Hannah Gooch, Dinithi Jayasinghe and Cassidy Kantun

Collaborative Journal
INTRODUCTION

As this journey began a couple of months ago we never thought it would end up getting to this
extent. It was something that we never expected. As this time has come about there have been
many changes made to our daily lives such as not being able to hang out with our friends, go
shopping at a mall, or sit down at a restaurant with family. This adjustment has been a big one,
and some people have not been following these protocols which have become an issue.
Mandatory mask rules have been invoked in several counties not allowing people to enter the
store if they do not have one on. This has not stopped our group from working on our research
and finding information to empower women even more than they were before. This is about
standing up and fighting for what we believe in, even when it is difficult. This journal presents
our views and struggles throughout this process.

Note and describe the disruptions, critical thinking and learning moments, opportunities for
creative response and approach to working through the requirements of the advocacy project

As our lives have been disrupted by this pandemic, we have been quarantined in our homes.
While working on this project in its beginning stages of the semester, we found it to be fairly
easy to work on and thought there would be nothing to worry about in this class. However,
because of this pandemic, we have found it to be a little difficult in finding the motivation to
continue as strong as we were in the beginning stages. We were also baffled in part about how to
communicate and finish certain elements of the project which required collaboration. Even
before this pandemic started, we worked and communicated very well with each other; and by
having to solely communicate online, we had to reassure each other of our workability. We were
also not sure about what we could do to continue to collaborate with each other. With this came
peer review among ourselves when we had to turn in assignments as a group, which came
constructive criticism that we all appreciated and gained from.

How are you and your group making sense of supporting an important cause even as you are
dealing with or adapting to a sudden, unknown state of reality of living under COVID-19?

We as a group find this cause to be very important, as we are all feminists and feel that feminist
groups tend to get a very bad reputation based on smaller group actions. Though this pandemic
has affected our daily routines and the way we communicate and work as a group, we feel that
this should not affect the way we work or the level of importance that this project is to us. We
feel that we have been able to effectively communicate with each other to further enhance and
advance our project to advocate for feminism. In the news during this pandemic, many news
sources and media outlets are reporting a lot of information, and not all of it is necessarily true.
For example, because there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the symptoms, spread, and infection
of the coronavirus, there are a lot of people coming forward with new information like “it makes
your skin turn a darker color,” and “ the air is so thin,” which can be true in some cases.
However, there are others who exploit the death of certain people who had underlying conditions
and have died within the span of this pandemic as an attempt to strike fear into the minds of
those who would rather go out instead of stay home to be mindful of those who would otherwise
be at higher risk. While it may be effective if those numbers are added to the death tolls in that it

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could scare people into staying apart, it still is spread of false information which could be
misconstrued and eventually realized as fake. We have tried to adapt these circumstances to our
project to be as truth-filled and as accurate as we could possibly make it. Accuracy is very
important to this project as if we are not portraying the correct information it reflects badly on
our credibility. If our credibility is debunked then our audience will not view our project content
in a good light and will only be viewed as a website written by people with little to no credibility.

Think of this collaborative journal as a rhetorical journey of your writing and research process,
happening during a time of a global health crisis. How is news coverage about COVID-19
impact your overall learning and writing experience about your advocacy project?

During this quarantine, we have become aware of the advocacy of other topics such as the
healthcare system & their resources, the increase of domestic abuse, racism against Asian-
Americans in this country, and many other ones. While these past few weeks have gone by, we
have seen how important it is to have reliable sources for publicity and news outlets, as we have
seen many people, President Donald Trump as an example, become misinformed and hand out
mutable information that can harm the public, or even cost them their lives. Recently, he has said
some things about injecting or ingesting pure bleach and hand sanitizer into his system to purify
it. Later, after several people were seriously hurt or died because of his words, he had claimed
that he was “just making a joke,” however a great many people do not see it as such. In light of
these new developments, we have been able to properly display the correct information that is
relevant to our project so as not to spread false information about the feminist movement that
could be harmful to the views that other people may have of the movement. This is important so
that situations where feminists used to be seen as vile, extreme, and confrontational, can be
reformed in favor of the feminist movement. Through our research, we have seen what a
negative impact of or being loud and vile, can do to an advocating group. A more recent example
of this is the “My Body, My Choice” campaign that has been presented by a group of people
wanting to protest coronavirus safety guidelines that are putting the public in danger. These
protests can significantly impact the views on feminism, as it is riding on the backs and altering
the purpose of the pro-choice campaign. This small protest happening in Texas, a very
conservative state, is hypocritical and weaponizes the language of having a choice when
comparing a medical procedure to requirements that protect public health. Although this protest
is recent, this has become a relevant example in the creation of false pretenses around the
protesters' own beliefs and the formation of doubt among that advocacy group. In order to avoid
that exact situation, we had to make sure our language wasn’t suppressing feminism or were to
cause a more negative connotation of what we wanted ‘cleansing feminism’ to truly mean.

In essence, what does it mean to write, to work, to live during an unprecedented, unexpected
disruption brought on by a health crisis outbreak?

At first, the disruptions to our classroom and group setting may have rattled us a bit. However,
we feel that by doing our work for our classes and following the policies and restrictions put on
us by the state of Texas, is the most we can do during this time. We have found alternative ways
of communication such as FaceTime and iMessage software to collaborate on the classwork that
requires us to work together. Our routines may have been completely uprooted, however, we
were able to persevere and work things out to where we could create our website in an effective
and concise manner to advocate for the proper promotion of the feminist movement and its’

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ideals. Adaption is the key factor in situations like the coronavirus pandemic which have turned
our world topsy turvy in a very short period of time. As such, we needed to find ways to adapt to
the new learning environment, and quickly, and we were definitely able to do that with the help
of communicative and collaborative software as well as perseverance.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this has been an experience that we will read about in textbooks for the years to
come. We will be talking about this pandemic for years to come, and hopefully, learn from the
mistakes we made so that it never happens again. Not only have students had to adjust to this
new working environment, but so have teachers and everyone's families. This process has
encouraged us to stay informed and knowledgeable not only on the pandemic but other topics
that interest us. For example, we have done endless work and research on this project and its
many stepping stones. Reading and studying databases, books, and news articles with endless
pieces of knowledge on this pandemic and the feminist movements. We are grateful for this
experience and all the knowledge it has provided us with. We also hope to inspire other men and
women with all the history and new ideas we have presented in all our material relating to our
advocacy project of the cleansing of feminism.

WORD COUNT: 1550 (as of 05/01/20 3:34 pm)