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Anne Dalke's picture

Just wanting to be sure that "everyone" knows about the interesting and adroit (feminist?) move our team made last week: Bryn Mawr College books performance artist Villanova cancelled.

Also, here's French feminism updated -- a new study showing that young women deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang: They're Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve.

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MC's picture

More French Feminism

France has, as of very recently, actually struck mademoiselle from the language because of the efforts from French feminists. Here is a NYTimes article from when it was decided. Here is an NPR article from before it happened, and here is a quick Feministing entry that gives us a quick little trip to the thesaurus for some uncomfortable.

I would be really interested in hearing some more conversations on language in class, maybe more on how language as a tool for control? And I don't just mean from the patriarchy, but from everyone- how easily are we swayed by words spoken/read, and how and why do we reassemble them to be more or less appealing.

Interesting exercise maybe thought: everyone comes in with a passage describing a female  fictional character of their choice and we unpack from there? I would want to expand beyond that, of course, but I'm wondering about how much time that would take up. Perhaps just a fictional character of choice?