Do you think this is funny?

Before I state my reaction to this true story, I want to say something about the movie. The movie was boring. I didn't feel excitement, nor was I intrigued while watching it.

       My opinion on this true story:

 It was bound to happen, it wasn't even the first time it had happened. I am not sure why we are studying this event, it's not that important in human history. I did identify myself with it though. I also fight for my rights. 

      About her telling her secret:

I am not in a position to judge her decisions, nor anyone's. Everyone does what they want to do, as long as it does not affect me. Yet, I don't think it was a bad thing that she told the truth. It was an honest, and true to self thing to do. Also, I believe that judging someone by their sexual orientation is stupid! Like, it's not anyone business who you decide to love and be intimate with. In fact, i don't believe in sexual orientations, and I know it's controversial but it's my honest opinion.I believe people fall in love with a person, not to the gender of the person. 

Also, when she admitted to be lesbian in front of her superiors, she did not know it was prohibited to admit it in the army. That's why she didn't have that much of a conflict with admitting it, specially since it didn't affect her efficiency in her job. She was a simple citizen, working hard to get by in life. 

I want to include that this all began because in her interview, she was asked if she ever committed immoral conducts. Obviously she felt that she didn't do such things, but to be secure, she asked what were these conducts. One of them was "stating of being a homosexual." Now, why would she lie about that?

Serving in Silence Answer's

1) Describe these reactions:
A. Military

When Margarethe Cammermeyer told the military about her sexuality, their reaction was to immediately discharge her, but as an “Honorable Discharge”.

B. Father

When she told her father, he somehow understood, but feared for her position in the army. Also, he believed that she should not tell everyone about it because it was an inside-of-the-house matter.
C. Children (in order from oldest to youngest):

Matt: He said he already knew and he understood completely.

David: He was understanding and decided to go to live with his mom after he had problems with his dad.

Andy: He asked her if she decided to become a lesbian, but accepted her anyways.

Tom: At first, he was avoiding her. But as the movie goes on we see that he accepts her mom in the end.

2)Margarethe's decision to tell:
A.  The military: Margarethe had never been asked before whether she was a homosexual or not, so she was never put in that position before. In the moment she was asked, she did not lie about her feelings and told the truth even though she was sure that would affect her in a bad way. The Army felt that it would have been better if she had kept that information to herself.
B. Her children: As Margarethe told the military and was facing the problem, she decided to fight back and sue the Army. Of course, this will to fight would bring a lot of public attention to her and that would affect, not only her, but also the members of her family, including her children, and that was why she decided to tell them the truth.
C. Her father: Margarethe was particularly afraid of telling her father, being the oldest and most conservative of her immediate family. When her father told her that he was coming to live with her, she decided to tell him before he found out by himself when he arrived.

3) What is your reaction to this true story? Do you believe that she should have kept her secret or told it to everyone? Explain your reasons why.

I think she did a good thing telling people and not lying, since she wasn't doing anything wrong.  I know that at this decade was a taboo, so she did make a statement by suing the military, because they had no reason to fire or discharge her.

4)How would Dr. Kinsey explain the Margarethe Cammermeyer’s sexuality?  She is a mother of 4 boys so how can she be lesbian? Is it her choice?

Dr. Kinsey might have said that Margarethe’s sexuality changed over time.  First she was married to a man and had four children.  According to Kinsey, it would be normal to love a man, and over time, love a woman.  Margarethe made her choice to marry and have children.  One might argue that she had been distracted from her homosexual identity for a time. Then she meets Diane.  For whatever reason, Margarethe had been able to discover, or re-discover, her identity as a woman who is attracted to other women.  In turn, it was her decision to act and live with Diane.Once, she was married to a man and had four children.  For many years, she was married to a man she loved.  Then she divorces the man soon to assert her interest in women.  She then meets Diane whom she had fallen in love with.  Margarethe made her choice, two choices.

What does Margareth believe about her sexaulity as it relates to her identity?

Margarethe tells her sons when she reveals her sexual orientation to them, that she has somehow always known that she was a homosexual. It is not something that she chose to be but something that defines her as a human being. She explained to her family, her superiors and the man that interviewed her for her security clearance, how her sexuality is characterized by her identifying and forming emotional bonds with women and that in turn is part of what makes her who she is.

Student Research Conference

In on our Advance English class, we were asked to do a reflection on the Award Ceremony of The English Literature Contest 2015. We were very proud of two of our classmates, since they won 2^nd and 3^rd place in such contest. I attended this conference, but sadly I had to go early since I was called for work, and didn't stay much time in the ceremony. For this reason, I will be doing a reflection on the Skit we did for a Student Research Conference, a couple of weeks ago. We were assigned to create a skit with a discrimination topic, and performed it in front of an audience.

My group and I, THE writers, choose the topic about racism to Latin Americans. So we created a scene, where a professional person has to go on a business trip and is wrongfully accused by a TSA agent. Creating the skit was a bit of a struggle, since we are not producers or actors, and to write a whole play is not easy. We have to think of every single detail, and as easy that may sound, it’s not. Another hard part of doing this skit was including a poem about discrimination into the script. My group and I decided to make the poem part of the dialogue. It was hard to make it work, and make it look like a normal dialogue but that the audience understood it was a reference. It was scary, since it was different than doing it in front of the class; instead we were perform it in front of strangers. We had to make them understand what we were doing and why, and deliver the message. At the end of the day, I enjoyed writing the play and acting in it.  It was a good experience since we could see what playwrights and actors go through and we take for granted. 

Blog Reflection

I know that as human beings we are supposed to know a little about everything and that the requirement classes we take are because we are going to need them eventually. I also understand that this blog helps us to express ourselves to the outside world, how we do so and how we respond to feedback. But let's be honest, I don't like to write at all and literature is not my strongest subject. I did not feel comfortable writing this blog; since I felt it was pressured and I couldn't truly write what I wanted because I had to follow some type of pattern in our writing. I think I like the journal better because I could keep a relation to myself and figure some stuff about me. On the contrary, I haven't learned anything from writing in this blog. I think this class has been more of "how to be a writer" instead of teaching us how to publish, which ways are better and what should we expect from the world or something like that. Instead, they leave us to write freely and to learn by ourselves what writing is good and what writing is bad. And yes, we have to think by ourselves, but we are in this class to learn and improve our writing style.

Maybe the only thing I could learn about this blog is how to take feedback, and how to give feedback, somehow. I think feedback should be the good type of criticism, let this be that what we say helps the writer improve. But it will be better if we could say what we really believe and think. When we are given a process to follow on feedback, this may makes us hold back into what we really think of the work. I think that I like to keep things short and straight to the point. Just a brief introduction, the facts, and a conclusion. That’s how my writing and publishing will be from now on. 

**added may 5,2015**

Well, I have written 15 blog post, including this one, and most of them are between 300-500 words (some more, some less). Since day one, I think my writing has changed in a way that I now state more of my opinions and it's more personal and direct to my writers than before. One of the blog posts that was most significant to me was the one where I had to talk about myself, called "So you wanna get to know me?". I think this blog post it's of more significance to me since I had to talk about myself, which I don't usually do and that I mostly try to avoid. It was a rare experience, and the outcome of it was not what I was expecting when I started writing it. As my development as a student, this blog has help me be more responsible and be more careful of the things I publish to the world. It was a nice journey, but it take a lot of time even though it was worth it.

The TSA

In our Advance English class we were assigned to create a skit about discrimination and perform it. So my group and I, THE writers, choose the topic about racism to Latin Americans. So we created a scene, where a professional person has to go on a business trip and is wrongfully accused by a TSA agent. The TSA agent is a redneck U.S. citizen who believes all Latin Americans are illegal immigrants, dumb, and filthy “creatures”.

I believe doing this script is really important since still nowadays we have to deal with discrimination. I live in a Caribbean island, so that means I’m also Latin Americans, and racism also affects me and all my fellow citizens, too.

I also learned the process of writing a small play, and all the details and focus it needs to be done well. We have to think of everything, and don’t let a single detail out. So it was a little stressful when it came to writing the whole thing, but at the end it gave a great feeling to know we had created something out of scratch. Also we had to perform this play we wrote. Looking for the props, how to use them, the little space we had, and using the right tone so the audience could hear us was a real struggle. But at the end of the day, the struggle was worth it and I believe we did a good job. Also, my fellow classmates, who put on as many hard work as my group did, did an excellent job on their skits and we all gave a great message about discrimination and how should it be put to a stop.

"The 60's" by Mark Piznarski

So if you haven't read my recent post about the 1960s, please do so. Here is the link: http://jeanettemarquez.blogspot.com/2015/04/what-happened-1960s.html

So, like I said, I'm going to adapt the next two types of discrimination into the mini-series "The 60's" directed by Mark Piznarski; and these are racial and gender discrimination.

Let’s start with racial. In the movie we are presented with two families and one of these are the Taylors. The Taylors are an African-American family, and we are presented with a son, Emmet, and his father, who is a minister in a church. His father was a pacifist activist of the civil right movements. He believed that they could achieve their goal by being calmed and pacific, and showing the world how even when they weren’t being aggressive, “white” people still harmed them, and sometimes even killed them. We can see how the father gets beaten up at the beginning by sitting down in a “white” café, trying to make a difference. This is because “white” people didn’t believe that “black” and “white” could be at the same place, because “black” people were “less” than “white” people. Because of this and more discrimination to black people, Emmet believes the best way to stop “white” people, and prove them they could also be like them, was violence and creating a riot. We can see later in the series that this turns into a bad ending, since it gets the dad killed by mistake because of Emmet’s act of rebellion.

Next I’ll be talking about gender discrimination. Like I said before, there were two families. I already talked about the Taylors, now I’m going to talk about the Herlihys. The Herlihys were a normal “white” American family, with a housewife, a veteran, three children (one girl and two boys), and raised in a religious manner. What I’m going to talk about is the mother, the daughter and one of the son’s girlfriend, called Sarah. Ok, so I wanna be brief so sorry if I let things out. First of all, we have the daughter, Katie, who doesn’t like to follow the rules as to what a woman and girl should do, so she sneaks out to a party and sleeps with a musician. After this, she gets knocked up and her father accuses her of not doing things the traditional way, and how he was ashamed of her. So she decides to leave him and raise her baby on her own. For this, she seeks the help of the father, which really doesn’t help much, but at least haves a place where she can live and people will help her take care of the child. I believe she was brave, to go out to the world and do things by herself, considering this was an era where women didn’t had much power. Let’s continue to talk about her mother. This woman was a typical mom, who cooked, stayed home, took care of the children, and contributed to everything her husband did. We can see how she takes a stand against him when she decides to sign the petition her son was asking, that was to bring the troops homes and stop the war. The husband tells her how can she do that when he does not approves of such thing, but she lets him know how she respects his opinion but he also has to respect hers. For me this is very important, since women had little voice in this decade. Talking about women’s voice let’s talk about Sarah. Sarah was an activist against the war. So, she loved when this brave man stood in front of a bus to make a stand and had lots of good ideas to stop the war and human rights. We can see later on how, he treats her like a shadow and she can’t stand this because she wants her voice to be heard and that people take her seriously for who she is, not for the man she stands behind.

I know I could’ve go in deeper, but right now that’s all I can think of. I hope you could understand how discrimination affected in this decade, and be clear that there were more types of discrimination than the ones stated above. Thanks for taking the time to read!

What happened: The 1960s

When we think of the 60's decade we mostly think about hippies, peace, love, and the death of Kennedy. I can bet when this decade started most of the people thought it was going to be the change of an era where discrimination was going to disappear and was going to stop. Well, sad to disappoint you guys but it was nothing like that. Here I am to comment how the 1960s were in the USA.

We found discrimination everywhere in society in this decade. Discrimination coming from race to gender and even political believes. Even though these problems existed in the decades past this one, they performed an important part in the 1960s, since people created movements to go against these wrongful things. 

From the beginning of the 1960s, there was the Vietnam War in process and, as we know, the United States decided to interfere. This cause many people doubt were the government stands, since the US had nothing to do with that war and, still, they were sending a big number of troops to fight in a war that wasn’t even theirs. And this means killing unnecessary and providing violence instead of suggesting peace. It’s obvious the government did not like that and went against the peace activists that were trying to bring the troops home and stop the war. Also, as always, women were being discriminated, since people didn’t tend to believe that women have equal rights and are supposed to be housewives, or stand behind a man. Women were not expected to have a voice and be independent. The last, but not least important, type of discrimination I’ll be talking about is racial. Did you know that after years of being banned, the KKK surged back (supposedly secretly) in the 1960s? I think this is enough to say how black people were still being discriminated, and black people decided to continue the civil right movement since they considered it was unfair to them, which it was.

Ok, so I know it’s not much but there is a really brief summary of types of discrimination so in my next post you can know what I am talking about when I adapt what I’ve talked about into a mini series called “The 60’s”.

See you in the next post!