Opening My Eyes

We had very interesting class periods this past week. On Tuesday we had a guest speaker, Lisa Koontz, who I thought was extremely interesting and nice. When she introduced herself she told us that she had never discussed the topic of her being a queer parent mother. She was able to open up to us about almost everything in her life. She started describing her and her partner and how they were together for seventeen years before they decided to have a child together. I was so intrigued by everything that she was saying because she had raised her daughter a little differently and she was so polite and open to discussing it all. One of the first things that I thought was really interesting was the fact that they decided to home school her. Their daughter is only four years old right now and hasn't been home schooled for a while but the intentions to home school her are so genuine. They really want her to have a good education and believe that if she were to go to a public school than she wouldn't learn as much and that schools focus a lot on behavior. Another thing I noticed is that Lisa said they dress her in 'boy clothing.' The reason for dressing her in these clothes is solely just so that she wont be constricted from doing anything physical or just being comfortable in her clothing. I thought they have good intentions for her daughter and I'm sure they will let her decide what she wants to wear when she grows up, weather it be dresses or cute dress pants and dress shirts. Another very interesting thing I noticed is that they do not have a TV at home. I know that some people would think this is really surprising, but I kind of agree with Lisa because my dad raised me by saying that TV isn't important and that you should be limited to only so much a week.

Thursdays class was also very informative. We had two articles to read this week and a section from our Look Both Ways book. We split into three groups, each discussing a different reading assignment. Then after discussing it in our small groups we discussed them all as a class. I thought this was very effective because I know me and some of my fellow classmates had some difficulties understanding parts of the articles. When discussing the articles as groups and as a class we were able to explain what we each understood about the article. Then once we had to go in front of the class to explain it to everyone it helped me understand it even more. It really helped me understand the material because my fellow classmates were the ones that were explaining it. We covered the main topics of each reading and what terms were the most important.

Resistance

The main theme for this article, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980), is supposed to be resistance. It was a little difficult to understand some parts. The first couple of pages were quite interesting and mostly shocking when she goes on to explain (page 1) what compulsory heterosexuality is and how it was written in part to, ‘encourage heterosexual feminists to examine heterosexuality as a political institution which empowers women.' The New Rights messages stated that 'women are the emotional and sexual property of men' and 'the equality of women threaten the family, religion and state.' Reading this section was quite surprising to me because I didn't realize how women were looked so down upon. The fact that women were considered as a sexual property of men sounds extremely demeaning to me. I know that many people used to believe this and some still do. I in fact have a roommate that comes from an extremely conservative family and has almost the same basic thinking and for some reason believes men in relationships have more power and women are not worth as much.

Another part of this article that was interesting to me was when the author describes how lesbians face discrimination in hiring and harassment and violence in the streets. This fact makes me feel like we have so far to go yet. I can't imagine being discriminated against solely on my sexuality and not based upon my resume or intelligence. In the next couple of pages she depicts four different books that were written from different viewpoints and political beliefs but all authors were feminists. One of the books she examines was by Nancy Chodorow. She explains how men are 'emotionally secondary in women's lives' and 'men do not become as emotionally important to women as women do to me (page 16).' I don't know if I necessarily agree with this because I know of many relationships that the man means more to the women than the women means to the man. I do believe that once a woman has a child, they become the most important thing in her life.