Day Two: Sex and Gender Notes

I. course keeping
collect $30 for packets
for Monday, read excerpts from Barrie Thorne's Gender Play,
by Sunday @ 5, post on-line your reactions to text:
what strikes you in her analysis/what questions you have for her/for us to discuss as a class
for Wed, read Alice Lesnick's essay on performing gender/inequality @ work/home/school
by Fri @ 5: first 5 pp. essay due,
cfing one of your own early memories/recent experience of gender play/work--
(we will divide you up, randomly, for writing instruction)
(Jen--talk here a bit about writing as an ethnographer/participant-observer?)

II. Jen reactions to Lakoff (hers/theirs)

III. Anne: follow-up w/ 3 experiences
--blindspot:
http://serendipstudio.org/bb/blindspot1.html

--"this is not yellow":
http://serendipstudio.org/sci_cult/courses/sexgender/f05/colorfroAnne.ppt

--write down directions to english house from your dorm
(how many self-orientation, how many compass-orientation?)

IV. my thoughts re Lakoff:
"the mind is inherently embodied"/"thought is mostly unconscious"/"abstract concepts are largely metaphorical"
A. helped swing pendulum back to body-based thinking: but overstates the case
thinking is affected by biological organization, not determined by it
acting and thinking do use the same neural circuits
--dream activity uses same circuits as used in visual contexts
--movements overlap when imagining/performing
--coaches: increase athletic performance by imagining (doctors heal by visualization?)
--"pretty studies": imagining opening/closing hand=same rate as actual ability/subject to same constants)
--also true that when the brain changes something from high density to low density representation:
is making categories
--IS NOT TRUE, however, that nervous systems are constrained by categories it creates:
having created low density representations, nervous system can regenerate high density ones
Jackendorff re: squeezing and expanding....
exs re: talking about...sex? gender?)

B. that most thought is unconscious/that our categories are unconscious/hard to revise--helpful

C. that our thinking is primarily metaphoric: that we move from concrete to abstract--also useful
(tenor/vehicle: could end w/ game re metaphor of classroom--> implied philosophy of education)