Self Evaluation

If you had asked me what my definition of feminism was a few months ago, I probably would have said something simple like, “it’s the movement to gain equal rights for women.” Of course that is partially true – partially. Now if someone were to ask me about feminism, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it without also bringing up race, class, non-binary genders, etc. I think one of the most important things I have gained from this class is my understanding of the intersectionality and complexity involved in feminism; how it isn’t just about women’s rights – there are so many other factors involved and they all connect. Feminism really does affect everyone in so many different ways.

I feel like I’ve learned so much and grown in so many ways throughout this class. I really loved the structure of the class and how we tried to create an environment where it felt okay to speak up and sometimes take risks. I am usually very comfortable speaking up in a classroom, but I found at the beginning of the semester, despite that, I was still afraid to speak sometimes because I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing and offending someone. As we got to know each other, however, I began to get more comfortable speaking about my true opinion. By the end of the semester, I felt very comfortable talking in class. I tried to speak up in every class, but I also tried not to dominate the conversation at any point. I spoke when I had something to say, but I didn't talk on and liked to sit and listen to other people’s stories and opinions. I especially loved the small groups because that’s where I really opened up and was able to share some very personal experiences that are usually hard to talk about.

I also liked the use of Serendip and our weekly postings. I always enjoyed scrolling through and reading about the things other people were thinking about and finding outside of class. With the online work, I was usually very on time with everything. I had just a couple of late postings, but always made up for them by posting later. I thought it was really interesting thinking about this in terms of queer time and whether I was living on queer time or not when I forgot to post - one of my (late) posts was even about this.

I really appreciated the diverse reading set we had in class. I will openly admit that towards the end of the semester as my life got crazy, I ended up sometimes not being able to finish the readings completely. I did make sure to at least familiarize myself with a chunk of the texts before every class so I could participate in the discussion to the best of my ability. Finding time to do all the readings was definitely a challenge, but for the most part, I really enjoyed reading them. Some of the more theory-based readings were hard to absorb, but I think the challenge helped me grow as a reader. I found the Book of Salt to be a particularly interesting experience because when I began reading it, I found myself digging for the story within the elaborate text, and I didn’t realize that until in class someone mentioned that the book was one where you really had to not dig, but just let the visceral vocabulary carry you along and enjoy it for that. After that class I went back to the book with a completely different perspective, and it was like a whole different experience.

I think one of the biggest surprises in this class for me was how much I actually enjoyed writing the papers. I have never considered myself much of a writer, and have always struggled to sit down and write a paper for a class. This class was really the first time, however, that I had so much freedom with writing the papers. It certainly made it more difficult in the sense that I had to spend a lot of time thinking and writing out my thoughts and talking to others and reading texts to narrow down my ideas, but it also allowed me to really dig into issues that interested me.

Each of the papers I wrote felt like a journey for me. I always went into my papers knowing very little about the topic, or having one opinion and then having it flipped upside down in the process. In my first web event on expressing gender identity through Facebook, I went into it thinking I would write about the freedom Facebook gives you in expressing your gender, but then as I did the research I began to realize the opposite was true. In the end, my paper was about how terribly restricting the design of Facebook is to expressing gender identity.

My second web event was on making high schools safer for queer students of color. I chose this topic for the paper because although I’m queer and as a closeted high school queer faced my own issues, queer students of color have a whole different dimension added on to those issues and I wanted to better understand it. I was especially intrigued (and troubled) when I read about how queer students of color often feel like outsiders in both the queer community and their ethnic or racial communities. This paper really opened my eyes to these issues and made me much more sensitive to them.

I probably had the most fun with the combination of writing my third web event and the final one that was an extension of it. (You would have never in a million years heard me say that I had the most fun with a 10-page paper before this semester. I am honestly shocked that I’m saying this.) The third web event was about how cross-dressing in the theater and Judith Butler’s notion of performativity can unbind gender. I wanted to write about this because of my own experience cross-dressing in the theater. I found the paper actually very challenging to write because feminism unbound seems like so loose and abstract an idea that it was hard to put my thoughts into words. I knew I wanted to expand on this idea for my final paper because I felt like there was a lot more to say about it, but after spewing lots of ideas everywhere during my meeting with Anne, I eventually ended up deciding to take a very different direction with the paper by writing a counter argument to my previous paper about how cross-dressing in the theater is actually very binding on gender and reinforces gender stereotypes. It was a fascinating experience writing that paper, unbinding everything from my argument before, and then coming to the conclusion where I found myself stuck in the middle ground, not sure where I stand on the subject, especially how it relates to my own experience of cross-dressing.

I have really enjoyed this class – even more than I thought I would – and I can definitely see it in myself that it has made me grow as a person who is attentive to issues in feminism and intersectionality. The things I’ve gained from our discussions are things I will definitely take with me in every aspect of my life moving forward.

(The picture I chose for my banner was one I found online, and I chose it because I think it represents really well the complexity and intersectionality of feminism. Feminism brings together all different kinds of people looking for different things and being affected by many issues in different ways, yet we are all swirled together and fighting for equality in some sense. Source: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/magic-color-spectrum-swirl-twilight-vision.html)