Artifact
As someone who grew up in a Catholic family and who went to a Catholic school since my kindergarten year to senior high school, I am confident that religion is among many important characteristics associated with the differentiation of gender inequality in society since the beginning of the world and all over the world. The role of a woman in religion nationwide especially in a Catholic religion is in the household by being mothers and wives, it is also granting on the respect for women and their vital role in family life, but Catholic Church does not promote emancipation a complete equality with men because the opinion of women most of the time is hardly hearing. The artifact that society uses to apply its norms to people is the story the twelve Apostles picked by Jesus to carry on His mission in the New Testament.
Jesus selected twelve people from his circle to turn to his disciples. They would have taken care of ordinary men. The 12 apostles were Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. Jesus taught them about the kingdom of God, and in return he learned much from them about the kingdom of men. The reason why he chose them is to spread the brilliance of truth, and the brilliance of truth will be scattering around the world and will continue to shine in the process of pursuing. He chooses and uses these guys to calculate his outstanding plans. After a complete discipleship journey and following his rebirth from the dead, Jesus fully commanded the apostles (Matthew 28:16-2, Mark 16:15) to advance God’s kingdom and carry the word of God to the world.
This story that affects equality issues in the society because Jesus did make a contrast of gender in the Bible by choosing only 12 Jewish men as apostles that means for a religious person that women are valueless and unequal to men. Because of that theory in the Bible, women are barring from becoming pope, priest and cardinal, the catholic church argues that “If Jesus wanted women to be priests, he would have called them to be his apostles.” Women were not allowing to aid in the revitalized diaconate by Pope Paul VI in 1967 and the church refuses to admit women to the priesthood, the catholic delivers a message to the world: women are inferior to men and they are still going be and nobody cans anything about that in the Catholic Community.
Social Constructionism is a theory of knowledge that study how socially situated and knowledge work well-adjusted in the arrangement of inequalities where a group of people in power decides to produce racial, sexual and gender affairs only to be categorizing and valued another group of people over another according to “Miliann Kang, Donovan Lessard, and Laura Heston”. This theory plays a big part also in gender aspect because this story from the New Testament, all the powerful minister of religion were straight male, all of them were white with green or blue eyes like Jesus who is describing as a blonde hair and green eyes man. This theory helps the feminist movements how to end bias in our society.
It is evident that a simple story affect of the rank of women in the religion also affects the status of women in society as a whole that’s the reason I choose this tale from the Bible. The Catholic religion is there to oppress a woman in every aspect in their life simply because Jesus chose men only to be his closest friends, it lifts men up and women down only for their own self-esteem. The issues with the exclusion of women and girls make our society unhealthy and unbalanced. We need to educate each other how to love and respect others for a better world.
Gender identity
My gender is constructing for my person based on the gendered interactions that I have in my childhood and my teenage years with my family, teachers, classmates and friends, as well as, other identities or roles I may hold. Another influence of my gender identity is how I feel inside and outside and how I know myself to be when it comes to gender.
When I was born, the doctor looked at my body and told my parents, “It’s a girl.” That doctor was socializing to believe, as if most of us are, that you can determine gender by physical anatomy at birth. I remember when I was 5 years old, I grew up seeing myself as a little girl wearing dresses and skirt and boys wearing pants and playing football in my neighborhood. But everything change when my mom had a full time management job in a restaurant, she didn’t have time to care of myself, so she asked my uncles and my brother to do it for her because she was the oldest and the main provider of the household so everybody had to follow her rules. I was raising by 3 uncles, a brother and a step-after/father, those guys did everything in the house such as: cleaning, cooking, laundry, comb my hair, teach me how to dance, study, play chess, tic tac toe, domino, video games and play sports like soccer, basketball and tennis etc.
In spite of the fact that my household was an only man one, my school was the opposite. I spent all of my childhood and teenage years in a catholic school that accepted only girl. The nuns of my school taught me how to eat, dance, sing, talk, act, walk and think like the sweet gentle girl. I had only one girlfriend because the other girls said that I was insane and I acted like a boy, I was confused because this event is how my uncles taught me how to talk and act, the nuns didn’t like my behavior either, and they were constantly fighting with my male care givers because my uncles always dressed me like a little boy when the nuns are having schools’ activities and the evil nuns weren’t feeling it and they always kicked me out from those activities sometimes. I remember that I was late for school and 2 of my uncles were fixing my hair, they decided to do a high ponytail with my hair but they could not find any elastic band or rubber band to do it so, they decided to use an electric cord to attach my hair and they did it and send me to school, and the nuns send me back to my house.
I spent my whole life trying to balance those two mutually exclusive categories of gender that society creates called binary gender, but it was unsuccessful, so I decide to blend them, and I get in return the perfect combo. This issue is 3 important concepts that I learn from the course that help me with my identity. The first one is the “Theorizing Lived Experiences” that disclosed how inequality of race, class, gender, and sexuality drives to numerous problems to a micro, meso, and macro/global level of every day. This theory is an important detail to the feminist analysis is allegiance to the formation of person’s understanding base in the experiences of people belonging to disempowered groups. This theory makes me realize that my childhood has a big impact in my gender identity perhaps if I was born in family includes father, mother and sisters or grew up with my aunts only I would be different and loss.
The second is Psychological theories incorporate psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic feminism that our conscious or unconscious thoughts and memories don’t have an affect to our gender identity, but our emotional experience during our childhood does. I grew up in memories that men and women aren’t different at all my uncles and brother did everything and anything that a woman can do
Discussion
My perspective has changed because of the assignments that I completed in Open labs, these homeworks were nothing like others I had been assigning in the past, at first, I was scared of these works but now I feel confident to do them. They unfolded my critical thinking about myself and took me out of my comfort zone. I definitely needed this class to identify myself and needs because I was losing. Once I started putting myself into those assignments, I was able to identify my gender and who I am. I wanted to do more and more I wished this class was a little longer. The professor and my peers who always commented on my posts made me want to learn more about myself, others and my future.
I began investigating gender identity options, even ones that are slightly outside of my gender area. I started taking steps toward answering all the questions about who I am. I stopped ignoring what others think and say about me. After this class of empowerment, heartening, and learning ways to excel myself, I could not feel more ready to take on the next chapter of my life.
One of the assignments required dip into more about my gender identity was 2. This project was to create a visual image of my identity and made a list my personal, enacted, relational, and communal identity. This task was really helpful, because it gave me a whole new perspective on how to cross the next phase in my life, teach me things I didn’t even know about and how my childhood has a big impact in my identity right now. After doing this assignment, I couldn’t wait the discovery of myself with my family, friends and classmates.
The biggest takeaway from this course is that I can create use Open Lab, which is a thing I never did before, turn in assignments online, write, and so much more in one place. I am also very thrilled to have this tool to include into the hybrid learning setting, I wish more teachers that I am going to have are going to use it as well in the future. The format of the class affects my learning and my motivation in the way that the professor always gives me frequent, early, positive feedback that supports my beliefs that I can do well. The tasks weren’t too easy nor too difficult, but they made me confident I that I can succeed at anything in college. The learning atmosphere of the class was safe, open, and positive.
College is a place for expanding your mind and find yourself and this class definitely did most of the work. Thank you to some of my classmates for making my experience so amazing, but I would especially like to thank the professor for having such a wonderful impact on my life.
Journal
This text “Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies” by “Miliann Kang, Donovan Lessard, and Laura Heston” uses Crucial feminist theories like discrimination and exclusion on the basis of sex and gender, objectification structural and economic inequality, power, and gender roles and stereotypes to explain us the creation of the social movement of feminism. The authors also show how personal experiences form by political, economic and cultural passions in the condition of history, institutions and culture, Conceptualizing Structures of Power impact and the limit of feminism. And how Social Constructionism and Intersectionality that is social categorizations including race, class, and gender applying to a specific group for the creation of racism and discrimination in the systems established and endorsed by rich and educate white men
The authors explain us in his introduction several factors that contribute to the creation of feminism movement. The first one was the Theorizing Lived Experiences that unfold how inequality of race, class, gender, and sexuality leads to multiples issues to a level of micro, meso, and macro/global of every day towards woman that cause them to develop organizations and protestations in order to break those dilemmas with other women who were experiencing the same economic, cultural, and social problems.
Social Constructionism is a theory of knowledge that study how socially situated and knowledge work well-adjusted in the arrangement of inequalities where a group of people in power decided to produce racial, sexual and gender affairs only to be categorizing and valued another group of people over another. This study and theory help the feminist movements and theories to analyze the fructification and recreation of social constructionism and how to deal with it.
Conceptualizing Structures of Power consists to keep or restrict someone or something within certain limits by the establishment of rules, norms, and procedures based of his or her gender, race and sex but like a human body this theory can crash by changing and by fighting inequality for the collapse of that system even if it is going to take time for the skeleton to collapse, and the feminism goals to accomplish.
The text makes realized that “man is a wolf to man” I thought everything like all those prejudices and discrimination was normal and they were nature work, I thought the color of my skin was supposed to be the change in order to be happy and loved by others, I thought I was supposed to be inferior to white people, that white is right, I thought God makes me black because I am damming, or he hates me. I said several times when I was a kid I hate myself I wish I was white because of the injustice that was going on around me and still, but growing up I feel like the text said it is just Conceptualizing Structures of Power to make rich white men feel good about themselves band put themselves in the top of the pyramid and put down minorities. Now that knowledge, information and education are accessible to everybody I feel the system is starting to crack and a change is coming as if Sam Cook said in his song “A Change is Gonna Come.”
Worked Cited
“Quick Summary of the Twelve Apostles.” PDF Free Download, docplayer.net/23892700-Quick-summary-of-the-twelve-apostles.html.
