Proposal! help!

    I plan on doing an online journal made of letters in which I use pictures , related to one reading, one movie, and an outside talk that I went to see, that revolve around women and the struggle/ fight against the negative view enforced upon us as inferior. My main focus will be sex work and feminism’s and society’s perception of it as oppressive and demeaning.  I plan on having a section on Bryn Mawr people and their thoughts on the sex industry. Another section will include quotes from my different sources and  small journal entries of my thoughts. My ultimate goal is to develop a collage of opinions and beliefs that illustrate the abundance of diversity in the world.
    Some questions that I want to inspire in my class mates would be questions concerning the self and the mind’s struggle to reject what society establishes as “normal”. Are the categories we build around us as we evolve into society there already; do we build them as our own means of survival? Do we “perform” what we feel is appropriate according to some set standard, or do we just feel it and go with it or is it a mixture of both? Do we really know who we are and if so, why do some people struggle to “come out” to themselves and find it easier to just follow what is there in order to not suffer the consequences of societal norms. How do we know what we do and feel is really a consequence of our own ideas and thoughts and not that of something already established?
    I plan to use “Born Into Brothels”, Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, and a few scenes from “Slippery Slope“. I feel like these pieces respectively capture the essences of my project, because they talk about themes such as the limitations, categories, the knowledge of the self, and sex as a negative aspect of society. These are themes that I feel are a consequence of an oppressive world in which we are set in a path that puts a certain ideal on a pedestal and expects everyone to reach that level.









Annotated Bibliography
“Born into Brothels”
This documentary depicts sex work through the eyes of an American Women, photographer, and feminist. It illustrates a perspective on sex work/ labor through the eyes of a western influenced mind.
Gender Outlaw
This Gender Studies/ Memoir, by Kate Bornstein, illustrates the life struggle of a man turned women in closed society. We as readers are taken on a trip through the thoughts and ideas of Bornstein on the boundaries of the sexual being.
The Sandman
In the sandman, Neil Gaiman, to me depicts the individual struggle between the mind and what is considered “real”. I hope to use this to illustrate this notion that we consider something “real” if it ingrained in our mind from birth, such as this notion of sex being utilized to manipulate the female body.
“Slippery Slope”
This film focused mainly on Pornography, but it showed a progression of thought on behalf of the porn industry. At first it was displayed through a feminist perspective, but later it evolved into a more open idea.