The End

Overall this class was a wonderful experience. I believe that it helped me a lot when looking at conflicts to see the multi-variance of the situations, and I look forward to applying what I learned in the future.

Gender Identity and Expression

This presentation struck close to my heart because it was related to my friend’s niece whom I discussed much earlier in this blog. The connection that was given in this blog to a real life story really helped people to understand a gendered conflict and it gave this difficult conversation the closeness that allowed us all to understand what had happened. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding in this type of topic both on the side of people struggling with gender identity and expression as well as their family on the other side. This misunderstanding comes from fear of being different and rejected by both parties, and is difficult to move past often times. I wish we had discussed more how such situations can be better resolved so that everyone is happy in the end.

Sports

The sports conversation was close to my heart due to the many sports that both my sisters and I played as children. For my family gender never separated you from or forced you to do something. There was always choice involved with the activities that my sisters and I did. I found it interesting the component of the media in this conversation and in the reading because the media often only omits women in programing if they are wearing skimpy uniforms or are beautiful. This mentality in a profession is astounding because in any other profession people would be fired for such vulgar behavior. Regardless this presentation was exciting and again because students in the class had such a close connection to the topic they were able to add a lot of input into the discussion.

Abortion

The abortion conversation was very interesting. While those who spoke seemed to have similar beliefs on women’s rights, some of the confusion stemmed around what others may believe. Such as the idea that women will believe others can get abortions, but not ever want to get one for them. I wish more information had been provided on why women do and do not chose to get abortions along with sound arguments as to why this is a viable option. I think that this would have caused less confusion in our class.

Women and Politics

It was very helpful to have Dr. Plane come in and discuss this topic. He offered a new viewpoint on what was being discussed. I do want to see more women in politics, but I felt in the presentation there was not a clear argument about why or how. I wish that for something like this more personal opinions would have been shared because they greatly effect many aspects of the discussion, but were never directly said.

Liberia Presentation

I found this presentation extremely engaging due to the association many aspects have to do with things I want to study in life. I especially enjoyed the parts in which we were able to discuss how women were effected, and we debunked the perception that women are not and will not get violent. Looking into the disarmament programs and recovery programs was captivating due to the limited research that has been done on what to do with women who have been effected by war crimes that men are significantly less frequently subjected to. I also really enjoyed how in this presentation we began asking question on how to change the harsh reality and little support women receive. I wish in this presentation that more people were interested in the topic. I think that many subjects in the course related to gendered conflict and when there was a discussion of gender in conflict many people got lost with this idea, and were unable to participate readily. It also became a problem because this conflict was very wide scale and while the history given about the conflict was great, it is hard to only discuss such a large problem for 90 minutes.

Rape Culture

We prepared and prepared for the presentation. We had about ten questions to ask the class that would promote discussions, but in the end we didn’t need anything. Our presentation went unbelievably smoothly, and I felt as though our entire group was able to support one another on questions based off of our interests that we had shown previously. I could not be happier with our discussion. We even had disagreements that were associated with rape myths, which something that made the discussion that much more exciting.