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.
The read “Too Latina to Be Black, To Black to Be Latina was incredibly delightful read. I love that she says that she does not let the small minds put her in a box that she does not fit in. Some people who are so ignorant and do not understand one’s history or ancestry background can make themselves look so ridiculous. This article kind of hits home a little. I have three children, one of them is dark, the other is medium shade with tight curls and then my daughter has a tan all year round and curly hair. My older son has had some encounters with ignorant people. When he was a little younger it would bother him that people would look at him differently, I had to explain to him that they are unique and beautiful and that in this lifetime he will come across people who will not accept his skin color. As he grew older, he realized that there are people who still need to be educated in all the races of the world. He is a Black Latino man, and he embraces it. There are many and some are connected somewhere down the line even if they do not like it. Aliechia is Latina and Black and no one can take that from her.
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 reflections that are a good example of length and depth, see Imane’s, Kayla’s or Paulina’s responses from a different section of this course.
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.
