Beyond the Norm

Our course is based off of complicating the norms, ideology, and essentialist views as is Feinberg's goal as well. She is trying to get across the point that there is not just an either- or but there's an either-or and more. From birth, its pink or blue, boy or girl. She challenges society's basic, limited views and challenges us to see life from another perspective. Ms. Feinberg does not take a social constructionist approach but more of the idea that people are born that way and choose to live that lifestyle. It sounds sort of contradictory but everything we talk about is contradictory and goes against the norms.

As we have heard through several different types of mediums, violence and discrimination against gays, lesbians, transsexuals, and people who chose to live an alternative lifestyle has become an increasingly growing problem in todays society, especially in Western Civilization. In the eyes of these people, their lives are at risk every day just because of who they are. “This doctor's prejudices, directed at me during a moment of catastrophic illness, could have killed me. The death certificate would have read: Endocarditis. By all rights it should have read: Bigotry.” (Feinberg 3) We see in a personal moment in the Feinberg's life where discrimination almost cause her to lose her life. I didn't realize to what extent this violence has grown to. Its completely ludicrous that this discrimination has found its way into the medical field where lives are on the line each day.

Personally, I feel the root of this problem is that “pink or blue” either- or stigma. If people could break out of the idea that everyone must fit into certain categories, there would not be this problem. This is an idea that we've addressed multiple times in class, but if there are no categories, we all accept each other as we are and not what we want each other to be. I believe this would end the discrimination and violence, but I know this is not at all possible because we can not change everyone's mind.

Feinberg believes that this transliberation movement will not only help the transgendered and transsexuals, but as a heterosexuals, I will also gain from the changes this movement will bring about.“This movement will give you more room to breathe- to be yourself. To discover on a deeper level what it means to be yourself?” (Feinberg, 5) I'm all for equality and fairness, but I do not see how this self exploration is a direct result of the transliberation movement. I can do this now without the movement. I feel she just wanted to offer something that would make transliberation more appealing and beneficial to those that it does not truly affect or help. But, then again, I could be interpreting her statement wrong. You tell me?

EMPOWER yourself, Don't become a VICTIM

"The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite-that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup difference" (Crenshaw, 200). Although a group may identify as women, all women do not deal with the same problems. A major issue to a middle-class working women will differ from the problems faced by lower-class or higher class women. Ignoring problems causes issues and disorder in groups. The intersectional approach to gender matters, significantly, when analyzing women's issues because we then recognize the different issues faced within the group as opposed to one major issue that might not affect everyone or be of major importance to everyone in the group. Specifically with violence, although we're still dealing with domestic abuse, it varies from class to class and race to race. A women of higher status does not experience the amount of violence and constraints experienced by the lower-class or middle-class women. In "Mapping the Margins", Crenshaw says that strategies used based on women who do not share the same class or race will be of no to little help to women who face different obstacles because of their race. Intersectionality will help ease dissension among races and classes within one gender/sex and help the group to get more accomplished while also recognizing all of their group members concerns and issues from different perspectives and social statuses.

Violence can have detrimental and long lasting effects on its victims, psychologically and physically. We saw in all of the readings, how violence became a cycle and continued to be a

downfall and trap for the women in each of these texts. A question I posed to myself while after looking back on the reading is, "Does violence have the same universal effect on each women within that social class and race or does it depend on an individual's mindset?" "But inside me too is the teenager who armed herself and fought back, the dyke who did what she had to, the woman who learned to love without giving in to fear" (Allison,71). "Two or Three Things I Know For Sure" really helped me to see that it really depends more on the individual's drive to move on or "grow" from the abusive situation as opposed to their environment and generalized social class's reaction. The main character chose not to be a product of her environment but to fight back against the traps her family members fell into all too often. Her determination to not be a victims allowed her to overcome her environment and the same situations that her family members faced.

Violence is a substantially large problem in today's society and needs to be dealt with. The authors of our assigned reading suggests that we take a route of empowerment and not victimization in the journey to combat violence. People must STAND UP and SPEAK OUT against violence. We need to begin to look at women, not as victims, but as possible martyrs, heroes, etc. I think this would be a great way to possibly attack the violence problem in America. EMPOWER yourself, don't become a VICTIM!

What Nationality do you identify with?

Our Subconscious Nature to Categorize

The main idea that is strategically intertwined within each of the assigned readings is the idea that people contain a political nature to categorize their peers for personal comfort. Before engaging in a conversation, people have already mapped out your being (race, gender, stereotypes, etc.) They want to put individuals in a box. Why is this of any substantial importance to feminists? Well, I would think the answer to this question would be because subconsciously categorizing people affects all aspects of our life. In reality, no one can truly identify with a single group. Everyone is, at some point, caught in "los intersticios". We're shared among many, spread across all types of groups. This issue extends beyond just the realms of feminism. It affects the entire world and everyone in it. The readings did a great job in addressing the effects of assumptions, harassment, and exclusion. What happens when we don't fit in a box? When we don't fit into a category? The majority of people want to discomfort you because you no longer "only" identify with them or you have alternative views and lifestyles while still belonging to the same race. "My childhood desire, often desperate, was not so much to be a particular nationality to be a American or Arab, but to be wholly one thing or the other: to be something that I and the rest of the world could understand, categorize, label, predict." (Asultany, 293). People shouldn't have to want to be associated with "one" thing because of outside negative views.I can only wish that people could just be accepted for who they are because the world will never be on the same page. I may even participate in this cultural marginalization unknowingly/subconsciously and can not begin to fathom why these actions and responses are so automated.

These readings show how people fail to be empathetic and consider how others feel. "Brian begins to tell us how people react to him in France, how strangers continually think he's not only Spanish or Latin American, but also read him as female. 'Gracias, senorita,' they say to him. But sometimes the reaction is not so mild. Sometimes it results in harassment, staring, being followed and attacked." (Martin, 11). Reading this I began to see how not only do we overlook other people's feelings, but we react angrily out of discomfort felt because of other's differences. Why do strange/out of the norm things generate such negative responses? Now that I've been made aware of how such outcasting, harassing, sectioning, and the grouping of people together can have a detrimental affect to people's outlook on life, I am going to strive to not make flash judgments or cause an inconvenience by my "gawking, gaping, and staring? (Clare). I can not say I directly relate to the text and the situations present within the text, but I am very empathetic and relate in a way. I think most people can relate. Being this or that, people sometimes expect you to be able to do only the things associated with your race or gender which shouldn't be the case

3 Random Things About Me

1) I am a Political Science major, Rhetoric minor
2) I am grumpy in the mornings
3) I love animals ;-)