One person from each group: please complete this tonight

I am dropping this into all of the documents I have

2/25/15: 4:57 pm

Dear Writers:

Thursday is an important day. There is much to be decided and figured out, and some early writing to be done.  A first (ugly) draft is DUE IN CLASS ON FRIDAY, which gives you just today and tonight to knock out a preliminary idea.

ON FRIDAY, EVERYONE in the group brings in their own paper copy of the ugly first draft:  3 people, 3 drafts.  Take ownership of the work, and be prepared to cut, paste, and change that draft.   DO NOT WALK INTO CLASS AND ASK TO USE THE PRINTER.  There is no time for that.

Collaborating is not simply a matter of throwing separate ingredients together in a pot, shaking, and seeing what comes up.  Collaboration requires communicating, negotiating, struggling together until eventually a shared product emerges.

First, decide on a topic that is relevant to our unit, Language, Gender, and Culture.  There are many tyrannies in the world.  There are those legitimate oppressors that have a face and are keeping people down.  But we are not talking about Big Brother here.  The tyrannies we would like you to address are those that require thoughtful introspection.

Let us share some examples of some topics proposed last year that missed the mark:

1. The tyranny of college tuition and the subsequent debt
2. The tyranny of marijuana laws
3. The tyranny of being expected to go to college

While these topics may be worth writing about, they fail to engage the premise of our unit’s primary focus, which are the “tyrannies [we] swallow day by day and attempt to make [our] own.” These topics may either be too vague or unrelated to the unit or both.

IF I HAD TO DO THIS PROJECT with other people -- whether familiar working partners or relative strangers -- here are the steps I would take:

• I would come to the group on Thursday with 3-4 ideas
• I would explain my ideas to the best of my ability, and I would listen to the ideas of my partners
• As they were speaking, I would be taking notes, seeking common ground
• After everyone had contributed their ideas, I would start asking my partners for ways they think we could move forward
• I would clarify which paragraphs I think I could write, and I would commit to them
• I would begin writing during class on Thursday:  “censor off” (Peter Elbow), Chromebook on
• On Thursday night, I would continue to write furiously and before bed, I’d print the whole thing for class on Friday
• Taking these steps are the only way to earn a good grade on this part of the group essay.

Sorry Not Sorry

For one of our assignments, we are supposed to write a rhetorical précis on either the article written by Brooks, Tannen, or Young. In my group, I chose to write mine on "His Politeness is Her Powerlessness" by Deborah Tannen, and it made me wonder why we talk a certain way: is it something we chose to do or are we conditioned to speak with a certain type of style?

I, being a girl, agree that women do talk with a sort of implication. When there's something that I want, I simply hint at it instead of asking for it. Many times have I said, " Wow, I'm hungry," instead of "Can I have something to eat?" Women take it upon themselves to try to be more polite instead of directly saying that they want to say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzL-vdQ3ObA This video is something I came across once on Tumblr. It is from a Pantene commercial, but if you watch the entirety of it, you see that this is another habit that women have. The video is a representation of how women need to stop apologizing for the little things that aren't necessary for it such as when someone bumps into us or when we are trying to get a person's attention. I realized what this "sorry" was really for; it's a crutch that we feel like we must use to justify every action we do, just in case they might offend someone.

Regarding this video, Deborah Tannen reasoned that men may believe that a simple "sorry" symbolizes defeat, which is why women apologize more often than men do. Maybe it has to do with the fact that at a young age, we were simply taught to be polite and try to please, so we find ourselves apologizing for things that may not even have to do with us.

The great thing about this is if we acknowledge our behavior, we know that we can change it. We shouldn't have to apologize for things being out of our control. It's okay to not try to please everyone and be polite all the time. Just be yourself.

Does Gender Really Matter?

It is obvious that because men are built bigger than women that they naturally became the more dominant members of society. However, the present is nothing like the past. Physical ability is no longer the main characteristic of a person that determines a person's social status. Rather, a person's success is what I think society uses as its main determinant of their social status, in which I would say men and women alike have about the same odds at becoming successful with all that the world has to offer today. Most employers don't take gender into account when hiring someone for a job; instead, a person's qualifications are what really matter. In college, anyone can choose whatever major they please, sex doesn't matter. Whether it seems like it or not, men and women are offered the same opportunities. Gender doesn't affect a person's success, its just a matter of who tries the hardest.

My Favorite Passage

As we are reading the articles that Ms. Fletcher has handed out to us, the one that stuck out to me the most was “The Transformation into Language and Action” by Audre Lorde. This article begins with a poem; how I interpreted this poem was that our abilities that we can give to the earth are more important than our actual self. I perceived the poem in this sense because the last line states “… and our labor has become more important than our silence”, meaning that the words that we do not say because we are scared of what the world will judge them by is less important than the physical abilities that we can give to the world. Audre Lorde then goes onto saying how that is incorrect and no matter how we feel we need to let our thoughts out into words even if others don’t quite understand our meaning. She then goes onto saying how silence will not protect you and although spitting out the words that the little voice in our head is telling us to release is hard, it is something that should be done. In paragraph ten she proposes the question “Because I am a woman, because I am black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself, a black women warrior poet doing my work, come to ask you, are you doing yours?” And I started to really think about what she was truly asking and I think she is asking the question of if we really put ourselves out there and tell the world what we think. I have come to the conclusion after reading this passage that I do not, for the sole fact of judgment. I am scared that my words are going to offend someone. I am scared that I am not going to word them right and they are going to come out of my mouth as gibberish. But I am reassured by her that they may me scrutinized by others, but it is better than keeping them in.

Toward the end of her article she says two lines that really popped out to me. One being “We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned, we can sit on our safe corners mute as bottles, and we still will be no less afraid.” To me this means that no matter how silenced we are, no matter how comfortable we feel, and no matter how fulfilled our life seems to be we will still be “no less afraid” than if we spoke up and said what was on our mind. The other line that had a impact on me was the last line of her passage, which says “The fact that we are here and that I speak now these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.” This quote inspired me so strongly because she is telling us to break the silence and to open up and express ourselves through our words and actions, which is something many struggle with, including myself.