Monday, 8 October 2007

Monday, 8 October 2007 10:11 am
taimatsu: (Default)
I have just had my first lecture of the year - the introductory session for Women's Writing 1. This involved defining feminism, mostly, and the horrible but not unexpected discovery that about six of the 60 predominantly female people in the room defined themselves as feminist. Gaaaaah!

Also Gaaaaaah was the thing where the lecturer was talking about an essay on basic feminism which discusses the terms 'feminist' 'female' and 'feminine', and dismissed biological sex - 'female' - as binary 'apart from a few hermaphrodites and things'. I was so cross. I know a variety of people who are women but for whom the biological clues to 'sex' are not straightforwardly female - whether that's because of a chromosomal disorder, or physical intersexedness, or being transsexual/transgendered. The lecturer has no idea if one of those people is in the room, and I was cross that she made them invisible and used what I suspect is rather an inappropriate term for the biologically different. She's my seminar leader so I might be able to tackle her about it tomorrow, though it's tricky when I'm not in that group myself.

Similarly, she was talking about the prevailing image of feminism as all about 'hairy humourless lesbians'; while it's *true* that that's what people think, what if I *had* been a hairy lesbian? It really sounded very dismissive, and her talk didn't make any compensatory mention of the contributions lesbian community has made to the women's movement.

I think I sound way too 'right-on' here, but then the whole point of the lecture was to make the girls who go 'eww, I'm not a feminist!' think again. Maybe it ought to make me think again about saying 'erk, I'm not one of those radical queer folks!' (Actually, I think I'm not, but I get the feeling if I make the fairly basic points above about sex and gender non-hegemony, I'll be thought of as one.)

It makes me nervous to think of saying any of this in a seminar, but I want that to be a safe(r) space where I can talk about, you know, lesbians and queer politics if it's relevant without being afraid to come out. *sigh*

Thoughts most welcome. Anyone got any experience with feminist literary criticism or feminist writing in general? I'm making this public so I can link to it in a community.

Crikey.

Monday, 8 October 2007 02:56 pm
taimatsu: (Default)
Gosh, that's a lot of comments. Thanks for all your thoughts - feel free to continue the discussion. I thought I would post again because I want to clarify what I might actually *say* to my lecturer/seminar leader tomorrow.

I mean "Oi, I have a bone to pick with you about your language!" isn't going to go down very well, and I am not actually a terribly politically active person, so I have little experience of standing up and saying 'What you said is Not Good.'

Ideas?

Email to lecturer?

Monday, 8 October 2007 03:17 pm
taimatsu: (Default)
I thought I would write up a draft email here, for comment. Do take a look.

Dear Lecturer, )

Profile

taimatsu: (Default)
taimatsu

April 2019

M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags