Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Empathy and Emotions

Diana, Esme, and Wendy at the gates
I walked to the ratty with Megana today, who is from New Jersey and also takes Women and Leadership. We saw the rest of the cohort there and joined them at a table. I had a pancake, some eggs, and fries. We chatted about the presidential elections and some of the candidates while eating. It was a pretty good meal and I left feeling happy and full.


Upon arriving at class the first thing we did was review our homework and discuss gender. Most people do not understand that gender is a spectrum, which is why In our society it is used as another way to put people in boxes. This ritual is incredibly harmful to inter-sex and transgender people, who do not fit into the social norm.



It was incredibly eye opening to learn that XX and XY are not the only two possible outcomes of the pair, people can have XXY and XXX pairing as well. Transgender people don't identify with the gender assigned to them at birth while Inter-sex people are born sexual anatomy that make it incorrect to assign them  ‘male’ or ‘female.’


Another difference between Inter-sex and Transgender is that that Inter-sex people often have unnecessary surgeries performed on them, often when they are young and cannot give consent while Transgender people have to fight for surgical procedures they wish to have.


Mary Grace split us into to groups, gave us a large poster, and told us to write down what makes a man. It took a while for my group to come up with anything because after these past few days it is clear to see that the only thing that "makes you a man" is identifying as one. 

What women are expected to be
and what they get called if they are not
We decided it must be asking for stereotypes so we wrote down things like being assertive, confident, down to earth, unemotional, "the boss", etc. We were then told to play out a short skit using some of these stereotypes. My group had  a great time creating the skit, it was hilarious!


We had a few of the girls tie their hair in front of their faces to look like beards and play the men, It was great to see these teenage girls talking in gruff tones and holding their pants to imitate sagging. Our skit was about how men get praised for certain things women get put down for.


After a short break which I spent in the Blue Room, we entered the workshop. It was very and therefore also very emotional. It was inspiring to see these girls be so open about things they have held in for so long. I feel very happy to be among such smart and brave people. Once the workshop I ended I grabbed some dinner and returned to my dorm to work on a couple assignments. I am very excited for tomorrow's challenge course.



2 comments:

  1. I am so happy that you were able to discuss how important Leadership is when it comes to gender bias being a distraction.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It gives me real pleasure and pride to see you learning all these great new things/facts. Much grateful to the ILC for providing this opportunity to all of you.

    ReplyDelete