Blog

Friday’s class began as usual; Julian presented a power point that indicated how to create an outline that helps everyone by narrowing down ideas and structure for papers. For me it was a reminder, in college I had a semester where I had to create many outlines before initiating a paper, but I had forgotten about it or somehow dismissed it. Now that Julian reminded us how important it is for papers to have structure and format I will begin to do outlines. He explained and created the outline so quickly he even had time to create an outline for one of my papers that I will be doing later on this semester . It was nice to have him go over something that is simple but hard to start and remember. Following his presentation Dr. Hoffman created six activities that had to be performed by group members. Each station offered different scenarios with different disabilities. The activities allowed everyone to realize others true realities and hardships. Everyone including myself was affected by the wheel chair activity because we all had to physically work with the wheel chair to accomplish the action. We all realized the troubles people with wheel chair disabilities face each day in order to accomplish small task that normally take five to eight minutes for the average person. I’m very glad we all had the privilege to engage and acknowledge disabilities.

The articles including the chapters touched on gender inequalities. Chapter nine focused on the contributions woman are making in higher education. The chapter stated that sixty – five percent of bachelor degrees were awarded to men but starting in 1982 woman proportion of bachelor’s degrees increased to fifty- seven percent and even today remains the same with a the percentage still increasing in the woman side. It is interesting to read that woman today are more likely to attend graduate school than men. One of the beliefs of why woman now are participation more in educational achievement due to reliable contraception’s that prevents woman from becoming pregnant. I agree with that idea because before woman would become pregnant the minute they would engage in sexual activities and that prevented or restricted them from earning an education. Another obstacle that was eliminated was the occupational sex segregation this allowed woman to pursue for competitive fields. It is interesting to learn the trajectory woman in the past faced in education and occupations. Chapter ten was informative because it uncover information such as how the word homosexual was not created until 1869 even thought homosexuality existed since before that time. Less than nine years after the discovery of the word homosexuality the first gay novel was published. I found this interesting because I could just imagine the controversies that may have revealed immediately after the novel was published. Few other events were talked about that I have personally never even heard of such as government personnel being fired in 1950’s because they suspected they were being gay and following that in 1951 the American Psychiatric Association added homosexuality to the list of mental disorders. Just reading this made me realize how narrow minded people were in the past and how difficult it was to be in this era not only for colored people but also for gender different preferences and woman in general. I can’t imagine not getting a job because they think you look gay, now I understand why many older people today from previous generations still conserve some views of how they see many groups that are not white, male, educated, and economically stable people. Another sad incident  that was talked about was the murder the twenty-one year old student from the University of Wyoming that initiated the allowed LGBT services to be provided in campuses to prevent violent gay crimes.