Personal Reflection -Yanjun Jiang

      First of all, I am very happy and grateful that I chose to take this class. This class brought us, women together and shared our opinions and ideas on various topics in the class. Such as white supremacy, masculinity, and the stereotypes women receive in society. What impressed me most was the article we annotated together in class which is the excerpt from ‘The Feminine Mystique’. This article reveals the stereotype that women have left from the past to the present. That is, women have always been regarded as housewives. They should take care of their children and their husbands at home. This is their responsibility. However, this article also reveals that women are helpless about this stereotype. They also feel more and more restricted by what society thinks women should do. This makes them feel that life has no other color, but lives are getting more meaningless. They repeat doing the same housework every day and gradually lose themselves. This article impressed me deeply since it taught me that women should radiate their own glory, not blindly obey the image that society has set for them. They have the right to live for themselves, create a better future for themselves, and bring enough sense of security and happiness to themselves. So personally, I’m glad that this class has taught me a lot about how women should be strong and change the stereotype brought to them by society. Women can be independent and have more masculinity and ability than men. This is a personal ability, rather than defined by gender. Therefore, the gender stereotype should be eliminated, and bring them gender equality. 

        Moreover, I am also very happy that the professor asked us to write a public blog post. This is my first time writing a public blog post. I think writing blog posts promote our learning and reflect our growth. I enjoy the process of writing blog posts, which can reflect our personal thinking process, not just the result of thinking. We never understand a problem or field, from understanding to familiarity, from familiarity to mastery. This helps us record a person’s growth process of thinking and solving problems. In my blog post, I wrote about the theme of gender equality. Because it has been believed that women are lower than men in physical and intellectual aspects historically. It has always been a stereotype that women should stay at home. Although it seems equal for today’s women to go to school and work like men, in essence, men and women are unequal. They have been defined since birth because of gender factors. Society is calling for us to be competent and play the roles of men and women. For example, women should be gentle and graceful at any time, and then men should be firm, strong, and aggressive. However, what I want to say is that everyone has the freedom to choose himself. We have no right to define a person according to sex. Women can be gentle or strong; Men can be strong or weak. At the same time, they can be heterosexual or gay, which is moral. What we need is a city without gender discrimination, a society in which women can make money to support their families and men can take care of their children without discrimination. Women are not only mothers, wives, and daughters, but also other identities. Men and women are equal in spirit. Everyone can choose their own appearance instead of being “beautified” by public opinion. I hope to take this opportunity to write a blog in order to share knowledge and exchange views with my dear students and all the public. Just as we replied to other students’ blog posts and agreed or disagreed with their blog posts. We discussed together and listened to other people’s thoughts and expressed our opinions. I think this really helps to promote the common progress of both sides. 

         Also, when I did a research group project with my groupmates, I really enjoyed the process of doing our project. I think our group activity has created a harmonious working atmosphere. Each of my group members and I have equal opportunities to give full play to our opinions and ideas on the theme we chose. The theme we chose was gender stereotypes. Our group chose to introduce the story of a specific female role to the public women to make a voice. We talked about the stereotypes of our female role faced from her early childhood to her marriage and family life. Finally, it expounds that women should live for themselves and give themselves the most stable sense of security. Instead of taking your husband and children as your everything. When we work on group projects, our group members learn from each other in communication, mutual inspection, and mutual evaluation activities. We learn to check our own parts while checking each other’s contributions to the project, and combine everyone’s into a perfect group presentation. I think this research group project promotes us to study vividly and actively. And let us have a deeper understanding and new knowledge of the theme of gender stereotypes. This has cultivated our innovation potential. In research group project learning, each of us uses our existing knowledge to find ways to solve new problems, and we often have new ideas on this topic. And then we add our ideas to the PowerPoint slides. Therefore, I also think that taking this opportunity of research group project activity has created conditions for our careful thinking and created an atmosphere of sustainable development.

        Finally, I am very grateful that we met you, our professor Ashton. We enjoy communicating and sharing with you every time in this class. We had a good chat and brought a good atmosphere and laughter to the class. We have also learned a lot of topics in your class that we haven’t touched or learned before. This class is the one that makes me feel most relaxed and happy. Thank you, Professor Ashton. I wish you all the best and have a happy holiday! We will miss you and everyone in the class. You all did a good job and congratulations on ending another semester!!