Transform Messages Into Stories
Session Slides
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Messages are all around us. They are in the greetings we give and receive and the conversations we join. They are the questions we are asked and in the looks we receive or don’t. They can be as personal as text messages or as general and public as the internet ads tailored toward us and the magazine covers at the supermarket checkout. And for as brief as messages might be, they can stay with us. And as dramatic as the messages might be, especially when we didn’t anticipate them, the power of messages is equally in how we hold onto them and how we choose to respond.
I provided the 4 articles!
This week’s four required resources were Blanco (2012), Hamer & Wilson (2014), Kincaid (1978), and Kivel (2007), with you picking another two resources from the remaining six. Take five minutes to reflect on the resources you read/watched and then answer the following questions.
· What’s the line from one of the resources that contains a message that the author received about their gender message and is a mirror for you with regards to your own gender identity?
· Then continue, what additional messages have received about your gender identity? You can follow the style of Kincaid (1978) and simply list the messages you received without additional explanation. You can follow the style of Blanco (2012) and Hamer & Wilson (2014) and provide the context for the messages (when, where, with whom). You can follow the style of Kivel (2007) and describe the impact of these messages on not only you but other people who share your gender identity.
· Finally, how have you held onto these messages? Do you still hear them from other people? Do you still say them to yourself? Have you resisted them? Do you pass them onto others?
Once you have written out your response – again this doesn’t need to take more than 5 minutes or 100 words or so – post your response to the discussion board. Please also read other people’s posts and consider whether what they are saying – either about the resource or about their own lived experience – is a window or mirror for you. Post these thoughts as replies to their post if you are willing to connect with them and potentially continue the conversation.
As you read through the messages that other people in class have received, take your analysis of mirrors even further. What are the messages other people posted that you also listed on yours? What are the messages that you didn’t include because you didn’t remember them, but as soon as you read them in someone else’s post, you also recall receiving that message? Also consider that even if a message was a window or mirror for you, is the same true of that person’s response?