Gavi's blog

            We talked last class about the power of calling our own bodies “home.”  Clare’s book repeatedly addresses the body as home, as a habitat as important for exploration as Clare’s northwestern home forests and the factors that have influenced his growth as an individual. I have to wonder, though, if all the talk of creating a home in a body underscores a long-held and often destructive dichotomy of mind/body in western culture. This dichotomy distinguishes the body as something foreign, something to be understood and mastered by the mind (which also encompasses soul/spirit/personality/etc.).

            Does calling our bodies “home” unnecessarily separate the mind (which is doing the calling/naming) from the body? I think that separating my power for naming from my body is a comforting notion. By calling my body home, I can contain the essence of my self, as a thing capable of naming and designating, into something separate and “above” the body. This naming creates an implicit hierarchy of value—as long as I still have the faculty of reason, of naming, the state of my physical body is relatively immaterial. But what if someone, for whatever reason, cannot “name” her body as home? Can she still exist as a “full” person? What does that even mean?

When Kaye and Anne showed us the images and video to discuss in our pairings, I was initially perplexed by the second visual representation: Vincent's Zeuxis Choosing His Models for the Image of Helen from Among the Girls of Croton

When discussing the pictures as a class, someone brought up the idea of gender being a disability in the world of the painting. This positioning of gender as a disability--instead of as an occasional liability or disadvantage--is deeply unsettling for me.

By Michael Oliver's definition, disability is "the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes little or no account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from mainstream society" (Clare 6). In Vincent's painting, then, the "contemporary social organization" would be that of ancient Greece, when the painter Zeuxis was active. During this time, society only distinguished one sex, Male; females were simply "inferior versions" of "essentially similar" bodies (Wilchins 90). In this gender rendering, female bodies could be hypothetically seen as impaired and thus excluded from a mainstream culture, here depicted by the men on the left side of the painting, who control the power of representation.

This is Chelsea borrowing Gavi's account. Mine is freaking out!

Hi Everyone! My name is Chelsea. I’m a sophomore at Haverford and have not declared a major – though it will probably wind up being Political Science. I'm excited to take this class because I love thinking about the ways gender and sexuality influence and interact with different pieces of society. I'm hoping that throughout the semester I will begin to not only see connections between Gen/Sex studies and other disciplines, but also consider their implications more deeply.

 It was really interesting to see the variety of majors that are present in this class.

Hi everyone! I’m Gavi. I’m a Haverford sophomore and a likely English major. I am also so psyched to be taking this class. 

I was really struck when, in the conversation we had after reading the higher education timeline and the Wilchins excerpt, Anne commented on the timidity of our visions for the future. This comment forced me to consider my position both in the classroom and outside of it, as a student and as an activist. I’m taking this course because I’ve been interested in gender and sexuality issues for years, and I want an education that prepares me to discuss these issues in a critical, academic manner.  Often, though, I operate in this false dichotomy where I separate my academic life from my nonacademic one. Sometimes, this means that I’m more restrained in class. My comments are more reserved and I’m careful not to stray too far from the direction the class is generally moving toward...