I Was Not a Feminist :: Reflective Writing Education Essays

I Was Not a Feminist I am not a feminist.I do not go to feminist rallies, burn my bra (although I donà ­t always wear one), feel hatred towards men, nor do I spend countless hours with my sisters figuring out ways to tear gas abortion protestors or concocting tortuous plots to abolish the radical right.I am a libertarian who exercises her right to vote and always does her taxes.I read Adrienne Rich and Allen Ginsberg and Ayn Rand and James Joyce with equal fervor.I listen to Tori Amos and Dar Williams and Rush and Metallica.I do not listen to Ani DiFranco; I find her music à ¬too feminist.à ®I believe John Milton, a dead white male, changed the way western literature relates to philosophy and religion.Stupid male humor amuses me, and I am happy to cook and clean for my boyfriend because I know if I donà ­t, he will eat Wendyà ­s and his house will smell bad.I am a baseball fanatic, and love hockey and college basketball.Softball bores me, and womenà ­s basketball is not nearly as exciting as menà ­s.I enjoyed being the only woman at fraternity Super Bowl parties.I could never not eat red meat because I love the taste of a well-cooked cow.All of these things, I have been taught, do not qualify me as a feminist. So why do I feel now that these categorizations should not matter?Is it because now I sense all things I am, not the categorizations, are feminist methods of thinking and acting?Before I realized it, I was not only a feminist, but also exercising a feminist pedagogy when teaching writing.Teaching writing is a chance to help students recognize that they, too, can write intellectually about a topic they are interested in and be excited about it.As a social-expressivist tutor, I try to work in a non-directive way, engaging my students in open-ended conversations that lead them to answering their own questions and clarifying their own ideas.When I teach writing, Ià ­ve had students do everything from peer critique to creating movement from sentences to show them that everything is open to interpretation.I use Matisse to explain thesis.These practices in themselves are not necessarily feminist, but the theories behind them, for me, always have been. Bell hooks writes in Talking Back that à ¬feminist education ? the feminist classroom ? is and should be a place where there is a sense of