to school but being in this class made the semester less stressful for me. I’m glad I decided to take this course because I learned so much about gender identity and what goes on in our world today.

Wow, it is already the end of the semester. Honestly, I’m currently writing this with 3 hours of sleep, but to start, I’d like to say that I like this class and it is in the top 5 classes I have taken so far in my two years of college, WOO! Being in this class changed my perspectives on many things I never really thought about on my own or didn’t think were wrong because of social and gender norms. I live in a conservative Christian household and it’s difficult to explain and try to open up new ideas to one of my parents about almost anything because of how the bible is made and written. I don’t agree with the many things that are said in churches and what is written in the bible, thinking about it now makes me realize how men are so nosy like imagine being so angered by someone else’s sex life, like get a grip. Anyway, back to my conservative household, this class has been a sort of escape from what I constantly have to hear daily such as, “gays are bad”, “marry a Christian man”, “Christianity is the right path”, and blah blah blah. I felt eager to learn about new topics such as LGBTQ+, women’s suffrage, strong female leads, misogyny, and stereotypes. I list these topics because they are the topics that I relate to the most and felt good to hear my peers in class speak on behalf of their experiences and what they found to be inspiring to the class. 

One of the many things I learned in class was stereotypes, specifically about biological sex. On a more personal level, I am extremely hairy, I have a great amount of body hair everywhere, and every summer it was dreadful to show off my hair because of the number of comments I would get such as “you’re probably a man”, “girls can’t be hairy”, “you’re gross”, etc. and honestly looking at it now I wish I didn’t give a shit. My excessive hair doesn’t make me less feminine nor degrades me as a woman, and I guess it’s a flex on my behalf because most men barely can grow a beard and I get shitted on for having the hair that they desire. No one should decide who they believe YOU are, nor label an individual based on their beliefs. These sorts of things should come from the individual themselves on how they feel about themselves. 

Another topic I feel that enhanced my learning is empowerment and equality. For centuries women have always been in a man’s shadow and for what? A woman deserves as much recognition as the man receives. A woman is referred to fragile and sensitive, which may be seen as “respect” to the woman but I believe respect would be treating others the same way disregarding the gender the individual is. Women are as strong as men and are capable of doing the things any man can do, especially when it comes to workforces. Women are not paid the same wage as men do, and just recently, the news stated that a woman in the medical field gets paid 2 million dollars less compared to a man in the same field and position. It’s insane how devalued women are, makes me still wonder if it’s also based on the bible. Where Adam is made from the dust of the ground and Eve is made from Adam’s rib, even the bible devalues a woman. 

Lastly, I learned more about the LGBTQ+ community whereas I feel like I learned more about historical icons like Marsha P. Johnson. Before taking this class, I had no idea who Marsha was nor what she was known for. I feel like I should have learned this back in High School because of how important Johnson’s role is in the gay rights movement. Even so, I am extremely happy that I was able to learn more about who Johnson was and how they impacted our history. 

To wrap this up, I don’t feel like I am the best writer. Writing the blog post and making it public, caught me completely off guard since I am always self-conscious of my writing, let alone that I hate when people read my writing. Not so long ago I recently just submitted my final piece from the blog post, I hope it’s good, to be honest. Personally, I think this class could have been a bit more fun for me if it wasn’t a lot of writing, but at the same time, I could’ve expected it before enrolling in the class, but overall this class was a great experience. Additionally, I hate reading, but for this class, I made the exception. I honestly expected this class to be more quiz/exam-based, but then I feel pretty lucky participating in this class because of due date extensions. I don’t think I would pass this class if it wasn’t for that, well, maybe if I were to pass, not sure. Sadly, I didn’t have a group to work with for the group presentation so I can’t say much about the project, but I believe it would have been fun to do and connect with some peers.  

Four months ago, I was convinced I was living in a two-gender-only world. My own personal experience was not enough to understand that this idea was not the entire truth. The truth was, there were other realities beyond the one I had always experienced. I was able to further understand this idea through my own self-awareness and of course the Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies class. When I first came across this class subject, I saw it as just an option but little did I know that it would become so much more. Honestly, I was hesitant at first. I had this one thought: what about gender would I learn that I don’t already know? But looking back at it now, that was very naïve of me to have said to myself. From there I first learned that there is always an opportunity to learn and room for growth and that would mean learning to understand better. This is exactly what I experienced with this Women’s and Gender Studies class.

While I did have a personal interest in learning more about gender studies by doing my own independent research, I was mainly focusing on the gender studies for men and the toxic masculinity society has implemented. However, I knew there were more subjects related to gender out there to explore. For instance, the idea that women and men face gender performing expectations because of society’s standard that pairs sex and gender. This is very true when it comes to women performing femininity and men with masculinity. While both expectations have raised a lot of issues in the years to come, women have successfully implemented feminist movements and actions to help fightback from the limiting society standards held for women. However we rarely ever mention the progressive actions we could take for men in their own community. This is why I chose to write about this specific subject in my blog post. Although this time it felt daunting. For starters, I didn’t want to appear to offend or insult anybody for their personal beliefs. It took some time to change the narrative of this thought. It finally overturned when I committed to believing my intentions to inform rather than to talk down an audience with this subject. Besides the fact that the blog post was an assignment, it felt very empowering to share information about something so important. The courageous part of it all had to be the idea that it would be a public post and not a typical essay only to be submitted and given one source of feedback. It was a great opportunity to have my classmates participate in my writing and vise versa. Also worth mentioning creating bonds with people who felt the same way about the issues at hand. It felt very reassuring and collaborative.

The feeling doubled when the group research projects began. The research project offered a lot of interesting topics to choose from, my group and I were fortunate enough to focus on the matters of reproductive rights. I mention fortunate because this topic never gets old, there is always something new to learn about the overall subject and what ideas can be brought into reproductive justice. In addition, there are other neighboring subjects with this topic including but not limited to; sex-positivity, gender, politics, and law. My group and I were able to have a mutual understanding of the hundreds of issues related to this subject and by doing so we were then able to unify our thoughts in an organized presentation. The only roadblock we faced as a group was figuring out who would discuss which specific angle of reproductive justice would we discuss.

Overall, this class has been a wonderful experience. From the readings, discussions, and the newfound knowledge. I had worries regarding what ideas would be difficult to accept. Especially since this has been my first semester back in college. It was a great way to start this new chapter of information. I had previously finished my associate degree back in 2018 and majored in marketing. While it was very insightful regarding business and the principles of capitalism, this time around, majoring in psychology and participating in this class has helped me in more ways than I ever expected. It opened a new part of life to understand. Gender truly is all around us. Gender is definitely a myth. And more importantly, while we can have opinions, it’s better to have an educated opinion. Therefore, thank you very much Professor Hashton for this opportunity to learn and grow.

Personal Reflection- by Sadaf Chaudhry

When I first signed up for this course, I was skeptical of whether I would truly enjoy this course as I had never taken a course like this before. Notwithstanding, presently toward the finish of the semester, I can without a doubt say that this course has really improved my insight into gender identity, gender stereotypes, transgender history and other significant themes related with sexual orientation. Regardless of whether it was about the historical significance of the struggles of transgender community in this country or the very meaning of the word “feminism” or the role of black women in initiating the fight for women’s rights. I had consistently believed myself to be a “feminist” yet I knew nothing about what it precisely intended to be feminist. I acquired so much new knowledge and learned about the experiences of some of the most influential figures that I had never learned about. For instance, learning about Marsha P. Jonhson and Sylvia Rivera’s background and how it impacted their role in the fight for trans rights. Angela Davis’s book Women, Race & Class, not only exposed me to the very realness of slavery in influencing the lives of African Americans but how damaging it was for black women specifically. In one of the chapters, she writes about white women being at the forefront of the First Feminist Wave while completely disregarding the struggles of black women and their contributions to the movement. This was such an educational experience because it not only reflected on the grounds of racism rooted in white supremacy and how intersectionality is enabled to threaten the rights of women of color. White women were simply battling sexism while women of color needed to challenge the presence of racial oppression and sexism within their communities as well. Through Davis’s book, I also found out about Sojourner Truth and one her most remarkable speeches in which she greatly emphasized on “Ain’t I a Women” in a response to the discriminatory behavior against women of color in the fight against liberation. 

Furthermore, Butler’s article on gender performativity was the set-off point, it not only enlightened me about how we all collectively perform gender and how easily gender identity can be challenged but also made me question the durability of other social constructs such as race or even time. The overall class discussion tackled so many important social issues; whether it was about men wearing dresses/nail polish, or other stereotypes surrounding gender roles (e.g., gender-based toys, colors association with gender) or the concept of gender reveal parties. These discussions revealed the very essence of the whole class being engaged in serious conversations that would normally go unnoticed. For instance, I felt comfortable talking about the traditional norms and how fragile masculinity is but if I were to have the same conversation in my home, it would not go so well. So, the class environment was completely different than that of a traditional classroom where we only go to acquire knowledge for testing rather it focused more on the learning aspect through our personal experiences along with the assigned course work. It was not just about learning but living it as well. Among all the concepts we focused on in the class, one of my favorite activities was the gender text collection. This is mainly because it was something completely new to me and it made me challenge my critical thinking skills. It was so interesting to learn about how I and my peers were able to find topics that challenged the traditional norms for gender. 

The course not only opened routes for new ideas but also made use of our critical thinking skills. The very first assignment was so exciting, I remember talking to my physical therapist about the different ideas I had in mind for this specific assignment. I had never written a public post, the thrill, and anxiety of knowing that anyone can access my work made me want to write something I was passionate about. I decided to write about the hijra communities of South Asia. One of the many reasons why I chose to write about this topic was the ability to tell people about the struggles of hijras and spread awareness about their existence. This is because I remember having an encounter with hijras as a child and the treatment of our elders towards them truly made me question the concept of humanity as a 7-year-old. I wondered why they were being treated differently when we’re all human. Hence, the title for my blog post is “Are They Any Less Human?” The blog post was like a mini-research assignment with the freedom of choosing whichever topic for research. Through my research. I was exposed to so many aspects of their lives and how truly heartbreaking it is for them to live in such conservative societies. The research urged me to watch a documentary about this topic; it was so informational as it shed light on the seriousness of the conditions they are living through. The lack of employment opportunities, being exploited by the members of their community because of money, the inability to have relationships with their own families, inability to fulfill their dreams, risking damage to their bodies to fulfill basic needs, and many more. This assignment was more than just about writing but it was more about experiencing reality and enlightening myself with the privileges I have and the accessibility to spread awareness about something that my people go through every day.   

In addition, the blog post assignment was not just centered around me being able to expose my ideas but also retrieving new information through other public posts of my peers. I read a few of their posts and it truly gave an insight on an important issue that I had never given much thought about before taking this course. For instance, one of the posts talked about the institution of marriage, while another post that triggered my personal interest was Housework: The idea that it’s just a “woman’s” job by Syedah. Partially because it reflects on the very trueness of how normalized it is for women to be considered the caretakers for the home and do outside jobs as well. Syedah not only tackles the stereotypical association of housework being a woman’s job but you can tell the frustration in her voice as she seeks to validate that a woman should be more than a caretaker for her husband or children. Syedah also reflects on her background influencing her to challenge this kind of mindset and I can completely relate to this as a reader.  

Lastly, the group project was another assignment that I truly enjoyed because of the way my group structured the layout. Focusing on the specific job professions and how gender stereotypes have been enforced in these professions is something we rarely talk about. For example, when I first started looking into research journalism, there were only limited resources where I could obtain valuable input. This is why I decided to focus on politics instead. It was not as easy to access the research either as many of the articles focused on one thing which was the underrepresentation of women being influenced by voter behavior. This is true however I was certain that there are many other reasons for such underrepresentation. Through my research, I found out that women are expected to behave a certain way to appeal to voters and to be even considered a fit for the job. This is because politics is considered to fall under the domain of masculine professions and for women to prove their “worth,” they have to act in ways that their male counterparts are exempt from. For example, I talked about this in my presentation, women dressing a certain way has been an issue for as long as women have been part of the political settings. Whether they wear a dress, boots, heels, or even pantsuit, they will receive harsh judgment regardless. Sometimes their political beliefs will be questioned for dressing a certain way. I was also able to talk about Irving and her research in which she writes how women are expected to portray both feminine and masculine traits to be considered qualifiable yet they are also expected to maintain the traditional characteristics of a woman who should be kind, affectionate, and responsible, unlike men who can be aggressive, authoritative, and challenging. Over the semester, our group met a few times but the fact that we had assigned each person their duties, it was not as hard to communicate. Everyone was respectful of one another’s ideas and this was evident when we decided to change the presentation template yet no one was bothered. Regarding the presentation, we all performed well but I believe that I could have expressed my thoughts better because my anxiety got the best of me. Therefore, the project helped strengthen my social and analytical skills through communication/research.

Throughout this class, I have learned a lot. I expected this class to be engaging, but I was surprised to know about how much I looked forward to this class. I enjoyed learning the different topics in class such as gender myths, black liberation, and feminism and trans liberation. I was able to learn a lot about the gender, such as women were told to be “household wives”, while the men went out and worked. I enjoyed reading the books, “Women. Race, and Class” by Angela Davis and “Transgender History” by Susan Stryker. I enjoyed reading “Women. Race, and Class”, which taught me more about the stereotypes women had to endure and how black women faced oppression. I enjoyed reading “Transgender History”, which taught me more about the transgender people and it gave me an insight into the LGBTQ+ community, which I didn’t know much about. The learning in this class was very different from my other classes. Even though it was a three-hour class, it didn’t feel like that. I felt very comfortable in this learning space because we were able to voice how we felt about any topic, without feeling that we were restricted. Even if we had opposing views about certain topics, it was never a time where someone felt as though anyone was against them, for their opinion.

As for public writing, this was a new experience for me. I’ve never written a blog post before, but I enjoyed doing it. I especially enjoyed writing my personal piece on women being housewives. This topic was very interesting to me because it still trends up to this day. On social media, I see a lot of posts where men want a woman that stays home, cleans and cooks for them, while they go out, have fun or work. Luckily, women have beat this stereotype by not allowing a man to confine them to this stereotype. Women have chosen to be much more than stereotypes, to be businesswomen, entrepreneurs, and much more. I’m extremely proud to say that we are evolving into much more than “housewives”, where even the reality shows about housewives show that they have their own and they aren’t just cooking and cleaning for their spouses. In addition to writing the blog posts, I enjoyed reading the other blog posts from my peers. They were interesting topics like marriage and gender equality, which taught me more about these two topics. I also enjoyed discussing these topics together in class as I was able to learn more opinions on it.

As for the research project, this was by far, my favorite research project that I’ve ever done. My group’s topic discussed gender stereotypes within professions, and I especially liked how we did it on professions that we were interested in. In my group, we figured out what we wanted to research and began working from there. If we had any questions, we would discuss it with each other, to make sure we all agreed. For our group project, I believe that I brought insight on the stereotypes placed on male nurses. I hadn’t expected most of the stereotypes to be on males, but after doing the research, I realized the reasons for it. Some of the stereotypes I saw were shocking to me because they were unbelievable. For example, there was one that talked about men wanting to be male nurses so they could see women naked. I had never ever heard of that one before. It was nice to learn about the profession because it relates to my future career. I was able to teach my peers how the stereotype came to be, who the first male nurse was and how the stereotypes have changed in the present day. It was a very fun project for me, and I enjoyed also learning about the other professions my peers researched as well.

Personal Reflection – Shannon Dyett

First and foremost, I’d like to thank Ms. Ashton for being an amazing and understanding teacher throughout the semester. Your kindness to me was really great and you’re the main reason I didn’t mind having a Thursday class from 5:05 p.m. to 7:50 p.m. I’d be lying if I mentioned that I wasn’t skeptical at first when I started taking this class mainly because discovering that this class supported the LGBTQA+ community and the students either supported or took part in that community as well made me feel a certain way. Growing up, I always had two parents that weren’t homophobic but didn’t want their two only daughters being lesbians, since my dad had a slight problem with gays and my mom had a slight problem with lesbians. The thing was that my dad, since he had two daughters and not two sons, didn’t care if we liked women or not, he just wanted us to explore our options with men before trying to be with a woman. So, to be apart of a class that had no problems with gays, lesbians or any other type of sexuality made me feel awkward and slightly uncomfortable because in my mind it’s either being straight or nothing, knowing that I myself was and still is Bisexual.

This class taught me a tremendous amount, especially when it came to the gay community because before I knew only about a couple sexualities such as gay, lesbian, trans, bisexual and recently I learned about queer. But, learning about all the other sexualities especially after doing my project made my mind open up to a million things and to learn all this information was phenomenal. When I first started the class I was a bit lost with what the class was supposed to be about so when we started with the two books in the beginning of the semester I felt overwhelmed. Overtime though I got the hang of school in general and when I started to learn what the class meant I got a excited knowing that it’ll be fun to voice our opinions and speak our minds about topics that someone like myself can’t speak on everyday such as why I call myself a bisexual person and the type of people I like. I loved that the blog post we had to do for class could have contained any topic of our choice. It just had to be about what the class stood for, that’s why I chose women getting abused by their husbands. Since the class name is Women’s Studies it felt right just writing about how women with abusive relationships or marriages get treated and just saying what their partners do and say when they first start off the abuse to what happens later down the line was amusing for me considering my passion for writing in general. 

Writing my blog post made me feel a thrill of wonder, especially when my fellow classmates read it and they were able to tell me parts that I wrote that they loved so much. What made me feel even better is that those same parts were parts that I shocked myself by writing. One part in particular that most loved including myself was the part when I said “that will turn the husband’s verbal abuse into physical abuse to the point where it will no longer be a marriage for the both of them where they love each other dearly till death do them part, it will end up being miss treatment for her till death do her part.” Writing my blog post “The Role(s) of Marriage” felt incredible, I remember not even knowing where to start but the minute I started to write I just couldn’t stop. Writing on the regular for me is fun and easy that’s why I appreciated Ms. Ashton saying we can write about whatever just keep the topic about women. What I learned from my blog post was nothing new but it just made me more aware of what I can expect from a man and it taught me to know that not all men are as sweet and kind as I’d expect them to be. 

Doing my queer parenting project with the help of Laneice was so fascinating mainly because it felt so good to do a project for once where I learn so much information I didn’t know before. To learn all about sexualities that I never knew about before was super informative specifically because I’ve heard of a couple of them but never knew what they meant or the difference between them. For instances, when Laneice and I wrote that bisexual and pansexual aren’t the same and that asexual and aromantic aren’t the same either I was confused especially with bisexual and pansexual. What confused me was the fact that both sexualities involves you liking both sex but apparently pansexual means you don’t just like both sex you like all sexualities as well so trans, men and women. Two of the genders I did a slide on that I didn’t know existed were agender and aromantic, mainly aromantic. Agender and intersex I knew of I just didn’t know the correct term for the people born with both male and female parts and people who prefer to be called they/them. Also being polyamorous, I didn’t know that it was a sexuality, I just thought it was a preference or something people were into since one person wasn’t good enough for them that they needed two or more to be satisfied. 

Overall, I didn’t just learn what the teacher briefly taught, I learned from my other classmates’ projects as well. Such as the group that did high heels, I didn’t know that high heels originated from men, I always thought it was a woman thing. The gender stereotype project was one project that I was happy to hear because I do think in life, especially women, they are the ones that people believe are always a certain way. People have certain stereotypes about women that aren’t true, they believe women are meant to do certain things such as work only around the house and take care of the children while men are the breadwinners of the household that work and get all the money and that’s how it’s meant to stay. That’s why in my blog post I was eager to voice my thoughts about how society sees women and that the reason most men think it’s okay to treat their ladies a certain way is because they are the dominant ones in the house and if they’re making the money then the women need to cook, clean and take care of the children since that’s all we’re good for apparently. I just love how this class was based mainly on how women are great at being women and doing way more than anyone would expect. 

I loved this class, my teacher, and my classmates. It was fun being in a class with diversity and not just black and spanish students like normal. Learning that my classmates were from different countries such as Russia made me feel inspired knowing that other students attend Brooklyn College, not just students I figured would since we live in Brooklyn. It would be amazing to have another class such as this one with a teacher like Ms. Ashton, again her patience and understanding is what I think makes a teacher a great teacher and I wouldn’t change a thing about this particular class (maybe an earlier time though lol). 

Amanda Liggieri

WGST 1001

Professor A

20 December, 2021

Reflection

I do not really remember what my expectations were for this class before the semester started but whatever they were, we exceeded it. Being a woman myself I thought what can I possibly learn from a class about Women Gender Studies… This class has actually introduced so many new points of views to me. This class was well put together from syllabus, to professor, to even the readings.  In many of my other classes you could hear a pin drop when a professor asked a question or put us in small groups. That is the complete opposite experience I got from WGST 1001. There was never a moment of silence in this class! Many times we would plan to leave class a little early but never actually did it because we could not cut the discussion short! That is something many professors aim to have in their classes but sometimes are not as fortunate to get. 

With class being almost 3 hours long you may ask, well what did we talk about for all that time? The class readings were not only informational but very relatable. We would discuss the readings and then be able to relate it to our actual lives and then speaking on that would open a window for another classmate to talk about their experience and so on. This class seemed to be a safe place for not only me but my classmates as well. Most classes you take in college you will never apply to life outside the classroom but with so many people that were able to relate to the readings in this class, you know that this class is important to take. One course topic that stuck with me is Marsha P. Johnson. I had never heard of Marsha P. Johnson prior to this class but once I started watching the STAR interview and was so invested. I was rooting for her so much that 5 minutes into the video I googled her to see where she was at in life and broke my own heart to see she had passed. To say the least, I watched the rest of the video holding back tears. Trans rights was something we spoke frequently about in class. Many other topics we touched on I thought I was an expect on but the readings we did allowed me to dig deeper for example “Gender and Genitals: Constructs of Sex and Gender” by Hubbard. This reading was more towards the beginning of the semester and talked a lot about sex vs gender and how gender was a social construct. This topic definitely tied into my research project of Gender Stereotypes 2. Hubbard is a great author along with Angela Davis! Judith Butler was a challenge and hard to follow but the video we watched helped a lot to understand her view point.  

As mentioned before my topic for the group research project was Gender Stereotypes 2. From my experience the group project was actually a roller coaster. My group and I all agreed on the basics of what we wanted to present but when it came down to the actual presentation there was a lack of communication and it was frustrating. I overall was not pleased with the presentation being honest. Some of my group members were not the fastest repliers and did not do their slides with the format and font we used already. I felt like some of the slides were almost in essay form and not in presentation form and every time I brought up a suggestion no one would really answer. I often found myself going on to the slides and fixing other people’s work to correct the format, font, and spelling/grammar. I even had to fix the work cited multiple times and remind my group to actually cite and not post links. This made me feel like I put in more effort than others. My part of the presentation was Marriage and Family. I introduced the stereotypes on a graph and then further explained on the following slides. I presented my stereotypes with statistics, pictures, and videos. I really wish the video I had uploaded would have been able to load because I felt it would have brought some humor to our presentation. Finding out the statistics for the stereotypes we already knew was actually pretty interesting. Although I was not overall very pleased with the presentation it did come out better than I was expecting. One thing I learned from this project was patience and how being a team player sometimes means helping your team out besides your part. On the other hand I would love to compliment everyone else’s presentation because I felt every single one was informational and interesting. Sometimes with an online class it is easy to lose focus but I was so attentive while everyone was presenting. I loved seeing the other Gender Stereotypes group presentation, I was worried our projects would have repeating information but it was fun to see how we presented on opposite spectrums under the same umbrella.

My public writing in the blog post was titled Misogynistic Music Industry. My thought process behind this topic was I wanted to do something different. I saw many posts on gender roles for women and felt like everyone was repeating the same things and the same quotes from Angela Davis’s book.  I would have loved to see some more original ideas throughout the blog posts but I do realize how Gender roles in a house or marriage setting was the easiest to quote from the readings we have done. I do like the idea of the blog post because I like reading everyone elses work and seeing their thought process. I liked getting comments on what I should improve. I feel like constructed criticism is needed to advance in anything. I even enjoyed helping others improve their work. I focused on the music industry because gender plays a big role on how artists present their music.