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In "My Words to Victor Frankenstein...", Susan Stryker writes of "the inability of language to represent the transgendered subject's movement over time between gendered positions in a linguistic structure." (247).  Do new or different, "non-traditional" forms of writing, such as personal writing or blogging, help us to overcome this inability?  Does the inability of language to represent certain feelings or situations arise from the inadequacy of the words themselves, or from the fact that academic writing usually occurs at a distance from the author?  If the latter is the case, then it seems that exploring new forms of writing can help us express ourselves in new and better ways.  It can also be the case, however, as we have discussed in class, that words themselves cannot express the complexities of the human experience.

I was also struck by Stryker's section headings, as she switches from the academic ("Criticism", "Theory") to the personal ("Journal").  It seems that the varied nature of her piece is an attempt to try out different styles, or to illustrate that a variety of styles are needed to represent herself; or, then again, that none of these styles are sufficient. 

For Jessy:

- Why do we need a distinction between academic blogging and personal blogging?

- What do you see as the relationship between blogging and feminism?

And in relation to our class: Does the fact that we use Serendip help the class to be more "feminist"?