Hey everyone! I think one privilege I have as a white person that I think society should eliminate is the privilege to be able to buy skin-colored Band-Aids.  This seems like a really trivial thing, and I never even thought about it before taking this class.  However, after reading that article where the author talks about how they only make “skin-colored” Band-Aids for white people, I realized that that really is not fair.  So to eliminate it, I think all Band-Aids should some in colors like red and green and blue or with patterns on them.  That way, they stick out on everyone’s skin, including white people.  I don’t think I or anyone else would mind giving up this privilege because I think it is a little thing that would make everyone a little more equal.   One privilege I have as a straight person that I think should be shared with everyone is knowing that I will someday be allowed to get married.  This is a huge privilege that a lot of straight people, including me, really take for granted.  I think every single person should be able to marry whoever they fall in love with, no matter what the gender of that person is.  I think being able to get married should be considered a basic human right.  I personally wouldn’t mind extending this privilege to the rest of the world because my life would not change that much just to let everyone else live happily married lives with the people they love.  Hopefully this privilege does get extended to everyone soon because I think the world would be a much happier and equal place.

SHOW AND TELL POST

So after listening in class these past couple of weeks, I decided to do my show and tell on white privilege.  It really interested me and concerned me that I had so many privileges as a white person than I realized.  I have so many privileges in my day to day life that I don’t even recognize and take completely for granted.  I found this blog on tumblr, and I found a lot of the posts very interesting and eye-opening.  The title of it is "This…Is White Privilege," and the link is: http://thisiswhiteprivilege.tumblr.com/.  Although some of the posts on here are very angry, I think some of the posts make some good points.  In one part, they say that white privilege is having almost all the new Apple emoji on the iPhone match your ethnicity.  This seems like such a little, insignificant thing, but it’s so true.  After reading this, I scrolled through my emoticons on my phone.  Every single little cartoon person with the exception of two or three was white.  And there are A LOT of people emoticons.  I usually just use them in texts without even thinking about it, but that’s because they look like me, so why would I have to think about it?  This is such a little thing, but it’s a very good example of a privilege that white people take completely for granted.  Another part of the blog points out that white privilege goes all the way back to our childhood.  She talks about how the majority of the Disney princesses are white.  As a little girl, I used to compare myself to  Disney princesses and use them as role models because I watched Disney movies so much, didn’t everyone?  I wanted to look just like Belle, or Cinderella, or Snow White, but I could aspire to look like them because they looked similar to me already.  I never saw that as a privilege before, but now I realize that it definitely was.  I can’t imagine the confusion I would have felt if all of those princesses looked completely different from me.  We were just little kids, but this is another thing we take for granted as white people.  Hopefully after reading this blog, I'll start appreciating the little things in my day to day life that can be seen as white privileges.

Growing up, everyone is taught that boys are stronger than girls.  Boys are faster than girls.  Boys are more athletic than girls.  Boys can play sports better than girls.  That is "just the way things are."  I didn't know the terms "brute facts" and "social facts" growing up, but the statement that boys are stronger than girls has always been a brute fact in my mind.  It was an unchangable thing about society that everyone knew about.  When anyone needs someone to do some heavy lifting, they will ask the boys in the room.  If a girls' team and a boys' team played each other in any sport, everyone would bet on the boys' team to win.  However, after learning these terms and reading certain articles in this class, I'm realizing that that's not really the case.  Although the norm tells us that girls are weaker, that is not a concrete fact.  There are girls out there who are stronger than most boys.  There are feminine boys out there who wouldn't be considered strong at all.  And who are the "boys" really?  We're even learning that gender isn't a brute fact. So it's not accurate so say that boys are always stronger than girls because there are exceptions everywhere.  This can now be considered a social fact, along with many other things in our society.  We should no longer think less of girls and consider them weaker because society tells us to because a lot of the time it's just not true.  I'm glad that this class is changing my perspective on this and other "facts" in our society because I never really agreed that boys are stronger than us anyway, and now I don't have to blindly accept it like I did in the past.

One privilege that I have that I know I take for granted is the knowledge that I will be able to get married one day.  As a straight person, I know that if I fall in love, I won't have to worry about the law or what state I reside in when I decide to get married.  I also won't have to worry about having children or how other people might be judging my marriage.  This is such a huge thing to take for granted, and the articles about privileges really made me think about it.  My best friend is a gay male, and he always talks about how it isn't fair that he won't be able to get married when he falls in love.  And even if the laws change, people will still judge the union of two males or two females, and I know society will approve of my marriage when the time comes.  It's sad that something as normal as getting married is considered a privilege.  It's a basic right that shouldn't be limited to just certain kinds of people.  I shouldn't have to feel grateful that I will have the oppurtunity to get married one day; it should just be a basic right of any human being. I know I have many other privileges as a straight white female, but having the knowledge that I will be able to freely get married seems like the biggest one to me.  I hope the laws change so that it won't be such a huge privilege, but even if they do, society won't fully accept gay marriage the way that it accepts straight marriage.  And it surely won't accept gay people having children the way it accepts straight people having children.  The articles and conversations in class have really made me think about my life and how easy it is to be a straight white female, and I now realize how much I really take for granted.

Hey everyone.  There are many things about being a girl and "doing" the gender role that I dislike.  I don't like waking up so early for class to fix my face and hair.  I absolutely hate blow drying my hair at night.  It's so time consuming and makes me sweat, which is something else girls stereotypically don't like to do. But one big thing that came to mind when I read the blog prompt for this week was homecoming. If you were a girl in high school, you waited for a boy to ask you to the dance.  You just did.  It would be majorly crossing a gender line for us to ask who we actually wanted to go with, so instead we would just wait around and hope for a suitable boy to ask us.  And I don't know about you ladies, but this gave me SUCH an anxiety attack.  What if I don't get a date?  What if the boy who asks me is weird?  What if the guy I like asks someone else? It was exhausting.  Meanwhile, the boys in the school could just waltz up to anyone they pleased and ask her to the dance, and chances are she would say yes.  I was so jealous of them. Why as girls do we have to do that?  Why would it have been such a catastrophic even if I had just asked the boy I liked? I don't know why it is this way, but I don't like it.  Shaving my legs and putting on mascara can definitely be annoying, but I think waiting around for a date back in high school was one of the worst things I had to do in order to "do" my gender correctly.