For this syllabus, I wanted to focus on the ways in which our ideas about sexuality have changed. Sexuality is something that is hard to define because it varies from individual to individual. Sexuality is also something that can be influenced by culture through the norms and values that different cultures hold. In this syllabus, I highlight and touch on the various ways that different cultures describe and show sexuality.

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Syllabus Summary

 I feel like my definition or the way that I conceptualize sexuality has changed from what I first thought sexuality was. Growing up, I didn’t really think about sexuality. I saw things that may fall into sexuality as being something that two grown ups do. But also not just any two grown up but grown up who were in committed relationships and I saw it as stuff like holding hands and hugging. Of course this is what most kids see when growing up. It is their first idea and understanding of sexuality that they witness from their parents or adults around them. It wasn’t until I took my first women, gender, and sexuality studies class, which was the introduction course, where I got my first actual solid definition of sexuality. Knowing from compiling my sexualities syllabus I feel like the way I define and view sexuality is outside of what the dominant definition of sexuality is. The dominant definition of sexuality is something along the lines of expressing physical acts of sexuality with one of the opposite or same sex. For me, sexuality is something that is much more open and varies from person to person. Everyone defines sexualuty differently and on their own terms. From what I have learned in classes and from my own personal experiences I would define sexuality as one’s feelings towards their own gender identity and the gender identity of those they may be attracted too through sexual feelings or romantic feelings. I say both sexual and romantic feelings because not everyone experiences sexual feelings or has the want to experience sexual feelings because of trauma or because of how they personally identify. 

I think for me the biggest factors that influence my view of sexuality and what I tried to encompass in my syllabus would be my background in women, gender, and sexuality studies as well as queer studies but also how much I am influenced by mass media. For me, mass media is more than just television shows, movies, or music but it can also be art, photography, and zines. Zines for me are a huge way in which I was able to get information on certain topics within my women, gender, and sexuality studies and well as queer studies because of the direct history zines and compiling zines have with these fields of study. I also see zines as a great way to share theory and ideas in a quick and easy way that also allows those who either made or put their work in the zine to share their own type of media like poetry, spoken word, or art. In my syllabus I tried to pull from many different articles that I have read in the past for courses as well as articles that I have just now read for the syllabus that I found. I tried to incorporate different cultures, identities, and experiences around sexuality within the articles, research papers, zines, and art that I focused on or shared. For me, one of the main pieces that I continue to go back to and see as monumental when it comes to showing sexuality outside of the dominant narrative would be POSE and Dirty Computer by Janelle Monae. Due to the fact, that these forms of media were created by black queer and trans women who are consistently hypersexualized or villianized within the dominant narrative around sexuality that these pieces that they worked on and shared flip the dominant understanding of sexuality upside down as well as disrupt the master narrative around sexuality and gender. 

What I found to be the most challenging for me about locating and finding work that fits or replicates my definition of sexuality would be that it is a definition of sexuality that falls far outside the dominant definition. Which makes it hard to find work and research to supplement my ideas of sexuality because it is research and work that is just now being done and being recognized within the field. I also tried to highlight the work and art of women of color, queer folx, and queer people of color because often times the dominant narrative seems to focus and highlight white folx. Also as I said in the beginning of this reflection people define sexuality differently depending on their own ideas that they formulated through the cultural norms and values that they may have. My idea and understanding of sexuality comes from actively thinking and critiquing the dominant culture I grew up in which was very conservative and religiously driven but also still outside of the dominant culture because of my racial identities. So, from this activity and through the work I put into to highlight and encompass different aspects of sexuality it was hard to find pieces and work that fit my understanding of sexuality because I saw many if not most of the articles, art, and media that I consumed fitting my conceptualization of sexuality.