Reading Response Blog Post 4

I really enjoy Kate Bornstein so I decided to re-read one of the chapters from her book for my last reading response. My understanding of the text, along with all of our recent reading assignments has been a lot better. Since using the same words frequently in class I no longer have to second think to what certain words mean. Sentences flow a lot easier for me and make more sense.

I re-read Kate Bornstein’s chapter 3: Let X=X. Since reading this chapter the first time, the phrase that gender is who you are and who you can be means a lot more to me. This chapter was easy to read as it focused on judging people when you see them right away. When you pass someone walking by, you instantly point out their race and usually their gender. In the past it has really bugged me when I couldn’t quite figure out if someone was a female or male. I have now learned that they might not be either! I’ve also learned that it really doesn’t matter what their gender is and if I’m just passing by them it isn’t my business. I see this realization making a connection with our later discussions in the semester. This is really important because I’ve learned proper etiquette on how to treat people. Not that I was doing it before, but no one likes being stared at. I’ve just let things go instead of wondering about them now.

My understanding of the reading assignment definitely reflects my new understanding of LGBTQ issues and concepts. Before it was hard for me to understand that gender isn’t just a binary thing. There is more to gender than just female and male. Gender is a spectrum. It isn’t just the body parts you were born with but it is how you relate to yourself. Since binary means only two, gender can’t be binary. Re-reading the part about the robot in Wall-E made a lot more sense to me than the first time around too. When referring to the movie I just figured that there was a boy robot and a girl robot. It’s much easier for me to actually comprehend that these robots might not even have genders! I also don’t just jump to conclusions about there being a boy and a girl in every relationship I see in the media.

This reading does relate to my Advocacy Project because my project is focused on the equality of all humans. This reading makes a point that figuring out someone’s religion or social status is nice when you are getting to know someone. These are really just characteristics though, they don’t actually make up that human being. It isn’t important because everyone is human.

Personal Reflection

This course influenced me so much on how I view gender and sexuality. I thought I was pretty knowledgeable in this area before the class but I really learned so much. Before this class, I really just knew about lesbian, gay, bisexuals, and transgender people. I never really knew that there was such a thing as asexual. I feel pretty embarrassed now that I didn’t know that. I also never knew that there were genders other male and female.

I am pretty passionate about the equality of all people. It really means a lot to me that I can be educated about this topic and that I can also pass this knowledge onto other people. I now can tell other people that there are many different genders. I can also let people know that sexuality is a lot more confusing. This is a topic that I stand up for as well. It really bothers me when people don’t think that people who are gay should have the same rights as other people. That’s like in the past when people thought colored people didn’t deserve the same rights as everyone else. Look how stupid those people look now! Just because someone is gay they are still a person! All people deserve equal rights no matter their size, color, sexuality or anything really. This course has helped me figure out ways to stand up for people around me. I really am glad I decided to take this course.

Personal Reflection

My personal reflection is dealing with Miley Cyrus in the media. She is usually a topic of discussion with people for some of her exotic behavior. Lately though, she has been working on something that is pretty awesome in my opinion. I follow Miley Cyrus on a social media app called Instagram, so it’s easy for me to keep up with what she’s up to. Recently, Miley has founded the Happy Hippie foundation. This foundation is mainly focused on LGBT youth, but in general is focused on any vulnerable youth group. People do all sorts of things to raise attention to themselves. Miley is one of those people, but she is actually doing something about it once she has everyone’s attention. She is raising money to create support groups for LGBT youth and also homeless youth. I think it’s incredible that someone with such a famous name like Miley Cyrus is such a big advocate for the LGBT community.

She also recently came out with a statement of her own. She told uploaded a picture to her Instagram account of her statement she gave to a magazine called Out. “I didn’t want to be a boy… I kind of wanted to be nothing. I don’t relate to what people would say defines a girl or a boy, and I think that’s what I had to understand: Being a girl isn’t what I hate, it’s the box that I get put into.” This is an extremely powerful thing for someone to realize and for a celebrity to announce as well. Miley Cyrus is a powerful individual with many beliefs and she is going to do amazing things for society on the track that she is headed.

Reading Response Blog Post 3

What surprised me about this book was how it was so easygoing almost. I can’t imagine how hard it is for transgender people to come out to the world but the book made it seem so easy to do. Emily also had a lot of confidence building up too and I feel like that’s how it needs to be to come out or really to accomplish anything. You can talk to people that will help you build confidence to succeed in what you are planning on doing. I enjoyed the fact that the book flowed how it did though. Although it was probably more of an ideal situation that some transgender people would have rather dealt with than their own realities, it was a good book to introduce myself into that genre of reading. It surprised me that this book was so easy going because I always imagine it being so terribly hard for someone to come out.

Regarding Claire’s response to Emily coming out as a transgender, I thought her reaction was AWESOME! I have always wondered about people coming out as a transgender while in a relationship. I don’t think that I could personally stay with my boyfriend if he came out to me as a transgender, but that’s because of my own personal sexuality. I’m not attracted to women so it would be very difficult to date one. It was also especially cool to hear how understanding Claire was of Emily since she was so into her faith. Most people think that being religious you can’t accept if someone is transgender, gay, or bisexual. There are a lot of liberal people who are religious though and it was refreshing to read about one in this book. Claire was a great friend throughout Emily’s whole experience of coming out.

Regarding Emily’s experience with her first therapist, I hated him. I really did! I hated how he tried to make everything seem like there was something wrong with her and he couldn’t just accept what she was telling him! I can’t imagine how difficult that would be. Emily’s parent’s reactions to her coming out definitely surprised me too. I really expected her dad to be more upset than her mom. I didn’t like how the mom reacted at all and I don’t think she is ever going to fully come around and that is unfortunate. I loved the fact that her dad is the one who took her to the doctor to get hormones. In society men are portrayed as more hard-headed than woman and that’s why I thought this was so cool. This book didn’t really remind me of a specific course reading because it was more of a non-fiction story. I really enjoyed reading Being Emily.

Personal reflection

My personal reflection is on the issue of baby changing stations being present in men’s bathrooms; or actually NOT being present in their bathrooms. This issue is pretty important to me since I am pregnant as a first time mother.

My significant other and I have been together for two years. We are beyond excited to start a family of our own. We both want to be equally involved in our child’s life, but society doesn’t always allow that to happen.

Since taking WOM 201, gender equality has been even more important to me than it has been before. I don’t just notice and frown upon it but now I want to make a difference of it. I thought it was awesome that such a known name like Ashton Kutcher publicly pointed out that there are no baby changing stations in men’s bathrooms.

I don’t know why anyone would think that it would be such a weird thing for a father to be out-and-about with their baby. I can’t imagine now that that baby covered in poop and now the father has no way of cleaning them. It is frustrating to see that people don’t even stop to give this a second thought. When you think about it, it really doesn’t even make sense. It should be required by laws to have one in every public restroom.

Society is blatantly not allowing men to help. It is keeping traditional gender roles in tact and is not being very tasteful with the way sexism is still shown. I would definitely change my opinion on a business to find out that they only have a diaper changing station in the women’s restroom and not in the men’s restroom.

Hopefully businesses start to take notice with more and more parents complaining about this!

Reading Response Blog Post 2

Reading just the first two chapters of Bornstein’s Gender Workbook has already changed my way of thought. Learning the “new” things that have happened since the older version of the Gender Workbook was released was awesome to read about!

From the first two chapters, I learned was that sexual orientation is completely different from gender identity. I guess I always just figured that the two of them always had to do with each other. This really opened my mind to a lot of questions and also totally got me interested in WOM 201.

Regarding Bornstein’s argument that “sex” should only be used to describe acts and not identities, I somewhat agree with them. Gender should be used to describe an identity if anything. Since you can be a female with the generic male parts, I think it would also be useful that sex meant what parts you had. Not that that is anyone’s business and this would probably get confusing. That is pretty much what I have always thought when asked about sex; was what reproductive parts you had. It was interesting on page 47 to read “My sex is male, but my gender is woman”. I think really that people should be able to decide what it means for them. If they want it to only describe acts instead of identities I think that should be okay. This would also get pretty confusing though. I guess I am not sure on how I feel about Bornstein’s argument regarding “sex”.

I think my score for the gender aptitude quiz in Bornstein’s book was pretty accurate. I wasn’t too surprised by it. I personally thought that I knew quite a bit about gender and sexuality. After starting WOM 201, I realized there was a lot of information that I had no idea about though. This information not only includes words used today but a lot of history regarding LGBTQ. This is why I definitely think my score was accurate. I definitely am not fully aware on how much information there is regarding LGBTQ.

One piece of information that was particularly new to me was that people can decide to be neither female nor male. That was most surprising to me. I have always tried to be accepting of people regardless of how different from myself they are. Taking WOM 201 has opened a lot of doors for me to see that there was a lot I didn’t know about some people. I am glad to learn this information though to hopefully understand anyone I meet from this point on at a better degree. I have also in the past wondered to myself whether someone was a female or male, and have now learned that it really doesn’t matter at all.

When I think of gender or sexuality, an image doesn’t really pop into my head at all (oops). When I think of the word gender specifically, I think of male or female which is obviously ignorant. I included this picture though because I liked it and thought it tied in with our class.

hmmm

Reading Response Blog Post 1

Out of all the Victorian literary texts given, I chose Michael Field’s poem Unbosoming. When I first read this poem, the sexual tension did not register with me. After talking about the poem with classmates it was all too clear to me. In the poem Unbosoming, the author is unveiling their great love. They are claiming that this love is growing and that they can’t hold it in any longer. The author wants either people or someone in particular to know how they really feel. It was interesting to me that only having Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper together (Michael Field) would true art be created.

After re-reading the poem in class, my understanding definitely changed of the words chosen. “With the burthen and strain of its great content” was a specific line that confused me the first time I read the poem. After re-reading the poem, I understood that the author was so frustrated that they can’t really do anything about their feelings and holding them in is such a burden.

There are a lot of connections between the text I chose and other course readings that we have read for class. Society as a whole and how it is structured around sexuality is an issue in most of these readings.

I could definitely see this poem written and popular in today’s time. The poem is a confession of true love and without any background known, it isn’t really to anyone in particular. The similarities between same-sex attraction being represented in the nineteenth century and time today are the use of flowers as a sexual innuendo, especially in poems. A flower has always been a feminine symbol of sexuality. The flower in this text though shows how badly she wants this person but cannot tell her feelings. Another similarity I found to be interesting was that people still use pseudonyms in today’s time along with in the nineteenth century. Some people are still hesitant about claiming their sexual orientation, as they could receive a lot of backlash, like in the nineteenth century.

The differences between same-sex attraction being represented in the nineteenth century and today’s time to me, mostly has to do with how society portrays it. The ideas seen expressed in public today regarding same-sex attraction use humor to almost make it acceptable with all viewers. People who published works dealing with same-sex attraction in the nineteenth century were definitely more subtle about their message but their message was still clear. The biggest difference between same-sex attraction represented in the nineteenth century and today’s time is that in the nineteenth century, relationships were mainly for money or for family. Today relationships are mainly focused on love, but these passages show a clear picture of love being involved.

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