gender: Answers? I don't need no stinking answers!


Subject: gender: Answers? I don't need no stinking answers!
sverhoef@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Date: Wed Sep 15 1999 - 18:36:47 CDT


Conversation overheard on a soap opera:

Actress #1:
It's important to stay in school... It's true that history repeats
itself, so if you study history you'll learn lessons you can apply in
your own life when it really counts.
Actress #2:
You mean like Kelly fucking up her relationship? (I'm parapharasing
here, OK?)
A1:
Well, yeah. When two countries get mad at each other they go to war...
_____________________________________________________

Point 1
When one country becomes more powerful than its neighbor THAT is usually
when international aggression occurs, not "when two countries get mad at
each other..." If you understand the paradigm of conflict arising out
of unequal power relations, then the conflict 'Kelly' finds herself
embroiled in can be understood in a very different way.

Point 2
School endows us with "lessons" we can apply to our own lives, "when it
really counts." From their ensuing conversation regarding Kelly's love
life, it is obvious what the primary project of women's lives is
supposed to be. Women should bring a "lessoned mind" (as opposed to
critical thinking skills) to bear upon that which really counts in their
lives: their love lives.

Later I overhear the younger character assuring the (slightly) older one
that she is perfectly fine without romance and knows that it is not
necessary for her to have a man in her life.
The soap is paying lip service to (and is probably receiving a lot of
credit for supporting) the causes of independent women and education,
while actually delivering a diametrically opposite message. Oy!
________________________________________________________

...and that bit above about critical thinking skills. I think when we
come to an academic environment expecting to be able to "understand"
something, that while that might be a reasonable objective in the
business school or in the natural sciences (at least at the
undergraduate level), I think that 'understanding' is exactly what we
problematize when we examine an issue in the school of liberal arts,
which..... SHIT!!! ...this isn't, but I think it can still apply.

I'll just speak for myself--I'm looking for *insights*, not 'answers',
and when I can come away from a classroom experience aware that I am not
able to wrap my mind around a concept, that's when I know I'm being
challenged, when I'm being pushed to see more, see differently.
So I say, bravo, David. You go, girl, with your incomprehension!
(That's the universal 'girl', of course.)

> david wrote:
> In my opinion, Del spread out much but clarified little. I could "see"
> (meaning "observe?") her "pansexuality" just fine. I couldn't understand it,
> though, and that's what I felt compelled to do because of the fact that she
> spoke to us in an academic environment.
>



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