Rachel

I'm currently a student at Metropolitan State University. I'm pursuing a degree in Gender Studies and I should be done by next fall (woo!). I'm very passionate about gender issues. Specifically, I would love to work on issues that affect women, or people who identify as women. I live in a suburb east of St. Paul with my fiance.

Posts Written by Rachel

By Rachel • 12 years ago

Stories needed here

I hope you’re all having a stupendous Tuesday after the long Labor Day weekend. I have to admit, I really enjoyed not working on Labor Day (ironic, no?)

Anyway, to the point. I’ve recently started publishing some of my fiction work for the Kindle (check out “The Life and Times of Rebecca Walker” on Amazon if you want) and I’m starting to develop my next project.

I’d like to write a four book series about a young woman named Paisley Tines. There will be one book written diary style for every year of high school. I really want Paisley to embody the experiences of young women everywhere as she journeys through high school.

The reason I’m telling you all of this is because if you’re willing I would like to incorporate your experiences into Paisley’s experience. If you would be willing to share an experience or two with me I think this could be a really rich story.

You can reach me at rachelhanson10@gmail.com. If you could tell me your experience and what grade it happened it (or if it happened in multiple grades) I would really appreciate your help.

By Rachel • 13 years ago

The Sex Binary

There are two sexes. We all know this, right? We live in a society dominated by binaries. You’re either sweet or sour; nice or mean; smart or stupid. We also have men and women. It’s widely accepted that a person is either a man or a woman, boy or girl. There are personality traits that are associated with each sex. This is where we get the word “gender.” We are gendered to behave a certain way based on our genitals.

So, what if someone told you that there is actually more than one sex? How would you react? Would you just pass them off as a crazy person? Consider, what if that person had a Ph.D and had done extensive research ...

By Rachel • 13 years ago

Reproductive Rights

The college I’m employed at recently started offering Gender Studies courses. Being that I’m a Gender Studies major at the university I’m pretty stoked about this. The professor that’s heading up the whole thing wants to write an anthology about reproductive rights. She’s including academic pieces, personal pieces, etc. I’m going to be contributing a piece to this anthology and I’m really excited to get started on it but I’m having a little trouble trying to figure out what angle to come at this from. So, here’s my question.

What does the phrase “reproductive rights” mean to you?

By Rachel • 13 years ago

Only responding to condescension?

I had something of a strange insight last night at work, and I thought I’d try to get some opinions on this.

I work the midnight shift (10 pm to 6 am) at a nursing home as a Certified Nursing Assistant.

Last night was a fairly usual night, and one of the residents who suffers from very intense anxiety was significantly more anxious than usual. She came out to where the aids and nurse sit in between doing our jobs and started to ask me when Sarah (the nurse) was going to give her her nebulizer treatment. As Sarah was sitting right there, I told this lady that Sarah would be in shortly, so she should go sit down in her room ...

I had something of a strange insight last night at work, and I thought I’d try to get some opinions on this.

I work the midnight shift (10 pm to 6 am) at a nursing home as a ...