Category Archives: Reading Reflections

About Reading Reflections

Write these reading reflections in the voice you use with friends; people who share your values, and are interested in gender but don’t know the information that is in your reading. Your response should show that you: 

  • have read the text and can identify the important information;
  • understand at least three important concepts, events, or people from the text; and
  • can explain the important information from the text using examples from your own experiences. 

Reading reflection entries should be 250 words or more and are due weekly, on Wednesdays by 11:59 pm. It is advised you complete these reflections before the discussion board activity. You can think of the reflection as a warm-up to get you focused to engage with others.

To submit your reading reflections, go to the plus sign at the top of the site > type a title* and type the body of your post > choose the category “Reading Journal” on the right > publish.

*Please use the title format “Journal [Number]” for each entry.

Kayla Santel Reading Reflection 6

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The most interesting piece out of the three readings for this week hands down was The Macho Paradox. The author Jackson goes into grave detail about how the porn industry was initially crafted by men for men, and that even in today’s world women porn directors make up a very small portion of the industry in comparison to men.

“Pornography tells lies about women, but it tells the truth about men” (182 Jackson). When I first read this quote I thought it was more insinuating about the fact that for women both porn and masturbation are seem as taboos, but for men they’re almost everyday commodities and very casual parts of conversation. But as I continued to read I was interested to find out it was actually explaining that porn capitalizes off of this concept of fantasy women. This is something I was already aware of, but in the aspect of body standards and beauty standards. However, the author in this case is more so talking about the treatment of these fantasy women in porn and how that can escalate into real life.

“The idea that consumers of porn can masturbate and have orgasms to that kind of treatment of women and not have it affect their attitudes toward the women…in their lives is more a fantasy than anything the most creative porn writers can conjure up” (186 Jackson). For some reason I never really connected the dots that the way men treat women in porn could have some tie to how they do in real life. Women are more or less almost always portrayed as submissive and subordinate in porn, like they only exist for one thing. To go on further and somehow connect that to sexual violence also made me really sit back and think. “Sexual violence is common in our society not because there are so many sick men, but because we socialize normal boys to be sexually dominant and normal girls to be sexually subordinate” (188 Jackson).

Reading reflection 2:

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“Feminism Is For Everybody” by bell hooks: After reading the first chapter of her book “FEMINIST POLITICS “, I fancy everything she said because I realized how wrong I was about feminism. I never had the chance in my life to read in detail about that subject. Feminism is actually not a movement against men, but it is a movement to end sexism. Women are not looking to be equal with men or to be superior to them. Mass media made people think that women are just looking for freedom from this revolution. Freedom is everyone’s right but it doesn’t mean there is no justice. Male domination should end and more opportunities for women in social work must be created. Both equalities for men and women should be at the same level. It should not be any impact of sex, race, or color in hiring somebody for example, or how much salary she/he will get. Women nowadays are looking for a better system where no sex is likable than the other. The new definition of feminism must be more familiar to people because what I think is that many people still have wrong thoughts about feminism which is very sad, especially in our generation.

Notes on your Reading Reflections.

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Below is a bulleted list of points to consider when doing future Reading Reflections. This is a general list based on my reading of all of your reflections. I also included a sample reflection that I wrote below.

  • Your reflection should be 250 words (roughly). Many of you wrote much longer reflections. Some of you wrote shorter reflections. For a classmate’s reflection that is a good example of length and depth, see Imane’s, Kayla’s or Paulina’s responses.
  • Make sure you select the correct category. For the first reflections that should be “Reflection 1.” Do not also select the category “Reading Reflection.”
  • You do not need to separate the readings and respond to each separately. You can give a holistic response.
  • REPLIES ON REFLECTIONS ARE NOT REQUIRED. You can read and respond (which is a great idea), but it won’t be counted in the same way the discussion responses are.
  • Reflections should give your impressions and thoughts, not be an outline of the readings.

Sample Reading Reflection on Week 1 Assigned Readings

One reading dealt a lot with defining terms and making sure we know the difference between gender and sex, and how gender is learned through socialization. The other reading was focused on defining feminism and advocating for a specific kind of feminism. In Sex & Gender 101 I learned importantly that gender is who we feel we are, how we express that to the world, and how those connect. We learn gender through socialization – which means learning how to behave in socially acceptable ways. Sex is the biological features of a person’s body. It is most frequently determined by genital morphology – or the form a baby’s genitals take when they are born. But other things makeup sex including chromosomes and hormones, which we don’t see, and may impact sex. In the bell hooks piece we learned that feminism isn’t man-hating, but it is a movement to end sexism. We learned that all people are complicit in sexism because we are taught it through socialization. hooks also makes a distinction between reform and revolutionary feminism. Reform is wanting equality and for women to hold the same positions as men, make equal money, etc. It is within the system of capitalism and marked by conflict. Revolutionary wants to change the system because there are no chances for equity in our current systems. So it wants to change the system to one of cooperation. Its interest is equity, justice, and inclusion, not equality. I included this graphic to help explain the difference. Hooks wants us to move to the right side.