Voices of Discovery

I participated in the Voices of Discovery group that focused on Gender and Sexuality. On the first night, we all went around and introduced ourselves to each other and than dived right into discussing gender roles. We listed off typical male and female behavior, both good and bad, and than our facilitators had as attempt to decide where we all fell on the gender spectrum.  The point was to demonstrate that most people do not fit into those binary gender boxes, instead they fall somewhere in between, which most of us did.  Our discussion then continued to various other topics.  I remember sharing some very personal information with my group that night, which is very atypical for me as I am a very private person, but I felt extremely comfortable and felt that I could add to the discussion because of my own personal experience.

At the end of every meeting, our facilitators would hand out a form in which we could suggest topics that we wanted to discuss the next night. I really enjoyed that they were interested in letting us pick the topics, because I believe that it created an atmosphere that encouraged discussion.

Some of the topics that we discussed included: gay marriage, transgender issues, sex education, rape culture, polyamorous relationships, 50 Shades of Grey, and many others. One of my favorite discussions had to do with transgender and gender non-conforming parenting.  We talked about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s daughter Shiloh.  Shiloh was born biologically a girl, but she has made the decision to wear typical “boy” clothing and have short hair.  Angelina and Brad both have fully supported Shiloh in her decisions, and have allowed her to explore whatever gender she choses to be.  Most of our group supported their parenting style, and had no issues with allowing Shiloh wear and do things that are typically consider boy behavior.  I thought that was really cool that our generation, well at least those in my group, were completely fine with the idea of a young child exploring their identity any way they want to! We also had a guest speaker come in and lead a discussion one night.  She had gone to grad school for Gender and Sexuality, and she had some very interesting points of view on some topics and our discussion that night went to many different places.

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience with Voices of Discovery.  I loved learning about so many different topics and learning other peoples opinions as well as having my own challenged.