You should pull in information from the sources you read/watched/listened to that were listed within the prompt in your response. When answering each question, please provide a response of 75-150 words each.
Reading Response 1:
After reading and watching this week’s materials, explain your understanding of how gender is a social construction.
After reading Jamaica Kincaid’s poem and the excerpt from Melissa Faliveno’s book of essays Tomboyland, point out some of the ways that their different understanding of being a “girl” is socially constructed. How are they alike and different? Consider that Kincaid is from Antigua, an island in the Caribbean, and Faliveno is from the Midwestern US. Are there nonetheless similarities in what being a “girl” looks like in their upbringing? What are they? What is different in their cultural contexts?
Spend some time thinking about the socially constructed elements of your own gender. What are the things that you learned would make you a “girl” or a “boy” where you were raised? Both Kincaid and Faliveno seem to show resistance or reluctance to this socialization in their writing; if you resisted some of the cultural and social constructions of gender, some of the things that make girls and boys, men and women identifiable as such, what are they and in what way? Write a paragraph or so about all of that.
Sources:
Jamaica Kincaid’s Poem: See attached files
https://xtramagazine.com/culture/tomboyland-melissa-faliveno-excerpt-176869
Reading Response 2:
After reading Rebecca Walker’s piece “Becoming the Third Wave,” which officially labeled the new era of feminism in the early 1990s, explain what you see as the concerns of third wave feminism that necessitated its separation from second wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. Please provide at least three different reasons with explanations for these distinctions and why third wave feminists were interested in these new causes.
In Rachel Cargle’s article “When Feminism is White Supremacy in Heels,” she explains “toxic white feminism” and gives four different behaviors that many white feminists engage in that are isolating at best and racist at worst to black women.
Define at least two of these behaviors in your own words and explain how they are dangerous for feminism moving forward if the goal of feminism is ultimately, still, to promote equality for all women.
As you’ve seen, there is a lot of conflict on what wave of feminism we’re currently in. While many people do call it Fourth Wave Feminism, others have called it Queer Feminism, Post-Feminism, among other names. Regardless of what it’s called, scholars and activists tend to agree that one of the hallmarks of the contemporary wave of feminism is that the spread of social media in the early 2010s was of paramount importance to it, as is the fact that more women than ever are able to take part because of internet access that makes feminist thought and readings more accessible.
There are, of course, positives and negatives about this. Knowing what you know about social media and the internet as students who have largely grown up with total access to it, explain what you see as some of those potential positives and negatives. You might think about the #metoo movement as part of this, for instance, or about the spread of TERF rhetoric that is allowed to rapidly spread on Tumblr and Twitter.
Sources:
Rebecca Walker’s piece “Becoming the Third Wave:” See attached files
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a22717725/what-is-toxic-white-feminism/
Reading Response 3:
Why does bell hooks critique Betty Friedan’s idea of the “The Problem that has No Name?”
Using bell hook’s article, describe the class struggle-related issues that led to criticism of mainstream feminism and what hooks sees as the solutions to those issues. How has feminism failed poor women?
Define “feminization of poverty” and “pink collar” jobs and explain how those concepts are connected.
In the video “Working Woman Testifies About the Reality of Poverty in the U.S.,” we heard anecdotes about several families living in poverty in the U.S., and two of them were about families with single mothers. Using what you’ve read about poverty and gender in this module, describe how the intersections of class and gender in the U.S. are more dire and extreme for single mothers.
Sources:
Bell Hooks article: See attached files
https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/followup/session/presskit/fs1.htm
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|