unfinished business

I found this article from the New York Times about the horrifying delays in testing rape kits.  Nicholas Kristoff writes that although victims must undergo the long and invasive testing process soon after the incident happens, tests can sit around for months to a year without being tested.  How can this can be the case?  Authorities claim that rape cases can be murky, but the fact is that these are crimes that are going uninvestigated.

I found this portion of the op-ed particuarly interesting:

Some Americans used to argue that it was impossible to rape an unwilling woman. Few people say that today, or say publicly that a woman “asked for it” if she wore a short skirt. But the refusal to test rape kits seems a throwback to the same antediluvian skepticism about rape as a traumatic crime.

I suppose that we can only hope that shedding light and attention onto the situation can prompt authorities to ensure that these cases aren’t looked over.

an interesting little fact

from  NYTimes.com’s Magazine Preview: an Interview with President Obama by David Leonhardt

Did Michelle ever make more than you did?

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, sure.

Probably only for a brief time, because I was working three jobs most of the time that I was in the State Senate. I was still practicing law and I was still teaching. So when you kind of put everything together, I think I was still making a little bit more. But when I started campaigning for the U.S. Senate and I had to drop some of those jobs, then she carried us for a couple years.

…we’re trapped?!

“The creation of sexism and ‘male as norm and female as deviant’ was constructed because we recognize these as categories and thought patterns. But in doing so, we’ve trapped ourselves into believing that this is the way it is and cannot image a world where things are otherwise.”

-Dale Spender

vagina!

A friend of mine sent me the link to wordle.net, a website that takes texts and turns the words into fun little pictures.  The more frequently a word is used, the larger it will be in the wordle picture.  Because of that, I thought it’d be fun to put in my paper on Teeth. 

the oppression of female language

For many psychoanalysts, this history of the oppression of female language and the aggrandizement of male language begins with the phallus but has crucial development in the puberty stage.  As with most psychoanalysis, the phallus plays a large part in the formation of language for it “embodies patriarchal law of the culture [and] its basic meanings refer to the recurring process by which sexual difference and subjectivity are acquired.”  Among other things, the lack of penis for a little girl creates a negative access to “language as the embodiment of cultural law” and disrupts her development with language whereas a little boy’s penis allows him full access to language.  After accepting her lack of penis, the female enters into the Oedipal stage where the restriction on her speech and the social sex difference is realized. 

 

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Kaplan, 58

Kaplan, 58.

the silence of women

However, this silence that categorizes women in discourse is not the actual absence of language.  Instead, it is the historical relegation of typically female linguistic activities to things such as gossiping, keeping diaries, and informal correspondence. Because these activities are within the private realm and generally amongst women, the discourse of women is not often seen or discussed.  These are not activities that garner much prestige and are often referred to disparagingly.  In addition to the relegation of typical women’s language to these lower forms of discourse, the absence of women in high culture topics such as “politics, poetry, science, and legal discourse” perpetuates the notion of women being unable to grasp and take control of language and express themselves freely.

 

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Cameron, 4

a history of female language

To fully understand the new movements towards female empowerment through profane language, a history of female language must first be discussed.  Language is perhaps the most important form of human communication and through its acquisition, humans are able to integrate into society and become social beings.  But part of this social nature of language is that it also reinforces gender and class stereotypes and situates each person into their respective categories.Silence has long been used to describe feminine discourse and represent the ways in which women have been denied the opportunity to express themselves freely through language. 

 

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Kaplan, Cora. “Language and Gender.” The Feminist Critique of Language. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1998. 56.

 

Cameron, 3.

Lacuna, Inc.

I found this article in The New York Times about researchers who have opened the door to editing unwanted memories.  Immediately, one of my favorite movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came to mind.  I know that this is not exactly in the realm of this blog, but I just had to share this with my loyal readers.

I am on the fence with a future that provides such procedures, but I understand the possible benefits of it.  Nevertheless, the film gives us the opportunity to begin to think about how powerful memories can be and whether or not is it possible to interfere with them.

Click to see the a paper of mine on Michel Gondry’s BEAUTIFUL film after the jump

a work in progress

below is the introduction to my newest paper on profanity… any thoughts?

In her essay “Dirty Words,” Luisa Valenzuela writes, “the mouth was and continues to be the most threatening opening of the feminine body.” Although some who have the image of vagina dentata in their minds may disagree, Valenzuela’s statement provokes a worthwhile discussion on female language. Certainly female discourse has changed over the years but there are still barriers that have yet to be broken. In particular, there is continued widespread unease with women’s use of obscene language and even men’s use of it in front of women. However, there have recently been movements to recreate the space of profanity and other obscene language by women claiming it as their own and even creating female-centric obscenities. By first looking at examples of women who use “masculine” obscene language, this paper aims to analyze the success of this method. Mainly, is it possible that women can “upset the core of phallogocentric, paternalistic discourse” by using something a language initially created to demean them? The argument will then turn and focus on the creation of a new language of profanities that aims to replace the male obscenities and empowers women.

Likeness

“The fear manifested by primitive or superstitious persons at the thought of having their likeness taken is commonly explained as a dread of magic. The idea is that anyone who possesses a likeness of someone else has him in his power, for everything that he does to the likeness happens to the person himself.” (336) From Otto Fenichel’s The Scoptophilic Instict and Identification from Visual Culture: The Reader

 

Read with the idea of mean girls and the representations of girl cliques in the media, this quote from Fenichel becomes very pertinent in explaining the cause of the homogeneous look among a group of girls. This possession of power by looking alike works in multiple ways. By having others replicate her look, the leader of the group is able to possess power over her followers who look towards her for inspiration. It is a viewable representation of her power over the actions of the other girls. This manifestation of power can often be seen in the make-over scene where the clique transforms an outsider into one of their own. By replacing her style with their own, the group places their own likeness on her and therefore is in control of her actions.

The other way in which this works is that by replicating the leader, the followers have the ability to eventually replace her. By slowing becoming the leader, the follower can eventually “possess” her status without requiring much of a change in the social climate.

The last way that this possession of power works is that the group as a whole is able to possess power over non-group members who idolize the girls and wish to be them. For the clique, this creates a sense of power by knowing that the are able to control the actions of other girls who attempt to replicate their likeness. In the case of “Gossip Girl,” young Jenny Humprey vies to become one of the popular girls at her private Manhattan high school. Eventually, due to her scheming she is able to become the leader of the group. However, it is noteworthy that as she gains acceptance into the group, her wardrobe noticeably changes to imitate that of current group leader Blair Waldorf.