Final Post - Mike Murgo

Listening to everyone's paper topics was not only intellectually stimulating, but also very fun. I learned a lot of interesting little facts, like how there is only 1 out, gay athlete in professional athletics. I was also intrigued by how many students focused on masculinity in their papers. I never really thought about all the subsets of it and ways that it could be interpreted, so listening to all the things that my classmates did with it truly expanded my mind. I felt that Josie's paper, which dealt with women in the middle east, was the most unique topic. Her presentation, along with many other students' presentations, made me wish I could read my classmates' papers. The presentations were a nice way to get the gist of the topic, but I wanted to delve deeper. Ellie's paper, for example, dealt with the correlation of homophobia and gender. As a social justice oriented person and an advocate for the queer rights movement, I almost wish she just read her entire paper to the class right then and there.

Overall, I truly enjoyed taking this class. I feel like I learned so much about the world that I never really understood or delved into before. My favorite units had to be Sexuality and The Social Construction of Gender and Socialization. Before taking this class, I knew that masculinity and gender roles were problematic in many ways, but I never really knew how they came about. This course taught me how they are formed, taught, and spread throughout society.

Although I enjoyed learning about all these topics, I don't know if any class has ever depressed me as much as this one has (in a good way, though - now we know what to attack in order to fix it). Naturally, sociology is about critically examining our society. Unfortunately, this critical analysis reveals many unsettling statistics and facts. The most memorable ones, for me at least, involved the degradation of women. Miss Representation did a fantastic job of revealing the atrocities that women still face in this supposedly progressive age, but I don't know if that movie will stick with me throughout my life as well as a scene we watched in class where male band members slapped pieces of bologna on a woman's butt. Of the two major genders, women are undoubtedly the more oppressed gender, but I would have liked to learn more about male oppression as well. I feel that we focused primarily on issues of feminism, which is fine and incredibly valuable, but it would have been great to have a lesson on the difference between feminism and the men's rights movement, and how men can face oppression as well (like how the general public typically does not take women raping men as seriously as men raping women, how they perceive it as humorous, etc), granted, to a much lesser extent than the oppression that women face. This article takes an interesting approach: http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/whats-the-difference/

I would have enjoyed having a discussion about it with the class. Furthermore, I feel that we didn't explore the tensions and divides within feminism as much as we could have. I often felt that issues arose, a stance was taken, and everyone agreed with it. FGM was a great example of what I was looking for; we examined the dynamics and ethics of choice and how the world influences such decisions, and not everyone agreed on the topic. I also liked how we were all in a circle for that discussion, as I felt that it really encouraged participation and it made it easier to accommodate. I know that, for me, round-table discussion always makes me speak up more.

In the end, I truly enjoyed taking this class and will be sad to let it go next semester. Thanks for the awesome few months, Professor Jafar and all my classmates!