Personal reflection Kayla Havercome 

Women and Gender Studies 1001 

Personal reflection 

December 21,2021

         I don’t know what I expected in women and gender studies 1001. At first all I know is that I wanted to get my pathway classes out the way so I could focus on my major. I think personally I’m not one to really think why this happens to which gender in any topic. But my general thought of this class is that I have come to learn everything that we know that our parents know and even way before that has always come down to gender in what way people are “supposed to treat each other”. I think that because my mindset has always been to not really care what people think of me and I know I’m gonna do what makes me happy even if I end continuing some social stereotypes, then so be it. But after just listening in some of the classes, I know that I should care, not enough to let it hurt me but enough in order to change these stereotypes, and I learned that by hearing the opinions of my fellow classmates in this class and hearing their views on the topics we had talked about. I know that in this class it was a safe space to talk about anything and we were able to hear each other out even when we didn’t have the same viewpoints. Personally, I have always loved history, whether it was geographic or the history of people in any shape and form, so learning about women as a whole and the LGBTQ+ community was a really interesting digest. And i think that on top of all of this having a teacher who you see really cares about hearing others opinions on these topics and just seeing their overall passion has really made me enjoy this class 10x better than i ever expected 

   I must admit I did have a hard time reading the readings except for like two of them because imma be honest I don’t read at all so my reading level is low but what helped was doing these hypothesis annotations and blog posts. Reading Angela Davis, the star interview, Stryker some of the one that were difficult to read, but looking at my classmates annotations and she how they decipher that text in front of them has really helped me find my own opinion on the texts because it gave me guidance on what the texts were talking about, and with dimming my point of view of the text i was able to find my own words of what part o father stories meant to me. When it came to writing the blog post, I did find it semi difficult because before this class like I said, I used to keep my opinions to myself and I don’t really like public writing or speaking like that because it does kinda make me uncomfortable. Then trying to figure out what to talk about, I do get in my own head because there are so many problems that I do want to talk about that don’t get enough light shed on them, so it was kind of hard to stick to just one, but I did. I wasn’t able to do the blog post with my classmates due to my situation so I didn’t get feedback on my post, which overall would have been helpful because I do get a little passionate when I’m writing and forget about grammar and other things that make up a proper paper. I wrote about this generation and how I think that everything doesn’t need to be put into a box. I know that the past generation is really specific in a negative way, so it would be how you were treated if you were in a certain category and I think that is wrong and unfair. That’s why I’m also proud to be a part of a generation that is still specific but owns who they are in the best way possible while also  knowing that everyone is human and shouldn’t be treated differently. Overall I did love doing this assignment and reading other points of view in blog posts by my classmates.

    I wasn’t able to bring much to the group project because i and some serious things that happened to me within the past weeks of creating the project and i did want to apologise my group which was high heels i know that my absence didn’t really help them because there was some stuff that i needed to contri0 to the group myself and I didn’t have anyway of communicating that I could help because i had to delete everything on my devices so I had no one contact info. But from watching the presentation it looked like they didn’t need me after all, which was cool to see their final project. 

     I definitely wanted to thank you professor for creating a safe space and honestly just letting us vent about the problems we face as women and sadly will face in the future until stereotypes are dismantled. It was a please hearing everyone from the classes I was present in.

Laneice Garner December 20, 2021

Intro to Women’s History: Personal Reflection

My experience of the Introduction to Women’s History class was a surprisingly pleasant experience that left me wanting more. The interactive readings coupled with the entertaining nature of the educational resources made each class painless and made me look forward to participating in the next class. To be honest, it was the passion of the professor for this class that made me relaxed after the first couple weeks of participation. I was excited to present to the class what gender texts I had found in everyday life which pertains to biases experienced by women on a daily basis and find out where the discussion would take us. It was a relief being able to discuss, with like minded, as well as opposing parties, meaningful conversations about how the texts reflected our real life experiences. It has always been difficult dealing with the feelings and thoughts of discriminatory expectations placed upon specific genders, and which outlet to release these thoughts into respectively. However, being introduced to Angela Davis’ book “Women, Race, and Class” set an interesting tone, especially in a selective socially sensitive society we are a part of today. Although the vernacular of Davis’ writing was difficult to process at first, it was the validation, power, and voice of many of the issues that don’t get discussed in today’s time that helped me feel empowered. It felt like the class understood what Davis was trying to convey and therefore others in our society could understand the contradictions of the life of women and how the underlying current of movements helped to shape where we are in the world today.

I thoroughly enjoyed Susan Stryker’s book “Transgender History” amongst many of the readings because it helped to expand my perception of the reality of how long people have been dealing with the different emotions outside of societal norms. As well as how many of the movements we see today, are not as new and how this is the reason people as a whole continue to fight for representation, expansion of mind, and validation of multiple life experiences, besides the one generic type of life experience that is culturally passed down or which we are forced to try to conform to, to become a part of normal society. The fact that my thinking and analyzation of the media, social interactions, certain images or waves on social media has strengthened because I feel like this class helped me to make my own deductions and peek behind the veil of what life has presented to me and explore with depth, not only what this means to me as a person, but how I would want to present my interpretation of my thoughts to the public as well so that we as a society can continue to mentally expand and be more than socially tolerable of each other. I personally enjoyed the videos we watched as a class and for homework because it brought a refreshing aspect to the discussion and I felt more of an emotional connection to the work provided, because it was visual and it made the work more than just black and white. I can tell that this class was designed to invoke thought and grow us as people and I really enjoyed going for the ride.

At first, when I saw the class site and how I would have to make my contribution to it, of course my first thought was that it was a burden, but after taking away the formalities of writing, which I was used to, and introducing the lax public writing aspect, I took pride in wanting to share with others my point of view on a topic that meant something to me. It was nerve wracking and extremely frustrating, being forced to guide myself on what questions I wanted to answer for my audience and not having structure. However, now that I reflect on the writing, I believe that that was the purpose of the blog posts, to break away from being told what to write about and how to write it. Having the opportunity to share and potentially teach a new perspective and spread that newfound knowledge to others on our topic was a truly gratifying experience. It is also extremely helpful to have the feedback from my peers because it not only validated my work, but it also helped to guide me on the journey of how I wanted to direct the point of my post. I continuously go back to my writing and other posts because I still can’t believe that I actually wrote about something that others appreciated and could take away with them and that will stay on the internet forever. After being one of the first groups of students to post my blog post, I definitely wanted to provide some guidance and structure to other students who felt unsure about what they wanted to present to the public or how they should present their thoughts and I enjoyed providing that for them and watching the point of the blog posts click in their personal thought process. I also enjoyed peeking into the minds of my peers and their viewpoints on issues that I also am passionate about, so to leave them praise or to create a discussion about what they were trying to convey, opened up new channels of communication and broke the ice in a deeper way than just being anonymous classmates who won’t see each again, I could learn from my peers as well as having professor guidance.

In terms of the group project, I feel like I brought structure, knowledge of the topic, and focus to the point of our presentation. At first, the topic of queer parenting loomed over me like a huge mountain that I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of, but once I started to discuss what I wanted to shed light on and what I wanted the public and my peers to gain from this presentation, the fear somewhat ebbed away. I was worried at first because I realized while working with my partner in the group project that not everyone has the same understanding as I do, although that is a naïve way to perceive things. I also felt like I brought encouragement to the project because although some of us didn’t have common knowledge of the topic, in times when we were doubting ourselves or how this project would come together, I took the opportunity to be patient, to explain, to relate with my partner in these feelings of insecurity and I felt like that relates to how I should interact with people in everyday life instead of being off put or judgmental of people’s interpretations or perceptions of certain topics. Overall, I think I brought the black and white general knowledge, and bones of our project and that my partner brought out more personalization and a creative take on how we presented our research project.

Rukhshona Uktamova 

Professor Ashton 

WGST 1001  

20 December 2021 

Personal Reflection paper 

                Women and Gender studies 1001 was a very interesting course. When I was registering for the course, I thought we will focus only on Women studies and then during class I realized how we can basically connect anything to gender, even how pink razors cost more than the blue ones, how gender reveal parties aren’t ideal, songs and so many other things. To be honest some of the readings were difficult to understand, maybe because my reading level is low. However, I really enjoyed the hypothesis annotation even though we did a few of them, I wish we did more of them because having everyone’s thoughts, ideas, opinion, analysis of the text on one page helped me better understand the text. The fact we were able to talk about anything, like anything going on our lives, complaints, problems, news we want to share was a great way to start the class because when we did, I felt more connected to the class, people supporting each other, helping others in making decisions, finding names for the cat. I also found the books by Susan Stryker and Angela Davis useful and interesting; I wish we read more of them in class so we could discuss them, but I guess I will read them over the break especially Women Race and Class book.  Show and tell gender texts was a great activity, I don’t think I was able to share both of my gender texts, in class but they are on the website but it was amazing to see what others brought to class.  

               It was my first-time writing blog posts, and I didn’t have much experience with public writing except those few of my poems that got published in my high school poetry catalog and in Stuckinthelibrary catalog in Brooklyn college. To be honest I found the blog post a bit difficult to complete, maybe because I was in group one, and I wasn’t sure what an ideal blog post looks like. Also, sometimes I get too focused on one side and forget to write and talk about the other side so that the readers are able to look at the full picture rather than just a part of it. I do realize the mistake I made on my blog post after posting the second draft because that’s when I got good useful critical feedback where students agreed and some disagreed with me which I liked and it was good to read the disagreements because those feedback showed what I was missing on my blog post but by the time they post their feedback it was late, I couldn’t do anything. I wrote a lot about how marriage is not a form of slavery and how it’s good, but I forgot to mention the disadvantages of marriage. Overall, it was a good experience learning but I had a bit too much confidence in myself that I was going to do great on the assignment based on the first few feedbacks I got but it turns out that sometimes having too much confidence in yourself is not good.  

                    I am glad that you assigned us the Research group project and gave us the option to do it in any format because it gives us choice and flexibility, which is awesome. Also, as you know since Covid – 19 and many classes are online I actually missed seeing people in class and talking to them. This assignment gave us the opportunity to chat with our classmates during class in breakout rooms and as well as outside class. I was part of the high heels group, overall, it was good working with my team members, but we did have a few small issues. I kind of felt like leading the group at some points because I was asking them what you guys have in thought? What do you guys want to write about? And I shared my ideas created a google doc and asked them to jot down their ideas. In some of the meetings it was only me and Amarah from our group who were in class, and even when we were missing many members, we got work done. I created the slides and shared it with all the members. Amarah and I labeled and organized the slides. I sent out reminders about citation, using the same font and size, asking them to make their slides less wordy more interesting. Eliza helped with decorating; the blue theme and Lady Gaga was her idea. A few minutes before presenting I remembered that we could have transformations on our slides and added those in. So, everybody presented on the slide they worked in, I did start the presentation, then did my own slides and then I wanted to ask questions, so we could have some discussion, and I ended the presentation and dressing up for the presentation and having the camera on helped me focus.  Communication is a key, that’s what I learned from doing the presentation because when I send out texts some members like Amarah and Oluwatobi replied back while some didn’t, which was a bit frustrating.  

              I want to end with a thank you note for all the things you have done for us. It was a great semester and I really appreciate that you had time after class to just chat with me and other students. Best of luck in your future endeavors Ms. Ashton!  

      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!!