My first English class in UCI comes to the end. During the ten weeks, I have been dealing with the issue of social construction of gender roles and Disney fairy tale films. I also tried Rogue One from the Star War series and Antman I and II from Marvel, which I had never touched before.
Rethinking about My Life as A Woman
In Week 2, I watched Kilbourne’s lecture “Killing us Softly”. She discussed how today’s media affected social perceptions of genders, especially women. She gave plenty of examples of commercial posters, advertisements, websites, showing that the mainstream media made females inferior. When she talked about the porn websites, vaguely covered bodies on the magazines and violent pictures on the commercials, honestly, I did not feel much resonance in me since I lived in a country that placed strict rules on sensitive things on media. But as I finished her lecture, I realized her main ideas were truths. The harm on females was beyond the pictures and videos; it was almost everywhere around me, implicitly: the school system, comment areas on the Internet, and even my mom and dad. Prejudgments on females Kilbourne mentioned in my daily life came clear to me. Now I can recognize those whitewashed, toxic stereotypes. And after her lecture, I felt supported as a female and more confident to fight against inequity. [Check to see my reflections]
Trying to Be a Leader
In Week 6, I started to prepare for the podcast. In Week 7, I worked with my teammates to create the podcast. I was the director, taking charge of the entire production process. I set deadlines for each task, made to-do lists, decided the recording strategies, coordinated members’ schedules and held three meetings. It seemed challenging initially because I was responsible for the entire group, and I was not as proficient at English as the US students. But as I hosted the first meeting and managed all the buttons in Zoom, I started to feel everything was in my control - I could lead the meeting progress. I found I could deliver my ideas to members most of the time more fluently than I thought. I developed the confidence to be an organizer and understood the word “leadership” more clearly. [Check to see the production process]
Technical Problems in Writing
This writing class concentrated on writing, for sure. Probably I have done over 10,000 words of writing in this 10-week-training. Now I feel more comfortable with writing in English. And I have discovered myself “talkative” if I do have thoughts to share, and the word minimum won’t stop me. However, I felt limited at English language flow producing the final essay. After Ms. Haas revised my essay on clarity and language problems heavily, I realized I still had enormous room to improve. Probably I should enhance by reading more (quite a headache to me) to attain better language sense and learn common phrases. [Check to see the writing process]
Humanistic Philosophy in Life
Besides, as I learn the feministic ideas from this class, my mind inevitably gets tangled sometimes when I think over them. Males and females are physically different from the birth: in muscles, in brain structure and in reproductive system. As a result, the division of labor widely exists and is usually efficient regarding the “comparative advantage” in economics. However, in this class, it seems we always attached to one side, i.e., it was correct only to pursue women’s power in media. We hardly discussed the other side, which made me always confused and a bit "unsafe" in the quarter. Moreover, feminism tells us to fight for the equal position of males and females. But is it the equity or equality that we are pursuing?
-Tianai
I like the title of your last blog It's nice to see you put Killing Us Softly as your first unforgettable memory in this class because the video is also a mind-blowing piece to me. Since we are from the same country, I can relate to what you said about this topic in our lives, seems like we don't see much gender discrimination in our country's advertisings, but the woman figure on the coconut juice YeShu does imply sexism. It's nice to meet you as one of my peer evaluation group mates. You showed me the professional way to design a website and I like your web design so much! Hope we can keep in touch and hope you can…
Hi, Tianai! I have exact same feeling as what you write in the section "Technical Problems in Writing" when writing my essay. I was once so confident because I think have written so many annotations, analyses and feedbacks. And my level of writing should be improved a lot already. But writing the essay brings me back to reality and I finds out that I still got so much skills to learn and improve.
Hi, Tianai! First of all, it was my pleasure when we worked together in our final podcast group. Every member in our group did a great job. Then I want to say that you really have a profound and insightful thought about the term, "Feminism". I was truely happy when I saw that you were more confidant to fight against inequity after going through the whole course. Now, it is time to say goodbye and I hope we can work as teammates again! ^ ^
Hi, Tianai! I like your last part about philosophical thinking of feminism and equity or equality and the attached picture! They are very insightful and inspiring! I can see your "unsafe" feeling and maybe understand to some degree, but I would like to offer another angle toward dealing with such feeling--every book, paper that we read, every course that we enroll and take, every person that we listen to usually can only provide one angle or some angles on how to view and contemplate one theme or one topic. Just consider this course as a starting point to push us to contemplate society, gender and equity or equality would be a better choice to deal with your "unsafe" feeling! Hope…
Hi, Tianai. Before taking this class, I also never thought that Disney movies would convey so much social construction about gender values to us. When I was a kid, I thought Disney movies were just cartoons that kids liked to watch. As you said, the Disney series of movies are a reflection of the feminist movement. Also, I really like the image your upload in your final blog! I hope you can do well during the final week, Goodbye.