Who's my baby daddy?

This week in class the subject of reproduction was brought up and there was a lot of back and forth on the idea.  People should be able to sleep with and marry who they want.  However, like Alexis said life can only be produced through a biological man and a biological woman.  It is impossible for two men or two women to bring forth life, it’s not talking down about or disagreeing about homosexuality or transgendered people, it’s just the reality of the situation.  Also, I do not remember all the questions Dr.  Abbey put forward to make it more complicated, but one I do recall was, can people who are transgendered have children?  To me the answer is no and possibly yes.  No, because if you have a trans couple who are the same gender it’s not happening just like with other homosexual couples or if there is trans heterosexual  couples who’ve had both top and bottom surgery each, technology is still not to the point where that would even be possible.   Perhaps yes, because if trans man and a trans woman get together technically you still have a biological man and biological woman it’s only that they switched roles.   If neither has had bottom surgery and they have sexual intercourse the traditional way or if a trans man identifies as gay and has sex with a biological man, then it might just be possible for them to have a child.  For example, the “man” who had a baby.   A man did not have a baby; a female to male transgender did with the help of artificial insemination.  (link to article http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5302756&page=1).  At the end of the day it boils back down to the same argument, that it takes a man and woman by birth to make another life.  Taking hormones of the opposite sex doesn’t change one’s sex it just makes the person more comfortable with their gender identity.  They can take all the hormones they want but at the end of the day even though the public doesn’t see what’s in their pants they’re still what they were born as.  Yes, their organs might shrink or enlarge but they still have them.  I have a testosterone imbalance where I produce too much of the hormone but that doesn’t make me a man. 

I don't know how I feel about men's movements

There is a part of me that doesn’t really feel the need for men movements.  I like a few ideas some of the groups have.  For example, with the peace keepers I admire their love for god, the emphasis they place on family, and the way they want to bond with other men.  Also, I like aspects of the million man because I appreciate the fact that they want to change how the black man is perceived and not the stereotypes that are constantly thrown around.  However, with men having the privilege in this country and pretty much every other one in the world, I see most of these movements as something to oppose women, (except pro feminists, even though I feel like these men could just be feminist and support the women’s movements) and they felt excluded so they just let’s make a men’s movement too.  Sometimes people are just left out.  In addition, I thought it was interesting that the way our guest speaker’s father was absent from his life in certain ways, due to work, and it made him ultimately made him become a pro feminist.  I’ve grown up with a dad who is traditional in pretty much every sense of the word, growing up on numerous occasions my father would tell me I couldn’t go certain places or do certain things because I was a girl, when my family would sit down for dinner, I couldn’t sit at the head of the table because it was a “man’s place”, or when my brother –in- law would get up to wash dishes, he would say things like “why would you wash dishes with all these women in the house” and he would always say things like my favorite (sarcasm) “a woman can’t do the same things as a man and still be a lady”.  All those things really used to piss me off but after a while I would laugh at him as I got older and told him he was crazy, but I never felt strongly enough about it to make me want to become a  feminists, honestly it kind of shaped some of the opinions I have today.  Many of my classmates said they preferred our male feminist speaker over our female, I wasn’t too fond of either, but I appreciated what they had to say, but I felt like many preferred the male because he was more PC and he didn’t stir people’s feelings and make them upset or feel some type of way whereas the female did.  It’s easier to like someone when they’re not controversial.

Just my take on things

I found this week's materials quite interesting.  There were a number of thngs that stuck out to me,
 however the one that stuck out to me the most was the reading about abortion.  I was apaalled at the
notion that the most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.  I'm personally insulted
by that statement because that means my womb is being considered a death chamber.  Yes African American
are more likely to get an abortion but only but a small percentage.  It says black women have 37% of
abirtions and that white women have 34%, with a small difference like one could consider a white woman's
womb pretty dangerous too.  It's easy to configure percetages in different ways to make the numbers
work to one's advantage in order to present their arguement.  I don't think it's right to label on race
with an issue that transcends all races.  Also, another thing that stuck out to me was our guest speaker.
I respect her views and her right to express them but I didn't particularly appreciate how she presnted
them.  She expressed that she never got her race card, but I didn't really believe her. especially with how
much she did focus on race.  I understand that her view can only come from the perspective of being a black
woman, but I felt like the way she convyed her points seemed more like a black panther member or civil
 rights leader than that of a feminist, even though the definition is so broad.  I understand oppression
but I don't wake up feeling oppressed and like the world is against me even though I know a lot of odds are
against me by being an African American woamn.