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This is another video sara.gladwin and I thought about setting the scene with. After choosing the "perfect gender" video to use instead, I saw no reason for also not sharing this one. Enjoy!

sara.gladwin and I felt that this would be a good discussion started for the "perfect gender"

I have mentioned and explained once in class and in one of my web events that I am asexual aromantic, which is one reason why I have mixed feelings about My Gender Workbook. The author in many instances assumes that the audience identifies as a sexual being, and her wording often gives the impression that sexuality and gender while not the same thing, are deeply dependent on each other. And while society's impression of your gender is often connected to their impression of your sexuality, as is the language they use, self-identification of gender does not always hinge on sexuality. I still identify overall as cisfemale, even though because of societal expectations and connotations I do not feel I have access to many of the words describing cisfemales. The word woman is deeply connected to being a sexual and/or reproductive being; menstruation and the construct of losing one's virginity and engaging in sexual or romantic relations is a sign of growing up, of a girl becoming a woman. And while I have the reproductive capacities of a woman, I have no intention of using them, and the idea of being sexually or romantically involved with others bothers me to my very core. As such I will retain my "virginity" (I have no time to explain how upsetting I find that word to be), my innocence, my chastity, which keeps me in the position of a girl, which I still cannot belong to because I am an adult (also because girls are expected to grow up into women). Does that make me an adult girl? I'd rather not be.

Although my group's Ghana Study presentation on language diversity was quite a few weeks ago, I still think often of the role language plays in Ghanaian society and education systems. Connecting to readings we've done in Pim's class on the subject of language in a postcolonial society, I find there are two (broadly speaking) schools of thought: the more idealistic (think Decolonizing the Mind of Ngugi wa Thiong'o) and the more pragmatic (think The Education of a British Protected Child of Chinua Achebe). Ideally, native language should play a huge role in national identity and pride. Speakers could be making concrete efforts to write in the language and to speak it. However, thinking more pragmatically, a unifying language (like English) could serve a purpose of being a place of neutrality and unification. Achebe writes, "The great thing about being human is our ability to face adversity down by refusing to be defined by it, refusing to be no more than its agent or its victim." He writes of a "middle ground...where the human spirit resists an abridgement of its humanity." And I think using English (in the context of Ghanaian education) could be the kind of middle ground about which Achebe writes.

During this past Thursday's class we anonomously put up our thoughts about our trip to Ghana and where to progress from there. One classmates response asked a question along the lines of "What happens when the stereotypes we know about turn out to be more true that we had hoped?" and this particular question impacted me quite significantly and made me begin to think of answers to this question. 

To begin, I had a similar revelation while in Ghana. One day at lunch Alice asked me what my "AHA!" moment in Ghana was and I said that even though I had never been in Ghana or any country in Africa, what I was experiencing was not mind-blowingly different than what I had thought. When I applied to this 360 program and I had mentioned that one of my goals is to disprove some of the pre-conceived notions that I have about Africa as a whole. Through reading and analysis and ultimately through a first hand experience in Ghana I was expecting to come home with stories about how our original pre-conceived notions were all wrong and Ghana is actually like this and this, and so on and so forth. I never really thought of my pre-conceived notions as stereotypes but after one of my classmates brought it up, I realized that the question "What do we do when our stereotypes more true than hoped?" is actually very valid, and the answer does not come easily. 

I found the discussion of the poem "Cinderella" in class on Thursday extremely valuable, particularly in the small group discussions. My favorite part was discovering and discerning all of the initial "first readings" of the poem. For some, their first readings and imaginings followed the traditional fairy tale, for others the poem raised connotations sex trade and for me personally, I set the poem in a modern sense--thinking of the business world, cultural capital, etc.

 As my group of three began devising a form of lesson plan, we kept circling back to these multiple readings. We decided then, that a great initial part of our lesson in a workshop would be to have everyone free write on the poem individually first, only later sharing their initial readings with a larger group. The purpose of this, while of course meaning to promote personal reflection, more importantly shows another example of multiliteracy.

By showing that people can interpret the same poem in so many different ways, within different contexts and deriving different meanings from it, eccentuates the point that people come from different backgrounds with different forms of literacy. I think that understanding and validating various interpretations of one story can help people in the process of learning to understand and validate various forms of literacy as well.

Setting the scene using children's books was a great way to start the class last week. I just wanted to go back to the question of the "age appropriateness" of these books. In my personal opinion a child should be able to read what interests them. However, if I had a child who was interested in reading books about love, I would not want them to only read about heteronormative love. I think that a child would better understand that love can come in many forms and can be felt for any person regardless of their sex, gender, sexual orientation etc. at a younger age. Once we are exposed to thoughts of right and wrong in the world we close up little by little. Can open mindedness be achieved more easily if it begins at an earlier age? Should there be a work book like "My Gender Work Book" that is accessible to all ages? 

So most of the terms that came to mind are associated with gender but arose as points of confusion during a theory class, where everyone used these terms liberally and I felt like I had no idea what they were talking about.

hegemonic : I think I know what this means, it comes up frequently in another gender and sex related class I am in currently.

Focault : now I know who he is and understand his theory, but during a prior feminist class he was intensely alluded to, and I was left very confused.

*queering (as a verb) does this have meaning outside the realm of academia or gender studies. I would like to be able to understand this term enough to use it myself.

*gender vs. sex : the difference between these two terms is still slightly unclear to me, I have definitely used them incorrectly before.

*cisfemale : this term was brought up much earlier this semester by a student, and was briefly explained by professor dalke but I still don't understand why it is used, or what it clarifies that is not clarified by other terms.

So all week I've been trying to piece the last few classes together and I think I've gotten somewhere...let's see what I have.

My focus has been on Game of You.  I've been captivated by the idea of the locks and what the key could be.  The first key hole we see is followed by the title page.  The word "you"  appears on the page outside of the title which is something I found really weird.  Then I wondered, could the key be "you."  We were struggling to find a point of the book.  I mean, Barbie has this fantasic adventure and yet she wakes up and doesn't remember anything in it.  The readers are left looking for some change in her, and yet does she really have one?  A key hole appears at the end of the graphic novel as well.  So Barbie hasn't yet learned to unlock whatever it is that lies behind that locked page.  Neither have we.  Perhaps the artist/writer is trying to remind us of that. 

The idea that Barbie had not remembered anything when she woke up reminded me of the radio lab on memory.  Barbie does not remember anything so did it really happen at all?  The book makes the readers think that it did because Barbie mentions how her friends are not talking to her as much anymore but regardless, we do not know how Hazel and Foxglove are recalling the events, we don't even know if they remember everything.