Author: canderson1

“Gone Home”

I didn’t get a chance to play Gone Home but I was able to view someone playing the game. I must say my first look at the game it was almost giving a horror theme/concept to it. Well not so much as horror but thriller. By the end of the game, I was able to understand what was fully going on. So, to my understanding Kate is telling the story from her perspective but the game is about Sam and Lonnie expressing their love for each other and Kate’s parents were not so supportive. So that caused Sam and Lonnie to run away together and Kate’s parents disappearing as well. It’s a bit surreal so I think. I mean I have never been in this situation, but it sounds a bit fiction that the parents will disappear due to their child running away to be with her girlfriend. Maybe I missed a part of it. Or didn’t quite understand the reason her parents left. But when I get a chance, I will play it myself so I can get a better understanding.

“Gone Home Similarities”

This game reminds me of earlier texts such as: Coming Out game, and the situation of how coming out to your parents can be scary and lead to different outcomes. Also, they relate in how you can’t help how nor who you love.

“Riot Grrrl Manifesto”

This text speaks volume when talking about sexism in this society. The GRRRL movement questions society and their gender norms and gives society statements to really think about how we as a whole have no idea how sexism and masculinity affects the women in this life. “we hate capitalism in all its forms and see our main goal as sharing information and staying alive, instead of making profits of being cool according to traditional standards.” I feel as though Hanna was basically saying in this text that this is not a trend you just participate in because you think it’s cool and that this is serious injustice.

Research Essay

I think with the essay, I want to research more on history of LGBT and how far it goes back and dates and timelines. Just so I can see the history of coming out and how it has differed from society of today. I want to know how it is also similar to society now. I feel if we look at the history and different scholars aspects and perspectives of history maybe it would be an eye opener for people who have a hard time understanding it because of gender norms and society norms.

Age, Race, Class, and Sex

Being black and being a woman is no joke. My everyday life consists of having to fight for rights to my body and to go home safely without being shamed for my skin tone. Today’s readings hit the nail completely on the head. It gives everyone an insight on the things that black women have to go through just because they are women and black. In the text, Age, Race, Class, and Sex, Lorde stated, “For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as American as apple pie…”. My colleague told me one day that, “Racism is so American culture, that when you fight against it, citizens feel as though you are fighting against America. Also reading this text I feel as though, educating someone can be tiring because of the simple fact that it has been decades and centuries trying to educate and fight for the equality that we are still fighting this day. This reading gave a look at stereotypes that are common being in the black feminist and of the LGBTQ community. I find it most interesting when Lorde talks about the similarities between the oppressions of being black, being a woman, and part of the LGBTQ community.

The Combahee River Collective Statement

This text really put some insight on the struggles of being liberated as a woman and a black woman. Often times we hide our struggles, so we don’t be seen as the “bitter” woman or too masculine when we are talking about what our everyday struggles are and this text really shared some insight on that! That I enjoyed reading and learn things that even I, not so much as didn’t know, but didn’t too much recognize or kind of brush it off. A quote that kind of put it in a simple context for me was ” We exists as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world.” This was also such an amazing read as well. Touching basis on black lesbian feminist in comparison to “Age, Race, Class, and Sex.”

Femininity-Love- Race

The songs for this week were ones that have always been on my playlist and have been with me in times where oppressions were taking over. Or when I just want to feel like the black woman I am. Honestly, I think that every reading was in correlation with all the songs, so it was very difficult to choose texts to link together because they all come from one message and one message and that is how we live day by day with our struggles as black women and feminists in a predominately white male society. Nina Simone and Solange have some of the same concepts and approaches when it comes to boundaries black women have set for us, such as phrases like “Don’t touch my hair, when it’s the feelings I wear” and “my hair is woolly, my back is strong, strong enough to take the pain.”

“Androgynous”
Androgynous is a song I never knew I needed to hear. The lyrics, in my opinion, speaks about how in the end the once uncommon will be common and no one is going to be “normal” in a once was normal society. For me in touches into the difference and similarities of the “pink and blue syndrome” that was talked about in the Prism of Gender which I will talk about in a few moments. And somewhat uses reverse psychology in how what it would look like if there were no gender norms.

Prism of Gender by Catherine G. Valentine.
I really enjoyed reading this short story about the different viewpoints of gender. In the story Vantine talks about the blue and pink syndrome, which I am fascinated by because it really hits where we never know how embedded it is in our everyday lives. A quote from the story says “…The “pink and blue syndrome” is so embedded with in our culture and, consequently, within individual patterns of thinking and feeling that most of us cannot remember when we learned gender stereotypes and expectations or came to think about sex, gender, and sexuality as natural, immutable, and fixed.” As I was telling a fellow classmate I had an incident where my sister wanted my niece (her daughter) to be more girly. I think that in today’s society, even though this is still a major issue we are dealing with, simple things like correcting a person when they are using the incorrect term or simply just not used to things outside of the “pink and blue syndrome” helps a lot. Well to reiterate not so much as correct the person or people but educate them. And this book would be an awesome educator.

Theorizing difference from Multiracial Feminism

I was really excited to blog about this story because being a black woman in this society I feel as though I see feminism differently than anyone else. I feel as though I have to work twice as hard to get people to treat me a certain way whether it be in the workplace, school, or even in a public setting period. Simply because I am Black, and I am a woman. “We recognize, of course, certain problems inherent in an uncritical use of the multiracial label. First, the perspective can be hampered by a biracial model in which only African Americans and whites are seen as racial categories and all other groups are viewed through the prism of cultural differences.” This statement speaks so much because this is another thing that is so engraved into our everyday society. But I also feel as though, African American women like me have to fight to be equal to other race women and then have to turn around and be equal to men as well.