I have fallen behind in my blog posts; as I sit to write, I feel like I am having a conversation over coffee with an old friend, needing to catch up. Life has happened, the end of semester is rapidly approaching and my mind is filled with new ideas and information. I'm working to cement all of it into knowledge, to transform what I see, hear, read, write and experience into a usable, re-callable form. The sourcing project for CCASA has been awesome and challenging at the same time. I have been focused on finding sources, editing and formatting citations into APA, but the proverbial rubber met the road over the last few weeks when I was able to use the information in the handbook and apply it to my own life experience. Also, I was able to pass along some of my new-found knowledge and resources on CCASA's webpage to a colleague of mine. It's amazing how I do all of this work to achieve one goal, and in the same moment I'm given an opportunity to really put into practice what I've learned. What a gift!
In class a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about global gender, global feminism and the idea that women's rights are human rights. We watched a clip of Chimamanda Adichie called "The Danger of a Single Story." I highly recommend watching it!
In my own life, I have experienced a single story more than once. Growing up in Wyoming, I was geographically and culturally isolated for people who were not like me - Caucasian, middle-class, English-speaking, from a nuclear family, etc. I also experienced the danger of a single story in a different way - while my life looked the same as those around me, what I read in books and saw on television, I recognized very young that I was not 100% the same. I was aware of being queer far before I had the courage to tell anyone, yet the single story of heterosexuality in my home, family and community left me terrified to be so far outside the norm.
Sometimes I am annoyed that I tie most experiences to the hard sciences, however something that helped me to deny the myth of a single story, of terminal uniqueness, as it were, is the fact that 99.9% of human DNA is identical. What separates us from each other is 0.1% of our genetic make up! Now, that 0.1% can have a grand impact - we are not the same people, even if we simply look at appearance, it's easy to see that there is great, glorious variation among humans. This knowledge lent to me a sense of unity - as a species, as occupants of our Earth at this time, we are in essence, the same. Our common purpose is our common existence, and the power of a common purpose can transcend oppression, geography, language, culture and dare I say, closed-mindedness.
Before I get carried away with unity, I think that it is necessary to recognize that we are also individuals, with our own beliefs, values and experiences. In order to represent women, or people, globally, we must promote unity and recognize individuality through awareness, conversation, activism and education. It would be painfully self-centered and self-righteous for me to only see the world from my own experience or carry the expectation that people will fit into the stereotype/category my mind places them into.
Whether I am considering my classmates, fellow Coloradoans or someone on the other side of the world, I try to remain open-minded, teachable and not make assumptions. I enjoy the comfort of familiarity in meeting people who share similar ideas, beliefs and goals. I feel as though I must be vigilant in veering away from ethnocentrism (the belief in the inherent superiority of one's ethnic group or culture; viewing other groups/cultures from the perspective of one's own). A single story is a danger to global unity - just as I have been able to re-write my own, I hope to further the idea that it's possible to see beyond what we think we know.
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