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Alright, so, I suppose since everyone else is mentioning their results, I might as well throw in that I got Judith Butler. While I hate to follow along with what everyone else does, this helps me segue nicely into the fact that I really think we should read Judith Butler, and once we've made at least a small foray into her work, what has been said since she first wrote Gender Trouble (though I'd be happy to read Butler even if it wasn't that specific text). Reading Paul Lauter and his archaic idea that "the social experiences and the cultures of women and men diverge at significant points" served to make me even more frustrated with the age of the texts we've been reading (73).

I can understand Lauter's argument on some level. Yes, we are currently living in a society that believes in a binary construction of gender and since gender is a social construct it makes sense that there could be some difference due to societal indoctrination as far as the way situations are viewed by each gender. However, when he makes statements such as "the application to women's art of principles and standards derived almost exclusively from the study of men's art will tend to obscure, even hide, and certainly undervalue what women have created", he seems to be suggesting that there is some inherent difference between women and men other than those which society has created (73). However, I am immediately reminded of Butler's question and answer in Imitation and Gender Insubordination: "What, if anything can lesbians be said to share?" "There is no necessarily common element among lesbians, except perhaps that we all know something about how homophobia works against women--although, even then, the language and the analysis we use will differ." (14,17) If a group which shares both gender and sexuality has little in common, how could a group which shares merely gender have so much similarity?

The works we have read so far have given us a small but useful basis in feminist theory. However, I would argue (as I started to do in my Web Paper) that the syllabus has been mislabeled. The works we have already read are themselves not "contemporary" to us as a class. Since we have both alumnae who graduated long before any of these texts were written, and students who were barely learning to walk, if even born, at the same time, the definition of contemporary needs to be reconsidered. I think that this gives us an obligation to consider as contemporary those texts which are most relevant to current trends in feminist theory. While I realize even Butler's work was published in the early 90s, I feel it would be useful to see what has been written in the past 10-15 years. What has been said by those who have had time to process and digest those writers who have questioned the validity of the gender binary?

I believe Susan Stryker is a good first step in studying the work of someone who actually is contemporary, but I don't believe that this one foray into that which has been written since I learned how to read is enough. Yes, going back and studying that which was written before anyone still alive began their existence is useful, but there are so many classes out there where students can take the opportunity to look at texts in a feminist light. I challenge you to find a class in the English department where you can't look at texts from a feminist perspective, even just in your own papers. Why can't we take this one to look at something new?