Voices of Discovery

For Voices of Discovery, I was a part of the Gender Identity group and it was a relatively positive experience. While part of this group, we discussed many interesting and controversial topics that involved some aspect of issues in gender identities and stereotypes within society. One topic we discussed that really stood out was the issue of gender stereotyping in advertisements and the effect these have on gender identities. Examples of this phenomenon include ads that are obviously targeted at women and portray them in the kitchen or as very sexual. Another example shows young boys playing with trucks and planes and girls playing with toy kitchens and vacuums. Most large advertising companies understandably want to target a specific demographic when trying to sell a product, but they do not understand the effects they are having on societal gender identities. This topic sparked my interest and led me to want to investigate it more in my final project for class. Everything we discussed was very interesting and it was fun to discuss them with other students that brought up different points than my own.

However, there were a few issues with the Voices of Discovery that I did not like. First of all, two hours is a lengthy amount of time to take out of my already-busy Wednesday schedule. Secondly, I am not really sure it has helped me to analyze and think about some of the major gender issues that are present in society. All of the conversations were very obvious and superficial and really did not challenge me to think about these issues at all. For example, the facilitators would show a video of a woman being cat-called and basically only asked us our initial thoughts. People went one-by-one and said how they thought it was disgusting and how the same would not really happen to a man. End of conversation. There was no in-depth and analytical thinking on the topic that I was expecting to get. I think if the facilitators were better trained and had specific talking points to facilitate the discussion and to stimulate thoughts, the program would be much more effective in interesting for students.