On Wednesday, March 31st from 12:30-2:00 pm, we had a pt. 2 of gender representation and portrayal in the media. We continued with discussion after discussion (ranging from insensitive comments to sexual assault), and also had a short recap of our last meeting if you were not able to join us the week prior.

From 12:30-1:30 PM, we held a presentation/discussion about the female portrayal and the representation of females in the media (movies, tv shows, etc.). The presentation was lead by the GES Team, with a lot of different voices and experiences coming together. There were some great discussion points such as the male gaze, ultra femininity, toxic masculinity, and more, which will be continued sometime in the near future!

On March 17th, we had a discussion on intersectionality in feminism.

But first, we started by talking about the events that occurred Tuesday, March 16th in Atlanta, Georgia. On Tuesday, there was a shooting that led to the death of six Asian American women out of eight total deaths. We discussed how we felt about the event and why conversations like these are important to hopefully one day stop anything like this from being able to occur.

After that, the discussion was moved to our Research Officer, Aris Pastor. Aris discussed her research about intersexuality, and those present quickly began to discuss with each other. Some of the major things that were discussed were the problematic “super-straight” movement currently circulating on social media, the social construct of gender and the spectrum of gender, the differences between biological sex and gender, the issues with feminism (toxic positivity; “white woman cry”; women saying “build each other up” to avoid the issues within the feminist movement/being called out), gender-neutral bathrooms, how trans women and men are the ones attacked in bathrooms, not the ones attacking, and transgender athletes. The event went till approx. 1:45pm.

Overall, it was an amazing chance for students and teachers alike to talk about this important topic.

Our first event was for International Women’s Day (IWD)-- March 8, 2021.

We had three speeches and four presenters and after that, we had an awesome discussion.

Mr. Warner, NAI World Cultures and Psychology teacher, and his student, sophomore Madi Eschenbach, were the first to speak. Their speech was about how women have been left out of history.

The second speaker of the night was Mrs. Ochs. Mrs. Ochs is a ninth-grade Biology teacher at NAI. She spoke about women in STEM and her experience of being in a [STEM] world that was not designed for her.

The final speaker of the night was the upcoming superintendent, Dr. Friez. Dr. Friez shared about her career and her experience as a woman in high leadership roles.

We then had an amazing discussion that covered many topics that we hope to further discuss in the future such as gender inequality in STEM fields and inequalities of trans women. This event was how Thrisha and Sav found a passionate group of people and launched GES!