Gendered Constructions of the Forest in The Village

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women's Studies)
14 April 2010

Gendered Constructions of the Forest in The Village

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village is the story of a small farming village isolated from the main world by the forest surrounding it. While the film examines gender roles in relation to nature in several ways, the characterization of the forest presents the most interesting and complex case. At once masculine and feminine, the forest serves initially as an oppressive force locking the villagers inside it and severely punishing those, like the film’s protagonist Ivy, who dare to venture into it; as the film reveals the village’s secret, however, the forest takes on a more gender-ambiguous role, becoming both the feminine creator and masculine protector of the constructed space the villagers inhabit and understand as safe.

The forest is most easily understood as a masculine, aggressive presence, largely because of The Village’s similarities to “Red Riding Hood” and similar fairytales. In both, a young, female protagonist dons a specifically-colored cloak; leaves her sheltered home to travel through a dark, treacherous wood to help a sick person she knows; is attacked by a forewarned monster; and (for purposes of this film) survives, but not without losing her innocence to the new revelation about what’s actually out there in the world. For Red in the fairytale, her innocence leaves with the realization that the world is not as safe or harmonious as she had once thought. For Ivy in The Village, this realization is twofold, leaving her aware by the film’s conclusion that a) her village is set in a consciously-constructed and -maintained reality grounded in the values, social systems, and technologies of 18th-century America, rather than the 21st-century America that exists outside the forest, and b) the chief instrument of maintaining this constructed reality, the red-cloaked monsters that stalk and guard the forest’s borders, are actually the village elders. In both cases, this innocence is stolen by a journey into the forest itself, lending the forest a distinctly masculine quality in its construction as an active force. Rather than being “feminized and sexualized through imagery such as ‘virgin forest’ . . . and ‘penetrating’ the wilderness” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 539), as traditional Western thought tends to understand it, nature here is obviously, definitively aggressive. It is not the innocence that needs to be protected; as in “Red Riding Hood,” it is the innocence-stealing force that needs to be protected against.

Ivy’s loss of innocence to the forest is what allows us to see it as, in some ways, a potentially gender-ambiguous force. The realization that the village’s setting and environment are consciously constructed casts the forest in a new light by making it no longer exclusively oppressive. As the new information about the elders’ involvement shows, it is also a creative force—a trait more commonly associated in Western tradition with femininity, especially in understandings of the environment. The myth that the elders have chosen to construct around the forest is undoubtedly oppressive in that it restricts the villagers’ access and power to move outside a certain space. It is a system both like and unlike patriarchy—like in that it creates “an arrangement of shared understandings and relationships that connect people to one another and something larger than themselves” (Johnson 71), and unlike in that the system and the space it creates are consciously maintained by a select few people within the village society. But the fact that the forest itself allows for the creation of that space and system in the first place is significant. It becomes both a protective barrier (associated with masculinity) and an almost nurturing presence, in that it provides for the villagers’ careful maintenance of the space they have constructed as normal and safe. Ivy’s breaking through the barrier to reach the outside world lends the forest and the space it provides for an additional “feminine” trait: the need to be protected and defended. Ivy’s new knowledge threatens the existence of the constructed reality of the village. Should she choose to share what she has learned, the space created by the elders and the forest-myth they rule by will be destroyed; should she choose to remain silent, the space will be preserved, with Ivy joining the ranks of the constant protectors of the secret that threatens it. Ultimately, Ivy keeps her silence and allows the system maintaining the village to continue unchallenged, questionably taking the path of least resistance but leaving us with a new understanding of the relative fragility of even the most seemingly-deep-set social systems.



Works Cited

Johnson, Allan G. “Patriarchy, the System.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 68-76. Print

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Women and the Environment.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 534-549. Print

Shyamalan, M. Night, dir. The Village. 2004. Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2005. DVD-ROM

Critiques of Western Media in Baghdad Burning

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women's Studies)
17 March 2010

Critiques of Western Media in Baghdad Burning

In the entry “Teapots and Kettles . . .,” dated 7 April 2004, Riverbend recounts the early days of the American occupation of Baghdad and eventually concludes that, despite what the Western media would have their audiences believe, not much about life in the city has changed or improved. Like the rest of Baghdad Burning, this entry uses Riverbend’s personal experience to critique the American occupation, with particular focus on exposing the false reality about Iraqi life presented by Western news outlets. In this sense, her blog follows two “paths” of “media advocacy . . . critiquing mainstream media, and making media tools available to people from subordinated groups to express themselves” (“Globalizing World” 387). Both a personal account and an educational tool, Baghdad Burning is the method by which Riverbend successfully calls into question the cultural perceptions Americans hold of Iraqis and the cultural perceptions Americans hold of our own military.

Riverbend’s blatant critique of Western media is a common, constant theme throughout her blog. As in another entry from later that same month, “Media and Falloojeh,” she contrasts accounts of what Western or Western-affiliated news stations are reporting with her own observations as a citizen of occupied Baghdad. “The foreign news channels [CNN, BBC, LBC] are hardly showing anything,” she says. Instead of reporting on the “over 150 Iraqis [who] have been killed by troops all over Iraq” during the last three days, the Western media airs “dazzling reportages on football games and family pets,” only occasionally “showing the same faces running around in a frenzy of bombing and gunfire” (Riverbend). For Riverbend, this inaccurate portrayal of circumstances is inexcusable. It presents an obviously false image of the American occupation and furthers the ludicrous beliefs Americans hold about the Iraqi population and the war itself. Rather than acknowledge the war as a serious, deadly affront with serious, deadly consequences for Iraq, the Western media’s reporting maintains the myth of American liberation: the idea that “the [American] troops were going to be ‘greeted with flowers and candy’” (Riverbend) by Iraqis grateful for liberation upon their arrival. In reality, the truth could not be more different. If Riverbend’s account is anything to go by, the Iraqis feel like “caged animal[s]—there’s so much frustration and anger . . . all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad” (Riverbend), and no one feels safe, stable, or free.

Less obviously, Riverbend’s entry forces us as Americans to reevaluate how we perceive our military. Even if we don’t fully realize it, “the military shapes our notions of patriotism, heroism, honor, duty, adventure, and citizenship . . . Politically, economically, and culturally, the military is a central U.S. institution” (“Women and the Military” 494). We are taught to evaluate and understand patriotism, devotion to one’s country, and courage in terms of military service, which further engenders an already-deep sense of pride in our troops and any initiative they become involved in. Riverbend’s accounts, however, remind us that there is more involved in war than our troops making us proud—namely severe consequences for the country being “liberated.” Why, she challenges us to ask, are we proud to learn of our military “bombing” a city “constantly,” leaving “dozens dead” and taking out “the only functional hospital . . . except a meager clinic that can hold up to 10 patients at a time” (Riverbend)? Why are we proud to hear of our troops effectively blockading a city, cutting off supplies of produce and food and leaving its inhabitants in streets littered with “bodies . . . beginning to decompose in the April heat” (Riverbend)? By unrepentantly showing us the harsh, negative consequences of war, Riverbend forces us to acknowledge that the “liberating Americans” myth is false from both perspectives: just as Iraqis (and, indeed, many people supposedly in need of democracy and U.S. aid) largely do not feel grateful and liberated under American occupation, our American troops are not nearly so often the heroic, untarnished saviors we should like to understand them as.



Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Living in a Globalizing World.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 371-392. Print

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Women and the Military, War, and Peace.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 493-509. Print

Riverbend. “Teapots and Kettles . . .” Baghdad Burning. Blogger, 7 Apr. 2004. Web. 5 Apr. 2010.

Activism Log VII

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
4 April 2010

Activism
Family emergency stayed pretty severe this week, so again, no tabling for me. I’ve sent an email to Rebecca to see about alternative forms of involvement, but so far, I haven’t heard anything back yet. I was able to start a Facebook chat with a few friends about the project in hopes of gaining support for it, but that quickly turned more infuriating than productive, so not much luck there.

Reflection
The most interesting discussion and readings we had this week were on Womanism, which I personally find to be a fascinating branch of feminism. The article I particularly enjoyed was Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” which discusses Walker’s attempts to rediscover and reclaim the history of black women, the generations of mothers and grandmothers who came before her and were forbidden by social convention from being understood or recognized as capable of great things. For the transgendered community, I feel this idea of rediscovering and reclaiming history is especially relevant. Because transgenderism is still largely rejected and feared by society, that community exists with little to no knowledge of its own history. There are some records of transvestitism, or of the earliest transsexuals to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, but for the most part, general society marks transgenderism and the achievements of transgendered or gender-variant people as taboo and unmentionable. Hopefully, as activist efforts force social tolerance and acceptance of the transgendered community, its ability to recover and acknowledge its own history will be restored and, much like Walker’s search, what is uncovered will help further develop a sense of strengthened identity in that community.

Reciprocity
This week was an extremely stressful one for several reasons. First, I am beyond frustrated with myself and the circumstances that have prevented me from tabling so far. I feel like I am letting down my project group and the entire initiative, and while Rebecca has told me she understands, I sincerely hope she can come up with something for me to do so I feel like more of a contributing member. I’ve still been collecting signatures on my own where I can, but it’s slow-going. And finally, the Facebook chat I tried to start turned into a complete disaster. Instead of talking to my friends about issues relating to the transgendered community and our project, I spent an hour in a heated, immensely aggravating discussion about more well-known “aspects” of feminism. I say “aspects” very loosely, because it was mostly a few friends throwing around negative stereotypes of feminists while one refused to hear anything other than his own belief that women belong in the kitchen and the bedroom, and nowhere else. Normally, I am all for discussions about feminism, especially when they’re informative discussions that help clear up common misconceptions surrounding the movement for people who are genuinely interested; the type of conversation I found myself in this week, though, was quite the opposite, and one I’ve been hearing/having all too frequently since really establishing myself as a feminist this semester. Overall, this week was just a stressful, disheartening experience, and I’m glad it’s over. The good news is that it looks like my family troubles are clearing up, at least for now, so I should definitely be on for tabling next week. I just want something that will get me back into loving this project whole-heartedly like I did during the first few weeks.



Works Referenced
Walker, Alice. "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens." In Search of Our Mother's Gardens. Ed. Alice Walker. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003. 231-43. Print.

Activism Log VI

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
28 March 2010

Activism
My involvement was interrupted again this week, this time by a severe family emergency that had me heading back home almost every night after my classes let out. As such, I wasn’t able to attend tabling. I’m hoping this clears up by next week, but I’ll have to see; if it doesn’t, I’ll be emailing Rebecca, our community partner, to see if she has any alternative ways I can get involved. I did collect a few more signatures, this time by passing the petition around my anthropology class. My professor was, again, very supportive, but the reception from the class seemed a bit more stilted. It wasn’t nearly as bolstering an experience as soliciting my creative writing class for support was, but I suppose that’s par for the course in activism—some you win and some you lose.

Reflection
My favorite reading from this week was the collection of excerpts from Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning blog. The article and blog entries comprising it provided a fascinating look at an alternative perspective on the war in Iraq, particularly regarding actual versus perceived needs and responses of the Iraqi population. Contrary to popular U.S. belief, Iraq had modern amenities, utilities, and cultural attributes. Most surprising to me was the realization that “females in Iraq were a lot better off than females in other parts of the Arab word (and some parts of the Western world . . .)” (Riverbend 527)—a statement which directly contradicted the image I have always been presented with of Iraqi and general Middle Eastern women as the most severely oppressed and limited in the world. Connected to our project, this realization that presented perceptions of culture/identity are not always accurate is a bit sobering. It’s great to be able to say that my efforts are helping benefit an oppressed community, or that I have a personal connection to that community through a family member, or that I’ve done research on key issues, sure. But the simple, undeniable fact is that I will never understand what it means to be transgendered, which means that I will never fully understand if my actions are actually helping or hurting. I can immerse myself in the culture of the community (which would be so much more involved than what I’m doing now), but without being transgendered and experiencing things as a transgendered individual, I will always, to an extent, be an outsider incapable of completely understanding the situation.

Reciprocity
Again, I’m disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to table this week, although I’m still a bit more concerned about the situation at home. In all, this has been a fairly stressful week for me; the less-than-warm reception I got in my anthropology class didn’t help much, and it has all dampened my spirits about this project and life in general. Better luck next week, I hope.



Works Cited
Riverbend. “Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 525-530. Print.

Activism Log V

*Note: Spring break week skipped!*

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
21 March 2010

Activism
Tabling was canceled this week because of Equal’s participation at a rally in Tallahassee. It was disappointing, but it also left me more time to collect signatures on my own. I actually spoke about the initiative in my creative writing class. My professor was extremely supportive of the project and allowed me about ten minutes at the end of class to explain it, the reasons/need for it, and to pass around a petition sheet. Not everyone signed, which I expected, but I was not met with any open hostility; in a nice turn of events, everyone seemed generally interested and receptive to the idea, even if it wasn’t something they ended up wanting to support.

Reflection
This week’s readings and class discussion covered a wide range of material, but as best I can summarize, they tended to focus on feminist conceptions of family and defining lifestyles. The article that struck me as most interesting was Ettelbrick’s “Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” In it, Ettelbrick discusses her rejection of the gay marriage equality movement. For her, obtaining equal marriage rights would only perpetuate other systems of privilege, such as race, class, religion, etc. It would also do nothing to address underlying social heteronormativity; instead of celebrating the differences inherent in queer lifestyles and challenging perceptions of heternormativity, Ettelbrick feels gay marriage would only increase the presence and power of heteronormativity by forcing queer couples to “end up mimicking all that is bad about the institution of marriage in [their] effort[s] to appear to be the same as straight couples” (318), and as such worthy of the same privilege. Ettelbrick presents here another complication of passing, which is an issue facing much of the LGBT community, but particularly the transgendered population. Because society so viciously stigmatizes transgenderism, the temptation is strong to pass for cisgendered and gain social acceptance. But as Ettelbrick discusses, the cost of this social acceptance is, like in all cases of passing, a loss of identity and fundamental connection to a supportive community. Ultimately, is it worth forgoing support and total acceptance to be tolerated in spite of your differences, rather than acceptance because of them?

Reciprocity
I was definitely disappointed in the lack of tabling this week, but I do feel that the success in speaking to my class about the project has helped boost my esteem regarding my fears of soliciting support for this cause. It showed me that people may easily prove more accepting than I had initially assumed going into this project, which alleviates my stresses about tabling a bit.



Works Cited
Ettelbrick, Paula. “Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 317-320. Print.

If the Aptly-Given Episode Title Fits . . .

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
17 March 2010

If the Aptly-Given Episode Title Fits . . .

The pilot episode of Brothers and Sisters (named, ironically enough, “Patriarchy”) introduces us to the Walker family, a large, hectic group consisting of Mom, Dad, and five siblings. Although I don’t regularly watch the show, I have heard of it, mostly because of the notice it has received for the storylines surrounding Kevin, an openly gay member of the Walker family, and his developing relationship with eventual-husband Scotty. This episode, however, focuses on Kitty, the second-eldest Walker child, so this discussion will follow suit.

Kitty begins the episode in New York City, where she lives estranged by merit of distance from the rest of her Los Angeles-based family. She returns to LA primarily for work concerns; already a successful politically-conservative radio pundit, she is currently investigating a position as the Republican speaker on a late-night political television show. Her trip also includes visiting her family to celebrate her birthday. With the rest of the family involved in their own drama, Kitty’s major conflicts for the episode are her indecision about the job offer and her fear of confrontation with her mother, who is far more of a political liberal than she. The latter conflict resolves fairly positively. Kitty and Nora do argue in one scene, but for most of the episode, their issues are kept under wraps. While there is certainly noticeable tension between them, Kitty still receives reassurance that her worries of being rejected by her mother are unfounded: Nora admits that they “will probably always violently disagree,” but also that “[she] [has] never stopped loving” (“Patriarchy”) her daughter.

Though both conflicts have compelling points of analysis, I found the issues surrounding the job offer a bit more interesting, largely because they incorporate several aspects of the stress Kitty faces. Her Republican politics are the butt of many of her family’s jokes and what she perceives as a barrier between them; the job would require her to relocate to LA, forcing her to relinquish the independence-by-distance she has acquired since moving away from her family; and her boyfriend Jonathon pressures her to turn down what they both know is a highly strategic career move in favor of marrying and staying in New York with him. For Kitty, this job offers her the chance to advance her politics and reconnect on some level with her family, but potentially at the expense of the family she could have with Jonathon. Her situation is not uncommon among career-focused women, who often follow “the ‘be a man’ strategy;” they “finish school, find a job, acquire skills, develop seniority, get tenure, make partner, and put children off until the very last minute” (Crittenden 342). The problem with Kitty’s situation, and with that of the general career-focused woman, is, as Crittenden discusses, the assumption that parenthood is primarily the woman’s responsibility, even at the expense of her salary and career. Jonathon’s proposal exemplifies this. He offers her what is essentially an ultimatum: Kitty can either take this job and advance her career, or she can remain stagnant at work, marry him, and start a family, which no doubt will later become her responsibility to sacrifice for and raise. The consequences of not taking the job, then, seem ludicrously restrictive for someone so driven and career-focused as Kitty.

In some lights, however, the consequences of taking the job are just as restrictive. It is clear that Kitty has worked to gain independence outside of her family, probably because her political views differ so much from theirs. While she shows some regret about the distance this has created between her and her siblings, she also seems attached to the idea of remaining independent from them, which moving back to LA would hinder by sheer proximity. Taking the television job would certainly advance her career and identity as an empowered, political woman, but it could simultaneously pull her firmly back into a family defined by its relational identities to each other. She would be a career woman, yes, but also a sister and a daughter, with those roles prioritized by the sense of obligation that would likely develop from reconnecting with the rest of the Walkers. Even as the move would protect her from sacrificing her career for the relational identities of Jonathon’s wife and their children’s mother, it could easily force her, again, into another, different set of care-focused, “nonthreatening and disempowering roles . . . in society” (Seely 100) she has already worked to escape. Ultimately, Kitty makes no decision by the episode’s end and the conflict goes unresolved, leaving us with a clear sense of how difficult it is for a woman to not only choose between her family and her career in a society structured to offer her no other options, but also for her to maintain her own independent identity when our understanding of women inherently connects them to the roles they fill for someone else.



Works Cited

Crittenden, Ann. “The Mommy Tax (2001).” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 337-345. Print.

“Patriarchy.” Brothers and Sisters. ABC. 24 Sept. 2006. Web.

Seely, Megan. Fight Like a Girl. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Print.

Alright, Alright, Alright: Violence in "The Rake's Song"

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
8 March 2010

Alright, Alright, Alright: Violence in “The Rake’s Song”

The Decemberists’ “The Rake’s Song” describes the extreme violence a man commits to escape the perceived limitations of married and parental life. Shortly after marrying at age 21, the song’s protagonist finds himself father to three children—a boy, Isaiah, and two girls, Charlotte and Dawn—each one considered more of an unfortunate, unwanted burden than the last. But with his wife’s death in labor for their stillborn fourth child, he finds his chance for escape. He systematically poisons, drowns, and beats to death his other three children, leaving him free physically and emotionally to resume his previous bachelor lifestyle.

Personally, I am still a bit unsure about the point of the violence in the song. On one hand, it presents violence as excusable within the confines of the narrator’s perspective, which is certainly an issue. For the narrator, his marriage is a means to an end. He signs on for readily-available sex, not for children and the responsibilities of a family. In his understanding, the children “her womb [starts] spilling out” (The Decemberists) are his wife’s burden, completely detached from him by his lack of desire for them. This understanding of women and children connects the protagonist’s later violence to the “general pattern of violence between the powerful and the powerless” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 267): as a man in a patriarchal society, the narrator’s freedom and power before marriage were seemingly unchecked; even after marriage, and furthered by his alienation of himself within his undesired family, his power remains greater than that held by his wife and children. Killing his children, then, is simply him exercising his greater power over people he views as disposable. Because he associates his children entirely with his wife, her death, for him, removes all reason for their existence; they are now entirely unwanted, and as such, his disposing of them to reclaim his freedom and identity as a bachelor is acceptable. As we are given no other insight into the story, it is expected that we, too, will understand his reasoning and excuse his violent actions as a man’s rightful struggle to regain his autonomy.

Obviously, this presentation of violence is problematic. But are there grounds for viewing “The Rake’s Song” as a statement against domestic violence? In some sense, yes. By presenting us with only the protagonist’s reasoning behind his actions, the song pressures us to accept the story and the violence within it. However, doing so also raises the question of why we feel so compelled to easily accept and excuse violence when we are confronted with it. Are there larger systems and influences at work convincing us to sweep things under the rug and move on? The lyrics hint at addressing such larger systems, particularly patriarchy, in their reduction of women to wives and wombs, even as they idealize men and the concepts of masculine freedom and independence. Unfortunately, they never seem to go beyond hinting at it as something pervasive and dangerous to all of society. The patriarchal mindset is here ascribed to a self-identified rake, or “dissolute man in fashionable society” (“Rake”), furthering the perception that such an attitude is an individual problem, not a systemic one. So while it neatly raises the question of why “we make excuses for male temper,” the song’s presentation of male temper and resulting violence as being the anomalous traits of bad-apple individuals ultimately distracts us from the larger issue that these are, in actuality, things we “as a culture” (Seely 200) create.



Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Violence Against Women.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 257-272. Print

“Rake.” Princeton WordNet 3.0. Princeton University, 2006. Web. 8 Mar. 2010. .

Seely, Megan. Fight Like a Girl. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Print.

The Decemberists. “The Rake's Song.” The Hazards of Love. Capitol Records, 2008. Web. 8 Mar. 2010.

Activism Log IV

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
7 March 2010

Activism
Tabling started this week. I had planned to go, but migraines and unexpected group meetings kept me busy. I did get a copy of the petition sheets, and I have already collected a few signatures from friends.

Reflection
This week continued our discussions and readings on violence against women. I also did my discussion-leading this week on Morales’ article “Radical Pleasure: Sex and the End of Victimhood.” It took me a read-through or two to completely understand what she was discussing, but once I got it, I really enjoyed it. She raised an interesting point with the victim-survivor trap that I, for one, hadn’t considered before reading her article. It’s true that “victim” and “survivor” are both social categories, and as such come with sets of rules for those individuals and the people who interact with them to follow that allow the trauma experienced to be adequately recognized. Those rules are, as Morales describes, incredibly limiting, largely because they inhibit people from making any real progress toward reclaiming themselves and identities separate from and not defined by the trauma they have experienced. In some way, I think the rules aspect holds true for activism, as well. It seems to me that activists come in two types: optimistic but naïve and jaded but determined. In any case, people have some idea of what to expect from activists, and activists have rules to follow if they want their movements to receive social recognition as even semi-legitimate. Unfortunately, playing by those rules often means playing roles that turn people off of your efforts. I see this a lot outside Student Union: people promoting a cause are ignored by other people walking by who just want to get to class. It’s incredibly frustrating because it limits both the public’s chance to participate in activism and activism’s chance to fulfill its goals and incite change. I really hope our project can overcome this obstacle.

Reciprocity
Although I didn’t go to tabling this week, I heard it went well. I collected some signatures on my own, and I was very pleased with the support my friends have shown for my involvement in this project. I know I’ll need to do tabling coming back from spring break, but to be honest, I’m not entirely looking forward to it. Public speaking and attention-grabbing have never been my strongsuits, so I know I’ll be nervous the whole time I’m out there. Still, this project is designed to push the limits of my comfort zones, so we’ll see how it goes.



Works Referenced
Morales, Aurora Levins. “Radical Pleasure: Sex and the End of Victimhood.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 283-284. Print.

Radical Pleasure: Sex and the End of Victimhood

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015
28 February 2010

In her article “Radical Pleasure: Sex and the End of Victimhood,” Aurora Levins Morales explains the value of actively reclaiming sex for survivors of sexual abuse and violence. Using her own experiences as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, Morales assesses the defensive position regarding sex many survivors take and finds it lacking. Instead of helping the survivor form a strong individual identity, such a position actually traps survivors in another form of victimhood. In Morales’ understanding, only by reclaiming the erotic as it applies to sex and physical intimacy can survivors truly experience passion and freedom in all areas of their lives. For the individual to thrive, she suggests, s/he must move beyond the idea of being a victim, even a strong, surviving one; s/he must reject the fear of sexual passion instilled in them by their abusers in order to become a person of complete passion and fulfillment in every sense.

Morales begins her essay by discussing why strong, defensive survivorhood is so appealing. She recalls her own experiences being sexually abused as a child and the impact those experiences have had on her ability to now understand and embrace her mature sexuality. Morales acknowledges from the start that her abuse and resulting fear of her own sexuality are not her fault; rather, they are the fault of her abusers, the direct consequences of their attempts to “induce physical pleasure in [her] against [her] will,” allowing “them . . . to persuade [her] that [her] desires were dangerous” (Morales 283). Such a stance creates a sense of “wounded eroticism . . . that is honored in survivor culture” (284) because it provides survivors with a way to show that their abuse and violation have left drastic, lasting impressions. In a society where people are often skeptical of the validity of such reports of abuse, the wounded eroticism Morales describes acts for survivors as a visible scar, a way of proving not only that their experiences were true, but also that the survivors have lived beyond them.

In the next section, however, Morales challenges the idea that survivors have actually lived beyond their abuse. Perhaps survivorhood, she posits, is really another form of victimhood. Just as “victimhood absolves [survivors] from having to decide to have good lives . . . to face up to our own responsibility . . . for changing the world and ourselves” (284), the idea of survivorhood presents another “out” for survivors in that it prevents them from ever forming self-identities defined fully by themselves. “When we refuse healing for the sake of that rage,” Morales says, “we are remaking ourselves in the image of those who hurt us . . . becoming the embodiment of the wound” (284). Rather than strengthening and benefiting survivors, then, the defensive approach of survivorhood to sexuality inhibits them, preventing them from embracing all aspects of themselves as equally important and key to their identities.

Morales next connects this idea to of reclaiming sexuality to the power of the general erotic. She discusses the erotic here specifically in regards to physical, sexual intimacy, as her own experiences have taught her that an inability to accept sexuality as a viable erotic passion is one of the strongest obstacles survivors face in reclaiming and freeing themselves. For survivors, embracing their sexuality in all its dynamics, all its turgid unknowns, is essential if they ever wish to truly live beyond their past abuse. For the general population, celebrating and fully claiming our bodies allows us to recognize the ways society exploits and abuses them; from this recognition, we can work to counteract this exploitation, becoming full people of passion and finally finding in everything we do the “deep pleasure in living” (284) contained in the erotic.



Works Cited

Morales, Aurora Levins. “Radical Pleasure: Sex and the End of Victimhood.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 283-284. Print

Activism Log III

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
28 February 2010

Activism
This was a slow week. I continued promoting the project over Facebook and in face-to-face discussion with friends, but I couldn’t collect any signatures without a petition sheet, which I should receive copies of once tabling starts. I also did a bit of outside research to better understand the statistics and circumstances surrounding the transgendered community. My primary resource has been Deborah Rudacille’s The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights, which I had actually bought this past summer, several months after my cousin came out. I thought I had finished it, but I had stopped reading about two-thirds of the way through. I’ve started reading it again, and I would highly recommend it. It does, from what I can tell, I nice job of discussing key issues in the transgender community and activist efforts, and it has been extremely helpful for me in understanding more about the issue that is central to our project.

Reflection
Class discussion and readings this week focused on violence against women, which is also a major threat facing the transgender community. Violence threatens the entire LGBT community, but the transgendered population is often at higher risk because of the high level of hostility general society presents towards trans. lifestyles. Transwomen in particular are especially at risk for gender-based violence, a phenomenon which stems from the fact that “[c]urrently, negative stereotypes about women of color, poor white women, prostituted women, lesbians, and transgender women all perpetuate the idea, in the wider society, that these women are not worthy of respect” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 263). Hopefully, our project will help foster an environment on the UCF campus that will reduce the threat of violence against the transgender community.

Reciprocity
I was glad of the opportunity to familiarize myself with information about key trans. issues, which will undoubtedly prove useful when tabling begins and I will need to discuss and explain the need for this project to collect signatures and raise support. I am excited for tabling to begin next week; it should be exciting, and it will give me a chance to feel like I am helping achieve something measurable and real.



Works Cited
Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Violence Against Women.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 257-272. Print.

Activism Log II

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
21 February 2010

Activism
This week, my work involved promoting the project. Rebecca created the Facebook group and online petition as planned, and I sent group invites/information to several of my Facebook friends who attend or are somehow a part of the UCF community to make them aware of our efforts.

Reflection
The reading I found most interesting this week was Khan’s “The All-American Queer Pakistani Girl.” In it, Khan discusses her struggle to unite her homosexual identity and her previously-rejected Pakistani one. Because of immense pressure from her family (particularly her mother) and larger society, which, especially in South Asia, “is rampant with homophobia—so much so that most people In South Asia literally don’t have words for homosexuality” (Khan 179)—she has, to this point, embraced being a lesbian member of the LGBT community at the expense of recognizing at all her connection to the Pakistani community. This is, I feel, similar to the experiences of the transgendered community, who are pressured by society to conform to gender identities that may completely contradict their understandings of themselves. To gain social acceptance, they may reject their connections to the LGBT community both before and after transitioning, and in doing so reject a vital part of themselves.

Reciprocity
Because this is my first time being a part of any LGBT-related activism, sending out the Facebook group invites was really my way of “coming out” in support of this community. It was by no means on the same level as coming out as homosexual or transgendered, but it was still a little nerve-wracking, as many of the people I sent invites to were people I knew to be strongly Christian and/or conservative. I did receive some hostility, but, sadly, that is to be expected when dealing with LGBT issues. For me, though, the significant part of this was finally declaring myself an open supporter of something I had kept quiet about in high school because I did not want to risk social alienation. It was extremely freeing to finally, irrevocably become open about something that has, as my feminist identity has developed and my family connections have made it increasingly relevant to my personal interests, become a vital part of how I identify myself from political, individual, and activist perspectives.



Works Cited
Khan, Surina A. “The All-American Queer Pakistani Girl.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 178-180. Print.

This is What We Need to Become to be Serious!

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
17 February 2010

This is What We Need to Become to be Serious!

Legally Blonde follows Elle Woods’ academic journey from sorority sister to savvy-yet-chic lawyer in her quest to win back her ex-boyfriend, Warner Huntington III. Much of the movie’s humor stems from its portrayal of Elle, which consistently shows her as airheaded, flighty, and generally ignorant of the more serious intellectual and social challenges associated with life at Harvard law school. Although Elle emerges at the film’s end a confident, capable lawyer, this transformation requires several major concessions on her part, regarding not only her interests (fashion for philosophy and ethics of law, for instance), but also her understanding and presentation of herself as an individual.

Elle’s grasp on her own sexuality and status as a sexual being is one of the most obvious of these concessions. Accustomed to the more carefree California lifestyle, Elle initially arrives at Harvard very open about her sexuality. Her video application essay is deliberately filled with shots of her lounging in the pool, clad only in glittery bikinis (Video Essay & Exam). Elle knows her physical appearance fills the dominant beauty standard: she is “thin, lean, tall, young, white, and heterosexual, with flawless skin and well-groomed hair” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 208), and she has seemingly no qualms about exploiting her privileged beauty to get her admission into Harvard. The hook succeeds, and the Harvard admissions committee, so distracted by Elle’s physical appeal, overlooks her inexperience and general ignorance of what law school will entail and grants her admission.

After arriving at Harvard, however, Elle’s presentation of herself as an openly sexual being changes noticeably. As her dedication to and success in her studies increase, her wardrobe changes, becoming not only more professional, but also more conservative. A lack of immediate social acceptance at Harvard and conflict with Warner’s fiancée, Vivian Kensington, force Elle to reevaluate her presentation of herself, particularly (in a reflection of her dedication to the fashion industry before entering law school) her wardrobe. Vivian’s style and mannerisms reflect her old-money, New England upbringing; she dresses in muted tones, high-necked sweaters, and clothing that shows off her figure as present, but demure, and clearly off-limits. In short, she portrays a model of the virgin/whore dichotomy women are expected to reflect within themselves, the “central contradiction of the culture” dictating that they appear to “work hard and produce and achieve success and yet, at the same time . . . live impulsively, spend a lot of money, and be constantly and immediately gratified” (Kilbourne 237). Elle sees in Vivian a prototype of the sophisticated, desirable woman: “This is the type of girl that Warner wants to marry! This is what I need to become to be serious!” (“I’m Going to Harvard!”) In her efforts to become “serious” and again worthy of Warner’s attention, Elle abandons bright colors for more respectable black and similarly-dark clothing, her skirts become longer, and her shirts acquire collars and gradually lose the plunging necklines she favored in dresses and blouses at the film’s beginning. While her clothes maintain their fashionable quality, they stop emphasizing her youth and sexual appeal because Elle herself slowly comes to devalue those traits in herself. Her new, restrained wardrobe helps win her social acceptance and respect as a law student, but this new confidence comes at a cost—namely, the loss of her easy confidence in herself as a sexual being, both desirable and desiring, and ultimately not a trait deemed attractive in the dominant culture’s understanding of an ideal woman.


Works Cited

Kilbourne, Jean. “The More You Subtract, the More You Add.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 231-239. Print

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Health.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 207-224. Print

Luketic, Robert, dir. Legally Blonde. Perf. Reese Witherspoon. 2001. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006. DVD-ROM

Service Learning Proposal

Service Learning Proposal
For Equal
(Formerly G.L.B.S.U. of UCF)


Jen Ackerman
Johana Vanegas
Jennifer Smith
Rachel Miles
Alexandria Bergeron

11 February 2010
Professor Nina Perez
Introduction to Women’s Studies, WST 3015

Community Partner: Equal at UCF

Address: P.O. Box 163245 • Orlando, FL • 32816-3245

Contact: Rebecca Marques
786-271-5382
RMarques@knights.ucf.edu

Equal at UCF Community Profile

Mission Statement:
Equal's mission is to provide a safe environment for students to interact and network with each other, engage in social activities, and develop personal character without fear of discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, and to provide support and resources for students who have experienced such discrimination.

Political/ Social Basis:
Equal's vision is a campus environment where GLBTQ students can feel both a sense of self-worth and pride in their individual diversity and a sense of community and belonging, and where all students can expect to be treated equally, regardless of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

Equal strives to educate its members and the university community about sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender issues, and about issues that affect the GLBTQ community and provide opportunities for the personal and professional growth and development of its members.

Equal’s Needs:
To fully utilize the student body, Equal will need all of its volunteers to be active and committed to our vision of equality. To make sure our goals get met, volunteers will have to expect rigorous schedule of deadlines and work. Work will include behind-the-scenes organizing as well as field work of petitioning and tabling.








The following is a proposal to outline the needs, rationale and feasibility for a service learning project to benefit GLBT student body and faculty. The following proposal contains background on the need for and benefits of getting gender identity listed on the Non-Discrimination policy project, an outline of the work I plan to do, the rationale for its inclusion in WST 3015, and a scheduled timeline. This proposal may need to be revised after beginning the project and must be flexible to meet the needs of the both the service learning project and the community partner.

Need for:
Volunteers who are committed to working for a safer campus that protects its GLBT students and faculty. Volunteers will be expected to help in any way possible including: helping promote the event, outreach to other campus organizations to raise awareness, collect signatures, table in front of the union, and do other various technical tasks.

Plan Proposal:
Our plan is to volunteer for Equal at UCF under Rebecca Marques who is organizing the petition and protest of UCF’s Non- Discrimination Policy. As of right now UCF’s Non-Discrimination Policy does not include gender identity under the list of minorities currently covered. We will be tabling, petitioning, organizing and participating in the protest and hopeful addition of gender identity to the Non- Discrimination Policy. This project meets the need of the our Community Partner Equal because one of their goals is to “create a community where gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) students and their allies can feel safe, welcome, and proud, where they can interact and grow with out fear of harassment or discrimination.” Presently the GLBTQ community on our campus is vulnerable to abuse and intolerance which is something that needs to be changed immediately.

Women’s Studies:
Since one of the core principles of feminism is the belief in social, political, and economic equality of all sexes and people, we believe as a group that this project completely encompasses the value and ideals of this course. We are fighting for the protection of this minority, so this group of people feels safe under the Non- Discrimination Policy and on our campus. We are hoping that this project results in more awareness of intolerance, specifically for the transgendered, and an education in equality for all.

Action:
This project has already begun with meetings and will continue with persistent planning and organizing. The first steps of the project include off campus out-reach and contacting those in the greater community who could also support us. Initially the five members of this group will be Rebecca Marques’ main group of volunteers. We will work directly under her and assist her with paper work, petition-making, tabling and recruiting. Each of one of us will have different responsibilities including creating and running the website (event page) for our project, collecting and sending our petition sheets and letters to the President of the UCF, organizing and planning the tabling efforts, running and assisting in the actual protest for our cause, and lastly fulfilling recruiting and promoting for the event.

As a group we will be working under Rebecca Marques who is an active Equal member on the UCF campus. We will need to be devoted and very serious about the cause in order to really achieve the equality we are striving for.

Timeline:
Event page created February 12th
Group Meeting February 15th
Petition forms created and distributed February 15th
to members
Speak and attend EQUAL meeting February 16th
Group Meeting February 19th
Group Meeting February 24th
Informational video February 26th
Video showcase to EQUAL March 2nd
Group Meeting March 2nd
Newspaper article March 8-11th
Group Meeting March 16th
Tabling and signature gathering March 1st- April 22nd
Emails sent to President Hitt March 1st- April 22nd
Group Meeting April 26th
Event (petition turn in) Tentative date April 28th

Activism Log I

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
14 February 2010

Activism
This week involved mainly planning. We met with Rebecca Marquez, our contact in Equal, in the UCF library this past Friday afternoon, 12 February 2010. Although fairly short (the meeting lasted only about an hour), we used the meeting to discuss changes to our project and the general plan for implementing it. We learned that because sexual orientation was just recently added to the Golden Rule, we will instead be tabling and raising support to add gender identity. Mainly, our responsibilities will include tabling in front of the Student Union, collecting petition signatures in our classes, and generally promoting the cause through social-networking—Rebecca mentioned creating a Facebook group and online petition for this initiative, both of which should be useful in publicizing and gathering support.

Reflection
A common point in this week’s readings was our society’s general refusal to accept women’s bodies. For me, this is an especially relevant point when discussing the transgendered community because of the further perceptions we have of transgenderism as being unnatural. If society teaches us that it is unacceptable for women to be larger than stick-thin, how can we expect it to accept a person wanting to change his/her physical anatomy drastically through sex-reassignment surgery so that the external sex and internal gender identity match? As feminists, we cannot help but be conscious of how strongly society pressures women to “feel safer starving than when eating” (Chernik 602), and to ultimately reject the bodies they feel most comfortable in to gain social acceptance. Similarly, transgendered people are often faced with a choice between feeling comfortable in their bodies and genders or feeling socially accepted. From the planning meeting with Rebecca, it seems as though our project will help to alleviate the hostile attitudes that impose this choice on the transgendered and gender-variant communities, making at least the UCF campus a bit safer.

Reciprocity
I am extremely excited about the change in our project focus from sexual orientation to gender identity. First, this means that sexual orientation has already been successfully added to the Golden Rule; hopefully, this is an indication that the Golden Rule committee is sensitive to and supportive of activism supporting the needs of the LGBT community, which would certainly be a positive thing to know going into our activist efforts. Second, while I support gay rights on general principle, I have more of a personal connection to issues surrounding the transgendered and larger gender-variant communities. About a year ago, my cousin came out as trans. My family whole-heartedly supports her, but we worry constantly for her safety, especially because violence against transwomen is so frequent and aggressive. For me, this project will be a way to ease my way into LGBT activism, as well as a way for me to feel like I am actually doing something to help make the world, in some small way, safer for my cousin and the general transgendered community.



Works Cited
Chernik, Abra Fortune. “The Body Politic.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 599-603. Print.

Beauty (Not Quite) Standards

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
8 February 2010



Body image is one of the most prominent obstacles the feminist movement faces in its attempts to empower women. As members of a patriarchal society, we are inundated daily with images and messages that instruct us to accept as natural “women as objectified sexual property valued primarily for their usefulness to men” (Johnson 74-75). We are told that certain traits create a standard of beauty, one that is “defined as thin, lean, tall, young, white, and heterosexual, with flawless skin and well-groomed hair” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 208). The issues with this beauty standard are obvious and plentiful: it marginalizes and others women of color, older women, queer women, and women of body types other than thin. Just as importantly, however, the very term “beauty standard” is an issue in and of itself, as it implies that this type of beauty is something normal, something that every woman should have little to no difficulty achieving and maintaining—either on her own or with the help of beauty aids like cosmetics, diet programs, and clothing—even when reality couldn't be more different.

The Estée Lauder ad promotes one such beauty aid: a radiance lift makeup crème designed to restore “the radiance, the moisture, the resilience of youthful skin.” The purpose of the product alone marginalizes and demeans women. To be beautiful, it implies, a woman must not age; by consequence, all women who do choose to allow signs of aging to show are not beautiful, simply because they do not appear young. This “standard” is both impossible and nonsensical, most noticeably in its refusal to acknowledge that aging is a natural, inevitable process. Further, the youthful appearance it defines as beautiful strips a woman of visible experience and the social respect that accompanies it, instead causing her to appear vulnerable and naïve—two stereotypes commonly associated with youth—and ultimately putting her at an automatic disadvantage to any men of similar age she encounters, who will likely treat her as the age she appears, and not the age she actually is.

The accompanying images are just as problematic. First, examine the model. Her hair is pulled back, and her neck and shoulders are completely covered, drawing all attention instantly to her face, which presents a perfect visual representation of the Western standard of beauty. Her skin and eyes are light; her lips are pink and full, parted to create a deeper impression of naivety and openness; her eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair are all perfectly groomed; her complexion, presumably through the help of the advertised cosmetic, is smooth and bright, radiant. She embodies every standard of beauty women are pressured to hold themselves to, and she does so flawlessly, seemingly effortlessly—perpetuating the impression that this type of beauty is standard and easily achievable. In reality, photographs and ads like this are often “airbrushed and digitally enhanced” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 208). But because they are presented without disclaimer, we accept them as attainable standards, ignoring both the marginalizing implications doing so has for any woman who doesn’t fit the thin, fair-skinned, youthful model and the fact that these standards are, in most cases, completely unrealistic, and not something women should pressure themselves to be.

Next, examine the makeup itself. As pictured, the cosmetic comes in three shades, all of them designed to match light to medium skin-tones. According to the product’s extended web advertisement, it actually comes in fifteen shades, although, again, they all appear designed to match relatively lighter skin-tones, which clearly excludes a large population of women. Combined with the fair-skinned appearance of the model and the ad’s failure to mention this range of shades (limited as it looks), the product seems targeted primarily at White women or women with similarly lighter skin, even to the exclusion of women of color. Which begs the question: if a youthful complexion is something all women need to be beautiful, how are women of color supposed to obtain it and feel confident, socially-accepted, and pretty? Apparently, we can conclude, not with the help of Estée Lauder.



Works Cited

Johnson, Allan G. “Patriarchy, the System.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 68-76. Print

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Health.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 207-224. Print

Resilience Lift Makeup by Estée Lauder. Advertisement. Estée Lauder Official Site. Web. 7 February 2010.

Resilience Lift Makeup by Estée Lauder. Advertisement. Playbill January 2010: 22-23. Print.

Well Done, Sister Suffragists: The Suffragist Movement in Mary Poppins and Iron Jawed Angels

Rachel Miles
Jeannina Perez
WST 3015 (Introduction to Women’s Studies)
1 February 2010

Mary Poppins follows the activities of the Banks family, consisting of George and Winifred Banks and their two children, and the titular nanny’s efforts to reunite them. Both George and Winifred are, for the duration of the film, shown as largely-absentee parents: George is consumed with work at the bank, while Winifred spends her time at suffragist protests and meetings, and the movie makes it clear that those activities are just as described. George’s work provides steady income and allows the household to continue, and is accordingly shown with general respect (even if his verging-on-obsessive devotion to it is not). Winifred’s work, on the other hand, is consistently shown with a mocking air. She speaks of women tying themselves to stagecoach wheels, serving time in prison, and throwing spoiled food at the prime minister, but always with a gleeful, cheery tone. For her, the suffrage movement is a game, entertainment in which to indulge herself before returning home and again becoming the dutiful and subservient wife. With Winifred as the only glimpse of the British women’s suffrage movement Mary Poppins shows us, we are led to believe that all suffragists were the same—flighty, upper-class, White women with only a passing dedication to the cause as a social activity, not a political movement, and often at the expense of their family’s stability. In the end, Mary Poppins’ intervention forces Winifred to realize that her place is at home with her children, and she both metaphorically and literally ends her time a suffragist. Her suffragist sash is used as a tail on her children’s kite and she puts her involvement in the movement to the side, leaving us with the impression that the suffragist cause for British women, while disruptive to the functioning of families and larger society, was short-lived and generally ineffective—even when history tells us otherwise.

Conversely, Iron Jawed Angels presents a more serious, historically-accurate view of the suffragists. The film focuses on the later years of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement, specifically the portion spearheaded by Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party (NWP) she would eventually found. The suffragists here are no flighty socialites; on the contrary, women’s suffrage is, for them, everything. It is their source of employment and their greatest passion; the thing they crave most, and the thing they are willing to suffer the most for. They eat, sleep, and breathe it, such that it is more than a political cause: it, and the burgeoning women’s equality movement, is their cause for existence, and they suffer significant social and penal consequences for making it so. Unlike the punishments Winifred Banks happily sings about, though, Iron Jawed Angels shows these consequences, which range from verbal attacks at public demonstrations to being force-fed in attempts to derail Alice Paul’s in-prison hunger strike, as intense and grueling. In further contrast to Mary Poppins’ image of suffragists, Iron Jawed Angels depicts the movement’s multiracial nature and the racism that accordingly followed, specifically Ida B. Wells’ refusal “to march at the back of the 1913 suffrage parade” in protest of “the ‘back of the bus’ politic of the women’s movement” (Seely 41). This inclusion of women of color introduces issues modern feminism is still attempting to reconcile—namely, the perception that feminism is a White woman’s movement, and the continued (albeit diminishing) reticence within the feminist community to properly consider the impact of race as well as gender on a woman’s life experiences. Overall, the film leaves us with the definitive knowledge that women’s suffrage was hard-won, and that, while women may presently have the right to vote, the larger women’s movement is far from over.


Work Cited

Seely, Megan. Fight Like a Girl. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Print.

Introduction Post

My name is Rachel Miles. Currently, I am seventeen years old and a freshman in my second semester at UCF. I am a declared English Lit. major, and I intend to minor in Women’s Studies, which is my primary reason for taking this course. I’m also hoping to double-degree, but I’m undecided yet as to what other major area I would study, or even if that would be the best action to pursue. After finishing my gen eds last term, I’m using this semester to explore potential areas of interest outside of English literature: I’m taking courses in Women’s Studies (this one and Feminist Theories with Dr. Vest, which looks to be an experience), creative writing, and anthropology, and I’m now just hoping that they all stay as exciting as the first two days of class have suggested they will be.

My interest in Women’s Studies comes from my general upbringing, which emphasized the importance of being open-minded and of questioning things I didn’t understand. I’ve done more of the latter over the past few years as I was exposed to opinions other than my parents’, primarily through school, and I’ve developed opinions that I think they probably rather wish I hadn’t; they’re relatively accepting people, but their views are significantly more conservative than I’m discovering mine are. I’ve realized, for instance, that I understand human sexuality as a fluid concept and identity, and that I’m a huge fan of the Kinsey scale. I am a fervent advocate of gay marriage and rights, and I hope to become more involved in activist organizations that work in support of those while at college. I’ve also reached a point where I don’t need religion, which was a scary place to be for a while as a person who was raised Christian and is presently living with three very religious roommates. For me, though, I don’t see a need to believe in a higher power to validate or find meaning in my existence; I’m not definitively saying that one doesn’t exist, and I don’t believe the institution of religion to be the source of all evil and corruption on this earth that many people I’ve talked to seem to. I just know that for me as an individual, religion is unnecessary and, quite frankly, a waste of my time. I’ve been told it’s a phase, but I really hope it isn’t. I like knowing that I’m comfortable with my life as it is, and with the idea that what I live out here is all I get and the only thing that matters. It makes me feel like I have a purpose more than religion ever did, and I’m more than okay with that.

That said, Women’s Studies specifically is a relatively new interest point for me. I was first exposed to the field because of a friend, who recently came out as transgendered and who has begun transitioning into life as a woman. While I had known before her coming out that gender and sex were separate, I understood that distinction only as a vague concept, and never as one that I considered beyond which term was the correct one to use in writing papers for school. After my friend began her transition, however, I started reading more in the field of gender studies, particularly related to transgenderism. What I have read – which, admittedly, isn’t much – has been fascinating, and I had hoped to find courses in gender studies at UCF so I could begin some directed study of the field. The closest option I found was the Women’s Studies program, and I figured that this semester was as good a time as any to start studying it, so here I am.

What I most want to get out of this class is, I think, the ability to better understand my own position on issues related to gender studies. I suppose I’ve always been a bit of a feminist, simply in that I never accepted the idea that I as a girl couldn’t or shouldn’t do the same things boys could. Beyond that basic idea, though, I don’t really know much about feminism or general Women’s Studies. I’ve started reading feminist blogs and papers to learn more about that aspect (I’m a fan of research, which is probably a good thing, what with being a student), and I’ve found myself agreeing with the points they raise on most issues. But I can’t definitively say that I understand why I agree with them, or if I genuinely do agree beyond the urge to support an opinion most other feminists seem to, or even why they’re issues in the first place. I’m hoping that by the end of this semester, I will have learned enough about Women’s Studies and feminism to not only analyze situations for potential gender issues, but also to defend my position on the issues I find. I don’t expect to end this course, or even later classes in Women’s Studies, with definitive knowledge on all aspects of what, if anything, defines gender; the very nature of gender as a social construct that accordingly changes with society makes that something I don’t believe anyone could achieve, no matter how many years of study s/he undertakes. I just want to understand the basics of gender well enough to explain why we should, as citizens in a society that claims to be conscious of equality and acceptance, care about the issues surrounding it, and why I choose to care about those issues the way I’m increasingly finding I do.

(That was significantly more than 500 words, and I'm sorry. In any case, I have read and understood the syllabus for Introduction to Women's Studies, and I agree to all expectations stated therein.)