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Identity-Final Project

Throughout this semester the concept of human identity and the misleading relationship between internal identity and external identity has taken over my mind. Virgina Woolf's Orlando, Theresea Cha's Dictee, and Claudia Rankine's Citizen all have contributed to my final project. My project's goal was to bring up a few of the many issues with human identity and how identity can be easily misunderstood in our current day and age. Throughout my essay, I argue that an individual's identity is learned and created at birth by the external world (environment, friends, parents, hobbies, stereotypes, etc.) However, even when human's are children and adolescents, their individual identity is growing from the inside. The individual identity is always growing and choosing who to be from day to day based off of the experiences from the external world. It is not until the human conscience becomes aware (usually around the time the individual is a young adult) that the true definition of identity is internal and can be altered or molded at will. The true definition of identity is closed off to the world's stereotypes and representations but is still influenced. This paradoxical relationship is why many people in our day and age continue to be discriminatory, judgmental, and closed minded. These people do not understand that human identities do not function as binaries. Instead they are complex and exist in a world that is not black and white. Identities are grey.

In closing, I would like to thank you all for a wonderful semester. I learned a lot from listening to all of your intelligent thoughts and discussions. This class was lit (pun definitely intended)!

#Identity

Donald Trump-Jan Brewer-Women

"I don't necessarily think that you need to pick a woman. This woman thing has gotten way out of control, I believe. And I think it's been driven by the left." -Former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.

With the recent rise of Donald Trump in the GOP, there has been a lot of talk about who Trump may select as his VP. Former Arizona Governor, Jan Brewer was very open with reporters saying she would be willing to run as Trumps VP and help in any way if she had the opportunity. Following her openness to serve as Trump's VP. Brewer put herself in place by stating the above quotation. Brewer may have just been protecting her political views and political public image through these comments. However, I thought it was interesting because Brewer seemingly silences and hides away her true female voice in her through these comments. Does she truly feel this way? Does this connect us back to Roxane Gay's Bad Feminism?

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/politicalinsider/2016/05/08/youre-hired-former-arizona-gov-brewer-willing-serve-trumps-vp/84113906/

Good evening everyone!

This keyword assignment was a very eye opening assignment for me because I didn't realize until I dug deep into the many meanings of my word that a word holds A LOT of content just in a single word! For my keyword assignment word I choose the word domestic. This word turned out to be a very layered word in the terms of connotation. By denotation definition, domestic gained public momentum in the 14th and 15th century to describe the private life of families which includes spouses, servants, the home, in-country manufacturing, and another term to describe a fellow citizen from the same country. Once I dug into the connotation meanings of this word I discovered a complex world. By definition, domestic is a private word describing private matters however it is universally used which is ironic since domestic is a word commonly associated with secretive and private matters occurring in the home. To add to the connotation complexity, the word domestic has taken on a gender meaning of itself. Still used today but mainly associated with past centuries, domestic was associated with the female gender to describe a wife who managed the house and remained obedient to her husband. Today, domestic has taken on a public scene of itself as it has been greatly discussed in terms of domestic violence and domestic manufacturing. This key word assignment opened my eyes to the power that the word domestic carries. From the secret lives of families' homes to the importance of domestic manufacturing, the word domestic has been and still will be used daily.

#domestic

meaghanandwomenslit

Ginger Rogers is one of my favorite actresses! I like this quotation mostly because she points out how nice it is to be a strong woman who is seen, but that it is also okay that some women who are equally strong don’t want to be seen.

engljackdummer-blog

This is a great quotation, thanks for sharing. I specifically like how she points out the simple concept that many women are the reason for raising strong men. This simple concept is easy to forget as some men get older and take on sexist views when they don't even realize that women are the reason for their existence and upbringing. I feel like it is the worlds greatest ironic misconception when it comes to men being sexist.

The award-winning poet on Serena Williams, her emotional book signings and why racism is inescapable

In honor of wrapping up our reading of Claudia Rankine's book, Citizen, this is a wonderful interview with Rankine talking about the subject of racism, her book, her inspirations, and the work she put in to creating this deep analysis on race in our modern age.

This response from her interview talking about her line in the book still has me thinking...

" “Because white men can’t/ police their imagination/ black men are dying.” What was in your mind when you wrote that line? When white men are shooting black people, some of it is malice and some an out-of-control image of blackness in their minds. Darren Wilson told the jury that he shot Michael Brown because he looked “like a demon”. And I don’t disbelieve it. Blackness in the white imagination has nothing to do with black people."

This idea that "blackness" in the white mind is sometimes seen as a figure of imagination is tripping me out. The way our human imagination can run with an idea creates these false representations of race every single day...

#claudia rankine #poetry #books

What would Rankine Write About Me?

If Rankine shadowed me for a day she would notice a person open to new people and conversations. A person willing to meet new people and soak up new experiences from these new relationships. She would write about a 20 year old white male open to difficult conversations such as gender, politics, and race. One thing Rankine wouldn't know if she shadowed me for a single day is the strides and obstacles I have had to overcome to get to this point of inclusiveness and openness to all conversations and people. Raised in a very inclusive and friendly family I was taught to love and accept all walks and thoughts of life. However, as a growing child I was not spared the influence of my closed minded peers and community. Born and raised in a town known for its history as a Sun Down Town and lasting demographic and explicit racial divides I was exposed to exclusive minded people. Today, I am who I am based on my background of seeing how restrictive and inhumane the typical train of thought and life in my hometown really is. I have met wonderful people of all races and experiences and Rankine would notice that I am well diverse in my relationships through my day to day experiences. However, Rankine would not know the hurdles and hills I have had to overcome to avoid the mental death that is a closed minded person.

#claudia rankine

mv-ust-blog

When Colin Stokes’ 3-year-old son caught a glimpse of "Star Wars," he was instantly obsessed. But what messages did he absorb from the sci-fi classic? Stokes asks for more movies that send positive messages to boys: that cooperation is heroic, and respecting women is as manly as defeating the villain.

In my Psychology of Infancy and Childhood Development class, we talked about media and how media influences certain parts of kid’s life and how that affects how they perceive the world. We watched this video, which is a Ted Talk by a male who argues that movies are actually unfairly biased AGAINST men - a perspective that I’m not sure has a lot of merit, but worth listening to his opinion on it. He also talks about the Bechdel Test, and seems to make an argument that there should be a similar version for males as well. Personally, I don’t think his argument is on very solid footing, but nonetheless, it’s another perspective!

litbywomen

Thanks for sharing, Megan–those of you interested in discussions of masculinity and the media, check out this TED talk!

engljackdummer-blog

I agree with you Megan that the speaker in this TED talk has some issues with the foundation in his argument. However, I really appreciated the speaker's ability to take a step back from the hard facts, such as 1 in 5 women in America have been sexually assaulted in their lives, and take another perspective for why the assaulters do the assaulting in the first place. Although his core argument may be flawed, the speaker is on to something... There may be some very powerful subliminal message directed to young boys in popular children movies that in some discrete way mold the way these boys think about women, violence, and rewards (usually a woman's love in many children princess stories). I see where he is coming from and I enjoyed his enlightening perspective on a certain degree of men's misrepresentation of relationships with women in many movies. However, I think the speaker points to the issue that both the misrepresentation of relationships between women and women (bechdel test) and men in movies points to an issue with the story/plot line that sells to children in our world today. Maybe there are too prominent of subliminal messages that children pick up on that form their mindset and actions later in life. Is this possibility? I do not know, but it is worthy of taking into consideration if we as a society want to bring down the harsh number of 1 and 5 women involved in sexual assault.

“It is the White Man who creates the black man. But it is the black man who creates.”

-Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

“because white men can't police their imagination black men are dying”

-Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric

These two quotes from the last section of Rankine's Citizen reading assigned for Tuesday has left me pondering the concept of racial profiling. This picture I found on Google provides a harsh realistic picture pointing towards the injustice that is racial profiling in our world today. The concept of racial profiling is only a figure of our imagination. It is created by past experiences, skewed facts, and the overuse of categorizing an entire race of people based off of a made up stereotype. I am curious to see if anybody else found this section of Citizen talking about racial profiling (particularly the "Stop and Frisk" section) lingering in their heads long after closing the book...

#citizen #claudia rankine

Nothing is innocent, my sister reminds me. But nothing, I would like to think, remains unrepentant.

Eula Biss (Time and Distance Overcome, 11)

#rhetorical analysis

Roxane Gay and The Marginalized Voice-Event Attendance

I am going to be brutally honest here… Applying for this class, Literature by Women, was already terrifying in itself. I was scared to indulge myself into material that challenged me as a male through new concepts that opened discussion about gender representation, equality, and roles. Although I have grown A LOT more comfortable discussing and thinking about feminist ideology, gender representation, and gender roles, my visit to Roxane Gay’s speech presentation on April 6th opened my eyes up to a whole other world.

“It’s as hard to be a guy in this world as it is to be a girl” –Roxane Gay

Leading up to this event I felt as though all the talk about the struggles of women in our modern society left me, as a male who is also greatly concerned about the representation of women, feeling left out. The male who cares about the representation of women is commonly left out of the stereotypical definition of being a “Feminist” because he is simply a male. The male who cares about the issues of women today is a marginal voice. A voice who wants so badly to help the cause of equality for women and proper representation, however, his voice does not fit the stereotypical definition of a Feminist (Feminist with a capital F). According to Gay, The Feminist is commonly described as a man hater, independent, overly pushy, and certainly a woman who aligns with the fictional idea of the Feminist Sisterhood that oversees and judges all Feminists. Thanks to Roxane Gay, I realized that being a Feminist (with a capital F) is not being a feminist (with a lowercase f). Gay described Feminism as being the stereotypical definition of Feminism. The almost unrealistic type of Feminism is characterized and stereotyped so deeply that there leaves no room for uniqueness. According to Gay, feminism is spelled with a lower case “f” because humans are going to make mistakes every single day and cannot be held to the pedestal of being a perfect Feminist. Not until Gay described feminism with a lowercase “f” did I realize that being a feminist (with lowercase “f”) is the marginalized voice of Feminism. Thanks to Gay’s open interpretation of the idea of feminism I felt more accepted as a male in the community of closely reading society’s issues with women’s representation. I felt relieved to hear that Gay realized that being a guy who cares about the issues of women in our world today is just as hard of a task as a women who is fighting for a change in gender representation, because she is so spot on with this realization. Being a guy who constantly hears objectifying comments directed at women from his buddies puts the gender conscious feminist guy in a tough position to speak up and act on the misrepresentation of women. I was so relieved to hear Gay understand that there is a struggle for gender conscious men in our society today because there really is. There exists a society of gender conscious men in our world today that are marginalized but are feminists in their true essence. These men are feminists working behind the scenes confronting objectifying comments by their fellow male peers. These men are feminist who are so far away from meeting the requirements needed to be a stereotypical Feminist. Going to Roxane Gay’s event opened up my eyes to the role I play in representing gender equality. Gay realized that there is a marginalized voice of Feminism and for that reason I thank her for making gender conscious men, like myself, feel more accepted into the community of gender conscious thinking.

#roxane gay #feminism #vs. Feminism

mv-ust-blog

Very fitting, considering our discussion today!

engljackdummer-blog

You are right, this fits so well with our discussion on Thursday about likability. Our society always feels like we are looking for the flaws in every person who steps into the limelight of our world today. Although humans are natural judgers who instantly look for distinct traits that set themselves apart from the other person, we as humans always seem to dig for reasons (flaws) in our limelight leaders that make them "unlikeable" or "undesirable" or "unfit" to be a leader. But the irony is that these flaws are just differences. These flaws are what make every person different. This is why I have an issue with the argument that every limelight leader has to fit a certain list of character requirements in order to be likeable. If every leader was so bland to fit a archetype there is no room for uniqueness. Society needs "flaws" to continue to successfully progress forward.

The Wife Beater. Who is he? A fictional archetype created through mainstream media and Hollywood. The "wife beater" is a hard working, non-reliable, disgruntled husband who comes home from a long day of work and takes off his work clothes to display the iconic symbol of domestic violence; the white tank top, the wife beater. Does the fictional idea of the wife beater truly exist in the world? Yes, we all have heard stories of domestic violence in our world today. But what bothers me is the idea of a "wife beater" tank top that continues to exist as commonly accepted language in our day and age today. Some of my friends and family still refer to the white tank top as a wife beater despite its horribly negative connotation. Hollywood has instilled into our heads from a young age an easy way to characterize domestic violence through the iconic tank top symbol... The problem with this flawed characterization? First off it puts perfectly healthy relationships at risk for negative interpretation by outsiders just because one member of the couple is wearing a white tank top. Secondly, it puts domestic violence in a box. Domestic violence isn't a black and white subject. Domestic violence is a complicated matter that comes in many forms; physical, psychological, and many more. For domestic violence to be characterized as a male in a white tank top is sickening and disrespectful to the sensitive subject of domestic violence.

"BITCH BAD

WOMAN GOOD

LADY BETTER"

This song, "Bitch Bad" by Lupe Fiasco attacks such an influential word in our society today. The word being bitch which is used oh so much in contemporary music. More specifically, in the genre of rap, hip/hop, and R&B the word bitch is sprinkled into so many popular songs. In Lupe Fiasco's song "Bitch Bad", the issue of using the word "bitch" in popular music is addressed in a lyrical form by Lupe. The story line of the song goes as follows:

1) Lupe addresses a general ranking of words regarding women in the opening line. "Bitch bad, woman good, lady better". At first glance, these rankings of words according to Lupe seem to be in correct order. Obviously it is better to refer to a female as Woman than it is to refer to them as Bitch in a song. Likewise, it is better to refer to a female as a Lady rather than a Woman in song as well. But sadly, contemporary music more than not refers to women using the word bitch and woman more than the word lady.

2) Secondly, Lupe describes the main reason why the word Bitch in music can affect ever listener's life and confuse their conception on life and relationships. Lupe describes how the word Bitch affects a young boy's malleable brain and his perception on the phrase "bad bitch" used in a song. As the young boy listens to a song with his mom in the car, his mom starts to sing along to the song saying "I'm a bad bitch, I'm a bad bitch". In the mom's mind, "bad bitch" may not mean all that bad of concept. To the mother, a bad bitch could mean a lady who is courageous, strong, and independent in the world today. For the boy, he sees his mom sing the phrase "I'm a bad bitch" yet he looks up to his mom as a role model, who is succeeding in her work (based off the fact that she is wearing nice clothes and driving a convertible). Therefore, the boy's young moldable brain has this perception that being a bad bitch is a good thing. It is a woman who is as strong, loving, and successful as his mom.

3) As the song progresses, we see Lupe directly address how artist's influence young lives through their lyrics in ways they may not have intended for. An artist has almost no control over who consumes their music and their interpretation of the lyrics. Therefore, young girls could see a music video where women in bikinis and heels are dancing around rappers with tank tops, grillz, chains, money, and nice cars. Along with these visuals, the girls are being referred to as bad bitches in the lyrics. So, a young formable mind will see these images and strive to be a "bad bitch" if that means money, nice cars, and heels.

4) Lastly, the song closes by noticing the double entendre of the word "bad bitch". For the young boy, a bad bitch is a good thing. It is almost seen as a compliment to his mother. According to the boy, to be a bad bitch is to be a woman of the highest regard. According to the girls who viewed the music video, a bad bitch is a woman who uses her body and beauty to be a compliment, a side project to the objects accumulated by successful men.

As you can see, Lupe addresses this issue of open interpretation of a very controversial word, bitch. When artists use the word bitch, they influence young listeners and lead them down a bad path of categorizing women under the word bitch. No matter how we view this song, the word bitch is very misleading in contemporary music and it is affecting all the minds of the listeners.

bloggingemily-blog1

A safety app called Companion is helping friends and families keep tabs on each other by virtually mapping their whereabouts.

Here’s a really cool app that my friend showed me! It relates so well to our discussion we had regarding our Solnit discussion and walking friends home. It is getting the ball rolling on walking friends home and making sure they are safe - only this time it’s virtually!

litbywomen

Fascinating find, Emily! I’ll be curious to learn more about the app’s use and popularity.

engljackdummer-blog

This is weird. Over the last week I have talked to my cousin (female) and one of my good friends (female) who both praise and use this app religiously. My cousin, who goes to Creighton University, said that her sorority dedicates two sober members a night to be on "app watch". The duty of the "app watch" role is to pay attention to their phone and notice when one of their sorority sisters logs on for a virtual walk home. The "app watch(er)" virtually follows her sorority sister to their destination. If any long pauses in their trip occur, the app watcher calls her sister and has a car available in case a ride is needed for an emergency situation. I thought I would share as this is a really interesting use of this incredible app.

This weekend I scrolled across Netflix several times searching for a possible movie based on the description and the cover image that might pass the Bechdel test. I passed 'Pulp Fiction' several times as it sat in my 'Recommended For Me' list of movies. Upon scrolling through the movie cover images I happened to notice something interesting about how women are usually portrayed in these cover images. The women portrayed on these images are either sexualized in some manner or portrayed in the distance as a smaller role. There were very few movies on Netflix that put a women front and center of the movie image without any sexualized feeling to the picture. This discussion leads to me why I picked 'Pulp Fiction'. I choose this movie mainly off of its 4.5/5 star ranking, its interesting movie description, and finally its unique portrayal of a women alone on its movie image (however, note how Ms. Mia Wallace still is somewhat sexually portrayed in this image). Despite my initial prediction that that this movie might have a shot to pass the Bechdel test, I was wrong, it did not pass the test. In fact, there was only two scenes where women were alone together. In one of the scenes the women did not even say one word to each other. In the other scene the two women were talking about piercings until all of a sudden they starting talking about how their piercings help their sexual lives with men... The point being, I thought this movie had a shot to pass the Bechdel test but instead, it failed miserably. Even more surprising, this movies is acclaimed as being one of the best or arguably the best independent film. what is even more interesting is that usually independent films are the voices for the marginalized crowd, such as women. So how could one of the most critically acclaimed independent films not even MENTION the marginalized voice like it should be.

#pulpfiction

Justin Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister, continues to appear on my twitter feed and facebook feed in some fashion every week. It amazes me how many people find encouragement in his words and videos that circulate around the internet. However, I feel that the continued appraisal by peers my age is warranted since Trudeau seems to connect to the youth in our world in such a flawless and informal way. Trudeau uses his talent to connect to the youth to break barriers such as the discussion of feminism which if these same conversations occurred in America by the United States President I could only imagine there would be a greater backlash.

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