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An Introduction of Sorts

2009 January 25
by Alexandra Funk

Hello. My Name is Alexandra Funk. I’m a sophomore Computer Science major at Bryn Mawr. So to be honest, one of the reasons I’m taking this course is that it is being taught by Anne and Laura. My favorite class since coming to BMC was Emerging Genres (taught by Anne) and I worked for Laura in the ETC.

That being said, I am also very interested in the course content. In class on Wednesday when we were told to share a story about when we first realized we were gendered, I realized that I didn’t really have one to share. I’ve always known there is a difference between girls and boys, but the difference I perceived was in everyone else, not in ME. I recognize that girls chose things that are “feminine” and boys chose things that are “masculine”. (Some part of this I feel is done consciously. At least once you reach a certain age anyway.) My interests, however, never felt gendered. I liked to read, to run, and to travel. None of these really scream female. I didn’t have a brother to compete with as a child (he came later, much later, so much so that he was a baby for my adolescence). Until I came to Bryn Mawr the fact that I am a woman never even seemed all that important to me. Now it feels like something I can’t escape from rather than something that just is. It’s almost as if Bryn Mawr affected me in the opposite way from which it seems to affect everyone else. I do consider myself a feminist and I would never want to attend a different school, but to me gender just seems like such a foreign subject.

Which brings me to why I’m here. I want to figure out why I never felt gendered and I want to know why things like Technology somehow become gendered. I love Computer Science and I’m a woman. This is a reality. So why do I feel like most of society views it as a contradiction?

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