W o r d Count: Approx. 400-500 w o r ds For the Short Response
W o r d Count: Approx. 400-500 w o r ds
For the Short Response 1 assignment, students are asked to choose and relate either a
relatively recent experience from their everyday lives or an aspect of popular culture (via
media text) that speaks to what it means to move beyond the surface level.
Students will be responding to the following question below:
Why is it significant to understand identity as more than one social marker such as race or
gender or class but identity as more complex. For example: What might this allow for? How
have we come to this in our course so far
Criteria
Your response papers must be written in standard essay format, which means you will be
evaluated on the quality of your:
• Suitable topic of either an experience or an aspect of popular culture (this can include a
film, television show, song, book and so on)
• Thesis statement/main idea or topic
• Clarity and organization of ideas
• Using and connecting course idea/ideas to support students' topics/main argument
• Use of at least one (1) course reading
*As this is a short response paper, you are not expected to draw on direct quotes from the
readings, however, students should be making connections and exploring ideas discussed in
course materials (lectures, ppts, readings...)
You may use the word "I" in y o u r written work. In fact, it is encouraged in this course,
especially if your short response paper is based on an experience. You will find that writing
from the "I" perspective will be useful, as you are situating yourself into your writing, as
many of the thinkers, authors, activists and writers we will be reading also write from the
"I" perspective.
Assignment Submissions Must:
• Include an original title, note: "Short Response 1" is not an acceptable title. This is your
opportunity to be creative and use your assignment title as a way to entice the reader.
• Include your name, date and course code (in the header, title p a g e or however students
format their assignments)

• Follow a style guide (MLA and Chicago Manual of Style are preferred, but if you are
comfortable with another style guide, this is fine, just be consistent with your referencing)
Avoid over-use of quoted materials. Quoted passages need to be contextualized and require
comments that directly forward your own argument. When citing work, all direct quotes
and ideas that are paraphrased (written in your own w o r d s) must be referenced. Avoid
errors of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Remember to proofread your assignments.
course reading
https://level.medium.com/breonna-taylor-and-bearing-witness-to-black-womens-
expendability-472abf5f6cee
https://youtu.be/hg3umXU_qWc
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/what-is-intersectionality-explained/
This is example 1
Selective Invisibility
In my first response paper, I will focus on the glaring disparity of the attention the recent
disappearance and subsequent homicide of Gabrielle Petito received in comparison to the
lack thereof to the hundreds of missing Indigenous and people of color in the United States
alone. This case of missing Gabby Petito was first brought to my attention on my social
media platforms. Tiktok, which is a platform for users to share videos on any range of
topics, was where I saw the most coverage of this story. Regular people took it upon
themselves to solve this case, dissecting every single post and youtube video made by
Gabrielle and her fiancé as they documented their travels. Every time a video like that
showed up on my feed, I couldn't help but feel uneasy about it. I didn't want to admit it to
myself because I truly wished that she was safe and found soon, but the fact that a white
woman's story was getting so much international attention just didn't sit right with me.
When reading through the comments, I came across an interaction between a person of
color trying share information about another missing person, who happened to be African
American, under a video of Petito. She was quickly dismissed by other (white) commenters,
who declared that she should have respect for Petito and her family and not post about
another person, to not take attention away from the case that they would much rather hear
and talk about. This reminded me of what bell hooks wrote about working with her white
colleagues, 'One arena of constant conflict happened when white women would ask black
women/women of color our thoughts about a decision to be made. And when we would
disagree, our comments would be ignored. It was as though we had never spoken.' Around
the same time that she went missing, an African American man by the name of Jelani Dey
had also been reported missing. According to his family, most of the media attention and
police resources were exhaustively being used to shed more light on Petito, with little to no
information being released about Day.
The discrimination against the Indigenous community was made apparent for me when I
moved to Canada. Prior to coming here, I was not well informed, and it has been completely
heartbreaking to read their stories and I am actively trying to learn more, have better
conversations with my professors and peers about this topic. The more we share their
stories, the better the community can come to support them and properly acknowledge the
people who lived on this land before any of us. According to an Instagram page dedicated to

missing Indigenous people, over 700 Indigenous people (mostly girls) have gone missing in
the same area as Petito over the last 10 years. Most of them did not get any coverage on
media, or the support of the internet sleuths who worked so hard to bring justice to a white
woman. When reading bell hooks or the Combahee River Collective, it is apparent that these
women fought an uphill battle to ensure that feminism involved their voices too, and
unfortunately that battle continues today. It is up to all of us to support them and to
continue to raise our voices to ensure that every missing case person gets the same energy
and attention as the next.
hooks, b., 2012. Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice. 1st ed. New York:
Routledge, p.145.
This is example 2
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: "We Should All Be Feminists"
In her TedTalk, "We Should All Be Feminists", Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie identifies several
factors such as gender socialization, sexism, and emasucaltion as hinderances to achieving
gender equality. Through the retelling of personal encounters along her journey to
understand and embody what it means to be a feminist, Adichie highlights that "we have
evolved but . . . our ideas of gender have not" (Adichie 8:47). For example, Adichie explains
that male dominance endures based on outdated notions that superior physical strength
indicates fitness to lead. This disregards that we now live in a world where intelligence,
creativity, and knowledge make a strong leader; all of which are qualities that both men and
women are equally likely to possess. In order to dispose of concepts of emasculation, sexist
interpretations of gender, and pressures men and women face about how they should be,
Adichie emphasizes that "we must raise our daughters differently . . . [and] we must also
raise our sons differently" (11:13).
It remains an issue that "those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished",
and we see examples of this in how boys and girls are raised (Butler 522). For instance,
Adichie talks about how we often teach boys to conceal weakness, vulnerability, and fear,
and failing to do so results in society stripping them of their masculinity. On the contrary,
girls are raised to "cater to the fragile egos of men" and make themselves inferior to prevent
being "a threat to a man" (12:55; 13:29). Adichie herself discusses how her and her friends
experiences with anti-feminism are because people are raised to believe that women should
be likeable and less aggressive, and that men should be praised for being tough.
Adichie reminds us that as humans we are social beings, and as we start to explore the
world, we internalize a lot of ideas from our socialization. An example of how we are being
raised to conform to sexist gender norms is through "gender fortification" (Fausto-Sterling
10). Gender fortification can be understood as the strengthening of gender norms through
stereotypical gender ideals such as buying girls cooking sets and dressing them in pink, or
buying toy tools and trucks for boys. By doing so we are fortifying outdated and sexist
interpretations of gender. Adichie herself states that women are not born with a "cooking
gene", and yet women are more likely to do the cooking and cleaning in comparison to men
(19:51).
Notably, throughout Adichie's TedTalk she helps the audience imagine a world where we
raise our young people with a focus on ability and interests rather than gender. A world

where we understand that the differences between men and women end at our biological
differences. A world where a woman's success is no longer a threat to a man. According to
Adichie, in order to d o this we must first "unlearn many lessons of gender [we] internalized
[while] growing up"; if we cannot reframe our thoughts and be feminist, we cannot c r e a t e
a happier and fairer world for future generations (20:02).
Works Cited
Adichie, C. N. "We Should All Be Feminists". TEDxEuston. YouTube, uploaded by TEDx
Talks, 12 Apr. 2019, https://youtu.be/hg3umXU_qWc
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology
and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal (Washington, D.C.), vol. 40, no. 4, 1988, pp. 519-531.
Fausto-Sterling, A. "Of Spirals and Layers." Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World,
Routledge, 2012, pp 3-11.