My writing process is ever-changing, I feel like I do have some sort of process without structure if that makes any sense. I normally just jump into writing my assignments but after taking this course it has shown me that actually breaking up the writing assignment into mini assignments is very helpful and can help me avoid the feeling of panic while I try to cram the last minute. It has given me a structure and timeline which I desperately needed.

I like to first go over the main criteria I need to include in my writing. Are all the questions answered first?I like to glance at the criteria and then vomit on the page. Everything that I could possibly say about the topic and especially include my opinions on whatever the subject is. I like to get it all on the page to then go back later to see what I’m dealing with. What am I missing? Did I meet all of the criteria? Do I need to do more research? Do I need to work on my transitions and bring clarity to my ideas? Does it make sense? Do I repeat a lot of the same words which then brings me to the thesaurus to try and elevate my vocabulary because it definitely needs the elevation? I like to start writing from my introduction all the way to my conclusion and then move things around accordingly. I’ve learned that when I write I’m pretty emotional and I like to write about myself personally and relate it to any topic. Trying to write essay #3 was in my opinion one of the hardest essay’s I’ve had to write for this class but I feel like it was the essay that pushed me the most into developing a scholarly voice, it taught me the importance of separating the bigger assignment into smaller ones.

I was drawn immediately to “when words do more than hurt” simply because of the title. I think the structure of the essay was really well done. She introduced the topic with background information to let the reader know what he/she was going to read. I think the ending of the essay was also done well ending it on her personal opinion on Sulli. However, I would have liked to have her state more of her opinion on the topic I thought at times it was a bit robotic. I think it would have been more interesting for her to state her relevance towards the topic and add that she was a fan in the beginning in order to draw the reader in more and give the reader in a way a sense to care. I give this author a 89%.

Some specific trends the author notes about the members of the incel community is that somewhere in their life they have had some form of rejection from life and women. Many share that they had been bullied when they were younger or have qualities about themselves that are not valued in our current culture or not deemed attractive. Some shared their disabilities such as autism and having extreme anxiety which can lead to being introverted and avoiding social situations. All the members of the incel communities are young men aged sixteen to thirty.

The patterns that inform the insider experience in this community is the constant loneliness and rejection that these men have experienced which later develops into rage against women which eventually becomes hatred. What that tells me at least about the members of the community is that they don’t want to empower their members to be confident (which will get them women guaranteed), they want them angry, sad, to feel sorry for themselves and blame a whole gender on their misfortunes in life. The members of the community need an outlet to express their rage and sorrow. Instead of turning their misfortunes into a positive thing and discovering a healthy outlet. The incel community wants to stay and melt in their insecurities, which in my opinion will never help them with women instead push them away. It’s like their doomed from the start, just bringing their pain deeper into their subconsciousness. When people experience trauma it’s a very delicate situation. A good way to combat trauma is support from other people who have experienced the same thing. To also combat it you need to accept it to move on to better yourself. Using rage as a way to deal with your problems just gets you into more problems. Your moving from a place of hurt that needs to be addressed.

I really liked how Beauchamp balanced factual evidence and personal stories of people of the incel community. I think the analysis of this community relates to a lot of things we experience in this world such as sexism and misogyny. It tears women down. It’s an outlet to openly hate women due to their lack of understanding and hatred of themselves. It moves in a circle once you get hurt you move your hurt onto someone else. And that just keeps repeating until you break it.  I was disgusted to read that this community was twisted into hating women and actually killing innocent people. But I hate to say that it didn’t surprise me.

I have many privileges that sometimes I forget I am lucky to have. I was born a U.S citizen from a middle-class family, I always had a bed and my own room, healthy food on the table, access to education, the ability and financial support to go to college. I have the privilege of having open minded parents which is something I am truly grateful for and support from my parents to dream big and go for it not letting anyone get in the way of that dream. Family was an important and still is an important factor in my upbringing, but I feel like individuality almost topped that which might affect how I research my online community.

I originally was going to choose an online community on YouTube, but I have decided that Facebook is juicier, and it is much easier to observe and conduct field research. I am specifically going to study an anti-abortion page on Facebook. I think it will be really interesting to see who is active on the page and what are the demographics are. I have already read some of the comments under the anti-abortion page of their posts on Facebook and I can say that it is definitely passionate and that there are a lot of people who are pro-abortion really speaking their minds and serving the page some facts.

I am personally against anti-abortion for many different reasons which might affect how I see the online community and might make me bias towards certain opinions. I was raised in an anti-religious household; I was told that an education and career came before children.  I even have a promise with my father that I wouldn’t get married until I graduated college and a promise with my mother that I wouldn’t have children until I was thirty. I don’t have an exactly personal experience with abortions, but a couple of my friends do and couldn’t be more thankful for them.

I am hoping to gain a better understanding with the online community on their views on anti- abortion. I think there is many different aspects to it such as religion, science, financial support and culture that will play a role in their opinions.

When reading the first couple of paragraphs of Elise Wu’s “Out Patients” I had no idea what to expect. Wu introduced the topic of having a factitious disorder pretty brilliantly. Using her own experience as the introduction really helped the reader understand her perspective. When talking about the disorder Wu uses personal details as well as other people perspectives on it as she discovers the online communities sharing their stories.

In fact, there are a few. Wu goes into to two online platforms both representing different needs surrounding the factitious disorder throughout the essay. In the end she compares and contrasts both experiences and both audiences.

Wu goes into very specific details as she describes the verbal portrait of this community on the page. While entering the site she says that her screen is a “sea-green background” that Dr. Feldman’s had a “expert’s smile” at the top of the page. Which gave her the chills and made her lose trust in the site. She also goes on to realize that it is not a place for the patients with FD but in fact it’s a place for the people who have interacted with it and who were hurt by it to come and ask questions and seek support. It was a one-way street, not a community.

Initially going onto the first website, Wu became discouraged after doing some scrolling. She noted that the doctor who created the platform wasn’t very helpful at all and seemed to have his own agenda by answering questions vaguely and plugging his books to gain further information, which created a false sense of community in the eyes of Wu. After she finds the site that actually is a site for FDers by FDers, cravin4care, she realizes the dynamics are different. Wu uses personal stories on the site to help the audience understand more of the meaning and purpose of the new site. There is more direct interaction, you “are” somebody meaning, you have to create a persona and personally subscribe to be a part of the website instead of just aimlessly scroll. What was different about this site was that you were able to make connections people returned to the site, people created friendships. She compares the two sites. Wu

even comes across stories of people “coming out” and trusts their stories. Wu relies on this source which influences her to seek help.

After finishing reading this essay, I’m glad it had a happy ending, I for sure thought this was going to be a story about how someone finds an online platform that fits them perfectly but I’m glad it wasn’t. On another note the human body never ceases to amaze me.

It’s about 2:30pm as I sit across on a big rock from the dog park on 135^th. The dog park isn’t much, but the dogs seem to enjoy it. Its located on a slanted hill and the benches where the owners sit are at the bottom lined up. Every time a dog enters the gates to the park Tinker the golden retriever greets them as if he was security. Tinkers owner sits on the bench with his legs crossed, looks like he is in his mid-twenties wearing a graphic t shirt. I noticed that he seemed like he was in a daze staring at the ground. The next person who entered the dog park came in with a phone pressed to her ear with a medium sized dog and a tennis ball in his mouth.  She paced the dog park walking back and forth engrossed in her phone call, as her dog ran around chasing his ball. She looked like a businesswoman and she could have possibly been on a call. A small poodle came in next accompanied with her owner. What I noticed is that most of the dogs mimicked their owners. Or the owners got dogs to fit their personalities. The poodle owner seemed like a quirky quite girl, her dog was a small golden poodle with a cute face that ran in between her legs. Tinker seemed sociable but also laid back just like his owner. Dash, the businesswoman’s dog matched the energy of the women. I personally really enjoyed Tinker.

In the article “The Hustlers: The Real Story Behind the Movie” Pressler takes us on a wild descriptive ride of the women who stole from the wall street men by drugging and running up their credit card bills. The article includes some very valuable cultural information such as the rules to working in a strip club and what was allowed. In a strip club, it is designed so that the club profits more than the dancers. At the end of the night they are supposed to tip out the bartender, DJ, house mom and the hosts. The dancers have to pay to work there. A shared belief between all the strippers were that the men walking into the strip club had deep bank accounts and worked on wall street. The married men were easier to target because they had more to lose which meant that they could exploit them without having the fear that they would say something.  The idea of a stripper was a young girl with curves. The shared belief of sexy was a girl with the “sort of waist-to-hip ratio “that Rosie was born into, the hourglass shape. The background information that Pressler uses to help guide the reader is essential in understanding the story. For an outsider Pressler provided Rosie’s and Samantha’s background to help us understand why they started in this business and what made them successful. The description that she provided helped the audience envision each member clearly. She described everything from the plastic surgery they had to what designer they were wearing on their feet.

This article takes place in the 1960s at the height of the civil rights movement. In this time the population is still enduring segregation. Segregated into different schools educating African Americans and white children differently ingraining the ideas of white supremacy at a young age. Even in the blurb of the article it starts by saying Negroes which gives us information on how African Americans were viewed at the time. The society was still telling African Americans that they were still not good enough to be with white people, that they are inferior. The police system took on this shared belief through brutally force by destroying and putting fear into African Americans. Even standing up to authority having a darker skin color your life was put at risk. This continued to fuel the already great divide between the two races. The police are supposed to protect the citizens but instead were targeting a whole race. African Americans did the only thing they could by minding their own business, keeping their heads low and trying to stay off the streets as much as possible to avoid the inevitable fate of being abused by society. The same system they are supposed to believe in to protect they were scared of.

Some questions a fieldworker might have to uncover the culture the article describes…
Who do you call when you feel endangered? If not the police why? Do you feel safe with the police? In what ways has police brutality changed from 1960 to today? Has it changed?

A fieldworker who wanted to gain the ondsider perspective would need to put himself in the enviornment where this has occured such as Harlem. Not only to go to Harlem but to speak with the residents of Harlem about how they were treated and what is their relationship with the police.