My Own Biases I believe that our text, The Psychology of Women, is a feminist book. Feminism is a basic belief that women and men deserve the same amount of respect and equality in all social, legal, and economic aspects of life. Matlin describes the definitions of feminism in those terms and also adds that a society that values the ideas and experiences of women is a feminist one which I found to be repetitive along with the idea of equality across all areas of society (page 5). The individual that wrote the amazon review claims that Matlin discusses her ideas and opinions as though they were fact. I found that the text limited information that was not objective and science driven. The vast citations throughout the text make it difficult
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Each part of a person’s social identity becomes a potential bias for them. I believe that how we view the world and how the world views us changes our perceptions of ourselves and others. My identities range from being a student and a daughter, to being raised by a stay-at-home mother with a working father. I am a student at a large research university; I live in the Midwest; I am in a relationship with a man. Every aspect of my life makes up a piece of my identity and alters how I see the world around me.
As a feminist, I thought the content in the Matlin text was clear and obvious. I have a very difficult time understanding how sexism exists in society and how ideas like ‘all women’s behavior is biologically and objectively different from all men’s behavior’ make sense to any people. Feminism seems like an obvious response to what, in my opinion and Matlin’s it seems, is a clearly biased and sexist society that we live in. From parenting (page 87) to the media (page 97), some of the largest parts of our lives are affected by using gender as a more prominent factor than personality and …show more content…
I want more data on how transgender people fit or do not fit into the stories the scientific literature currently tells us. I want to be more inclusive of people of different sexual orientations and ethnicities. Any disappointments I had in this course focus on the extent that we covered the male and female dichotomy and disregarded transgender and gender nonconforming people for the most part. Intersectionality, something that affects all aspects of how gender is viewed, could have been covered more in the text as well. How society stereotypes white cisgender women is very different from a black transgender woman. It is my hope that I was able to move past some of my own biases to look at this text and this course in an objective way, but I am not too naïve to think that it has in some way changed how I thought about the content. Overcoming biases is a process and something that require time and attention, but becoming aware of our identities helps us understand ourselves on a deeper level and relate to others more
Each part of a person’s social identity becomes a potential bias for them. I believe that how we view the world and how the world views us changes our perceptions of ourselves and others. My identities range from being a student and a daughter, to being raised by a stay-at-home mother with a working father. I am a student at a large research university; I live in the Midwest; I am in a relationship with a man. Every aspect of my life makes up a piece of my identity and alters how I see the world around me.
As a feminist, I thought the content in the Matlin text was clear and obvious. I have a very difficult time understanding how sexism exists in society and how ideas like ‘all women’s behavior is biologically and objectively different from all men’s behavior’ make sense to any people. Feminism seems like an obvious response to what, in my opinion and Matlin’s it seems, is a clearly biased and sexist society that we live in. From parenting (page 87) to the media (page 97), some of the largest parts of our lives are affected by using gender as a more prominent factor than personality and …show more content…
I want more data on how transgender people fit or do not fit into the stories the scientific literature currently tells us. I want to be more inclusive of people of different sexual orientations and ethnicities. Any disappointments I had in this course focus on the extent that we covered the male and female dichotomy and disregarded transgender and gender nonconforming people for the most part. Intersectionality, something that affects all aspects of how gender is viewed, could have been covered more in the text as well. How society stereotypes white cisgender women is very different from a black transgender woman. It is my hope that I was able to move past some of my own biases to look at this text and this course in an objective way, but I am not too naïve to think that it has in some way changed how I thought about the content. Overcoming biases is a process and something that require time and attention, but becoming aware of our identities helps us understand ourselves on a deeper level and relate to others more