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What an interesting class we had today. I suppose every time that I go to this class, I ask myself the question, "why am I taking this class?" I am new to the whole feminism thing. I must admit that when someone was referencing first, second and third wave feminism within my first class, I was really just...well, I felt in over my head. I, embarrassingly enough, went home and "googled" the terms.

Anyways, I consider myself a naive reader. I haven't quite formed all of my opinions in life, and certainly haven't in terms of feminism. I seem to have been reading the essays that we've been assigned and naturally agreeing with pretty much all of them, which...is something that rather frightens me, but at the same time...is ok, because all the opinions that bounce around during class jump-start my own opinions eventually.

In any case, after reading Kauffman's "The Long Goodbye", I actually agreed at one point. But, I think it was just me being a blind follower.

I feel like Kauffman's argument against personal testimony is in ways 'ok' to me, but ultimately, I generally feel like our issues, personal testimonies, and experiences MAKE UP the issues that we stand for. It seems to me, for some reason, that this argument goes against the whole feminism ideal. Aren't we fighting these issues BECAUSE of our personal testimonies? Thus, we should at least...perhaps not entirely ignore them. I do see how sometimes if someone were to say, "I was a poor girl living in the South"...that they may automatically take authority in that sort of group of issues due to natural human behavior and psychology, but I feel like that sort of authority makes the feminist theory stronger. Hmmm.