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.

To start off I want to admit that I was beyond confident, almost to an arrogant degree, that I had a firm grasp of what it means to be a woman. I was certain that I knew everything (well mostly everything) about what being a woman entails. I felt that especially as a Black woman that my experiences with both race and gender were enough to make me knowledgeable about the world and how I and women like me move throughout it. Seeing that Angela Davis was one of the required readings also gave me enough confidence to know that in this class my experience would be considered and intertwined into the makings of the course and that I would feel included in the dialogue. Learning about the different waves of feminism, seemingly clued me into a new unfound world of liberal and progressive female movements that I didn’t even know existed. Thinking back over the course of the semester, what I didn’t realize is that in this class I would learn and discover that as a woman, regardless of how you identify, all of our experiences are unique as well as important. There is no single way to live as a woman nor is it possible to sum the female experience into one monolith dialogue.

First off, I have to admit that I really enjoyed writing my blog post. While writing my post I took a personal risk and stepped out of my comfort zone. Typically, I focus on writing things that I feel like that I can connect to on a personal level, and as someone that is CIS and straight, writing about LGBTQ+ representation in the media wasn’t something that I felt like I could do effectively. However, this changed after watching the YouTube video on trans representation. While watching the video, the issues and topics that they discussed resonated with me in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. Out of all the readings and videos (even from my Idol Angela Davis), I feel like I took the most from that video. Even as someone who isn’t trans, I can understand why trans people would want to see themselves represented in more progressive and healthier ways. As a small yet growing group in our society, trans people are often stigmatized in the same ways of other minority groups. It is easy for people to fear-monger or promote negative assumptions about a group they aren’t familiar with, and this often has detrimental effects on these groups. When thinking about LGBTQ+ representation (specifically trans representation) I am reminded of how important it is to have allies both in and outside of our social groups that can help uplift and promote healthy and productive discourse on new ways to engage with these types of issues. Being able to publish my post to the blog is a way of helping to facilitate this discussion and ensure that more people, regardless of if they’re LGBTQ+ or not, see and hear the issues that impact the community.

In addition to the blog post, I also had a huge takeaway from the group project. When researching and learning about reproductive justice and abortion, I was shocked to learn about some of the lesser-known issues that relate to abortion. When breaking down abortion by race, I was surprised to learn that abortion laws have a greater impact on women of color. Oftentimes, when abortion and abortion laws are mentioned on the news details like this are left out. Something that I found particularly troubling about this is that when people take a pro-life stance, they are severely undereducated about the details and circumstances that surround abortion, and this makes the discourse on abortion seem even more troubling. I’ve come to some personal conclusions on the matter and one of the more grating ones is that abortion is seen more as a political topic than it is a women’s health topic and ultimately this has a negative impact on all women in the present as well as the future. By adding my research to the group project, I supplemented my group’s overall take on the other social issues that impact abortion like racism and the need for abortion to be depicted in more accurate ways in the media. When the true stats behind abortion and restrictive abortion laws are so distressing and impactful, it is important for reproductive justice to be taken seriously and more fairly by the government.

Furthermore, I sincerely enjoyed the readings and other components of the class. Seeing the gender texts that other classmates brought in exposed me to new viewpoints and encouraged me to look up other content that surrounds feminists and gender discussions on the internet. I found myself engaging more with this type of content on the internet and learning from it. One of my favorite things about the class was that it was a safe space for us to share and learn new things from each other in combination with the coursework. Coming to class and being able to hear about how different students interpreted the readings and other media assigned was enlightening and I feel as though I learned valuable information that I will be able to utilize in the present as well as the future. This was my first time learning about trans experiences as well as learning further information about women’s movements and the deep history behind these things that isn’t known to most people. While we did learn a lot in this class over the course of the semester, most of it felt engaging to me on a personal note. Using the class site to submit work and view the work of my peers made me feel like I was a part of a community and not another student on a roster. Rarely can I say that a class invoked this kind of feeling in me and will cherish this learning experience in my future college endeavors.

Linxin Jiang

After doing the public writing, I was able to learn from different women who grow up with different backgrounds and view things differently. After working on the topic: gender stereotypes with my team. I was able to reevaluate my knowledge about how gender stereotypes can affect the lives of women. One thing I think I can improve next time is becoming a better team player.

One thing I learned from reading public writing from other people is to understand that everyone can have different ideas. When I was reading other women’s writing, I tried to be as neutral as possible. I was trying to understand what her idea was coming from. For example, I don’t agree with the first writing I read. I carefully read her writing, and I tried to understand her ideas before I made any comment. I wrote down everything that I think can be changed, and things that I don’t understand after I read her work. I shared what I love about her work first, and pointed out some structure issues she had. Since I have a different idea than her, and I want her to write what she supports. Therefore, I thought it would be great for me not to question her ideas. I was focusing on how she was introducing her idea and making transitions in different ideas. 

One thing I can improve next time from reading public writing from other people is I should wait until other people give out their thoughts, so I know what she wants to hear from people. She was very happy that people agreed with her idea. I think that it is very important for me to share more about what I liked about next time.

One thing I learned and can improve next time when I do public writing is to communicate and learn from as many people as possible. I found it important to be able to get comments from other people. When I was writing my draft, I felt my eyes and thoughts were covered by something invisible. I thought my draft was good enough until I got suggestions from others. After our in-class break-out section, I shared my writing with others too. Hence, I got more great suggestions.

I learned how to improve individual work from reading and writing public writing. On the other hand, I learned how to work as a team from working on group research projects.

Communication and helping each other are very important for a group. I was doing great talking to people in our group chat. I kept track of everything. For example, I update every task that we discussed during research day for group members who were not able to come to the class during our two research days. I came up with the idea and asked all the team members if they agree to talk about the life of the girl so we can cover all the gender stereotypes that our group thought is important. I tried to be a bridge between all our group members. Put all the tasks together and remind everyone. One of my team members was not comfortable with talking in group chat. She directly messaged a lot. Therefore, I tried my best to update her. I imported a template for our PowerPoint Slides. I reminded my group members to keep using the same format as well.

A few things that I can improve next time include that I should encourage my group members who are not comfortable talking in group chat. I will tell them it would be great if they can also tell other members of our group. It will be more efficient. Another thing that I can improve is stopping using ‘I think’ when I am working in a group. The use of ‘I think’ and ‘I guess’ is a habit of mine. I reminded one of my members several times that I think using paragraphs was not a good choice. We can talk more during the presentation. But we should keep our slides short. But she didn’t want to delete anything. If I have a second chance. I will spend more time convincing her. Additionally, there is an animation in slide 17. However, I didn’t check with my team member who is sharing the screen before the presentation. I found out she is using a local file during the presentation. Therefore, the image with numbers was not able to appear. I decided to say it instead. It is all because I am not confident, and I don’t like conflict. Even when I suggested things that I think are very important. I used ‘I think’ and ‘I guess’ at the beginning of my sentence. And if they don’t want to change it, after all, I will stop saying it. These are something I will improve next time.

This is the best class that I have taken this semester. I was able to take a break from all the mess that I had this semester. I learned to be ‘sensitive’ because I viewed most of society’s issues in a positive stander. However, I noticed many voices against women this year both from men and other women. I was so disappointed at talking to people online, but I see hope from this class. I meet a lot of people just like me who care and want this society to change. I have a little brother who is nine years younger than me. I can change all the men in the world, but I would teach him how to be a normal guy. Someone who can think independently, respect women, support Feminism, and can empathize with women.

Before taking this class I thought I knew everything pertaining to women’s history: gender, sex, stereotypes and power dynamics. But little did I know, I was only scratching the surface. My knowledge has solely and only been compiled of the basic knowledge that has been regurgitated and spit out by society time after time. I was aware of the simple things like the male gaze, the beauty standard, Western ideologies and the basics of women gaining rights. But nothing could prepare me for what I absorbed during this class. Why isn’t public school history classes compiled of trasngender and queer history and women oppression. I believe it should be a requirement for all history classes to go over because it is so necessary to know and to understand society and what it has been built off of. This class has provided me with so much knowledge and allowed me to break down forms of media that are influenced by what I have learned. There is so much history that I never knew until taking this class. I am so grateful I got to dive into the history of various women’s studies topics through chapters, doing public writing for the first time and through my group research project.

Furthermore, learning and unpacking transgender history: rights, liberation and major events captivated me. “Transgender History” written by Stryker discussed many major events but one that caught my attention was Cooper’s Donut’s in 1959. Police were patrolling the vicinity and asking people for their identification. These searches led to arrests due to speculation of prostitution and loitering. As a result drag queens were rounded up by the police but, the customers at Coopers Donuts decided to resist the arrest with the drag queens. It ended with fighting in the street and arrests made. This event went down in history because it shows the power of unity and joining forces to destroy the control of police, government officials and society’s ingrained beliefs. This is also so interesting to me because you would not think of small details in the story like transgender people identifcation cards not necessarily matching with their appearance or the name given to them at birth. This was obviously a problem which led to a lot of issues with suspicious and bored police officers who had nothing better to do. In retrospect it is crazy to know that society decided to believe one day that if a person is not the “default” sexuality (heterosexual) they deserve to be oppressed. It is insane to know that oppression and prejudices formed against transgender and queer people are solely rooted off of the ingrained ideologies and beliefs that have not been questioned. As well as that, one of the big figures we learned about was Marsha P Johnson and it was such an amazing experience to watch the documentary revolving around her life. To see the effect that she had on the people, the community and knowing that she contributed to paving the way for trans and queer individuals is so beautiful. My favorite part of the documentary was being able to see the performances she did, hearing the crowd be starstruck and being comfortable in her own identity no matter the circumstances. It makes me sad to know that scientists during that period in time believed that if you did not identify with your sex given at birth to being mentally insane. Although I already knew the basics of gender stereotypes and houseworks it was so enlightening reading Davis’s book “Women, Race and Class” even through her riddled words.. 

Moreover, this was my first time public writing besides when I used to make blogs as a 10 year old and have nothing to talk about. Public writing is so much more different and relaxing than writing formal papers. When writing formal papers I get so much anxiety but, during this class I felt so relieved and like I could talk and talk about a topic I am super passionate about but I had to keep it to the word limit! While writing my first blog post “Gender Stereotypes and Western Ideologies in Media” I felt like I could weave my personality into my writing and let my thoughts roam freely but still stay concise and convey my thoughts, beliefs and positions on my chosen topic. Furthermore, I dived in gender stereotypes, western ideologies, the beauty myth and media. I love exploring the effects of the deeply ingrained beliefs in media because it showcases how embedded they are in society and the people that create these forms of media. As a filmmaker and writer I hope that through my exploration I can create films that do not possess the limitations of gender stereotypes and only allow for fluidity and an intertwine of femininity and masculinity. I weaved in my prior knowledge from one of my favorite films which I feel showcase gender stereotypes Jennifer’s Body and utilized Jennifer as my point of reference for guiding my media portion. Along with that, diving into the “housewife” helped me to realize the contradicting beliefs of society. Although the housewife is associated with spending money excessively and is scrutinized for it, the men in power view her as a fuel that controls the changing tastes that affect the market. So the women fuel and contribute to the economy, create humans that fuel and contribute to the economy and it is still not enough.

Moreover choosing reproductive justice for the group research project was the best choice ever. I absorbed so much knowledge from the information all of my group members were collecting and through my process of researching. I chose media because it is my comfort zone but because when I see anything regarding abortion a white girl is getting one and is always regarding pro-life beliefs and standpoints. It was a breath of fresh air to dive into the social media activism that is taking place on social media regarding reproductive justice and abortion stories. Women are often shamed and if communities can be formed that unify women I am here for it always. It is super empowering to know that social media is not only being used to bash women but uplift and support one another. It was also enlightening to see that pro-life movements are also weaved into the Black community and rooted off of religion.

This also inspired me to write a script in my thesis script writing class pertaining to reproductive justice. We enter the world as pro-lifer Dan (the protagonist) who has gotten his mistress Megan pregnant and it is not long before his wife finds out. I wanted to explore the idea that men do not care about reproductive rights until it puts their family or reputation into jeopardy. Even then they only care about it because it is concerning them and their family.

In conclusion, I loved being apart of this class and all of the knowledge and history I have been able to learn. I definitely will continue my studies outside of this class and dissect more films to see the gender stereotypes weaved into them.

I can not believe it has already been a semester of being in this class. This class has helped me be knowledgeable in things that I thought I knew but clearly did not know the whole details about it. Like how in the group high heels and that those torture devices were made by the King of France to make HIS legs and butt look amazing. I love that this class was like a free for all and how we were able to talk about everything and anything! From gushing over how cute Yara’s kitten is to how frustrating toxic masculinity and white supremacy are. 

In all seriousness, we talked and learned about many important topics in this class. For instance, my first blog post was about the myth of the black rapist, and how yes rape is awful and I would never support it however there is a sad truth that most people in jail for rape, especially if their race was black, they were not the ones that committed the act but or blamed that they did. There was a section that was mentioned in Angela Davis’ book and we are all Davis’ lovers in this class as we support everything that she says and does because it is all the truth. Along with Angela Davis, we also read works and talked about Judith Butler who was an amazing author that had horrible grammar. However, once you were able to decipher her work you are in awe and angered by her line of work because as fascinating women history may be, it is always frustrating seeing how women were treated in the past and how the thing was normalized so nobody needs that how the men were treating women was actually horrible. 

Earlier I mentioned posting a blog post and honestly, I had a lot of fun with it. Even though I struggled with the website and it is my first time using the CUNY Commons website, however, it gave me a sense of journalism and it felt like I was about to post my article that would open the public’s eye and even cause controversy but get people talking about a topic that needs to be addressed. Ever since middle, my English teachers would always tell me to pursue journalism as a profession since if it was a topic that I was passionate about and had a lot of opinions about said topic, my opinions were actually eye-opening and got my teachers to think about the article they assigned us in a different way then they originally read it in. I also loved the idea that we had creative freedom to write about anything we wanted to shine light and attention to as long as it was from the readings from class, or is a different source but has the same ideals of the reading we were assigned. 

The blog post gave me and all my other classmates in this class to explore the world of historical events and allowed us to sink deeper into our ideas and opinions on certain events and topics and help us see if we actually know the topic we are studying or if we just brushed the surface and never really got to the core of the problem or topic. Again referencing my blog post about the myth of the black rapist, I knew about the topic of rape and how it is a horrible crime to commit and I believe all rapists deserve to spend the rest of their lives rotting behind bars, but I never knew that black men would be targeted for this crimes. Sadly, I also knew that black men are more likely to be incarcerated for crimes they did not do, or if they did commit a crime they would be given a higher and stricter punishment in comparison to a white male that committed the same exact crime. So it was not really a big shocker that white males would actually be the one gang-raping a woman but pushing the blame to multiple other black males that had not even been near the unholy scene and end up sitting behind the cell until they take their final breath. It is extremely frustrating but when you live in a world where white supremacy is constant, this is the sad reality many Americans have to deal with. It is complete and utter bull shit, but it’s the truth.

Do you know what else is complete bull crap? Gender stereotypes! Why is it that because I was born with a vagina rather than a penis I am immediately deemed sensitive and less capable than the opposite sex? Why is it if you are born with a penis that you are the strongest which means you can never cry about your problems unless you want to be seen as feminine and have your sexuality and masculinity questioned? This happens because of gender stereotypes that are so outdated that they should not even be used in the twenty-first century. Since I am a woman my favorite color is either pink or purple and not blue or green because those are colors that are associated with man and they are manly and not girly at all. If you are a guy wearing the color pink your sexuality is questioned as you are showing a feminine side of yourself and it is not normal for men to wear pink and any other color that is associated with women. Sadly gender stereotypes are not just implied to colors and clothing, but also to many job professions that I and my group members explored.

My group decided to focus on the job profession aspect of gender stereotypes since gender stereotypes are such a major topic and it is almost like an umbrella with how many topics can fit under gender stereotypes. We decided on professions that we are interested in pursuing or interested in learning more about. For instance, I chose to learn and write about teachers and those stereotypes because that is what I am majoring in and what I want to be in my career in the near future. Whenever I told family members or friends that I was going to be a teacher they all responded with the same line that “Oh my god! That is the best job a woman can ever have!” Which got me thinking about why is it that women tend to always be teachers and professors in comparison to males in this profession. If you ask the internet they just reply that teachers’ salaries are low compared to other professions like doctors, lawyers, and mechanics. If you ask an average person they say it is because teachers have the same dismissal time, and vacation days as their children do so the mother is able to both provide and also take care of the children once they are home from work and school. 

I constantly made the comment in our presentation that being a teacher is the next best thing to being a stay-at-home mom, or housewife. This was the main reason why I did not want to become a teacher because I did not want to be pushed into that stereotype and I also did not want to be in school anymore as I have been in school since I was four years old. However, I am not a natural-born leader so I can not run my own company, I am too sensitive so I can not be a lawyer, but I love helping people in any way I possibly can whether it is by donating to charity, participating in walks to bring awareness to illness, or just regular community service by decorating senior homes for the holidays, working at soup kitchens, delivering groceries to elderly that can not leave their homes, etc. What better way to help my community by educating the youth and shaping the future generation to be the best people they can possibly be and help change the future for the better. The idea that in the future I will be teaching future doctors, lawyers, politicians, musicians, veterinarians, maybe even teachers like myself excites me even more and makes me want to work harder so that I can become the best teacher I can possibly be. 

All in all, I had a blast taking this class this semester. It made me feel different types of emotions. From anger and sadness to happiness and joy. If there is someone reading this post that was not in our class or did not take this class but is debating on it, please take this class! It is basically free for all and you are able to rant about anything and everything that is happening in today’s world. As for any male students that may be reading this post, please join this class. Trust me the class is going to attack your gender constantly because we are not white feminists. You can learn so much in this class and a lot of valuable information. Please take the class because believe me when I say that you will not regret it. 

Thank you Professor Ashton for this amazing semester! I always looked forward to your class and even if I was tired that day, your class immediately woke me up and I learned so much in this class so thank you! I hope everyone in this class continues doing well in their academic journeys and happy holidays!!! Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve, and New Years Day everyone!!!!