True American Stories

It’s obvious that today’s class sparked a lot of controversy between the class and I’m going to try to share my opinion on it as comprehensible as possible.

For starters, I do think that our class needs to, at least for this particular discussion, start pulling “I” out of the conversation. It’s pretty selfish for when talking about our country’s construction of gender, we bring in well, “I’m a guy and I love Justin Bieber.” “Or I’m a girl and I don’t wear a bra.”. Those are all great things but it’s just not fair to the majority who are still feeling oppressed by the gender norms that our country has constructed.

What really got me thinking however was when Mr. Heidkamp basically said that we won’t live in an equal, free society until we have men walking in heels in the hallways singing Justin Bieber with out any altercations. Is this a joke? Maybe it was just the confusion from the riot beginning to form on one side of the classroom, or maybe that wasn’t even an intentional thought. That’s why topics like this, concerning gender, race, religion are so scarcely talked about any little thing you say can be blown out of proportion or misconceived. I hope this classroom controversy doesn’t make Mr. Heidkamp give in and move past this discussion to spare tears and vocal chords. If this discussion continues let’s just remember to respect everyone in the room and give everyone the opportunity to voice their opinion, because based on these blog posts there were some people who hid in the background that I wish would have vocalized their opinion.

While I kind of see where Heidkamp was coming from in using this teaching tool, and some classmates were too quick to jump to conclusions, I believe strongly that our society has worked very hard to get where we are at this point in time.

One of the reasons that I had such a huge problem with the assignment given today, is that it goes against so much of what we should be trying to change. I partly understand that the whole point of it might have been for us to recognize what needs to be changed, and what are false ideologies on the topic of gender. I would however, like to give the people in our class a little bit of credit, thinking that we are already aware of these issues. They are beaten into our heads every day by media, by social interactions, and now in our teacher’s gender lesson plans? I can only speak for myself when I say this, but I’m bored. When are we going to stop pointing out the flaws that are already ingrained in our brains and culture, and start talking about the change women and men have accomplished over the years and what we can do to add to it!