Abbe Eliasof

30 April 2019

Final Reflection
My topic for this project was undoubtedly very broad and multifaceted, and the issue of

femininity and masculinity standards for and within minority communities is a problem in itself,

but also leads to many other problems. The solutions described in my various sources are

primarily focused on the smaller issues such as homophobia, racism, sexism, etc., however, the

solutions from my interviews are the most useful. My friend, Justin Johnson-Bradshaw, believes

a good approach is to raise our next generations to be more open-minded, to fight inaccurate

portrayals of certain groups in the media, and to work on understanding each other more.

Professor Kelly Finely believes the best approach is to work on ourselves and start conversations

in our own communities. Both of my interviewees gave good solutions to my issue and all the

ideas could be implemented to help solve it.

My research for this project was seemingly all over the place because I talked about a

great many things. It was hard to find sources that explicitly talked about how sexism affects

minority communities, so I had to get creative and think about how I have seen this play out in

my life and the lives of others around me. I researched things like homophobia in the Latinx

community, sex trafficking of Asian women in their own countries, denial of mental illness in

African-American women by their own communities, and more. I think my research was able to

paint an abstract, but very understandable picture about how imposing Eurocentric ideas of

femininity and masculinity on minority people harms them and causes them to harm each other. I

believe anyone who has ever felt constrained by the gender roles and norms imposed on them

would find this information useful and could benefit from it. Though it mainly talks about how
these standards harm minority people, they actually harm everyone who doesn’t easily conform

to them.

When creating my own two solutions, I thought it would be most beneficial to focus on

something for male identifying people because women already know how they are being

oppressed, but a lot of times, boys and men don’t. Also, getting males to realize how society has

been shaping them to act and realizing the amount of oppression it causes is something that isn’t

done often, but needs to be. This is why I decided on the two solutions I did. Raising awareness

in college men and teaching young boys about the pressures society places on them. Both of

these solutions were designed to raise awareness about toxic masculinity and racism. It was a bit

difficult to get some of these messages across to young boys in an appropriate way, but I started

with surface level things like bullying, expressing emotions, and asking for help. As far as

logistics go, it was easiest to determine things like promo (because we’ve done so much of that

this year) and timing, but it was harder to figure out what would actually occur during these

events, then put a cost on it. I had to get a little creative with activities for the boy scout

workshop because I didn’t want it to be just like In Bloom and I wanted more interactive parts.

Overall, this project was a challenge for me because my topic was so broad and there

were specific types of sources that had to be used, but I honestly learned a lot and was able to get

really creative with the articles I used. Most of my sources didn’t really help me come up with

the solutions, but they did help build an argument and taught me a lot about many diverse groups

of people. A lot of the information I collected is very relevant today and I can definitely see it

playing out. My main use for it would be to educate those who are ignorant how Eurocentric

standards of femininity and masculinity are imposed on those in the Western world and how it

harms everyone. The only thing I might consider changing about this project is adding an
additional self-chosen source and maybe taking out one of the other sources so that it would be

easier to fill the gaps in our research. Both this project and the multi-genre project helped me

learn a lot about the topics I chose, but I think I preferred this one because it was more in depth

so it forced you to deeply know your topic and then build off of it.

I don’t think I will ever implement my solutions, mainly because I don’t have the

network to, and I couldn’t do it myself. It would be great to be a part of an organization that

could put it together one day, but it is not something I see myself doing in the near future. The

largest hinderance would be actually getting people to come and getting adult males to volunteer.

It could be extremely beneficial though, because it would hopefully teach young boys about a lot

of things that their parents and schools may not be teaching them.

This project is definitely connected to Gen-X because it works to solve a feminist issue. I

feel as though Gen-X has done a great job of addressing issues in our society and doing

something to help fix them or at least challenge the systems that allow them to exist. Identifying

a problem and creating solutions are the fist steps in activism, which is what Gen-X is all about.

We have had a lot of discussions and learned a lot in this class, then applied it in the real world

through things like In Bloom and other projects, and that is what this entire project aims to do.