In doing research this week, I came across an article written by Gracy Olmstead for the American Conservative on 5 reasons why words matter. At this point in the semester, I had only been able to come up with one example “to connect us to others”, which for the idea of getting to the point is her first reason, the ability to communicate through words makes us human. She goes on to say that any monkey can take a picture with a smartphone but it’s that linguistic connection that makes us human. Her next reason, which the next four I didn’t even consider is, words give expression to the abstract in a way that images cannot. She brings up William Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet “To be or not to be- that is the question”. How could we describe that in an image? Her next reason is words give us a full story, from its context, background, beginning and ending. And the fourth reason connects to the third, the fourth days that it connects us to the other. Our ability to tell someone else’s story. Words connect us to not only being able to connect to others story but also the stories that came before us and the history of our human race. The last reason is because Words awaken our imagination. She gives a wonderful example going back to Shakespeare. She quotes a line from one of his works that says
“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun. (Shakespeare)”
Then says, yes you can take a picture of a sunset or a beautiful waterfall but look at the even greater imagery that comes from reading something like that. Her last image says that writing is like a mirror, an inky, mysterious, beautiful word mirror and those words allow us to reflect but also to look in.
So, today I learned about Intersectionality Feminism. It’s actually pretty cool. It reminds me of Post-Modernist Feminism, where because there are so many factors contributing to an individual, it is impossible to solve women’s problems because they are so diverse.
I like intersectionality because it encourages to consider different points of view. Not all women view topics in the same light, because of their culture, educational backgrounds, body type, life experiences, religion, etc. etc.
Here are two articles that informed me what it is supposed to be about: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10572435/Intersectional-feminism.-What-the-hell-is-it-And-why-you-should-care.html and http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/why-our-feminism-must-be-intersectional/
I identify with this because as a female, I feel privileged to have grown up in a home with a supporting father, not caring whether I was a girl or a boy, and teaching me all the same lessons and instilling a strong sense of self-esteem in me. I am privileged due to my class and my level of education. My issues don’t match other women’s issues. So it’s good to distinguish between the two!
However, there are some issues I have with this ideology, and others have with the ideology as well. I feel like this is being spoiled, much like feminism is, by extremists, and – dare I say it – elitist exclusionarists (not sure if that’s a word, but let’s go with it).
“Check your privilege.” Despite what I said above, this phrase absolutely kills my soul. Everyone’s life experiences are important, and even though there is an overwhelming majority who has taken control of the dialogue, people don’t have to be rude to take it back. A much better, understanding slogan would be, “Every point of view is validated,” or “Listen to all different forms of life experiences.” This would create an open-minded discussion where everyone is on a level-playing field. But intersectionality doesn’t seem to want to make anyone equal. They want to highlight groups who have “suffered” more than others and give them a larger voice/more power in the conversation. And while I think it is very important for them to have a voice, I don’t think it should be at the expense of anyone else’s. I don’t want people shaming me because of the privilege I will readily admit, and I don’t want anyone to believe I am patronizing them when I am trying to listen to their problems and offer support because “I can’t understand.”
The Problem of Division:
This leads to the problem of division. There are so many different “privilege” factors that the number of combinations becomes infinitesimal, until nobody can relate to anybody. I value the intersectionality that encourages us to embrace and acknowledge our differences, and stand by each other to support struggles that aren’t necessarily our own, but are valiant struggles that need some spotlight attention nonetheless. I don’t value the intersectionality that prevents me from bonding with my black best friendsand supporting her troubles because of my “white privilege.”
I also have a problem with the Tumblr article I linked above, saying that if you are not a black woman, you do not have a right to call yourself an intersectionalist. You are encourage to practice intersectionality, but you cannot appropriate their paradigm if you are non-black (including other minorities!). I find this ridiculous, like women telling men they can’t be feminists. Apparently, I can be an “ally,” but I am explicitly told that allies are not needed to fuel the movement. Well, who exactly are you trying to educate with the movement? The “others” with privilege. And if you don’t welcome them into your movement, or if you plan to constantly belittle them, they aren’t going to want to support them. Sadly, you need the majority on board for social change. So I am very disappointed with the rhetoric of this ideology.
The Problem of Victimization:
Lastly, this ideology is eerily Hegelian, proposing a Dialectic of Self vs Other. In this case, Self is the Privileged Majority, and Other is the under-privileged minority. Yet by trying to reclaim their sense of self, they are forced to subjugate the privileged majority by invalidating their experiences. There is no way to achieve an equilibrium of equality here. And no matter how privileged a person is, they’re going to have emotional baggage and scars too. And so then, there forms this hierarchy of privilege, where the less privilege you have, the more power you deserve in intersectionality feminism. There is a theory that being under-privileged forms a richer experience, which in part is true, because in the face of adversity, you learn a lot of lessons by undergoing it and overcoming it. However, that isn’t to say that adversity is linked directly to “privilege,” and that certain types of adversity are more worthy than others. This creates an atmosphere of victimization, because the less privileged you are, the more attractive you are to the cause. This also creates an atmosphere of undermining others’ experiences to further emphasize the disadvantage you are in.
Overall, I think intersectionality can be a beautiful, flourishing ideology because there are so many different facets of feminism that need to be recognized, embraced, and supported through their struggles. HOWEVER, I do not agree with all of the exclusionary and demeaning rhetoric. It’s like fighting fire with fire. If people are demeaning to you, being demeaning to them isn’t going to fix anything. Instead, trying to educate these very people about why they are wrong is the more important aspect to focus on here.
At least, that’s how I initially feel after surveying this limited scope.
The article “Hipster in the Mirror” written by Mark Greif of the New York Times, brings a psychology approach to the recent rise in Hipster Culture in the past few years. The article mentions the book, “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,” by Pierre Bourdieu. The author then devotes a significant portion of the article describing Bourdieu’s background, childhood and philosophies. I believe the author had the idea of giving us background before laying out the building blocks for his argument, but he forced it too much. I believe that less time devoted to Bourdieu would have benefited the article and allowed for a better read. However, the main philosophy of Bourdieu that the author applied to Hipsters does in fact make for an interesting deduction. Bourdieu believed that culture derived from taste were rigid and arbitrary conformities.
Greif’s language throughout the article is mixed between academic and cultured. He uses studies, philosophers, vague french influences and class dynamics to shed light on the Hipster movement. His article combines logos and ethos to build upon the knowledge and credibility of Bourdieu to shape his argument. He depends too much on the work of Bourdieu, however Bourdieu does have excellent ideas and its a shame that he died before the Hipster movement.
The tone of the article is never demeaning, but it teeters on the edge of being too debatable. He believes that culture and taste are merely acts of one-up-man-ship. He writes as if he understands society completely and that class is about calling each others bluffs. His conclusion from this article however needed more evidence. He concluded that each group or class in society believed themselves to be essentially different. They believed that other classes/groups couldn’t handle their lives, atmospheres and livelihoods. Society uses tastes and culture to separate themselves from the rest and as a means of proving that they are different and by default better. Greif and Bourdieu however believe these societal assumptions are false and that these ideas that structure our world are mere trivialities.
I believe Mark Greif has a stronger understanding than most and many of his arguments are valid. This is probably due to the fact that Greif is considered a highly respectable critic with publishing in N+1. His method of referencing a french philosopher only known to highly educated individuals prevents most viewers from completely connecting with his work. It would be much more respectable if Greif relied more on his own thoughts and philosophies than those of others.
This article discusses how social media has influenced the way that women see themselves. Dove conducted a study and discovered that 78% of women feel that social media portrays an unrealistic standard of beauty. This included women that were tweeting negative things about themselves and the standards that are created from various platforms. However,the article states that there is a lot of good that has come out of social media. Because there are so many users and bloggers, there is a lot of room for diversity. This means that more people are represented throughout the many platforms. Bloggers share their beauty and body image stories and struggles that they have faced to help people facing similar issues over come them. Through hashtags, it is very easy to find celebrations of different body types, ethnicities and ages. These women are changing what our idea of beauty is. And by doing so on a platform that is rapidly changing and being updated, our beauty standards can more rapidly evolve.
The article features five bloggers that are breaking the beauty norm by being themselves. They are making beauty more personalized so that all women can feel beautiful. This is something that cosmetic brands should be more in tune with because it would allow them to expand their brand. This is a win win for consumer and manufacturer because the consumer has more access to products that would best suit them and brands would make more money. I really don’t understand why brands have more light shades than they do deep ones. Do they think that people with darker complexions don’t want/ don’t wear makeup? Because they do and they’re always frustrated that they can’t find a suitable color to match their skin tone.
I’ve opened the discussion of Nicki Minaj being a feminist icon to understand what feminist actually means as well as female sexual empowerment. I’ve read quite a few articles about female sexual empowerment, one was a female doctor explain g the differences between powers that men and women have, men having physical power, we see them through sports, physical competition, and women have a sexual power that we see through fashion, modeling, and even pornography. The doctor was stating that women need to embrace this idea of sexual power over men. Women are in charge of who they want to have sex with, when, where, and why, and the fact that they are expressing and embracing this power doesn’t consider them a ‘slut’ because they have sex with multiple men, however she does say that it is extremely important to be conscious of who you are having sex with for health concerns. Another explanation of why women are having troubles expressing their sexuality because they fear for their safety, as they do hold this sexuality power, men hold this physical power, and if they want they’ll stop at nothing to get it, including women. However, it’s hard for women to physically fight off a man, but by having celebrities, political figures and fashion moguls adopting female sexuality and feminism will help make the sexual power women possess more common.
Another article talked about the author attending this sex workshop where she had to add a question pertaining to certain aspects of sex, like positions and ethics. One question was regarding how many men can a women sleep with until she’s considered a slut or hoe… The workshop leader answered with ‘until she considered she herself as such’. This article then went on to describe 4 main topics that are love and sex are not mutually exclusive, a number does NOT define you, explore and own your turn-ons, and your sexual pleasure is what you want it to be. These four topics are the ideals that women should understand to help make their sex life more lusturous and amazing. There’s absolutely no shame in expressing their sexual needs because when you have sex there are chemically induced hormones that make you happier that each human needs to live life properly. These women need to be able to own who they are as women, because they have power just like men have power and to say that men are superior to women, they are actually equal, they both have things to offer to the table.
This journal segment is donated to a reading about an article titled, “Should Charities Ask For Time Before Money” found on Stanford Business School’s Graduate website. The main thesis of this article finds that a charity is likely to get more money from donators by asking them for their time and effort before asking for monetary donations. They find this to be true mainly because the more time and effort a person puts into a cause the more emotional their personal connection will be with the organization and specific people in need of help. The coauthors of this study find that donating time vs money creates two different mindsets in the donator. When donating time people ask themselves if what they are doing will make them happy or emotionally attached. When donating money people tend to contemplate issues regarding whether or not it will put a dent in their wallet and think more from an economical standpoint. The coauthors conducted three studies for the article. The first study asks participants to read an article about a fictional charitable organization. The experiment found that the article asking for time before money consequently found that people were willing to offer twice as much money than if the article were to be presented the other way around. The second experiment involved a fake article that asked for time, but not money at all. The experimenters provided a donation box seen near the exit door. People still gave twice as much to the organization that did not ask for any money at all over the organization that explicitly asked for cash. This shows that the mere sign of a financial donation makes people distant to the cause. The article’s concluding experiment basically found that the reasons why people were so willing to donate their time rather than money does not have any correlation with guilt. Donating money before time finds that people donate more due to guilt. By donating time rather than money, it is possible to have the opportunity to become more engaged in the actual cause. By just donating money the exact opposite exists, as the donator is more inclined to become much more disengaged. Human beings wish to be a part of something greater than themselves. By donating the gifts that God has given each of us, it is possible to create in such a positive and real way for not only our fellow man, but for our community and world too.
This is a TED Talk by Sam Harris, an American author, philosopher, and neuroscientist, arguing against the illusion that “science will never answer the most important questions in human life… like ‘What is worth living for?’ ‘What its worth dying for?’ ‘What constitutes a good life?'” I found this to be relevant to the question of if “society would be better off without religion” because of the morality factor.
An argument made by Dinesh D’Souza in an Intelligence Squared debate entitled “Science Refutes God” was basically that science can’t measure morality because there is no quantifiable way to distinguish between “what is” and “what ought to be.” While Harris doesn’t directly attack this perspective, he does ceoncede that there is a misconception that “because science deals with facts,and facts and values seem to belong to different spheres… It’s often thought that there’s no descriptionof the way the world isthat can tell us how the world ought to be.” He continues that values are a particular sort of facts pertaining to the “well-being of conscious creatures.”
According to Harris, while “we (may not)… have scientific answers to every conceivable moral question… But if questions affect human well-beingthen they do have answers, whether or not we can find them.And just admitting this —just admitting that there are right and wrong answersto the question of how humans flourish —will change the way we talk about morality,and will change our expectationsof human cooperation in the future.” He alludes to corporal punishment in 21 states where thousands of children are exposed to legal beatings by a teacher “with a wooden board, hard,and where these beatings are allowed to raise large bruises and blisters and even breaking the skin.” After pointing out that the “rationale for this behavior is explicitly religious,” he asks the audience if they believe that this is healthy for emotional edevelopment of the child… and the audience nervously laughs. But he points out that that is a real question and one that matters. Getting a question like that wrong because of blindly following a set of standards is wrong and counterproductive to proper development.
My favorite portion of this speech is when he makes an analogy comparing food to religion.
“Well think of how we talk about food:I would never be tempted to argue to youthat there must be one right food to eat.There is clearly a range of materialsthat constitute healthy food.But there’s nevertheless a clear distinctionbetween food and poison.The fact that there are many right answersto the question, “What is food?”does not tempt usto say that there are no truths to be known about human nutrition.Many people worry that a universal morality would requiremoral precepts that admit of no exceptions.”
He continues by alluding to women in eastern society being mandated to be covered up. He poses the question of “who are we to tell them how to live their life?” He points out the atrocities committed on women and then “180s” and asks “Well, who aren’t we to say this?” Voluntary wearing of a veil is not the same as being repressed and condemned to wear a veil because someone else is forcing their will upon them. He concludes by saying that once we admit that these moral questions do have right and wrong answers is when we can have serious breakthroughs.
“I’ve always praised myself on my ability to turn a phrase. Words are in my not so humble opinion an inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both implicating injury and remedying it.”
Let me set the stage, Harry Potter has just been killed by Voldemort to kill the one of the two horcruxs (a piece of your soul implanted into an object or person when you murder someone, allowing you to essentially live forever) left. Harry is now in a limbo state where he has a conversation with the late Dumbledore who says ” Words are in my not so humble opinion an inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both implicating injury and remedying it.” Dumbledore’s original statement to Harry was “Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it” however rephrases it to say “Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who deserve it”. This is what I “read” for this week, after going on to Quara to read about why Dumbledore says things. The forum pretty much went to the extent that, if Harry, even though dead, has a choice of peace, knowing his return will save everyone, needed the encouragement of Dumbledore to go back. Harry knew what the cost was, but needed to know what more needed to be done. Dumbledore then ends by saying just because everything is happening in Harry’s head that doesn’t mean that it isn’t real. Without all of this taking place, Harry could have entered to death, departing the world as an equal to death, as it was told in the Deathly Hallows.
We all know little girls love to play with their mom’s lipstick, eyeshadow, mascara, etc… It’s just innocent fun, right? Well, that behavior and habit actually promotes sexualization at a young age. Applying makeup has shifted from a teenage rite of passage to something little ladies now go gaga over in a selfie-obsessed culture. Kids are being pushed into dressing and acting beyond their years by their parents. We can all see this in the show, Toddlers and Tiaras. In the show, 2-5 year olds run in a beauty pageant. The little girls look like tweens. The mom cakes on the makeup, curls and hairspray, flippers(dentures for kids), whoreish costumes you only see in halloween. You just see the moms in the stands cheering on the daughter and getting way into it. It is the parent that shoves and pushes the child to do the pageant. The moms get extremely upset when their daughters don’t get 1st place and the little girls are just happy making new friends and eating candy. It is scary to see these moms and what they are doing to these girls and it develops issues in child development. These little girls don’t have a chance at being kids. At younger ages, girls are introduced to adult sexuality and objectifying. We see some celebrity kids experimenting with makeup as little as 3 years old. We see this with Tori Speling’s daughter, Stella who wore red lipstick, Suri Cruise who wore little heels and red lipstick at age 3 years old. Especially, Farrah Abrams on Teen Mom, lets her daughter, Sophia, 6 years old wear makeup. On air, we see Sophia with blue eyeshadow and red lipstick on. It even looks at times that she is wearing mascara. Parents need to use common sense when supervising or teaching their little girls about makeup. Something shimmery or light pink is okay, but something darker is sultry and does not suit well on a young girl.
Take a look at this photo below:
This is the same person. In the Before picture, we see that the girl’s face is more circle, nose is wider, high forehead, and no cheek structure. In the After picture, we see that with makeup she has defined her cheeks and nose more, her jawline is more defined and with her hair-do her forehead is smaller. It comes to show that with makeup, you can alter your face/look. You can appear more attractive to appeal the opposite sex or feel more confident about yourself. The problem is that if you wear too much makeup that you look like 2 completely different people, it is likely that you are hiding something. You look fake and deceite other people. Makeup is the most common mask we wear. We use makeup to cover up blemishes, dark circles, which is okay, but it is not the true reflection of yourself. You are covering up what you really look like. It seems that girls wear makeup because they are ashamed of what they look like when really makeup enhances the way you look. It does not define you.
Alicia Keys has started no makeup movement in light of these issues. She vowed that she did not want to be under pressure in wearing makeup. She will wear it if/when she wants. Alicia Keys went to MTV VMA Awards without makeup. She says, “I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing”. It is very insirational for girls to appreciate their natural look and love themselves. No more hiding. I also do not wear makeup on daily basis. I prefer my natural glowy skin then feeling all melty and cakey. My daily regimen is washing my face, moisturizer, eye cream. I feel that with a natural look I look younger. Also makeup sits into your pores and under eye which causes more wrinkles.
I’ll take time to touch up on the literary “subject” to compare this to the literary “self” later, but for now I’d like to discuss the latter. ‘Why?’ you ask? Well, imagine this… Or not. But to begin, Your Computer. Is it a “self”? (If you want to call it an AI, you may be ahead of me).
In a lit. theory summarizer (author Mary Klages), we are told that the ancients (Plato, Aristotle, Horace, etc.) all the way up to around the 1970s, thought of texts (books, literature, none in discriminate) as being able to communicate “universal truths” about human nature. Did texts have a God-complex? Do words know more about us than we, who made them, do? Should we aspire to less like Martin Luther King, Jr. and more like Martin, Luther, King, and Jr.? I don’t quite know the answer to these, but Klages tells us that Humanist Critics (the ones who made the aforementioned statement of texts) considered texts somewhat “intradermal”; “the text can speak to the inner truths of each of us because our individuality, our ‘self’, is something unique to each of us, something essential to our inner core,” much like Starbucks Coffee (Klages 47). This is a beautiful statement, but I’d like to go ahead and contemplate further about the relationship between the text and the “self”, because I’ve never felt a text speak out to me much, somewhat like God. I should pray to the text, you say? No. But, I wonder in entertainment of these ideas, if someone created a text, and it should connect with me somehow, but doesn’t, if I create a text, is there a possibility that it couldn’t either? Because it would seem to be that it would have to necessarily connect with me to meet some genesis for itself. Or do all texts, even those created of your own endeavor, have a dissociative character? Then how do we bind to them, and how to we learn “universal truths” from them? Surely we’ve learned little from dust bunnies under the dark crevices of a rusted-brown, beaten-down sofa chair in some abandoned halfway home in China, right? I’m bothered by this thought of texts. That they necessarily have something to say about you just by virtue of having a medium by which to connect with your “individuality”, “self”. And why aren’t you indivisible? Lobotomy experiments of the 1900s have proved many a times that you are divisible, and, moreover, when certain parts of you brain are removed from you, you cease to be the person you once were, or at least change strikingly. Did texts have a plan for that? If not, at what level do they cease to have substance? Vegetative-state by the would-be reader? And the medium, it still hasn’t been explained. Can you show me a “self”? If so, I’d like to meet the Real Slim Shady. Maybe I’m not so bothered by the fact that texts can say something because we’re human and some can have an understanding of them. But, I am bothered by some of the parts, particularly this proposed implicit connection without perception. What does a text have to say to a vegetable? It might have something to say about a vegetable, but not to it. I’m being rude and brash on experimental purpose, and I hope that this rant doesn’t upset too many people, nor do I advocate rudeness and brashness, but (as I hoped, from the title of this post) I’ve learned that I can get necessarily wordy, without ever being mad. I mean, whatever mood you thought I was in while writing this was probably null. I was pretty blank-faced (-_-) throughout the whole thing. Again, this was just experimental, but it’s given me some confidence in feeling I really can do much to play with the concept of the “self” for the upcoming revisals for the course essay(s), so thank you Reader for your attention as I (the text; no longer am I David Trebejo) endeavor to creep deeper and deeper into your impressionable mind (: P)
Klages, Mary. Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Text. 47.
