Blogs

Apparently soda is gendered now. Or at least the marketing team for Dr. Pepper thinks so. "Dr. Pepper 10" is a new diet soda for men "with just 10 manly calories." It's "not for women." They should have stuck with their old slogan, because this does not make me want to be a pepper too. 

Barad’s quantum entanglement, diffracted through Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.

“Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore.  The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti.  And Tralfamadorieans don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either.  The see them as great millipedes—‘with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other,’ says Billy Pilgrim.”

            (Slaughterhouse Five, 110)

Like a lot of the other commenters, I was really happy with the turn-out of the workshop, and so glad to get to hear the perspectives of upperclassmen on class and their experiences with it. I did wish I got more of a chance to speak with staff and faculty, though. I think the space questions (where we feel most productive, ownership, etc.) were really effective for mixing us up more, which was great. I know for a lot of people, the campus center was a really popular place for doing "productive work" and I found it curious that so many staff who I spoke to (deans and counselors in particular) chose that as compared to their office as a place of work doing, because for me it's always been quite social. I wasn't surprised that in general faculty felt most uncomfortable in the dorms, but I was surprised that so many people said they felt comfortable everywhere. I think perhaps people couldn't name a space in which they felt uncomfortable was because I feel that a lot of times, places in which i find myself uncomfortable aren't always that way. The spaces are liminal and their level of exclusivity changes for me based on who occupies them. 

The workshop was a success. I was impressed by the turnout. From the first analysis of the images, it struck me how my group members and i, despite being of different ages and coming from different racial, economic and educational backgrounds all shared close and sometimes identical views on issues of class. We all gravitated towards using appearance, comportment, and environment as physical markers to classify our subjects.

I felt ratified to see that many people were bothered about the inequality in the pay scale for student's working with dining services in comparison to those working with other departments on campus. I appreciated the different perspertives on the issue of ownership, especially the conflict between claiming a space as mine and having to share it with a roomate or classmates etc.

I second the motion to expand the conversation to include the entire school community, possibly even making it a part of the wellness seminar. I felt proud to be a member of In Class/Out Classed.

Humbach's argument for the distinction between the justice of/for rights and the justice of right relationships has me thinking a lot about next Butler lecture, titled Gender and its Allies: Performativity in Precarity. I've noticed in the posts throughout last week and this weekend that many of my classmates are similarly struggling with Anne's question of * how is all this related to gender studies? I think after reading Humbach I better understand Judith Butler's comments on Gay Marraige, Gays in the Military and (although she didn't comment on this one) Gays adopting.

I'm not sure who else in this class uses the blog host tumblr, but I do. Recently, I came across a conversation started by a trans* female author, titled "People who attend cissexist "women only" colleges". The following is the entire first post:

Your college is a joke.
I hope you wake up every day and think, “I wonder why my college sucks as greatly as it does.”
But you don’t have to wonder. It sucks because it’s cissexist.
And I don’t know if Bryn Mawr is an inclusive environment, but after reading this paper [tw: cissexism, biological determinism, an anti-intersex slur or two], I hope every person there is ashamed of their school.
I hope every single person there feels bad.

A bunch of Bryn Mawr students (myself included) rushed to defend Bryn Mawr, explaining that Admissions' policy is to accept applications on a case-by-case basis. But, in some ways, I can't help feeling that she's right. I DO feel ashamed that Bryn Mawr doesn't have a firm policy on accepting trans* women: as a school that was started with an attempt to help remedy the hugely problematic disinclusion of women in higher education, how can we ignore a disenfranchised group of women? How come we don't accept their applications unconditionally, and then accept or reject their admission as we would any other student? Why do we have to have a condition on the acceptance of women whose rights need to be supported?

One of the most interesting discussions for me during the whole on-campus workshop happened when we are questioned about the first time we thought about ye class issue here in Bryn Mawr College. Two students in our group said that actually before they started our seminar this semester, they have never thought about the social class issues and its correlations with education.  Most students think that when they interact with students who come from different social class, especially with those who come from higher social class than themselves, they are more likely to be self-conscious and sensitive. Therefore, we came up with the idea that people should consider more about the social class issues when they interact with people from different economic backgrounds. But at the same time, when we discussed how often we thought about the class issue during our college life, the answer turned out to be: not very often. We all agreed that we focus more on the “academic elitism” that Jane Trembley mentioned in her article. I think this kind of comparison is really interesting. On the one hand, we think that we should pay more attention to the class issues; on the other hand, we agreed that class sometimes does not matter that much, because what we want is to attain a higher level in academics. I therefore wonder that for people in Bryn Mawr, how important do they think the social class is? Also, what kind of role does it play in education?

I went into both lectures of the previous week with mixed feelings. I was excited to be in the presence of “rockstars” in the gender world, but I was a bit worried because I have found that both Judith Butler and Karen Barard’s work tend to go over my head. I was quite pleased to find myself following along. I found Karen to be much easier to follow fully, which shocked me because I find her writing to be too phsyics-y for me, and yet, I understood her discussion of spacetime. As for with Judith, I followed her less. I enjoyed the artful construct of her sentences, even if I couldn’t always detect the meaning of them. I did, however, really enjoy her answer to the audience member who asked about gay people’s right to adopt. I felt that her response acknowledged both her professional and personal feelings on the subject and that it was tactfully delivered. I am looking forward to hearing her speak again on Monday. 

I think that the workshop was a great turnout but it could’ve been a bit better. S. Yaeger mentioned that she would have loved to see some custodial and grounds staff at the workshop and I definitely agree. However, I was kind of expecting for little to none of the grounds and custodial staff to be there just because of the feedback we got (as a class) about how some had asked their housekeepers and how most felt like it wasn’t their space to be there. I thought that the conversations that we had were great. I got a chance to speak with two Spanish professors and Kelly who I believe is a multicultural director of some sort. Their ideas were very compelling about class and the different definitions that are associated with the word. I had the chance to understand and hear different perspectives about how each individual perceives class. Something that I am still questioning is the definition of “ownership”. I feel like ownership is something that directly relates to being comfortable. In a space where we have some sort of ownership, is usually a place where we also feel the most comfortable because we feel in control. I think what would be helpful is to continue these conversations, if possible, once every two months or so.