Critical Feminist Studies 2013

In 2009, I visited an art exhibition at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, titled “The Seen and Hidden: [Dis]Covering the Veil.” The show created a clash of western and eastern cultures in order to display the controversial interpretations of what it means to be covered, objectified, and sexualized in the preconceived notions of Arabic and Islamic cultures. The pieces in the show invoked a vivid sense of both frustration and mockery at the overall confusion and misunderstanding found across the globe, which has ultimately resulted from the potent duality of the gaze.

Is a Christian feminist an oxymoron? I identify as a Christian. I identify as a feminist. I do not know how to completely reconcile them together. It can be easier to have these two aspects be separate. In some circles you can proudly say you are a feminist and in others affirm that you are a Christian. But then you are denying a big part of yourself if you do not acknowledge both beliefs. An issue that you’re creating for yourself is that you are hiding and choosing parts of yourself which might not be as accepted in certain circles. You are picking one over the other and in those instances saying that the other is less important. How do you deal with feminists who have a view that religion and “their ideologies, their symbolism, and above all, their established institutions stand accused of putting a stranglehold on women’s aspirations”(Soskice 1) In many ways men and organizations have used religion to put women in a subservient role. Christianity is not about making women lesser than men and feminism is not about destroying family values and beliefs that Christians hold dear. If you can find the good in theology that helps to elevate women then Christianity and feminism could become closer to being accepted together.

“I am an archaeology major and finding pottery sherds are very common.  As an archaeologist it is my job to create a complete picture, a complete identity for the sherds I find.  Right now I’m struggling to find my true self, my authentic identity.  Right now I am a bunch of sherds waiting to be found and be put together.”

Identity Fluid or Not

On the surface, Arizona’s ground is purely gravel, beneath is sticky clay and rock-hard white lime. It’s a cruel combination yielding to only the toughest and most determined, and even those somehow able to sink a root must fight for their lives under blistering sun and cloudless sky. Trying to forge a home in the desert can lead to exhaustion and hopelessness, so I readily admit to a certain degree of masochism behind my love for a place that seems, on its surface, to be the antithesis of life and nurture. Growing up in Arizona, I learned to crave the searing burn of sun on my skin, the way my nostrils stung with deep breaths of the dusty, desiccated air, but I didn’t want to belong. I watched my neighbors’ futile attempts to maintain even the sparsest of green lawn, only to become despondent as they turned to hay despite the wasted and wasteful gallons of precious water streaming from their hoses. My love for the Sonoran Desert was hardly immediate; for many years I viewed the barren landscape as a personification of my own inner despondency. I yearned to leave – rejecting the land was infinitely easier that trying to put down roots. When I did leave, however, I felt the ache of displacement immediately. I had unwittingly sunk root into ground that had once seemed impenetrable and I have discovered that beneath the rocks and clay laid a varied and complex soil that has managed, despite my protestations, to feed a soul I never acknowledged.

“Girl, boy, boy, boy, girl, girl, boy, girl,” I quickly say to myself.

On the second page of Persepolis, there is a panel reading, “where boys and girls were together,” and the illustration shows eight children (Satrapi, 4). When I read that page, I stared at the drawing trying to figure out how I knew which children were boys and which were girls. I could tell, from a simplistic drawing, based on the hairstyles and the top half of the shirts, and that bothered me. The style of the drawings and the accessibility of Persepolis reminded me of illustrated children’s books: simple sentences with drawings of what is happening.

 I decided to take another look at a few children’s books I loved when I was younger. Many children’s books feature anthropomorphic characters, and I wondered how the anthropomorphic characters would be gendered compared to the human characters. The specific stories I looked at were “The Veil” from Persepolis, “Chapter VII In Which Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest and Piglet Has a Bath” from Winnie-the-Pooh, The Berenstain Bears and the Sitter, Arthur Writes a Story, Clifford’s Family, and Thank you, Amelia Bedelia. The illustrations in these stories range from very humanized to actually human, and from highly gendered to barely.

This is a new username. It's still someone who's in the class, but it's not attached to a lot of very identifiable information (as opposed to my old one). Anne and I agreed that writing about my (maybe) queerness would be a more interesting topic than the one I initially proposed, but it's a little more clandestine than a literary analysis of The Dollhouse. I'm just starting to come out at Bryn Mawr, and people back home don't know I'm queer yet--I really don't want my grandmother to find out about this because someone in the family thinks it would be fun to teach her how to use Google, so broadcasting my name no longer seemed like such a good idea.

“I guess I think that maybe perhaps if you want to hear to my opinion, but I’m no expert, so I’ll make it brief…” is not an uncommon way for me to preface what I have to say. I am a strong believer that a five-minute-long disclaimer is enough to protect me from any criticism whatsoever. I believe strongly in a lot of other things, too (for one, I consider myself a feminist), but you wouldn’t know it from the way I talk. I sit there biting my fingernails, taking in what others have to say, feeling that their thoughts are much more intelligent and valid than my own. I dread being called on and sharing what I have to say, the best case being that I just said something painfully obvious and the worst case being that I said something completely wrong. I fear judgment. I fear criticism. I fear being wrong. Luckily, I’m not alone in my fears. My fear of speaking out is shared not only by other women, but many people who are marginalized by society. Fear limits self-representation to a self-preserving performance, making us unable to represent ourselves as we wish to be represented.

I didn’t expect anyone to take notice of my self-portait when Laura Swanson came to visit. A screenshot of a Tumblr customization page, it felt simple, despite the meaning I had given it, but when I spoke with others, they understood what I had meant. Tumblr, like many social media, stands at a peculiar intersection between personal thought and private identity, allowing users to specifically tailor their blogs to express the particular representation they choose at the time. Among women, it has a particular following; as stated by Niels van Doorn’s team: “The traditionally ‘feminine’ act of diary writing…is adopted by both men and women, challenging the traditional understanding of technology and the Internet as masculine territories.” Thus, it allows for a specific niche where users of any gender can express themselves in the manner that they choose. Through Tumblr, when one has the opportunity to match an identity to a real life face, it can express hidden facets of a personality one is unable to share in daily physical contact, allowing a kind of freedom for users using it to get away from their typical life.