Author: Nastassia

Nastassia Molicheva Discussion 2

In order to explain the concepts, I would choose the Genderbread Person diagram. I believe it shows that the concepts of gender expression, sex, attraction, and identity clearly and provided some explanations as well. The graphic is easy to understand and doesn’t carry too much information which allows it to be understandable for adults and children alike.

Here is my diagram:

a Venn diagram of Nastassia's identities

The groups that have influenced me the most are: Humble Upbringing, Democrat, and Art Lover.

My humble upbringing allowed me to have values of being careful with money, grateful for what I have, and being a minimalist. At the same time, it might be challenging for me to communicate with people who are complaining without taking any action or are wasteful with money and resources.

Being a democrat, or more so, a human of liberal views embraces my values of equality, feminism, and environmental protection. Therefore, I would have problems supporting racist, anti-egalitarian views, and the belief of some people that climate change is fake.

As an art lover, I value the variety of visual perception of the world that is available to me, history knowledge that comes with it, and the opportunity to express myself through art. I don’t really think I would have any problems communicating with people who do not share the same values, however, I don’t think I would be able to have a deep connection with them.

 

Journal 2

In the assigned reading there were many interesting concepts discussed. One of them was the concept of binaries – “social constructs composed of two parts that are framed as absolute and unchanging opposites” (1). Binaries are rooted deep in the culture of the United States and show themselves in various spheres of one’s identity.

The binary gender perspective presents only two genders – men and women – ignoring all others who identify as neither. It uses a biological determinist view that pronounces that “biology is destiny” and the fact that someone has been born and assigned one sex at birth must mean that they are also of the same gender. But that view is incorrect – there are also transgender people and others, who identify as non-binary, gender fluid,
or genderqueer.

Another example is a binary perspective on race: in American society, it’s the opposition of Black and white. The differences supposedly are showing in biology, physical attributes, intelligence, strength, sexuality, “culture” and motivation level as well as skin color. Inherently coming from racist history, those ideas, unfortunately, still continue to exist. Even nowadays we are experiencing a phenomenon of a “one-drop rule”, where a person would be considered Black even if they had only one drop of African blood – where, if someone is mixed race with one parent being white and another one a minority, the child would be considered a minority as well.

While defining class and socioeconomic position, the binary is constructed between the middle-class and the poor and is largely politicized.
Middle-class people are viewed as responsible and moral, while poor people are defined as crazy, tax-evading, and irresponsible. There are also several stereotypes about the poor that carry racial and sexual context, that often do not fully reflect the reality of the situation.

In general, the binary model is unable to show the differences in human experience in all its variety. Identities are much more than just two sides of one coin. A lot of things – our race, gender, class, etc. will shape our experience. In order to truly understand and explore the world we live in and know the people we live around, we should look at them without prejudice and understand their complexity.

Nastassia Molicheva Discussion 1

Hi everyone, my name is Nastassia Molicheva, I am a visual designer majoring in Multimedia Programming and Design and transferring to get a Communication Design B.F.A this fall. I am an immigrant from Belarus and have moved to the US about five years ago. Prior to moving I almost finished my B.S. in Languages and Intercultural Communications back home, so communications is a topic close to my heart. In my free time, I enjoy being in nature and taking long walks, singing, and keeping my body moving via yoga. I delight in traveling, learning new cultures, meeting new people, and discovering new things. I reside in Staten Island (don’t side-eye me, lol), but would love to have my own house with a beautiful backyard someplace warm (Cali? Austin?). Feel free to message me and keep in touch!

I enjoyed watching the videos immensely, as I always am interested in other people’s stories as a way to understand them better and enrich my own perspective.

My own gender story is that: I’ve grown in a binary culture, where women were supposed to be caring about the family, be soft and nurturing, and beautiful. That way, I internalized beauty and softness as a way to act like a woman (I identify as a cisgender woman). At the same time, I never felt myself naturally being like that, or even striving to be.

I was raised partially by my grandparents, where my grandmom was the epitome of strength and resilience and power over the whole family ( while still for some reason emphasizing that “you need a man”), and my single mother, who, possibly wasn’t as authoritative in her power, but always valued intelligence over beauty.

That way, I have grown with awfully mixed signals of what I am supposed to be. Besides the cultural binary of man/woman, there also was a binary of beautiful/smart. That way, I simply couldn’t be both, and I needed to choose one and be valuable for at least something. So I chose to be smart, at the same time resenting or not paying enough attention to taking care of how I look (not that I could really afford to). Because of the label, I chose for myself to adhere to the cultural norms of the society I lived in, there was no point to do so.

Sometimes I wonder if my choice was also visible to other people. One cannot see “intelligence” as easily as one can see “beauty”, and those labels are definitely subjective. I think I worried too much about how people perceive me because even though I chose the label of smart, I still wanted to adhere to the world around me and be more valuable (beautiful) – hence the long hair, and trying to be skinny (nevertheless, ending up looking tomboyish).

I am still not a girly girl, but more like a woman who loves both feminine and masculine clothes AND does minimal cooking (my boyfriend loves to, though), feels like she is smart AND beautiful (because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that eye is mine), and is ready to advocate for herself and others.

Journal 1

The reading reiterated my idea of a few concepts, and introduced some new ones.
There are three concepts of gender: gender as an equivalent to sex, e.g. you body autonomy tells you what gender you are; gender as separate from sex, e.g. sex is the body you’re born in, and gender is something you grow into through interactions with other people; and gender as assignment of meaning to bodies, which was the concept that the book is based on, and means that gender is constructed socially, and bodies themselves do not determine if you’re one gender or another.
What I found interesting is that people have not only multiple identities, but also multiple genders that differ depending on the situation you’re in/people you’re with. I never thought of it that way, but feel that it’s very true.

I liked the idea that you personal stories are the way to understand yourself as a person. I’ve noticed that the stories you tell yourself (and others) usually become your reality. If you think you’re lazy, you’ll end up being lazy, and vice versa. It was useful to learn that one can apply change one’s life by just thinking differently, aka “fake it till you make it’, or the more official term – enactment. That’s when you act like the condition/change you want has already occurred, e.g. you got to be/feel productive (even if you didn’t), and you eventually will.

I learned about agency – the capacity to act or make a difference; it’s obstacles and ways for it’s enacting. For example, the obstacles are that different genders are expected to enact agency differently, that sometimes you might feel unsafe doing so and feeling that you cannot cause any change. To enact agency, you can either do it yourself – and change it with your actions, influence others to do it when you don’t have enough knowledge/resources or ask for help, and reframe your situation – change your view/interpretation of what’s happening to you to try and find a positive viewpoint.

My culture, similarly to the culture of the US, operates on a binary, and only within the last five to seven years, I’m happy to say, there are educational and cultural opportunities that became available for and about people who do not fall on that binary.