Registering to vote, setting up a myspace account, and walking into almost any public bathroom all have one thing in common: they each require the individual to declare their gender and/or sex identity.  For most people, this may not seem to be a cause for alarm; society trains everyone to express a specific gender identity (either “masculine” or “feminine” based on whether their genitals are “male” or “female”) from their birth.  These gender identities make it easy to determine whether one has male or female genitals, therefore allowing the heterosexual “norm” to easily prevail by simplifying the policing of non-heteronormative sexual configurations. 

In the age of what many believe to be the “third-wave” of feminism, one that challenges the notion of what it even means to be “female” or “feminist” and has expanded to include those who may not or could not have been part of the first or second waves of feminism, it becomes clear that one of the major differences between the older waves of feminism and the one we are in now is exemplified in the attitude towards pornography. Here, I use the term in a very broad sense since so many feminists define it differently and I mean it to include both sex/sexual work such as prostitution and stripping as well as the pornographic movie industry.

In the early1900’s, scientists discovered that humans have different 4 types of blood: A,B, AB, and O.  The distinctionsbetween these blood types are based on different carbohydrates and proteinsthat compose the cell membranes. Each of the different types produces different antibodies and antigens(1).  This system of classificationhas proven to be important because different properties make some blood typesincompatible.  For example, if aperson with Type B blood needed a blood transfusion or organ transplant, thedonation could not from a person with Type A or Type AB blood because Type Bblood makes antibodies to the antigen of Type A blood.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in Baltimore, my hometown, probably knows the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America, is not healthy. The thought of Fells Point on a humid night in July or August wouldn’t be complete without the ubiquitous smell of the harbor after a storm, when all of the trash has been washed toward shore. It’s fairly innocuous, just present if you take the time to notice. However, for a few weeks of summer 2007, the smell wasn’t just present, it was overwhelming. Massive die-offs lead to hundreds of decaying fish crowding Fells Point and the Inner Harbor, the parts of town responsible for tourist revenues, and where my sister worked at the Maryland Science Center.

I have always been interested in language. When I was small, I discovered my love of etymology through vocabulary tests. I realized that I remembered words much more easily if I knew how these words were “built”, so to speak. For instance, the word “decimate” was much easier to memorize when I knew that it basically meant “to kill one in ten” in Latin. Eventually, my love for language grew; so much, that I am probably going to major in one, if not two foreign languages here at Bryn Mawr. So it was very fortunate for me when Professor Grobstein recommended that I

See Minotaur

Or, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Minotaur

CHAPTER ONE

herm

the mutilation of the corpus which bore me

Livejournal entry, 11:26 pm 09/10/2007

I very quietly freaked out when I saw a preview of a show about transsexuals in America at the beginning of freshman year - I happened to be wearing a skirt, and I really wanted to get *out* of the skirt. And now I'm plowing through readings on trans/intersex issues in recent American history and googling all kinds of things, and I'm very quietly freaking out again. And I don't know why. My hypothesis is because I lack a vocabulary to describe my own gender identity, and this sort of thing gets it all stirred up. I suppose the best term is genderqueer, but … I guess I don’t know what I mean by that. I’m not transsexual. I don’t feel like my body is wrong, or that … I mean, I don’t think of myself as a woman, and I don’t like the word woman, but I certainly don’t think of myself as a man, either.

Godly Delusions

A woman with child found an ascetic outside her home, the unkempt 

man dressed in rags appeared to be meditating next to her door steps. 

Understanding his sacred duty she did not dare disturb him, but as the woman 

was coming down the steps her foot slipped, and down she landed on top of