Stop Asking What I’m Doing!
“Why are you majoring in gender and sexuality?”, “How are you going to find a job with that degree?”. These are the questions I get quite often when I tell people about my major. Sometimes I catch myself second-guessing if this was the right choice. Yet, deep down, I know that this major was meant for me. Growing up in a heteropatriarchy society, I always questioned why it was men running the world. There were no women figures I could look up to, as in my culture, women do not speak out on their opinions and thoughts. We had to listen and depend on the men in the household as they were always right. Besides, I have always questioned my own sexuality but feared to go against societal norms as it wasn’t looked down upon for being anything but straight. I have internalized the ideas and concepts at such a young age that I wanted to break away from the norms and live a more authentic life rather than being someone I am not. Many Vietnamese people are suffering in silence and must conform to society’s expectations of what is meant to be a cisgender heterosexual man/woman. Thus, I wanted to be more informed in this specific field to help the younger generations and also teach the older generations the importance of understanding how gender and sexuality are a spectrum.
But how am I going to get there? Since I am in the last semester of my third year at USC, graduation is a year from now. I had to start planning and thinking about how I would share my knowledge on this topic. Because of the Ambling Invention walk, I was able to come up with how to present my knowledge. I want to travel worldwide to meet powerful and impactful women in certain communities and interview them. I will capture photos of them and their work wherever I travel and create a photobook to shine a light on how their work has changed their community. Once I have collected enough photos, I would like to do a photo art gallery where I showcase my work and will auction these photos, give them back to them, and put them in their community. Further down the line, I would like to make a travel doc series where I do the same thing but in a video format. I would love to pitch this idea to Netflix or any TV programs one day. Eventually, I would like to start doing lectures in my previous high school on the importance of understanding gender and sexuality (sort of like a 101 class on it) and then reach out to other international schools neighboring Vietnam. Most likely, I will need to get a Ph.D. or Master’s in this field as I want to gain more knowledge to fulfill my role model duties for the Vietnamese women and LGBT community. These are a few ideas, but I am definitely looking forward to my future as many great opportunities are coming my way!
