The other day I sat in a classroom and listened to a classmate explain that a contemporary feminist movement could not effect change because knowledge and power are held, and disseminated, by government officials, “the higher-ups”. I said nothing.
In the same classroom, I sat in amazement as another classmate insisted that segregated bathrooms were integral to Canadian society because challenging sex difference would shatter the foundation on which many legal and statistical institutions are built. Again, I said nothing.
The next day, walking through HUB mall, I wondered if the sideways glances and the judgmental stares directed at me were issues that I should take up with my MLA. For that matter, perhaps next time I am asked if I am in the right bathroom, I should be thankful that there is at least some government agency that has my gender identity checked neatly in a box.
What does this have to do with the blog assignment? As Jacqueline Rhodes pointed out in this week’s reading, the internet can be an invaluable tool in allowing feminists to become at once both writers and activists. Acting from a false stability of identity created by association with links and themes, feminists can create a network of “fictive coherence that serves as a point from which to work for change”(128). I believe blogging this term will be the "fictive coherence" that brings our class together, and, for shy people like me, the seemingly ever-changing subjectivity of identity online is a huge benefit.
I look forward to the opportunity that blogging will afford me to voice my feminism, including challenging hetero (and homo) normatives through theory, and incorporating such feminist theory in public and private life. With such a view of feminism in mind, the purpose of my blog is to build and maintain a network with the 320 radicals that serves to interrupt and integrate academic theorizing with action.
Let there be blog!
2 comments:
This isn't my response response for the week.
However - I just wanted to note that I wish we had one of these for our other class.
See you around!
I've technically already done my response for this week . . .
And it's after the due date for them. . .
So call me a keener and beat me up after class but I really appreciated your entry.
I absolutely identify with the classroom experiences you articulated. It's difficult for people to try and negotiate the discomfort associated with running head first into conflict (something anyone deviant / progressive / oppressed is perfectly familiar with) and the often more intense discomfort at having let an offensive / ill-informed comment go unchecked.
It is hard to live an activist lifestyle in as conservative an environment as Alberta is. Here, speaking up against the status quo often involves getting some serious flack for it. Whether you are silenced by teachers or, as is more common, other students, it can be a very discouraging experience. And we are generally in such a minority, that too often we have to bear the brunt of this on our own. Not wanting to monopolize class discussion becomes a difficult task to fulfill when class discussion is centered around ludicrous examples of "reverse racism", for example (E.g. "I just don't think that because I'm white I have a share in white supremacy. I have black friends.")Also, you end up feeling isolated socially and intellectually. I can't think of a faster way to get burnt out.
The idea of coherence you found encouraging seems to come into play here as movement building. How encouraging to have a community in which you aren't the only one who thinks that maybe things are a little more complicated than boy=blue and girl=pink. Also the distance (however "real" it may be) provided by internet communication seems to be less directly confrontational and thus less frightening. The medium also allows for well-articulated responses that maybe don't come out as smoothly in the heat of the movement, with all the anger and nerves involved.
Also, thumbs up on the bathroom politics. Have you heard of PISSAR (People In Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms)? They're a pretty awesome activist group out of UC - Santa Barbara. You should check them out, if you haven't already.
There should be more bathroom theory out there. Judith Halberstam does a little in "Female Masculinity", but that's all I've come across thus far.
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