Hello class! We haven't officially been introduced (and of course I mean on Serendip), but my name is Vaughan and I am a senior Philosophy Major. 

I expected the choosing of my avatar to be an easy task. However, in wanting to connect the avatar with my personal narrative it was a bit more difficult to find one that could encompass what I am going through at the moment. I feel that it is representative of the new journey that I am embarking on in my life, one that shows promise of helping me to understand my gender and racial identity and how it affects my personal, social, and professional life. As someone who has never questioned the implications of what it means to be a young “woman”, through taking this class I hope to gain knowledge of what my gender identity is and means, as well as how to exercise agency over it. There is a compass and a map shown in my avatar, both of which are vital to beginning a new journey and being able to see it out to the end. I am hoping that this class will act as the tools shown to help me along my path.

Original question: Is it wrong to feel unangered by the exploitation of your gender?

As a gender collective, is every single person in that identity group required to react or defend the group from being marginalized?

Is it a bad thing if you have not questioned your gender?

Can we become activists for the gender fluid and want there to be no gender in society if we have never questioned our own gender?

Why does it seem like we are simultaneously praising gender identity and claiming your own gender AND pushing for a no-gender society? If we take pride in our genders, how can we also be asked to give them up? 

Group Members: vhiggins, pialamode, sschurtz, Amanda and Christina (not sure of their usernames) 

Questions:

Is gender meant to serve a purpose?

Who made gender?

What is gender?

Why do people like to put things in boxes/categories?

Should we try to break out of those categories, make new ones, or keep them?

Statements:

We are all human

Humanity is allowed within people in accordance with their identities

Identitiy is a complex component of a person

Person-hood is defined by identity

Identity can change

EmmaBE, EP, Taylor 11, Elizabeth 

After reading Kate Bornstein's workbook I was very confused as to whether I was questioning my gender and sexuality enough. Was I not being open minded because It never crossed my mind that I might want to kiss a girl? Or was it Kate Bornstein that needed to lay off on the questions! After reading this workbook I have came to the conclusion that I am for sure a cisgendered woman. However, I questioned whether I should even label myself anything other the name I'm most comfortable with, Faith (my first name). Do I want to deminish labels? Or do I want to keep them and continue categorizeing people that dont nessarily want to be categorized. When talking to Sam today I got a new perspective. Sam discussed the idea of actually being comfortable in one's box and not being asshamed of it. Well I second that! I think that labels are a sense of comfort but they can also be something that categorizes people in a negative light. So, to hell with all this confusion!!! For once there is an answer to this conflict. The answer is ... to do what ever the hell you want! If you want a label be my guess and if you dont simply inform people what you'd like to called. However, ultimately it's not just "society" that creates these categories its US! We renforce them everyday. We use pronouns like "he" or "she" without asking and we check boxes that say male or female on it. I think companies ask female or male for identification purposes not nessarily to oppress us as a society.

Aaaaand I'm the last one to post. I knew there was something I forgot yesterday night. Sorry Anne. Hope my tardy two-cents still are relevant. 

We talked a little bit in class about why scientists are cutting open dead rats' brains to search for the neurological implications of play. I think Agatha said that we must take play for what it is, just relax and stop trying to analyze it to death. Respectfully, and as the daughter of two hardcore scientists, I disagree. Scientists are curious creatures. When an answer eludes them, they would gladly sacrifice their spleens in the effort to understand the unexplainable. That, in my experience, is their play. They derive pleasure from the chase, the puzzle. 

I think the most interesting part of Sunstein's article was the bias that interfered with a study on play. Even though trained professionals were interacting with the children, somehow their desire for the players to do better permeated into their actions and rendered a false-positive. I love how we are so enamoured with play. 

I think I agree with the idea Sunstein presents that part of the charm of newspapers is the chance articles you can come across; it is a good way to come across interesting random factoids. I also see his point about how like and like breeds extremity. That said, I feel like playing Devil’s Advocate: I have trouble staying on top of, or even vaguely in touch with, the news; the nice thing about tailored news reports is that I will actually stay on top of them. Further, depending on how you tailor your news, it might come out like a Google search, where the results relate to whatever you are looking, but still have enough variance to be interesting and cover a number of fields.

I'm a little astonished as I recall my childhood.I had a schedule perfectly "crammed with activites that are productive, educational and fun". I practiced piano an hour a day since kindergarden, but my major memory of that time is still running and swinging in the twilight. I guess that's because I went to a great kindergarden: the hardest math we ever did was copy-writing numbers. My weekend schedule was filled with piano, drawing, ballet, calligraphy classes, but I never felt tired and I still got time to fly kites, climb mountains or just lay on the grass. The reason why I could do so many things at the same time as a kid is that, fortunately, I was curious about almost everything in the world so I enjoyed all the classes. They were not tiring burdens but just another form of play, an opportunity to do something interesting. So as long as a child is not forced to learn something he hates, "productive education" and play are not contradictory.

In the article, Henig mentions some concerns about children's lack of playing nowadays. We have to admit that many many kids are indeed indulging in phones or video games. However, the desire to play and curiosity for serendipity are in our blood. Even if today's technologies take away most of our lives, we still keep a small corner of place in heart for fun, for enjoyment, and for play. I remember one of the top students in my high school studies so hard every day, even between classes or in the lunch break. But she liked comics books so much that she always saved a little time for her comics every day. She sometimes went to the cosmics costume parties now and then. This counts as a type of "modern" play. We all have our own ways of playing. Some people like to share it. Some just want to keep it to themselves. Although the processes may be different with each other, the feeling of excitement and relaxation is mutual. As long as we reach the ultimate goal , why worry about it so much?

An interesting example of my point would be my uncle, who loves travelling and appreciating the nature. He used to be a vice president in a world-leading enterprises in China. He had this whole promising future ahead of him, but he chose to resign from his position and started his trips around China. I knew play and curiosity were always parts of him that couldn't be erased, not even by reputation or wealth. I admire his courage and determination to really achieve a dream, a dream that we all have but rarely try to reach it.

I didn't find Henig's article to be overly revolutionary in terms of how I personally view the act of play, but it definitely diverted my attention to something which, upon some thought, is more disturbing than all the frightening and awful things we realise that kids do and say to each other when they play. Bullying, name-calling, fighting, lying... it is certainly really terrifying to see that children have it in them to truly be so mean...

And yet, there is not the same let-down, horror, or shock when adults behave in the same, or worse, manner. What brought this to my attention was the ease and calmness with which the lab tests and brain surgeries and experiments on rats were described. I took a moment to step back and look at the situation.

Adults collecting and breeding rodents. Controlling the environment in which they are raised. Slicing open their brains, poking around inside their little craniums – and why? Because “science demands that if there are important long-term benefits to play, they must be demonstrated.”

“That is why studies of play-deprived rats are so fascinating.”

Both the Sunstein and Henig articles posed different but important problems that have arisen in the society we live in today. Sunstein resonated with me in the idea that people are being catered to too much, and the idea of curiosity is losing its impact as we as humans are being fed so much information all of the time, and it is hard to sort out what we really want to spend our time on, rather than having a newspaper to look at and sort through to find those special events or activites that peak our interests. 

The Henig article brought me back to the kind of discussions I was having in High School, I was in a really special place where all of the teachers and students alike recognized that all of the standardized tests and requirements were kind of ridiculous, and I feel that they dont allow students to be creative, because they are always looking to do well on the next assignment. This is almost the same with play and how it was explained as a place where children do not have as great of an opportuity to be whimsical, and they are more forced to learn music or a language by their parents and society, rather than having the opportunity to discover something that they truely enjoy.