There was a lot I disagreed with in the curriculum, and that being said, I had my horizons broadened a great deal. I have an enormous amount of respect and gratitude for our lady ancestors who suffered horrific conditions due to their sex, and never had the opportunities that I can afford to take for granted. And the revolutionaries in the fight for equality made sacrifices and took risks that I don’t know if I would ever be brave enough to venture into, especially not if everything in my upbringing was telling me that defiance was wrong. The course also forced me to take a hard look at my own life and my own behaviors, and examine the many easy ways out that I’ve taken over the course of my life. There have been many times, as I’ve found, that I’ve benefited personally by reinforcing gender stereotypes and other sexist behavior that could only have been damaging to womanhood as a whole. It was sort of like kissing up to the people in power in hopes that I could at least elevate my position a little as opposed to taking my own power. These habits will change, for certain, and I do have this course to thank for it. There were a lot of sides to the issues that had never occurred to me.
As far as journals go, that’s a question you may have to ask yourself as much as you ask me. I found the blogging aspect of the course helpful enough, but I thought about it sort of as an informal paper or essay, and I did try to formulate my own conclusions and theories about the material and my reactions to it. If you saw progression and evidence that a bit of thought was being put into the work, then the blogging has been successful. Nice course, I dug it.
