Blog 7

The other weekend I had to complete my drill time for the US Coast Guard Reserves in St Louis, MO. While I was there our command had planned out a couple of training sessions for us on certain topics with one of them being on human relations issues. During this particular training we were told to gather into groups of 5 people and then we were given a list of 12 different types of people. From this list we had to choose only 7 people that we would put into a "capsule" to send to another planet to start up the population again (the earth was about to be somehow destroyed). The 12 different types of people that were listed were a 70 year old priest, a Jewish writer, a female actress, an accountant, the accountant's wife who was pregnant and use to take drugs, a stripper who smoked marajuana, a Chinese feminist student, a pharmacist, a medical student, a professional basketball player, an armed policeman, and a wheat farmer. When all of the groups were done deciding who they would take in the capsule we were instructed to say out loud who we chose to not take. It was interesting to see that in almost every group they decided to leave behind the Chinese feminist student. One of the reason why I fought to keep her for our group was because we knew for sure that she was a female and she could help repopulate the new planet. But, to my surprise most groups wanted to leave her behind because it would make the trip "easier". With hearing that reply I saw how little people know what a true feminist is. They just assume that it is a loud speaking, strong opinionated, unruly woman who won't take 'no' as an answer (from a man). It almost seemed to me like all of the groups were scared to 'deal' with a feminist and so they would rather leave her behind than deal with her at all.