pejordan's blog

This is a remix of "If I Were a Boy" featuring R. Kelly. I don't think it's any less problematic than the original because it still puts the man in this traditional position of power ("how I work and pay the bills," etc) but at least it gets a male perspective in there a little bit. The song also points out that Beyoncé is making some broad categorizations about men in saying that women are always the victims in relationships. The one line I really like is "you are not a perfect woman, and I am not a perfect man". I thought it was interesting because we talked in class about how the video was one-sided and not entirely fair to men, and I saw this as a response to that.

    Gertrude Stein and Gayatri Spivak are two very different women; Spivak was born in India yet completed most of her studies in the United States, and Stein was born in the United States but lived most of her life in France. However, they are both considered to be feminist authors, and they share the opinion that we cannot make ourselves too easy to understand for fear of letting ourselves be used for didactic purposes. The two accomplish this in different ways, Spivak by emphasizing the depth of our lack of understanding of those different from us, and Stein by limiting our understanding to the surface. While both of these approaches are feminist, Spivak’s approach ultimately gives greater agency to women who have been marginalized.

This is what Ellen, Shannon, JD and I came up with:

Overall theme: less binary division; also recognizing that not all women are the same, want the same things, etc.

-Three classes focusing on controversial women (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, potentially Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter); are their voices being heard? (potentially discussing motherhood more)

-Three classes looking at queer studies; Eli Claire--> disability and queerness; also exclusion of trans-women from feminist circles

-Three classes exploring sex work; interesting power plays, how women are viewed in sex work differently than men

Ideas regarding class structure in general:

-Having more optional/supplementary texts, films, and materials to account for the varying levels of experience with gender studies

-Looking at more films in general, also discussing the problems of documentaries some more

-Using hand-raising as simply a means to signal that you have something to say, not necessarily having to leave your hand in the air

-Trying to make the classroom seem smaller--> an actual circle, stop using the projector?

"But above all she must press for a wage to be paid by the State legally to the mothers of educated men. The importance of this to our common fight is immeasurable; for it is the most effective way in which we can ensure that the large and very honourable class of married women shall have a mind and a will of their own, with which, if his mind and will are good in her eyes, to support her husband, if bad to resist him, in any case to cease to be ‘his woman’ and to be her self."

When reading “Three Guineas,” this passage gave me pause to think about what Virginia Woolf was saying about motherhood. She argues that motherhood should be viewed as a profession and also treated like one by granting wages to those who are mothers in order for all women to achieve financial independence. I started thinking about this concept of defining motherhood as a career, and I don’t think it’s an accurate definition today. Some women are mothers who don’t work, some women are non-mothers who work, and some do both; all are perfectly valid options, but I wanted to focus on the issues facing the working mother. Many women in academia have fewer children than they want or have slowed down their careers in order to raise their children. The major questions I had were how do women balance parenthood with a career, why is the share of work in parenting still so unequal, and why is academia specifically so incompatible with raising a family?

This first week of class has given me a lot to think about, but I’ll start with my thoughts about the course in general. I think that as students at Bryn Mawr or Haverford we are expected to take responsibility for our learning, but I’d never really thought about taking responsibility for helping others learn as well. Framing the course as a potluck in this way resonated with me, and helped me to understand that we all see things in different ways. By using our different experiences with feminism and literature, we can help each other to see different sides of the text or issue we are considering. In addition, the style of evaluation is very new to me as well. There is a fair amount expected of us, but I think that withholding evaluation until the end of the course will help me to think of my work as a cumulative portfolio, and make connections that I may not have if every one of my papers were being graded individually.