Amoylan's blog

Coming out. What people don’t understand is that coming out of any closet is hardest for the person actually having to do it. People receiving news like that selfishly feel blind-sighted and they blame themselves while not giving that person’s feelings a second thought. The sad part is, people struggle so much with coming out because of the fear of other people’s reactions and they only get proved right in many situations. I think the hardest person to come to terms with coming out with is yourself. With yourself you’ve always known who you are or maybe it hasn’t been that easy, but telling yourself who you are first, and really believing it is the first and hardest part of coming out. Even if people are receptive and accepting right off the bat, that doesn’t eliminate the fact that you had preliminary doubts and fears of their reactions. There is no easy way to come out of any closet, but it needs to be done in order to free yourself. It’s easy for me to sit here and tell you about my opinion on the coming out situation, and how it affected me personally, but that is hardly relevant, so I will back it up statistically. The Pew Research group  did a survey of LGB americans (398 gay men, 277 lesbians and 479 people who are bisexual) the questions were, when did you first think, when did you first know and when did you tell someone. The results are as follows: 

The definition of unbinding is formally “to release from bonds or restraints.” When I think of feminism unbound, I think of it in terms of unbinding the traditional idea of feminism, “queering” it in the sense that normative views and ideas on feminism are released from bonds or restraints. Everything goes beyond the surface of its normative definition and in this case, feminism and mourning can be related in terms of unbinding traditional definitions of the two. Mourning on the surface is grieving the loss of something or someone that meant something to you. Mourning an idea sounds like it is making a mockery of the process, how can you mourn something that was all in your head? Unbinding the traditional sense of mourning offers that mourning can be a process done by anyone for anything that has been lost.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of mourning being a privilege. I think the way mourning is romanticized does present it as a privilege, different people have different means and therefor more access to ways of dealing with their loss. I think it is important to understand the difference between mourning and grief. There really is no way to escape either, but grief may the more exhausting of the two. My mom lost her mother in February and the transition to the holiday season has been especially tough on her, we were at a family party yesterday and she kept saying “fake it till you make it.” She forces a smile and that almost puts away the burden of mourning but that makes the burden of grief so much more present on her face. There is a privilege in mourning if you look at it from a economic point of view, can you afford to take the time off from work, can you pay for therapy etc. but everyone has their losses and everyone will need to grieve and mourn in whatever way they can regardless of financial ability.  

we discussed the idea of power feminism when we lined up and talked about bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody. I'm still having a hard time fully grasping the concept of it, power has always had a very patriarchal connotation. Someone in a position of power has the right to monitor and regulate what you do. Does buying into this idea of power and control mean buying into the patriarchy? bell hooks discussed the idea that when women want what men have, they are feeding the patriarchy and subscribing to that standard. The idea of power feminism seems to take a negative spin on what feminism boils down to. 

A fifteen year-old boy is beginning high school today, the school he is attending was just renovated under a very large budget, it is now very aesthetically pleasing. His mom will drop him off and most likely embarrass him just as any parent of a freshman in high school would. There is a twist in this seemingly “typical” day, his mother will have to lift his wheelchair out of the back of the car and then lift him into it in order for him to get around for the day. She’ll wheel him into the building and he’ll get sympathetic or attempted sympathetic stares the whole way, but it’s okay right? Because he must be used to it. The entrance to the school is accessible in a very literal sense so she brings him to his first class and leaves him to his day.

A fourteen year-old girl is beginning high school today, she will attend the same school as the boy and her day will start off similarly. She will walk in nervously with her parent, most likely get embarrassed by them, then her day will begin. Her disability is not as visible as the first student but rather a constant internal battle of when she is going to tell her parents she is queer, should she have to? Will people at school know? Will she have to tell them? Her mind is a constant whirlpool of questions and doubts about herself and who she really is. Disability is not always visible or physical.

Sorry I wasn't in class yesterday y'all, I possibly have strep so it's been a fun couple of days. Anyway, Julie told me that the conversation on Exile and Pride centered around Home and Claire's discussion of it in the text. Home to me was always a fixed definition, I always took it very literally as the place where I lived. I understood when people said you can have a house but you might not have a home, but it never occured to me that home could be anywhere else. I have found home at Bryn Mawr on such a deeper level than I ever imagined. I have found home in the wonderful people I have come to know here and surround myself with. I have found home in myself in realizing who I am and the reassurance that this is the place that I need to be. Home is no longer a fixed address in Massachusetts, it is within myself and all around me here. 

Sorry for the late post, with all of the lantern night hype it completely slipped my mind. I wanted to comment on the class discussion we had on Thursday. I thought that it was healthy for people to get a little bit heated and share their thoughts on the silence or lack of silence in our class. Good suggestions were made on how to rearrange the class structure as far as conversation. I thought it was interesting that as soon as we began the 5 second rule it seemed as though everyone had more to say than they ever have. Personally I know that I spoke more that class than I have in a while and that felt good for me. I think the 5 second rule is going to be difficult though, the pace of the class has never been the issue for me personally so I think it will mess with our dynamic a little bit if we keep it around. Overall I think we had a healthy class discussion and I feel closer and more comfortable with everyone in the class now because of it. 

            The class is averagely sized, large by Bryn Mawr’s standards though. The atmosphere is a bit chaotic, I walk in to a whirlwind of questions and answers and voices a few minutes after the “getting to know you” activity has started. The professor says list every pronoun you know to this person across from you that you’ve never spoken to…go.

So this post sort of relates to a conversation we've been having in all of our classes not just the most recent ones. The sex we are assigned comes with gender roles that are forced upon us and carried through generations. the realtionship between father and son is one that is extremely different from the relationship between mother and daughter. I came across a video of a poetry slam in which Lily Myers performs for Wesleyan University her piece entitled "Women Shrinking" she addresses the roles of gender in their family and how there is such a divide betwen the men and women in her life. Her gender roles were inherited and as she so wisely states "inheritance is accidental." I've attached the video of her performance, it is truly powerful.

The discussion on thursday regarding seeing and reading gender in language really intrigued me. It had never occured to me to look for it or even think twice about it. I guess I always assumed that the voice of the author would be who was speaking in the piece. I find it so interesting that people can seem to tell what gender a voice is just by the words that are being used or the pattern of speech in the particular work. "Seeing Gender" really opened my eyes to a world of gender in language, the last passage expressed so much deep emotion and intimacy that was followed by the question "does gender lie here?" something I never would have asked or wondered about. I'm really looking forward to learning more about this and further analyzing it.