UofM Feminist

One of the questions I had after reading Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" was from her quote, "There is no way in which we can produce an alternative out of the blue, but we can begin to make a break by examining patriarchy with the tools in provides" (Mulvey 35). After reading Lorde's "Age, Race, Sex and Class" where she mentions that one cannot dismantle the master's house using the master's tools, and I was slightly confused as to why Mulvey would say this.

By using the tools that patriarchy gives will not help us further our means. To fully break ourselves away from the oppression that is patriarchy, we must use our own tools and develop our own way of thinking. We have continued to create theory and understand more about how this oppression functions, but we have yet to fully create our own tools to dismantle it.

Some may disagree and say that we need to work within patriarchy to further our means and when we get more objectives accomplished, then we can break away. This is also problematic because one may wonder, " Where does this start and end?" How can we know when we are supposed to break away? Or are we supposed to use only our resources now and try to completely get rid of the patriarchy system? Should we try to change it first?

Patriarchy is within our system of government, and we, as feminists, need to be able to infiltrate the system to create change. Protesting can only do so much. I hope to be able to affect the system from within. Conciousness raising is a huge aspect of change as well. But now I am opening a whole new can of worms.

Back to my original question. This is only a small piece of Mulvey's article, but it stuck with me the most. I believe that to create change, one must be able to utilize their own tools and thinking or they will not get very far. Therefore, with that in mind, does that mean that psychoanalysis is irrelevant to film studies because it is formulated from patriarchy? Of course not. Psychoanlysis gives us a new way to look at the ordinary and think about new ideas.

Mulvey, for example, focuses on the male "gaze," which is very prominent in hollywood films. However, I agree with Diano Saco's "The Piano and 'the Female Gaze' " more so than with Mulvey. Saco brings up the notion that there are films which there is a female "gaze" that objectifies men. "The Piano" is a perfect example of this objectification.

Watching The Piano was a very uncomfortable experience for me. I thought that they way Ada was portrayed was well done, however her character made me so upset. I couldn't understand why she didn't do anything to help herself or her daughter. However, there were parts of the movie that were striking. Depending on the scene and how she was feeling, Ada's hair was worn differently. It rained when her husband died, when she had her wedding picture taken, and when her husband finds Ada sneaking over to Baines' house. The whole movie made me feel depressed and sad. Lighting only seemed to be apparent when it was on the piano or on Ada. The only thought that came to mind directly afterwards was:
"i'm learning to laugh as hard
as i can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then i could relax"
- Ani DiFranco -
- My I.Q. - Puddle Dive -

Posted by Jessica Englund at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why is homophobia the last thing that we think about? There are "at least ten percent of...students will be or already are lesbians and gay males." (Smith, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader,101) How is it that a tenth of our population is cast off as unimportant? Assuming that everyone either fits in to the gay/straight binary is quite absurd as well. What if we were to include gender queers and bisexuals? Would that number increase? Where do we draw the line for straight and gay/lesbian? Within the feminist agenda, there are women's issues as well as issues of race and class, but sexuality tends to be last on the list.

When I was younger, I always wondered what people did if they weren't "normal," meaning straight. I was taught about sex by my girlfriends in middle school. My parents decided that the best way to avoid the awkward sex conversation was to never have it. I never wanted to ask questions about sex because I was ignorant and didn't want to look stupid, and when I did ask questions, they were generalized so that my friends could answer however they liked.

One of my friends came home this weekend, and she and I got to talking about sexuality assumptions. She is a women's studies major and has only declared her bisexuality to a few friends, myself including. Whenever she attends LGBT meetings on campus, members are always ready to assure her that straight people are welcome, that you do not have to be gay to be apart of the meetings.

When I thought about this, I wondered why members of the LGBT community would use stereotypes and judge people based on how they look and what they wear. This bothers me alot. Why judge people when you yourself do not want to be judged?

Back to my original inquiries, I have one thought. I wonder if how you identify yourself is how we draw the line in society. For example, if I were to identify myself as a bisexual woman, does that make me heterosexual or a homosexual based on my current relationship or lack of? No oppression should ever be dismissed or thought of as unimportant. In many schools today, teachers press the fact that color makes no difference, that race isn't important. According to Audre Lorde, "Ignoring the differences of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to the mobilization of women's joint power." (Lorde, Sister Outsider, 117) However, although recognization of differences is important, the fact that women of different races do not share the same experiences and that is an issue within recognization. Based on sexuality, race, class and age, women suffer from different oppressions. No one is the same, which makes defining feminism so hard.

So, now that we know and recognize it, where do we start?

Posted by Jessica Englund at 07:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Sleeping with a lot of women is empowering for many men, but many women who have tried to 'behave like men' discovered the same 'magic' did not work for them, as they usually did not feel good about themselves."
- Amit Uran Markman -

My Feminist Thought and Theory class has brought up some very interesting discussions and some people in the class have quite intriguing opinions. Every thursday, I have lecture for FTT and two of my classmates presented their discussion notes from tuesday. Amit was one of them. This is one of the topics that was discussed.

This claim bothers me a lot. Not only is the statement a poor generalization of all women, but it isn't true for some. For instance, another girl in class pointed out that one of her friends is able to have sex with random men without feeling bad about herself. Samantha Jones, from Sex and the City, is quite similar. She lives for one night stands and good sex.

What also bothers me about this statement is that it depicts women as inferior because they cannot 'behave like men.' And since when is the ability to have sex without emotion 'magic'? Furthermore, not all men have sex in this way. Some women and men have sex without emotion and are okay with that. Many of us do not have this capability, (and I include myself in this group) but that doesn't make us weak or 'woman.'

Identity is much more than how one has or does not have sex.

The article we read was Simone de Beauvoir's introduction to The Second Sex
www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/2nd-sex/index.htm

Posted by Jessica Englund at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)