cursory weekend post!
Jan. 16th, 2011 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rax- Further Confusion is super rad, although oh my god my sleep schedule. But it has been wonderful to see many of my West Coast friends, especially the Seattle folks I missed last trip. And there is Race for the Galaxy! And there are tons of furries! It's pretty boss.
- One disappointment: They canceled the pokemon panel, and I am missing the IU pokemon event to be here (SO SAD ABOUT THIS), so I have not gotten to dork out about Pokemon much at all. Luckily, I ran into a smashingly androgynous Silver cosplayer --- no one else recognized the costume, and we dorked out at each other for a while, and they fed Rik when Rik was hungry, and it was great. I'm a teeny bit tempted to do a Dawn cosplay now (since I could basically make my hair work if I just parted it to hide the pink) but I don't know if people at furry conventions would get it, and I don't know if I care enough to actually go to an anime convention just to have an excuse to dress as a Pokemon character.
besides if I wanted to mack on people dressed as Silver I'd really need to do Kotone - I am actually getting reading done here! Not as much as I would at home but, hopefully, enough. This week's reading in one class is about non-academic feminism! It is reminding me why I prefer academic feminism. :( Although there are some really great things being said, this whole "second wave and third wave taking jabs at each other every chance they get" thing is just draining to read.
- Also, Jessica Valenti's Full Frontal Feminism, published in 2007, which claims to make a significant effort toward intersectionality, and even has a chapter all about men? Does not contain the word trans a single time [0], lukewarm at best towards queerness, and handles race with gloves. I need to read it a second time in a different mood to see if there are things I like about it; in the mood I approached it in, I was just like ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. But maybe I was looking for too much? Or at least letting my ugh get in the way of the things that are presumably good about the book such that we were assigned to buy and read it.
- Restaurants are for other people, but between a normal grocery store and a Vietnamese grocery store I am getting to eat more than trail mix, and that is good. Orange juice. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
[0] And yes, it's a pet issue, I know, but come on. I'd keep a running count of the number of times "genderqueer" showed up, but it would be too depressing. Trans is in the national consciousness, the way so many authors pretend it doesn't exist is just maddening. There really is no excuse. 2007.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: an important clarification
Date: 2011-01-20 01:25 am (UTC)"Transvestites and transsexuals do not challenge the social construction of gender. Their goal is to be feminine women and masculine men."
I ... I can't even, who. the. fuck. do. you. think. you. are. INARTICULABLE RAGE, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT.
also, "the ease with which many transvestite women pass as men and transvestite men as women is corroborated by the common gender misidentification in Westernized societies of people in jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers"
like, just, WTF, is that a thing? i don't think so. also lololololol passing-sans-hormones as "easy."
okay i'm sorry i'll stop quoting at you. just, what.
Re: an important clarification
Date: 2011-01-20 01:45 am (UTC)"The readings you are assigning in this class propagate false and damaging stereotypes of trans* people. They tokenize intersex and trans* people in order to make (equally false and damaging) points about gender as an absolute social construct. To assign these readings to a group of students that is largely composed of freshmen-with-no-background-in-gender-studies is dangerous and irresponsible, especially since it appears as though class time will be devoted to summarizing rather than critically analyzing the readings. Holmes and Lorber in particular exploit the 'experiences' of trans* and intersex people at the expense of actual trans* and intersex people themselves, and they teach unwitting students that this is an acceptable or even good thing to do.
The materials being used for this class make me extremely uncomfortable because of these and other reasons (e.g., the texts also contain views towards non-Western gender identities and experiences that reek of thinly-veiled cultural imperialism). I can't speak for others in the class, but I feel that my identity and lived experiences as a trans* person are being dismissed and exploited, and it seems silly to assume that I am alone in that regard.
I strongly urge you to devote class time to rectifying this situation and discussing these issues, and to reconsider assigning such readings in the future.
Thanks, and see you tomorrow!
Simon
Uhhhhhhm maybe not.
Re: an important clarification
Date: 2011-01-20 02:40 am (UTC)i feel like this should qualify as hate speech, or something.
Re: an important clarification
Date: 2011-01-20 02:57 am (UTC)Also where/when are we meeting tomorrow?
Re: an important clarification
Date: 2011-01-20 02:47 am (UTC)Lorber has written some stuff I like but I find her stuff on trans... fucked.
Re: an important clarification
Date: 2011-01-20 06:17 pm (UTC)