Precarious, Performative, Playful, Potential...Perspectives!

While I have been, I think, pretty vocal about what I like and dislike about this class, I have decided to keep my evaluation private.  The reasons for this are varied and complex, and I won't bore you with the details.  In any case, I will be emailing my evaluation to Anne and Kaye.  It's been a pleasure.

(TRIGGER WARNING)

Dear friends,

As has become my custom, I would like to introduce this web event with a short description of my motives and hopes.  I want to tell you how this web event came to be (a long story in this case), what I hope to communicate through this web event, and what future directions are possible.

            Allow me to start at the beginning.  In the past few weeks, I have found myself increasingly aggravated, confused, and above all inspired.  My aggravation stems largely from Haverford’s policies regarding rape and sexual assault, which seem to become more and more inadequate the more that I learn about them (for anyone who hasn’t already done so, I strongly recommend reading AmyMay’s web event Biological Discourse and Rape Culture at Haverford College and jmorgant’s web event “Consent is Sexy” at Haverford: Not Yet).  While my belief that the Haverford policies are insufficient was immediately strong and clear, I grew confused about how to effect change.  I pondered a variety of questions, including:

When I look back at this course over the span of the semester, I view the Gen/Sex class not as a linear progression and building of thought, but as a diffused and (of course) diffracted set of ideas that have significantly shifted the ways in which I see and interact with the world. Even during this finals week, I was struck by the influence PPPPP has had on my writing and my work; as I studied for my History of Western Civilization final, for instance, I increasingly saw the words “entangled” and “diffraction” in my notes. I view history and literature (my two academic fields) differently, as well as the implications and potentials of my inter-personal relationships.

However diffused of an influence the theory in this course has had on me, I can still track my linear, temporal progress through my web postings. In my first posting, I wrote that one of the activities we had conducted the week prior “forced me to consider my position both in the classroom and outside of it, as a student and as an activist.” I was frustrated by the disconnect between my behavior inside and outside class, and the standards to which I was being held in both areas. I had hope that these different lives of mine could converge; I wrote that “I realize that I will be a better student and a better activist when I can synthesize critical thinking and unconstrained action. So hopefully, my visions for the future will (in the future) be a lot less timid.”

Disruption in the Interpretation of Embodied Symbols

Final Web Event

Assumptions are made about individuals through the expression and interpretation of embodied acts and body language is the conduit for social meaning.  The social meaning behind bodily acts are disrupted when the movement itself is not completely controlled by the individual.  Disability, gender, and communication are all entangled in a web of perception, symbolism, and agency.  This web of entanglement causes people to not see an action for as it was intended and make assumptions about a person on their limited controls on bodily action.  Interpretations of bodily actions are often misunderstood when an individual is not completely able bodied.

I created my third web event with every intention of deriving from it a workshop meant to bring together Israeli and Palestinian young adults over shared literatures. Literature was a medium through which, I had argued, right relationships had the space and time to emerge, and was a form particularly suited toward broader socio-political change. While I was excited about this final web event and its possibilities, I was also somewhat daunted by my own distance from the site of relationship building. I was also concerned by the spatial impracticalities of actually translating this workshop into action. I have become, through the course of the semester, very interested in how academic conversation can be used as groundwork for activity and doing; it seemed duplicitous to consider in my postings how “a group of listeners becomes a group of actors,” and even create frameworks for such a transition, but have no intention of taking this kind of action myself.

On one of the very first days (weeks?) of class, when we were talking about diffraction, I noticed something very interesting. The chairs that we sit on in English House have a texture that’s almost like a very solid mesh—there are lots of tiny circles both in the back of the chair and the seat of the chair. If you look across the room to one chair sitting in front of another, you will notice something very interesting. The visual space in which the backs of the chairs overlap will appear to have magnified the pattern. While you may not be able to really see the texture of a single chair from across the room, looking at one chair through another magnifies it to make it visible, if not totally crisp and clear.

For my final project, I chose to expand upon my third web event, which explored the idea of forming a right relationship between the Boy Scouts of American and the LGBTQ community. A restatement of my original introduction is useful in understanding the issue at hand: 

“The Boy Scouts of America’s website is covered in testaments to the organization’s commitment to the betterment of America’s male youth. Its mission statement professes dedication to building active and conscientious citizens, its parent portal promises that it is the best organization to reinforce ethical standards and promote self-confidence, and its timeline gleams with the success of past service projects and awards from numerous presidents. What the website neglects to publicize, however, is perhaps the most telling statement of all about BSA’s moral and ethical belief system: the Boy Scouts do not allow openly gay members to join their ranks.”

     I began this class doubting my own ability to be a useful contributor. Most of my experiences with gender and sexuality classes in the bi-co have been cross-listed, so I was able to tackle the gender and sexuality using a specified and known framework (e.g.  political implications, literary structures and syntax...). This is the first class I have taken, in which there was purposefully no status quo framework within which I could situate myself. This was difficult, and I enjoyed it at times, and really dreaded it at others.
    On a personal note, It’s taken me a long time to feel comfortably situated within the academic world of Haverford. I doubted my ability and capacity for this school since the first day of my freshman year. It’s taken years to feel comfortable enough to speak aloud in a class discussion; to understand that I’m at this school for a reason, and all matters of voices should be heard. I realized (halfway through my junior year) the reason I harbored this sense of unease was due in part to the fact that many of my classmates were constantly performing a part of academia that I had not grown up with, never grown accustomed too. However, the recognition of certain language and style as a performance allowed me to overcome the initial fear of being heard. This is the roundabout way to say that I perform much better in small, intimate groups than I do within the class as a whole. Speaking to a few people is less of a performance than addressing a crowd. Both are essential, and I’m still learning.

I enrolled in this course after Kaye recommended that I take it following an internship I had last summer at National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) that was funding by Haverford’s Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. NAPW does a lot of different things, but basically provides legal support for women who have been incarcerated or had their children taken away because of a drug charge. While I didn’t get to do much reflecting on these issues specifically, this course did teach me a lot.

I entered the class a little unsure of exactly what to expect. It was my first Bryn Mawr class and my first course that was listed primarily under gender and sexuality studies (I had taken gen/sex classes in the past that related to political science and anthropology). On the first or second day, we were asked to do a “wagon wheel” and talk to various members of the class. One of the prompts was to say all the gender pronouns we knew. I began, “He, she…” The student standing across from me added, “Ze…” (What?) I responded with a smile, “It…” The student answered, “I don’t think a person would appreciate being called “It.” Okay. Got it. Can’t make jokes about gender here. Don’t want to offend anyone.