Introduction Post

Hello!

I’m Rachel (or Miles, as Emily calls me), currently a junior at UCF. I am majoring in Literature and minoring in Women’s Studies, with hopes of earning a certificate in Service Learning and a second minor in some has-yet-to-be-determined field. My interest in this class stems from a few points. First, although I have been a registered Women’s Studies minor since my second semester at UCF, I have never actually taken a Girls’ Studies class face-to-face. I took Leandra Preston’s Virtual Girls class last spring, and while I did not have enough time in my schedule to give it the attention and commitment it really deserved, it was enough to pique my interest in the subject of girls as a field and topic of discussion. Perhaps even more importantly, and as we have already begun touching on in this class, girls as a topic of discussion are too often forgotten or erased erroneously as a lumped-in category of a larger group, usually women in discussion of women’s rights and general children in discussion of children’s rights. If I took away one thing from Virtual Girls, it is that, while this is something of which I have certainly been guilty in the past, it is just as certainly something I cannot afford to continue with in the future as I continue to explore Women’s Studies. Taking this course, then, is not me trying to make amends; rather, it is an effort to start myself, my scholarship, and my growing work as a feminist from a new position, a fresher perspective that will allow me to more accurately work with the issues that have become so important to me since starting college.

Secondly, and, I’ll admit, seemingly contradictory to the last point, I have been interested in this course for reasons of my own experience. Most recently, this is due to my involvement with UCF’s chapter of YWLP, an organization aimed entirely at addressing the topic of girls and leadership. However, thinking about it now, my experience with this topic and the ideas foregrounding it predates my awakening as a feminist. Throughout grade school, I was involved in Girl Scouts, and very proudly at that. But despite my pride, this involvement was something I also felt a sense of external discouragement towards—not from my parents, but easily from my peers at school and friends from other clubs and social activities. This definitely frustrated me, as I could see no legitimate reason for it. Girl Scouts, like Boy Scouts, emphasized developing leadership skills through service projects, community involvement, and the creation of a supportive, networked group of peers undergoing the same. Admittedly, neither organization could easily be dubbed “cool” in a high school setting, but there still seemed to be more of a willingness to accept my male friends’ involvement in scouting than my own. At the time, I didn’t have any of the academic jargon and theoretical terms to use to put my frustrations into words; I just knew that it bothered me enormously that I was almost constantly being told in every setting outside my troop meetings that what I was doing, something that made me feel happy and confident in myself and my decisions, was not something I should want to do. I do have the words to describe it now, but I still feel like those aren’t enough on their own. I want to also understand more about the issues at work, why those actions were and are discouraged for girls and what I can do now, even though I am no longer a Girl Scout myself, to help change things.

And for the record, I have read, understand, and agree to the terms of the course syllabus and the blogging protocols.