I think the very first thing I have to talk about is the metaphor comparing white privilege to an invisible weightless knapsack in the first reading. One of the most interesting ways I have heard someone put it. The thing that intrigued me the most was the significance of the “weightless” aspect of it. All of us have our own baggage that we carry everyday as a person, we all carry our burdens. Some heavier, some lighter, but we all know that they are there. What I found interesting is that the author says that white people carry their privileges around everyday too, on their backs, guaranteed to have them and use them whenever they please. But the author says weightless. Maybe I am just exaggerating this but it’s just crazy that this one word affects how I’ll see it from now on, white people don’t just not see their privileges. It’s there on their back and they can’t feel it because it’s been made weightless for them. Being the kind of person that I am, a lot of the time I can excuse ignorance just because if you cant see something then you cant see something. But they can’t feel that burden of holding all their privileges and that makes me think: why not?

I really liked the fact that the author was talking about women and mens privileges and that made them start thinking of their own, but not just considering her sex but all contributing factors like class/race/religion. I like when people are aware of their privileges, I think I have said that before. The author even made a list, and on that list I felt there were things that were important to point out but I have just never put it into words myself. One that stuck out to me was number 15 that says “I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.” I think that’s just one that I have never thought of. I’ve seen countless examples of it, specifically black people having to speak for their race in groups when they are the only one there. Why? No one can guarantee a whole race group has the same thoughts as one girl so why put her to speak? It just made me think that I have never had to do that in a big group before and how insensitive it is too. I hope there will always be another person of color in whatever public room I walk into. Overall the reading was very eye opening when it comes to recognizing some of the privileges I have due to the color of my skin and the people around me. 

The second reading starts off strong with the author wanting to make sure people use the term “oppression” correctly which I can agree with. In my experience I haven’t heard people using it deliberately wrong. I will be thinking about the context in which the term is being used though from now on. The author is right in wanting to point it out too, we have to know what it means in order to stop it from happening. One quote I found that shocked me was “If we ever deny that any person or group is oppressed…we are accused of insensitivity…For women, such accusation is particularly intimidating, since sensitivity is one of the few virtues that has been assigned to us if we are found insensitive we may fear we have no redeeming traits at all and perhaps are not real women.” I was shocked at how true it was, there are so many moments where I have felt this way and therefore silenced myself. We are taught to be nice and hear people out even if you know what they are saying is completely wrong, that’s not right.

The author gives a metaphor, they compare oppression to a birdcage. Sounds simpler than it is, the author says understanding oppression depends on how you look at situations. You need to be able to see the big picture and look outside of just your own point of view.  People see oppression as one general thing you can work to overcome but fail to see all the things that limit a person into being able to even start. 

The part where the author talks about men opening doors changed my life. I’m not kidding. The author explains that when men open doors for you it is not entirely a kind gesture or even at all. Men want to get to the door first. Men are capable of helping you when they think it will benefit you but don’t help when it comes to actual life and death situations. I know the author didn’t mean to make me see men in a worse light but they did, it’s all true, they will rather hold a door for you than change the system that keeps us in a constant state of fear. They ignore it and only advise you to work around it. I liked that the author mentioned how men also say they are being oppressed when they are the ones contributing to that system. Men cant cry because men would rather be praised for not crying than be mocked and compared to a woman. They are rewarded for their punishments to themselves. Even the barriers they created that limit them still find a way to reward them, even if it’s just maintaining their status of being a man. I never thought about it that way.

The reading starts off strong. Alok Manon wants us to recognize that a lot of people have opinions in places they don’t have all the right information for and I completely agree. I have heard countless conversations about people and how they identify/ express their gender and sexuality. I have grown up to be the person who tries to shut it down as soon as I hear some wrong things. By wrong things I mean ignorance, oppressive language, or just straight up lies told as facts. I believe it is one of those topics that you really need to be educated on enough to speak about respectfully, especially if it doesn’t really concern you or your health. Which is why I found the reading “Beyond the Gender Binary” very enlightening. We learned that these kinds of conversations about non-binary, transgender,and gender non-conforming are, a lot of the time, had to target them. People share opinions, even debate people’s basic human rights.

 There are a few different laws people tried to set in the U.S. that go against transgender people. One quote that stood out to me was ”Bias and discrimination are not just being endorsed, they are given the green light.” I just thought that it was true. When people with power start discussing taking away the rights of certain groups of humans it allows people to think differently about these people. It encourages a hierarchy. It encourages discrimination. “I do not have the luxury of being.” This quote hit me. I feel like as a teenage girl I take a lot of things for granted. For example my health or my time and opportunities. After reading that quote it put into perspective how little I was aware of the effort people have to put to be themselves, when I can do that easily without judgment just because I express my gender in the most common way of our society. I am happy to recognize that ignorance of mine and improve it. 

The author then mentions how power has a huge impact on how people view transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming people. It makes a lot of sense to me. I have seen how power, and the lack thereof, creates a certain environment and creates almost like shields from consequences. It makes sense that when people go against these environments and make people face some consequences for their actions, the people in power are going to want to fight back in some way. So they bully, they degrade, they discriminate, but none of it takes away from the main issue being the power imbalance in people. In order to understand and become better people we need to see the power we hold in ourselves and use it for good. 

The author tells us a story of how when they were in highschool they had a bully, this bully then reached out years after graduation to apologize and explain that it was their own internalized homophobia that made them act the way they did. This doesn’t excuse it. I am actually really concerned about the amount of times I have heard stories similar to this. It is almost always a side plot in shows that have teenagers as main characters. I truly do think it’s getting old, maybe I can never understand because my family were never that religious or just never that against the LGBTQIA+ community but I still think it doesn’t excuse how you treat a person. I understand that way of thinking is taught, but at what age should people start being held accountable for the way they think and the harmful things they do to people? 

Some more things I learned were not to use very specific statements like “it’s common sense…” and saying that only women have children. The first phrase is just overall pretty rude but now I’ve also learned that it can spread misinformation and create some “norms” that shouldn’t be. And the phrase about childbirth, I have already started to change that, I need to solidify it and teach others around me too. Women aren’t the only people able to carry and birth a child. Men, transgender and non-binary people can also carry/birth kids. What I found interesting from earlier in the text is how people ask for the child’s gender in order to really see them as a person, as a little human being. I can see that, I wonder if I even do that. There haven’t been many kids born recently in my family so I don’t know what my reaction would be if someone told me they were having a baby and I think that’s a little bothersome to me. Would I ask their gender? And once they told me would that change anything that I say afterwards? I can go further into the reading but this is already 800 words so i’ll just say I found it all very informative with all the statistics and examples, I feel as if I was taught a lot.

I think reading “Sex & Gender 101” by Kyl Myers was a great first read for this class. It was very informative. In the beginning when they talked about biological sex, I thought I knew a lot. However, when they brought up sex chromosomes, hormones and intersex, I almost got lost. I have seen some doctor shows and been introduced to the meaning of intersex but reading about it was different and I’m glad to know and learn more about it now. I honestly wasn’t aware that you could have incompletely formed genitalia, I had never even heard the term “gonad” before. 

I learned about gender assignment very early on in life of course, we do that with gender reveal parties. I found learning about parents surgically making their child’s genitalia look more “normal” at birth shocking. Gender identity I knew some more about, growing up in public school in New York kind of opened up a lot to me especially after coming out of quarantine when people had the time to reflect on how they wanted to be identified as. Gender expression, I have always tried to practice not conforming to gender norms in clothes but sometimes I still do. I like to stay in the middle of that. I wear pretty dresses but I’ve also worn my grandfather’s pants, shirts, ties, jackets, and shoes. I am aware that sometimes how I express my gender may not always align with my gender identity but I think that’s okay too. 

Something I was glad to learn was the true meaning of “pansexual” when reading about sexual orientation. I don’t know when I first heard about this sexuality but it was explained so differently, so wrong, to me. I wish I had searched it up on my own but I think I just never felt the need to because the people that told me were the ones that identified as pansexual themselves. I really needed to be corrected. I think another thing I needed to hear was that sexual behavior doesn’t always have to align with identity. I think a lot of the time we focus on labels because they make it easier for people to understand you but I personally don’t enjoy them. I will respect them of course but I will respect someone not wanting any of their own as well. 

“Feminist Politics: Where We Stand” by bell hooks was a little disappointing only because it explained how feminism has been miscommunicated. They explain how we as a society learn about feminist politics usually through patriarchal mass media or through privileged white women. One quote I found interesting was “The wrong minded notion of feminist movement which implied it was anti-male carried with it the wrong minded assumption that all female space would necessarily be an environment where patriarchy and sexist thinking would be absent.” I thought this was an important quote to highlight because I am sure there are instances when every woman has felt less than or degraded by a room full of women. There are times when I have felt more targeted by women or felt as if I were in a competition with a woman that neither of us will win in the end. There are moments in my life when I have to take a step back and think if I am being sexist or misogynistic, I wonder if that’s just me and some of the sexist thinking I have internalized. 

Another thing I found shocking was when they brought up how when fighting for equal rights/working rights, white men gave more power to privileged white women and this kept black men from having equal rights with white men. Then as white women reaped these benefits, they started to care less and less about dismantling the patriarchy, they cared less and less about the revolutionary feminist visions. It’s all very disappointing.