Blogs

Nicole Matos

Critical Feminist Studies

21 December 2007

House on Fire

So,I’m going to try something new. I’m going to write for myself. I’m going torant, and lift a little belly,if I may. I’m going to be insecure, I’m going to speak to my own personaltestimony, sorry Linda. Warning, this might get a little crazy.

Wider Than the Sky

        This semester I read the book Wider Than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness by Gerald M.

Edelman, a writer who is also a Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist. This book explores the ideas of

consciousness—what it is, how it works and even whether consciousness actually exists. In the words of the

author, consciousness contains, “Many disparate elements—sensations, perceptions, images, memories

thoughts, emotions, aches, pains, vague feelings and so on. Looked at from the inside, consciousness seems

continually to change, yet at each moment it is all of piece—what I have called ‘the remembered

        When I read an article in The New York Times that said researchers had found evidence to support the

idea that anorexia may have a biological basis, I was initially surprised but then this idea started to

make sense.  In this class we have talked about how the nature verse nurture debate has already been

solved—and that the answer is both nature and nurture.  We talked about how genes and the environment

work together to form the people we are, and a disease such as Anorexia is not an exception.  It is pretty

Registering to vote, setting up a myspace account, and walking into almost any public bathroom all have one thing in common: they each require the individual to declare their gender and/or sex identity.  For most people, this may not seem to be a cause for alarm; society trains everyone to express a specific gender identity (either “masculine” or “feminine” based on whether their genitals are “male” or “female”) from their birth.  These gender identities make it easy to determine whether one has male or female genitals, therefore allowing the heterosexual “norm” to easily prevail by simplifying the policing of non-heteronormative sexual configurations. 

In the age of what many believe to be the “third-wave” of feminism, one that challenges the notion of what it even means to be “female” or “feminist” and has expanded to include those who may not or could not have been part of the first or second waves of feminism, it becomes clear that one of the major differences between the older waves of feminism and the one we are in now is exemplified in the attitude towards pornography. Here, I use the term in a very broad sense since so many feminists define it differently and I mean it to include both sex/sexual work such as prostitution and stripping as well as the pornographic movie industry.

In the early1900’s, scientists discovered that humans have different 4 types of blood: A,B, AB, and O.  The distinctionsbetween these blood types are based on different carbohydrates and proteinsthat compose the cell membranes. Each of the different types produces different antibodies and antigens(1).  This system of classificationhas proven to be important because different properties make some blood typesincompatible.  For example, if aperson with Type B blood needed a blood transfusion or organ transplant, thedonation could not from a person with Type A or Type AB blood because Type Bblood makes antibodies to the antigen of Type A blood.