So firstly I would like to admit that I was one of those people who didn't think that the F word (Feminism) had a positive connotation, and I would have never wanted to be associated with that word before this class. I definitely have a different view now. I should be proud of how hard a lot of women have worked to get us to where we are now and I also need to continue the fight because there are definitely still existing problems. Another serious issue that I learned is that men can too be feminists and that feminism means that we want men and women to have equal rights and opportunities not that feminism means women want more power than men.
Before reading "Feminism is for Everybody" I never realized the divide within the female community in the fight for equal rights. "Even though individual black women were active in contemporary feminist movement from its inception, they were not individuals who became 'stars' of the movement, who attracted the attention of mass media." (Hooks, 3) I think I had never really thought about it because I am white and I have never really been pushed to have to think about it, so I am glad that Bell Hooks brought it to my attention because the different divides within the female community are extremely important to note because they all have different agendas (beyond the main one), they all have different experiences in the movement, and they are all given different privileges or lack their of, it shows the necessary complication of feminism.
Although I personally feel women should be able to have abortions if they wish, it was extremely interesting to watch that film about abortion. It was interesting to see how strongly both sides of the argument feel about this issue and how complicated it can be to make this issue go away and have people agree upon one outcome. I agree with Bell Hooks when she says "the anti-choice movement is fundamentally anti-feminist." I do think personally it is that simple.
The next idea didn't surprise me, but is definitely worth mentioning is this idea that in our patriarchal society that still exists, "fathers who live with their children in the United States now spend more time on care taking than in the past, but given fathers' absence after divorce and separation, the overall tasks of parenting still fall primarily to mothers." (Freedman, 133) I think this went back to women and what they want to peruse as a career too. I know after doing self reflection on myself. One of the reason why I chose to be a teacher is definitely because I want the opportunity to have children, and be a huge presence in thier lives. The schedule of a teacher is definitely mother friendly.
I also think another thing that stuck out to me in this class was the topic of body image. I know that personally I had read "Steam Room Revelations" which I will not ever forget for my presentation on a short story. This was about a woman who went through a personal journey to become comfortable with her own body. She also learned that beauty is subjective and socially constructed, because what most of us found as not attractive in these older woman she got to know, was actually natural beauty that she saw. Body image also stood out to me again when we saw the timeline of the Ken doll through different decades. It was amazing to watch the transformation of Ken depending on what was "hot," "masculine," "attractive," etc.
I do think that possibly making some sort of timeline while reading the history of feminism in many of the texts would have been helpful. I think we touched up on a lot of the huge, important, and interesting topics, however I do feel like I could have learned a little more of the famous and important names or dates. I personally am not a great reader and because of that I have a hard time reading and remembering/comprehending a lot of information at once and I think an activity as a class to understand some of the history would have been helpful. But this definitely has been a great class, I learned a lot about the content and myself, and I feel like it was a necessary journey for me to go through to become more of the woman I want to be in the future.
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