i feel so awkward right now. i just had my human behavior class and our assignment was to get into randomized groups of 4 and choose (based on our own criteria) who would go into the bomb shelter in the case of a nuclear attack, which would wipe out humanity. we could only pick 2 people to save and out of my group, i was the only girl. every other group was all girls except for one other group that had 2 females and 2 males. my group told me i was automatically in due to procreation...then they were trying to decide which guy to choose. they asked me who i would pick. oh wow. i had no comment even though i found one of the guys attractive. i just thought it was so strange that this was being asked of me. i already felt like i didn't want to be in class that day and i was definitely not in the mood to participate. the guy i thought was attractive kept asking me questions about what i wanted to do/ starting at me and i answered them but hesitantly (i knew i was turning bright red). i just felt like they were all thinking about procreating with me...those 20 minutes felt like an hour. i also felt like it was assumed that i'd want to just because i was the only girl. maybe i'd just rather die? so much pressure; they were talking about me having babies and the possibility of incestuous relationships. i haven't been that uncomfortable in a while. i would have been fine being invisible but of course i stuck out like a sore thumb as the only girl in the group and they all kept staring at me for reactions. attention is great, don't get me wrong, but none of the attention was even based on my own merit (it was based on my gender). And what if i was a really unattractive female or there was another female to compare me with...how much more awkward could that have turned out? maybe another girl would have been happy with those circumstances (these 3 guys fighting to hypothetically procreate with you). i have so much to do but this effected me so much that i had to sit down and write about it. i think part of it might also be the fact that i felt alienated, different from everyone else and they certainly made me aware of that fact. i know i had to be using one of my defense mechanisms. i was psychologically removing my actual self from the situation and saying "okay...i'm a generic female, they aren't talking about me specifically as a person." that would probably be the intellectualization. i definitely disconnected from the conversation. losing track of time and disassociating with myself and my true feelings. i felt like i became child-like in the sense that i turned red and became really uncomfortable with the idea of procreation and what it entails. i also became really quiet and the typical me might have made a few jokes but the situation was a little too uncomfortable for that. the weird thing about this experiment is that in groups where one or two people offered to die, others also offered to die. in groups, like mine, where one person or more mentioned wanting to live, everyone started fighting for a chance to live. i think, taking institutionalized gender stereotypes into consideration, since all the guys in my group wanted to live, i definitely wanted to live (even though, if i really thought about it, all the procreation pressure would have caused me to forgo the bomb shelter). i think they were all about "survival of the fittest" and being macho and asserting dominance. it triggered my gag reflexes a bit. i think i probably would have argued a bit more for myself if i hadn't automatically been voted in. i like these activities because i learn so much about myself--my reactions, about others and our interactions. but i bolted out of the class the moment we concluded. i just couldn't take the pressure. i felt like there was such a build-up inside of me. all i could focus on was how strange i felt. my writing is so fragmented right now...this mixture of emotions definitely has an effect on my writing and its structure. i bet these guys aren't even thinking about what just went down; i bet i'm the only one still thinking about it. they think, "hey, it's just another class activity" and i think "holy hell, that was so strange..." I feel like it's one of my dreams where i wake up feeling like it was a good dream, but when i really think about it, it wasn't. on the one hand, these people didn't reject me as an option to procreate, which has to be a good thing (not that i'm extremely self-conscious or anything) and on the other hand, i was placed in a vulnerable state--feeling awkward about the overall situation.

maybe i just feel like they weren't really taking into consideration, who I really am. and i know its not part of the prompt but i don't just procreate with anyone. i like to get to know people first and to have meaningful conversations with them. thinking about me, individually, it takes A LOT of time for me to open up so to say, in 5 seconds of meeting each other, that we would hypothetically procreate was INSANE. actually, they didn't even introduce themselves to me until after the fact that they had decided i was automatically in. i guess i takes things too personally. but it's really like those dreams where you wake up and keep forcing yourself to think about what just transpired even though you almost feel like there is no point because it was all a dream in the first place. oh and they actually just assumed that i wanted to be a mother and have children. i didn't object because my gender was saving me on the one hand, but on the other hand, i wanted to tell them i didn't even want children. i mean, i do most likely want children or maybe one but i'm still thinking about it and so how can they feel like they have the right to make the assumption that i want children or should be a mother. i think i need to step away from this situation for at least 20 minutes and possibly return at a later time to deal with these complex feelings/issues...