I had to call my daughter on this one. The question I have after speaking with her is: Could this just be a phase a person is going through?

It would be interesting to know from one of my classmates what do they thing the meaning of Sexual Fluidity means?

Here I go again learning something new. I never heard of Sexual Fluidity before until this class and of course looking it up on google. From my understanding this would be where transgender comes from. Where a man is transitioning to a woman and vice versa with a man becoming a woman.

I have learned over the years that someone may be born this way. And then when my daughter came to me and told me the like girls I cried and asked her did I do something wrong and told her that she needed to stop. Is someone born this way or are are they pushed to this group of people? My daughter did tell me that she didn't think she was born that way she thought she was pressured into being bisexual. She assured me that it was nothing I did wrong it was just they way she felt at the time.

Where did the word Queer originate from? In the 80' why did they have to associate being Queer with the AIDS epidemic?

I am going to tell my age in this paragraph. :) When I was group up the word "Queer" referred to gay people. It was not broken down to what it is in todays society. During this time when I was grouping up it was during the AIDS epidemic and the only people that could get AIDS were the queer/gay people. I remember my uncles use to use the word all the time and they would tell us as to stay away from that person because they were queer/gay, so of course as a kid we did not understand what they were quite meaning. I think it was my sister who told us to be gay meant a female liked a female and a man liked a man. And it you like the same sex you automatically had AIDS because it was a gay person disease and you were going to die.

Religion is something that have come up a lot in this course. I have been trying to understand why this keeps coming up. I think I am finally understanding why. In order to understand the clients we will be working with first we have to understand them and their beliefs. Maybe religion is not part of it and maybe it is. If not we need to understand what our clients believe in or if they are more spiritual. Regardless whenever a client comes to us we have to make sure we listen to them and get to understand them, because if not how are we going to be able to be there for them.

How would you explain Brian McLaren's simplicity (stage 1) so it can be understood in a similar way when trying to use this approach with a client?

When you think of the the worldview now with the current adminstration we are in and knowing the United States is one of the hated nations in the world. How can you explain to a client that is afraid that certain parts of this country can be bombed at any time? And how would you explain how the current president of the united states is willing to invites other countries to have free will to bomb certain cities in California because the people in those cities are politically blue and not red?

How is Queer Theology viewed in social work when it comes to an individual who is struggling with self identity?

As a black woman this is something I am curious to learn more about. Before this class I have never heard of this before and the meaning of it. In reference to womanism which from my readings this was first introduced by Alice Walker in her in the early 80's. Women have come a long way out of the kitchen and into the work force. The question now is: How differently are women viewed from the early 21st century compared to women now?

Are you born gay or bi or whatever the case may be or is this something that you are pushed towards because of peer pressure or the way one group identifies with you more?

How do you actually identify yourself as being a female or a male? Is physical parts that you are born with that tells you that since I have a vagina I have to like men or is it the opposite way around?

Gender identity I feel is a lot that the younger generation is dealing with in todays society. When I say the younger generation I am referring to teenagers who are in middle and high school age. I say this because my daughter struggled with her gender during this time. She was overweight and the only group that accepted her for who she identified with at the time was the group of her peers that struggled with this as well. I say this because she came to me during her junior year in high school and told me she liked girls. It was not because she actually liked girls it was because the group that accepted her for her appearance. It is very sad that a guy will not look at a girl because she is overweight. So at the time she came to me and told me that she liked girls over guys was because of the influence she had around her and the group of her peers that accepted her. She struggled with this for years. She even tried to commit suicide because of her identity. It was not until she and I attended therapy until I fully understood what she was going through. But at this time she has been in an abusive relationship with a girl, and she was keeping all of this from me. I am happy so say that she found herself and is now engaged to a man and they have a child together. When I talk to her now it is like she is a completely different person. She has always been feminine but now it is like she knows who she is and she knows what she wants. She has taught me a lot about the different groups and how they identify themselves as.

Sometimes as social workers we will come across a client who may have questions for everything. How would we as social workers explain ethical, culture, anti-racist and anti-oppressive to a client who is in middle school?

OH!!! This right here.... There are so many white people that actually believe that they are better than any other race and they are privileged. If everyone would take a moment to understand the actually history of the human race, and the continent it began on. They would come to understand that Africa is the continent of human life. It was not until the split of the continents and people journeying off to different sections of the world is when their melatonin began to change to adapt to the climate they had migrated to.

As a social worker how do I tell my black client that because a person is white it does not mean they are better then them, just because of the color of their skin and how society has labeled them?

How would you describe a person that has a prejudicial attitude?

I know we have all done in at least one in our lives. But how often do you look at someone and stereotype type them by the way they look, dress or act?

I had never heard the word Ableism before but as I as reading about it it started to remind me a lot on autism and when I got to the last sentence it mentioned the autistic community it made a lot of sense. My daughter just had her baby this past week on the 9th and the father has a little brother whom is autistic. A lot of what the definition had was really on point. It had been a long time since I interacted with a child that was autistic. I really forgot how smart they actually are and at the same time they are very strong and repetitive with the things they do. He could say some words and the words he said he would repeat over and over again. I just observed him and they way the did things and how short his attention span was with a single activity. I was curious the next day because with my grandson not being part of that family I wanted to know more about when he could be tested for it? The pediatrician said since it is in the father's family we could see signs early but they normally would test him at 12 and 18 months.