Diffracting

           I decided to take “Critical Feminist Studies” because I felt and still feel that there is so much I can learn about feminism, people and myself. I believed that I was a feminist prior to this class, but mostly because I didn’t really understand what feminism was. Turns out, I had a decent idea of what feminism was, but not as much about how I felt about feminism and what I am.

            I’ve learned that I don’t believe that there is a single definition for feminism. People can be their own feminist. We box too many things already and having a single set definition for feminism that everyone who wants to be a feminist must fit is too much. Feminism, to me, means doing some good in this world. It means making a change that is ready to be made. It means keeping your eyes open and caring for others. This is my definition of the feminism I want to embody. Feminism is no longer about equality between men and women. Feminism is looking for a break in binaries, creating a world where we are no longer ruled by them. There is no man or woman, or maybe it’s that there shouldn’t be.

            Can this happen? I like to hope so. I tend to be a fairly pessimistic person, however, I’m not willing to give up on certain wishes. How do we stop an inequality when there MUST be two sides? Maybe even if we do, we can’t rid the world of all the things I would like to get rid of. However, I refuse to give up.

            This course hasn’t been one of the most fulfilling courses I’ve ever taken and I’ve been pondering why this is. The class didn’t connect the way it has tended to in the past. I felt like there was disconnect in the conversation. Why were we not moving enough? In the right direction? There was a difference in the comfort and amount of information about the topics discussed in class. The readings were, for the most part, as engaging as ever and I loved many of them. However, I found myself falling into the listening mode in class, rather than a conversation one. I didn’t feel the pull, the urge, and the interest to jump into the conversation. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t interested, I just wasn’t quite sure where I was.

            I still feel fairly uncertain as to what I took from this class and even more what I brought in. In a selfish way I feel like I’ve used this course to further my own journey into Bryn Mawr College and transgender students. Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so. What I wanted, what I craved out of this class was movement. Movement in my learning, in my mind and in my life.

            Since I’ve started gathering information on transgender at Bryn Mawr I feel like I’ve learned an amazing amount of information, but not enough. I hope to continue my learning even post-graduation. My wish has been to find others who would be interested enough in the topic to continue to question Bryn Mawr. Who are we as students? What is a Bryn Mawr student? What and where should we be?

            In doing my final project, I have gained the hope I’ve needed that there are others who are interested enough to follow through and continue to question. Even if I haven’t met them, I know that there are many students out there and I hope that the training involving the dorm leadership team next year will encourage others as well. It has been an amazing journey at Bryn Mawr College and I’ve moved more in my life in my time here than I have at any other point.