Activism an action or campaign to effect social change. The film I watched was “CRIP Camp: A Disability Revolution,” the film displays activism amongst teens with disabilities who come together and join a disability rights movement to advocate for legislation changes. Crip camp unfolds from a perspective of lived experiences, and the failures to recognize teens with disabilities as sexual beings. I also saw individuals telling their stories and advocating for themselves and not allowing anyone to make them feel less than.

I don’t think that I have ever engaged in activism, maybe I have and didn’t realize it. I have been an advocate for adults with intellectual disabilities because I recognized that most of them could not advocate for themselves, but they stick together and help each other out. I can introduce gender justice as an orientation, that deepens our understanding of the issues at hand and start a meaningful conversation. Seeking out opportunities to highlight the full range of gender identities and sexualities as a central rather than ancillary focus. Furthermore, examine hidden assumptions in our guidelines and consider how language can either reinforce gender stereotypes or create opportunities for free expression. Support grassroot infrastructure to build a movement while advancing fair media or focus on strategies to hold media accountable for its own reliance on gender-based stereotypes and glamorized images of gender awareness.

Patriarchy is not just something external. It also resides in our minds. Once the patriarchy gets into our heads, it affects the way we perceive and judge ourselves, our relationships and the world we live in. It causes many men to experience their vulnerability as weak and shameful. Furthermore, society consists of a male dominated power structure throughout organized society and in individual relationships. Power is related to privilege, in which men have more power than women, men have some level of privilege to which women are not entitled.

Let’s just imagine a person named Michael who lives in a rundown apartment and works hard at a tedious and poorly paid job. Michael is not a socio-economic winner in his community, but that community can still be institutionally structured so that Michael is at liberty in a variety of ways that his wife Rachael is not. Michael works and may not have to worry about who has to clean up after him. When he gets home, he has the right to just sit down and relax after a hard day at work, he always gets the last word when him and his wife converse, not realizing that his wife also works hard at work cleaning trash, picks up the kids, goes grocery shopping and cooks. Everything in society is repetitious. Although men and women often share the same labor. I created this to show there is no guide.

I am an educator, the work I do I think about privilege. Accepting my own privilege hasn’t been easy. I have had many thoughts which help me to understand my own privilege in relation to the children I am working with and the world. My profession puts me in a position to assist children who are in need of resources, and facing educational, and environmental conditions different than my own.

Furthermore, when I am assigned a new student, I immediately hold a degree of authority over the student. Educators are the gatekeepers to resources that children need and are often unable to access without assistance. It does get complicated thinking about privilege is an ongoing exercise. It has become a part of my daily consciousness but is a difficult concept to grasp and one that I didn’t come by easily. Learning to challenge my position in the world and understand the power imbalance that I am a part of, does not mean that I immune to life’s hardships but having an unearned benefit or advantage one receives in society by nature of their identity.

My privilege also stems from being an African American lower middle-class upbringing, education, resources to food, access to health care and family support. This is not to ignore that my gender, femininity and introversion don’t at times put me at a disadvantage, but it doesn’t take away from many unearned benefits I was handed simply from being born with certain traits and resources. On the other hand, I found myself feeling alone and isolated, misunderstood and at times scrutinized. Engaging in behaviors that has turned into internalized oppression, spending money or getting my hair done that did not affirm me, using big words that at times I didn’t know the meaning of, working longer and harder than anyone else with precision. Watching the video and reading the articles helped me understand that privilege benefits people who belong to a specific social group or have certain dimensions to their identity while oppression is an abuse of power preventing a certain class of people opportunities and freedom.

To “Move Beyond the Gender Binary,” for Alok means challenging the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Imagining better futures and being binary needs not to be universal but valid. Alok deconstructs reality in order to lay the groundwork for reconstructing a reality that would be better for everyone. Although society plays a crucial role, I have never felt conformed to anything, my identity is who I am “a female” and Alok has given me the tools to understand that I don’t have to be what society wants me to be and to understand how people feel. It does make me wonder though why put labels on people based on their traumas. If I were to answer the question, I would say my identity doesn’t go against the binary or nonbinary norm because I believe in letting people live their lives how they want no matter what society says. I could remember my grandmother hating us wearing jeans, she just had something against jeans and sneakers. She brought me and my sister’s corduroy pants and dress pants and made us wear dresses. In school on dress down days while everyone wore regular clothes, I had to wear my uniform because she hated pants, so I would sneak clothes out the house and change when I got to school because I wanted to be a part of my class on dress down days.

Although I suffered consequences it was worth it because I was a child that just wanted to participate with the other children, my grandmother was very old fashioned, so she raised me and my siblings the way she was raised. We hated it because we got bullied a lot, so I could understand where Alok was coming from. The video has made me realize what I experienced growing up and not being allowed to be myself because of my upbringing and my grandmother not realizing that her ways only made me want to rebel more against her.

Good evening fellow classmates and Professor, my name is I’tanisha Lewis and I do allow most people to call me Nisha due to a lot of people mispronouncing my name. I was born in Philadelphia, raised in the South Bronx and the third oldest of six siblings and a mother of two pretty amazing kids. I enjoy quality time with my family, yoga, meditating, watching YouTube to learn how to maintain my naturality of my hair, watching the ID channel, Chopped, non-fiction and fiction movies and online shopping. I am almost sure this is the last year of school for me as I am working on obtaining my Associate’s in Early Childhood Education.

I currently started working at the DOE as a Subpara which is pretty challenging, challenging meaning the bouncing around from different classes, but have worked with some amazing children so far. My ultimate goal is to continue my education at Hunter College after I graduate and to become a full-time Paraprofessional with the DOE. I hope to learn more about sexuality and culture, overall, just how women are overlooked when it comes to certain things, listening to different views and opinions from my peers in class while sharing my own and have a better understanding of thw course.