Precarious and Performative Play Web Paper 3

Several weeks ago, a user of the website TUBLR posted about Bryn Mawr’s  policies regarding trans women.  She called the school out for a number of things.  Students, myself included, responded pretty quickly to defend the school and to explain that the Bryn Mawr community is largely welcoming to trans individuals. 

I have been thinking about the exchanges we had since then and I have come up with many questions.  When I was trying to decide what to do with this web event, I planned on writing a paper exploring my thoughts on a possible right relationship between cis feminist activists and trans feminist activists.  Then, the thought occurred to me that doing so would be a little pointless if there were no trans female voices involved.  I thought of the question recently raised in class about how to humanize someone you don’t know. 

So I contacted the trans woman who had posted on TUMBLR and asked her if I could interview her for my paper.  She agreed and I planned on interviewing her via email and writing a paper based on our interview.  Something about that didn’t seem quite right to me.  I had recently conducted interviews for a paper in another class and I hated the process of treating peoples’ narratives like data.  I hated the idea of creating a closed conversation that would then be  presented through the filter of me. 

This web event describes my plans for an activism project, to be completed as my final project for this course, which seeks to change the culture around sexual violence at Haverford.  I've decided to do this web event super early because I want to be able to document my thinking at this stage in the planning process.  I've been working on this for about 2 weeks now, and I want to make sure it is clear how this project ties into the coursework (mostly Judith Butler's work) before I get too far into logistical planning.  I tried getting the video to upload but Serendip isn't having it.  So instead, I made my own youtube channel for my web event, which can be found here.  The web event is presented in three sections, which should be watched in order, from I, to II, to III.  Upon consultation with Kaye, I decided to do Web Event #3 as a video purely because the topic of sexual violence is so personal to me, I did not think I could effectively communicate my plans via written words.  I also find it appropriate to have this information delivered via a conversational video, since the point of my proposed project is to stimulate conversation.  If any of you have feedback or suggestions, please please please voice them.  I'd love to hear any ways to make my ideas better.