Blogs

Hi everyone,

I feel like Posse has been brought up a few times and maybe not fully explained.  Here is a blog Jomaira wrote about Posse, but if you have any questions, please feel free to ask Jomaira or me!

http://mawrterlife.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2011/04/18/634/

As inspiration for your postings, this weekend, about space on campus, I thought you might enjoy
(I might invite here) a comparative analysis of my office and Jody's, thinking about....
size
location (in the center of campus? peripheral?)
public or private (how open? how closed?)
what else???

Yes, I do realize that Kaye had mentioned in class that we were going to look at sex and gender in different regions but as I read this column (published in The Standard Hong Kong), I realized just how important it is for us, as students of gender and sexuality studies, to really look further into the intersections between race and gender.

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=5&art_id=115956&sid=33969693&con_type=1&d_str=20111012&fc=1

When we make assumptions about genders in general, we tend to forget that not all societies comply with what our notions of what 'feminine' or 'masculine' are. In this article, Nury Vittachi, attempts to create a more complex way of classifying men. While I don't really agree with some of the things that he is saying (the column is supposed to be tongue in cheek afterall), I sort of see the point about the limitations of western concepts of masculinity and femininity. Thus, I think it is important to look more at gender constructs in different societies rather than to apply our "own" (or the American points of reference) to other societies. 

Hey guys! 

I'm assuming (possibly incorrectly) that many of you have seen the recent article written by an ex-BMC student now attending Wesleyan about why she found Bryn Mawr to be a negative experience. She then goes on to extend her view to women's colleges in general. What was most interesting to me about the article, though, were the comments. Many Seven Sister students were immediately up in arms againt what Ms. Chu states in the article. If you had a chance to look at them, what do you think these comments say about the "class" of Bryn Mawr. Do you think this is something that has experienced a shift since BMC's beginnings? 

Also, to play devil's advocate: How does the bashing of Ms. Chu's opinions relate to what we discussed in terms of censoring and holding back opinions in fear of offending someone? Obviously the commenters did not, but is that what they expected from the author? After all, the purpose of an Opinion piece is to express the opinion of the author. What do you think about the fact that the piece is not longer available online? (Or else I would have posted it here..) 

Looking forward to hearing what you guys think!

I have been thinking a lot about misrepresentation this week. In a world where "copying" and "pasting" is so easy, where splicing and clipping and reposting is second nature, how easy is it to misrepresent someone's point? I met with Anne in the beginning of last and we talked about my essay. She mentioned that she wished that I had used more quotes from Eli Clare in my writing about freakdom, to which I replied that I felt that using his words in my paper felt like a misrepresentation. But would I have been? In taking Clare's words and turning them around to use them to argue against him, would I have actually have been misrepresenting him? As I have thought more and more about this, I have decided that while I did not have malicious intent, in using his words, which were intended for a specific purpose to prove the opposite, I would be misrepresenting him. Any time that you take someone's words and turn them around to mean something which they had not meant to mean, that is a misrepresentation. Not only is this not what they intended to say, but it can often have a very negative effect. 

I was glad to see that Anne had posted the Pseudoscience of Same-Sex Schooling study published in Science magazine. (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6050/1706) Though I am not a Bryn Mawr student, I did go to an all girl's middle school, and while reading "The He Hormone" I found myself reflecting on the experience. I think that there is a value in same-sex education that Pseudoscience overlooks. The study begins its argument by pointing out that the test scores of girls in a SS environment were much less impressive when one took into account their elevated performance prior to entering the school. While this may seem like a mildly interesting statistic, I felt that it missed the point of Same Sex education. I think that a lot of what SS institutions strive to address is less tangible (and perhaps less statistically testable) than test scores. Though I do remember middle school as feeling academically challenging, I think the real value of the experience came from being in an academic environment during those awkward and tumultuous middle-school years that allowed me to behave as a student without being concerned with the gender dynamics at play. I think McAuliffe alludes to this when she quotes the Bryn Mawr grad who said that "I could concentrate on learning instead of being the representative of a gender. Gender became irrelevant instead of being something that defined me." I have no way of knowing how I would be different as a student or a person had I not gone to an all girls middle school.

Rebecca Jordan-Young's article (and some posts on here) discuss David Reimer's case in relation to "proving" that gender is inborn in people, and cannot be nurtured or influenced by society. For me, this has been an interesting topic to debate, since I read the book (As Nature Made Him) a few years ago for my gender studies class in community college. Many of my fellow classmates and even my teacher confessed that before reading about Reimer's case, they considered gender to be more influenced by nurture than nature. I am reminded of my two nieces, who are two and five years old - they are obsessed with all things (forgive me for using this word) - girly. And no one in the family has outwardly encouraged this female-centric behavior. It's an interesting perspective to see such young children who are so aware of their femininity. Of course, both my nieces "fit" into their genders. I am also reminded of an article I read (in People magazine I think) about a little boy who was diagnosed with gender dismorphic disorder. He wears dresses, and goes by a girl's name, instead of his birth-given boy name. His parents are raising him/her as a girl, and trying to help him/her deal with his/her gender as best they can. Both these examples are a strong argument towards the nature aspect that, when it comes to gender, maybe we are (as Lady Gaga would say) just born this way. 

I work at the Women’s Center on Haverford’s campus, and we deal with a host of issues relating to sexuality. While I was at work this week, a male friend of mine came into the center, and somehow our conversation turned to the subject of how the issue of sexual assault is presented to freshmen during Customs week. While I admitted that I didn’t really remember the specifics of the talk that was given during my own freshman orientation, he told me he had been shocked by the emphasis he felt the campus put on the idea that when the issue of consent is in question, men are always to blame, and that and it is entirely the male partner’s responsibility to halt the encounter, particularly if alcohol is involved. He stressed to me how scared and helpless he felt at the implication that simply by being male and pursuing a sexual encounter he could unintentionally assault someone.