Biases

Body learning: anxiety edition

now-im-a-superheroIn my notes from one of the first days of class, I have written, “embodiment -> we know because of our body; ways of knowing that exceed rationality.” This simple concept – that our bodies are sources of knowledge – is something I’d never consciously thought about, but as this idea about embodied knowledge started to sink in, I realized that my head has been learning a lot from my body recently.

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I started the week with particularly active butterflies in my stomach, for no particular reason. I assumed that they would ebb and flow as usual. But they didn’t; they stayed.

The next couple of days, my body started experiencing anxiety in different ways. My heart would race. I wasn’t digesting my food. I would shake a bit. I cried more than usual. I always felt on edge, like I was just about to have a panic attack but without the relief that can come after one. Continue reading →

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Yearly Exam

I silently sign my name on the sheet telling the front desk staff sitting at the computer that I am here, and sit down in a generic, but expensive-looking chair.

Aiming for comfort.

Aiming for comfort.

Women are glued to their copies of Parenting or Marie Clare. A couple sitting cattycorner to each other look up at me, and then glance back at each other talking. An instrumental version of Memories from the musical Cats plays softly in the background. I don’t have a magazine, so I take up Candy Crush. After 10 minutes the woman at the front desk calls my name.

“Hi, Amelia! We just need to get a urine sample from you, so if you could just go down the hallway and to the second door on the left and leave that for us in the metal cabinet, then go to room number two, that’d be excellent!”

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Online Gaming and Gendering Invisible Bodies

Anyone who frequents or even casually plays online games are likely to be familiar with the stereotypes and vitriol surrounding the “girl gamer.” If she exists at all, which very often she does not, she is in your games and responsible for your team’s loss. She’s probably just a “casual” gamer who should stay out of the “big leagues.” She probably isn’t a real gamer at all.

tumblr_m4s3tvjXWd1qfq9sno1_500[1]Am I doing it right?

Of course, on the internet, and in particular in the forum of a game where you have maybe an hour to construct your gender to a group of strangers who will likely never know your face or body or even name, being a “girl gamer” is less about bodies and more about gendered expectations. Bodies certainly are involved with those expectations, though.

TW for slurs, mentions of casual binarism, mentions of homophobia

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Extreme Bodies, Extreme Defiance [Warning for discussions of vomiting]

Every morning I make the same breakfast sandwich: two eggs and cheddar cheese between two slices of toasted bread. As a kid I never ate breakfast, but as an adult I look forward to it. Breakfast not only tastes good, it also gives me energy I need to start my day.

Today isn’t like the other days. On any other day, I would wash down my breakfast with a glass of milk. Today I feel brave, defiant; today, I feel like taking a risk.

Before making my breakfast sandwich, I open the fridge and peer inside. I could have milk, with its comforting pH of almost 7. It’s not much different from water, which in its purest form is a perfect 7. Courage, or maybe stupidity for all I know, floods me as I reach past the milk and pull out a bottle of orange juice.

‘Yes,’ I think to myself, ‘This will work.’

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Women in Public ≠ Public Property *TW assault*

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the issue of women’s bodies being viewed as public property. From cat calls to groping, it seems that many men have a clear sense of entitlement to women’s bodies in public spaces. This way of thinking and acting is incredibly prevalent in our society, and the cultural encouragement of this behavior is especially disturbing. I recently watched several videos by Stuart Edge and Andrew Hales that completely condone this type of behavior by harassing women and then playing it off as a fun joke.

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He called me a waste

The guy I went to prom with called me a waste the day I came out to him. He looked me in the eye and said this with a smile on his face as if it what he were proud of what he just said. This wasn’t the last time something like this had ever been said to me. On multiple occasions I have been called “selfish”, “unfair”, and “a waste” by a number of men because of my sexual orientation. And on every one of these occasions I ask them all the same question, “Why?”. Continue reading →

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Do I Control My Hair or Does My Hair Control Me?

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I feel I can safely say that the majority of women I have crossed paths with throughout my lifetime have, at one point or another, completely obsessed over the locks on their heads. What a woman does or does not do with the “filamentous bio-material” that grows from follicles in the skin on one’s skull seems to carry heavy social messages to the world around us.

I believe my hair tells a long and continuous story. The really ridiculous and really awesome things I have done to my hair are like little mental chapter markers; the hairstyles I’ve had are connected to memories of personal struggles and important events that have taken place throughout my lifetime. On one level, the long story of the obsessions I’ve had with my hair and what I have chosen to do with it is purely personal. Yet on another level, a much larger level, this post about the relationship I have with my hair can reflect the many struggles and external pressures that a large number of American women share.

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Why is Dominance so Important to Men

  • In today’s society it seems as though rapes are becoming more common and every time there is a story on the news or in the paper the alleged rapist is always a man that is described be not very muscular. Rape for men seems to be a way for them to have the power that they may not have in their everyday life and this is the only way that they see will achieve it.                                                    
  • Sex looked at today as a sacred moment between a couple when a man can have dominance over the women however, for those men who are not given the chance to express their dominance do whatever they deem necessary. Many men that want to demonstrate their dominance will either rape women while they are sleep or drug them and then rape them. Whatever their tactic is it is all for that sole purpose of having dominance over another person.
  • In the DMV there have been many reports of rape and when the men who are committing crimes are caught their reason for committing these rapes is because women in their past have laughed at them or they just never felt as though they were respected as men and therefore by becoming a man they rape so that the women are able to see and feel who is “in charge”. Having dominance should not be that important to a man but because of the way society has painted it to be men will go through drastic measures just to feel what that dominance feels like.
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Fan Fiction and the Tourist Approach

Because a bunch of people have asked, here is a link to my final paper on mpreg, or male pregnancy fan fiction. Please be gentle- it’s not a prefect paper, and only scratches the surface on this subject, theoretically and otherwise. In the end, fan fiction represents a fascinating place for intersectional theories to do their thing- I wish I had more time to dig deeper on it.

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Club Affairs

        ImageThe media consistently portrays an image to women that they must be sexy in order to attract men. Magazines and television shows depicts images of women wearing short skirts, high heels, heavy makeup, and shirts that show their naval in order to be sexy. The media and popular culture alike encourage women to flaunt their cleavage, silky legs, buttocks, and etc. Normal and acceptable club attire requires women to wear a tight short dress or skirt with high heels. These women are constantly being bombarded by sexual advances from men who assume these women are inviting this attention because of the way they are dressed.  

                When I started going to clubs at the age of eighteen, I wore the expected scandalous clothing and thought nothing of it because it was normalized. I would have felt out of place if I covered my body, while everyone else was showing off their assets. One night at the club, I was wearing a short and tight zebra print dress. The dress hugged my tightly and I was wearing very tall black high heels. I received a lot of attention in that dress from men mainly and I began to feel confident (not that it should have). One man in particular was originally conducting himself in the appropriate manner by asking me to dance and inquiring if I wanted water. As the night drew on, we still continued to hang out at the club. Once the night was over he offered to walk with me and my group of friends to my car. Before I approached my car, this guy held my hand tightly and forcefully tried to kiss me. Scared I started yelling and one of my close guy friends rushed to my aid. When my guy friend asked what he was doing he stated that “it looked like she wanted to do than just dance with at the club”( because of the way I was dressed). At that moment I realized the very message that I thought I had to uphold of being sexy due to the media almost cost me my safety.

                In this country women are under a great deal of pressure to be feminine and one of the ways to achieve that femininity is to have a sexy appeal. Many women get blamed when they are rapped in this country because people claim if “she hadn’t been wearing that outfit, no guy would have assaulted her” yet the media claims in order to attract a mate one must appear sexy. That statement directly correlates to blame the victim phenomena. No woman invites rape because the act is nonconsensual in nature. The effect of being perceived as sexy in this country has both negative and positive connotations.