gender

During this week's panel, I noticed that gender played more of an important role in the personal practices of certain individuals versus others. Individuals such as Jess Dobkin (Marina) use their bodies as an important component of their practice, while the work of other individuals such as Michelle Obama (myself) is separate yet relevant to her work. The work of the first lady is centered around an ideal or a concept of how a woman should behave. As the first lady of the United States, Michelle is expected to conduct herself in a manner that is appropriate for the wife of a president.

 I was reflecting on the Top Secret Rosies documentary we saw at the BMFI. It is rather surprising in a sad way how women have always been discriminated against throughout history and until this day, gender is something we, humans have not gotten to a unanimous agreement upon in regards to equality and fairness. It goes back to the categories we tend to make, everything is categorized and put under a label, jobs, clothing, appearance, colors, wages, and decision making in some places. Top Secret rosies showed how women have played an incredible role during the war, a role they still have not been fully recognized for. Before the war, during the  war, and throughout time, women have not been treated fairly, and the world have gotten away with it.

Here's a rough transcript of the Panel of fictional characters we had in class on Wednesday.

First, we went through forum postings from the previous week:

    merlin: Imagining yourself doing activities actually changes the brain. For instance playing the piano. People who imagined themselves playing, but didn't actually know how, their brains appeared the same as those who were actually being instructed.

    watson/vgaffney: Close reading is still a very important skills in the humanities. Particularly english and philosophy. The complexity of the writing requires it.