In Response to Masculinity Crisis

As a female who has and does participate in typically “male” sports, I find this idea particularly interesting. I think it is more common for men in more traditionally feminine sports to have that struggle of separating their identities from their sport. I have had and seen many different experiences. As a wrestler, I did not ever have anyone questioning my sexuality or anything, I was simply a girl who wrestled. As far as I could tell, the same could be said for any of the other female wrestlers I came across throughout my career. There was only one girl who  did not respond to the sport the way I did that I met. For her, it was more that she wished to conform more to the masculinity of the sport rather than reject it; seemed to adhere more to Bulter’s idea of gender based on performance. On the other hand, so many of the men in a “feminine” sport that I have met do align with the idea you have presented here, except those who are comfortable being perceived as feminine.

Irigaray and Feminist Writing

My first encounter with Irigaray was in my women in world literature class where we discussed feminist writing and rewriting. Considering her ideas regarding the elsewhere of feminine pleasure, Irigaray appears to be in a way rejecting Helene Cixous’ concept of feminist writing. Irigaray states that “feminine pleasure has to remain inarticulate in language, in its own language, if it is not to threaten the underpinnings of logical operations. And so what is most strictly forbidden to women today is that they should attempt to express their own pleasure” (571). Cixous, on the other hand, works with the idea that feminist writing should reject logic, proper organization, and really all things that men put into their writing. She speaks of times “when you are lost, beside yourself, and you continue getting lost, when you become the panicky movement of getting lost, then, that’s when, where you are unwoven weft, flesh that lets strangeness come through… it’s in these breathless times that writings traverse you, songs of an unheard-of purity flow through you, addressed to no one, they well up, surge forth, from the throats of your unknown inhabitants, these are the cries that death and life hurl in their combat.” She works with this idea that real feminist writing comes from within. Irigaray, however, does later discuss the way the “feminine finds itself as lack, deficiency, or imitation… a disruptive excess” (571). After this she gets more into feminist writing more as I understand it. The only part that I am not completely clear on is the mimesis. I feel like it doesn’t fit well with the way I thought feminist writing rejects the masculine ways.

In Response to Fiske and Feminism

I think what you said about catcalling and women recognizing that they are being objectified as sexual objects when being catcalled was spot on. There’s no need for me to attempt to answer your question about not responding, as we discussed that in class, but it does make me think about what my sister’s experience with catcalling was like when she studied abroad in the Dominican Republic. The thing about it was that sometimes she would see men catcalling to women on the street but in their culture, the way they would choose to word their calls often came from characteristic of the catcall-ee. In some cases it would be the general “hey pretty lady” kind of thing, but sometimes they would yell things like “tall girl,” “fatty,” or “big nose.” These aren’t the nicest names to yell, but they aren’t necessarily derogatory as we think of catcalling. Either way, this would certainly still be considered hailing, but I wonder if this would still be considered catcalling?

Fruits in the Media

Today’s discussion got me thinking a lot about fruit in the media. Of course, as a classics minor and lover of Percy Jackson, I immediately thought of the examples we mentioned in Greek mythology, the Golden Apple I mentioned and the Persephone’s pomegranate seeds. We talked about how in those myths and how they involve women, but I was reminded of how in Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus book, The Mark of Athena, a character who is the demigod child of Hades uses the fruit of the underworld, the pomegranate seeds to put himseld into a “death trance” that allows him to live with very little air. These seeds that are generally viewed negatively, as they are what tethered Persephone to the underworld, are the only reason Nico survived until his rescue. This leads me to question a reversal of this “forbidden fruit” idea. I don’t know much about the bible or the story of the forbidden fruit, but it makes me wonder about how the devil/snake convinced eve to eat the fruit and if maybe the coming of the messiah was like the arrival of Nico’s savior and more or less put an end to the punishment, the death trance, so to speak. Or something to that effect anyway.

I also included a few fruit on my personal list that we didn’t have on the board. Maybe it was spending the last couple days thinking about Barthes’ bliss, but my mind went to a different place. The grapefruit, papaya, honeydew, cantaloupe, and peach are all associated with the female anatomy. Surely the orange can be as well, as we saw in the passage about the garden on the Euphrates. Thinking about this in regard to the question of what the title is referring to, it might be a stretch, but I think an argument could be made that because not all vaginas are the same, oranges are not the only fruit.

Bourdieu

Overall, I feel like Bordieu’s Distinction was a bit confusing and hard to get through. Every time I allowed myself to become distracted while reading, I found it difficult to determine where I left off because of that. Despite the confusion, I was able to grasp his meanings. I found the idea of taste with the differentiation between social classes to be fairly spot on. Thinking in terms of myself and how certain aspects of my life such as literature, as an adult, and even when I was a young adult, I feel that there is a stigma against young adult literature that makes me feel embarrassed to say that I prefer to read those novels. I often anticipate judgment for sharing when asked about my favorite books. It seems to be below my social status in a way, and it is only because society has made it as such, which has a negative effect on the way I see myself at times.

I thought it was weird that, in the advantageous attributions section when he brings up language and linguists, that he didn’t go into the whole prescriptivists vs. descriptivists thing. I kind of feel like that would’ve fit in well with the social class discussion, considering that, in my opinion anyway, prescriptivists often try to correct people because they have a superiority complex. I feel like it would fit in well with the polar opposite classifications bit, too. Though, I guess the “correct” language vs. any “incorrect” language aren’t necessarily polar opposites.