charlie's blog

A friend of mine sent me the link to this article when I told him about this class. I think it is really interesting and dovetails nicely with the Living the Good Lie article that we read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/magazine/my-ex-gay-friend.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

I have never studied a class that was so “inter-“ before; so interdisciplinary, so intermethod (not quite a word, but in my personal, made-up definition, using different mediums, teaching style (I am still working on that hand-raising compulsion), and viewpoints to express an idea), and so intertopic. Although I usually find that diability is not a topic that I find myself drawn to on a regular basis, I pleasantly found myself drawn to the discussion last night. I think what was missing from Exile & Pride, for me, was Clare’s personal story. While the environmental information and stories about the different women’s communes were interesting, I much preferred the personal stories of the “freaks”, Ellen Stohl, and the fragments that Clare shared.

Here is the link to the story about baby Storm, who is being raised gender-less. Sorry it took me a week to post. 

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/baby-storm-raised-genderless-gender-dangerous-experiment-child/story?id=13693760

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The articles and books that we have read thus far, and will continue to read, in this course have not just been interesting to me, but experience and thought-changers for me as well. I come from a very homogenous community - white, upper-middle class, mostly Jewish, suburban town. Our next biggest subgroups of people are Asians and Indians. Gay people are rarities - maybe one per grade (at least one "out of the closet" per grade). Transsexuals and transgenders do not exist. Those with disabilities are taken out of mainstream schools early on or never mainstreamed at all.

Hi. I am a sophomore at Haverford. I'm majoring in Art History and am pretty sure that I will be a Gender and Sexuality Studies concentrator. This is my first class that is officially focused on gender and sexuality although it has always been something that interests me. I am really excited about this class and the potential discussions we will have in the future.