It's the end of week three...

So, halfway through the class, and so far, it has definitely not been what I had expected. I was expecting a sit-down lecture from a White Apologist professor that would basically consist of six weeks of "You're horrible for being white, you're horrible for being male, you're horrible for being middle-class," and so on, complete with a multi-page paper every few weeks to drive the point home.

Suffice to say, it's been nothing like that. This class is making me think. It's making me think about what (and how) I think. Even more importantly, it's making me think about when I don't think.

What do I want to see out of the next three weeks? I'm not sure. So far, it seems to me that we've been establishing a framework and terminology, and are just now starting to apply it to the internet and video games. That application seems to me to be what will really make the course - we've talked about how people can change gender and race online, but not really what that means. So I can log onto CoH and play a latina superheroine. So what? How does it change my understanding of race? How does it change anyone else's understanding of race? Sure, people who've been living under the proverbial rock (and never thought of crossplaying) might assume slightly different things about me, but it's City of Heroes - a far more important question than whether I'm an illegal immigrant is whether I'm going to light you on fire from a hundred feet away or chop you to bits with a big freaking sword.