Uncategorized

by

Docile Bodies and Stimming

The reading in Docile Bodies reminds me greatly of the disability acceptance movement and modern strides in autistic advocacy.

Docile Bodies describes how society seeks to control individuals by controlling how they move their bodies. The written work focuses mainly on people and general, and then the differences in how it may present for women and men. I will be focusing mainly on their comments on humans and general and how it may relate to autistic people.

“A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved” – Foucault, Docile Bodies, pg.136

Autistic people often have similar experiences of their stimming being shunned by members of authority, peers, family, and strangers. Receiving strange looks, biting comments, or disappointed speeches in response to moving their body in the way they felt fit. Though modern ABA therapy is stated to help clients learn to manage their stimming, and not eliminate stimming completely, it can be said that the way in which medical professionals have treated stimming is less than ideal. Stimming is seen as a disadvantage in social spaces, a way of making yourself stick out like a sore thumb, even sometimes interpreted by strangers as “performing disability”. Masking autistic traits is a way of fitting in as a docile body.

Many Autistic advocates and content creators have advocated for the freedom to stim and posted videos of stimming to help normalize the behavior to non-autistic viewers. It is important that if we ever feel inclined to judge or frown at someone moving their body, how they see fit, we reflect on whether that’s something we actually care about them doing, or if we’re reflecting the docile bodies message that was pushed onto us.

by

Turns Out Nobody Cares What I Look Like Sweating

strong body builder man with that tattoos and a terrible mohawk hair cut in a sassy pose smiling is the cable machine doing lateral pull downs and the meme says wow I see the workouts are paying off you look great

About five months ago I started my “great lock-in” aka me starting my weightless journey Again!! I was tired of how I looked and wanted better for myself physically and mentally, so I decided to get my lazy butt up and go to the gym after not being consistent for a few years. I didn’t expect to feel so envious and self-conscious while working out for the first time in a while. I was looking around at others that were working out and comparing my body to them, or comparing how I was working out versus how they were. I felt like I wasn’t doing things correctly, simply because I was getting my workouts from TikTok and Instagram and just trying to copy what the “gym influencers” were doing.

Even though I was feeling like this I tried to keep pushing and put those thoughts to the back of my mind. I wanted to focus on making myself better, and I knew that was gonna be part of the process fighting through the stigma and shame of being judged, and reminding myself that I do belong there and that I actually can succeed.
When I first started attending the gym, I would wear baggy clothing to try to hide my appearance, to take some of the attention off me. Even though people probably weren’t staring at me, I felt like they were. That ties into the idea of the panopticon the feeling that somebody is watching you even if you don’t know if they are. But wearing those clothes wasn’t comfortable, especially the hoodies. I started noticing my body overheating when I wore them. I knew I needed to make changes to what I was wearing, and that ended up putting me one step closer to the confidence I have now. Being able to wear clothes that I’m comfortable in made me realize that just because I’m larger and have more meat on my bones doesn’t mean I can’t wear what smaller people are wearing.
After switching the kinds of clothes I wear, I started gaining more confidence in the exercises I was doing, and I began to see improvement after a while. I noticed that I was losing a couple pounds after a couple months of nothing major. But my body started looking different, my face looking slimmer. And I was like, “Hey, this hard work I’m putting in is paying off.” Seeing those small improvements took me to another level because I was like, “Oh, I am doing this. I can do this.” Nobody was in my way but me.

Over time, my confidence just kept building. Now when I go to the gym, I don’t care what people think. I do the exercises I want to do, no matter if I look crazy. I’m still gonna try them and perfect them the best I can. Nobody else is gonna do the work for me. Nobody else is gonna boost my confidence. And honestly, nobody is even shaming me, no one has ever come up to me and said I don’t belong there. It was really me having this internal battle with myself, getting in my own way with that little voice in my head telling me I shouldn’t be there.

by

The Feminist Message In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

A few weeks ago, due to my GWST major, I had decided to watch the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. After thoroughly enjoying the movie, I realized that some of it’s themes were being discussed in our CSST class. One of the themes that seems evident in Marilyn’s character is Cartesian Dualism. This is the theory that the mind and body are separate. The idea that the body of a human is simply a distraction from the depths of their mind. This idea is one that could be applied to the two characters, Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell). In Jane Russell’s character, we see that she is perceived solely as a sidekick or obstacle to the gorgeous and the blonde Lorelei. Before diving deeper, Gentlemen Prefer Blonde’s, is essentially about two showgirls who go on a trip to Europe after Lorelei gets engaged to her rich fiancé. Ms. Lee’s father-in-law, concerned about the woman’s intentions, sends a private investigator to spy on Lorelei’s whereabouts throughout the trip. Eventually, The P.I ends up falling in love with Dorothy Shaw, Lorelei’s best friend. Though being a pretty generic love story, the film does good in displaying the double standard between men and women as well as the villanization of women who value their bodies. The phrase “gold digger” that is used by men, against women (despite the fact that men have created and continue to fuel that system), is always shown in the media as a means to make an audience sympathize with a man. In many cases, this is a harmful practice. However, in the movie, Lorelei is more often than not transparent about her goals. In a conversation with her father in law, she explicitly states, “I don’t want him for his money, I want him for your money!” She uses the airheaded blonde persona that men have used to fetishize women with, in order to make men fall in love with her.

Though she’s quite intelligent and is more of a pragmatist than anyone, men refuse to see that due to how little they think of women. She, along with other women, is perceived through her beauty instead of from what lies within. More specifically, her mind and experience as women is disregarded as if she exists to be only a shiny trophy. On the flipside of that coin, Dorothy Shaw–the less desirable and more logical best friend. Though always being seen by men as this woman who is constantly overshadowed by her best friend, she is secretly a naive and sexual woman. She is the complete opposite of Lorelei: A “lover girl” with no regard for a man’s financial stability. We see her naivete when she can’t help but fall in love with the P.I, despite being made aware of his underhanded behavior. While Lorelei uses her beauty because she’s aware of its value and of the politics surrounding it, Dorothy thinks with her heart and a lustful mind. All of which is overlooked due to society’s inability to see women’s minds through their bodies though the mind is far more important.

by

docility, masculinity and the chilling effect under an increasingly authoritarian world

I’ve been thinking a lot about masculinity and systems of power. I think it’s interesting how society views men in the military as very masculine and strong, both strong minded and strong physically. In class we talked a little bit about how systems of power create docile bodies. I think its interesting how such strictly disciplined and hierarchical environments really reinforce rule following. They often have humiliation and subordination as a punishment for not adhering to conduct. All of this creates a very docile person. Docility = ease of control.

Another topic that the reading docile bodies talks about is the concert of a panopticon, where people act as if they are always being watched because theres a possibility that they are. I feel like we are all personally feeling… watched. As students, faculty, in our jobs, schools, by the current administration. A couple times we have seen in class where Dr. Kate stops herself and adjusts her wording. This is also called the ‘chilling effect’ where individuals or groups refrain from engaging in expression because of targeted laws and punishment.

These are just a couple ways that existing systems and current events create docile bodies.

by

Wrestling with body image

Through all my life, the sport I did was wrestling. I did it as a kid in elementary school where I was very skinny and didn’t weigh much and I did it in high school where I was not the size or weight that I wanted to be. Weight has always been sort of an issue for me because of how I would see myself and compare me to the people around me like my brother who has a similar body type but is skinnier and more athletic or my best friend who might be shorter but is far more athletic. I went from skinny in elementary school, to heavier in middle and start of high school and then back to skinny and then back to heavy where now it’s sort of in the middle. Wrestling is an amazing sport and an amazing way to get in shape but it is also the easiest way to get an eating disorder. When the main focus of a sport is to be as low of a weight you can to get the best chance at winning, even if the coaches tell you not to, you try to lose a lot of weight and that’s what I did. In two years of doing the sport in high school, I went from about 185 to 160 to 170 and then all the way down to 150 and I know for a fact that I did not do it in a healthy way.

Now the reason why I went through these fluctuations was not just because of the demand of the sport but the culture and the people around me. I’ve once seen a person whose weight class is 113 get called fat for eating lunch and that’s just the norm. And with personally experiencing this culture, I became very accustomed to it. I would laugh along, make jokes to other people and even start joking about it with my friends outside of wrestling but inside, it just hurt. I truly lost my appetite. During that time, I lost myself in the culture. I wouldn’t eat for extended periods of time, I would over work myself and then I would eat as much food as I could in this constant cycle where I lost my love for food. I had conditioned my stomach and myself to not need the food anymore and it truly was my brain telling my body that we needed this. Until finally senior year, I was just done. The impact of the sport and the culture on my body was too much so I felt that to make a union between my body and my mind, I had to take a step back. And even though sometimes I may still focus on my weight and I may still have these feelings in the back of my head, I still keep trying and that’s all that matters.

by

Softball Lesbians

I came out as a lesbian to my mother in 2015 when gay marriage was legalized and she was surprisingly unsurprised. Ever since then I’ve wondered why she wasn’t surprised, since I thought being femme meant no one could tell I’m gay. So, recently I asked her, ‘Were there any signs when I was a kid? Did you ever think I’d be a lesbian?” and she answered ‘yes’.

One example she gave that perplexed and amused me was, “You loved softball.”

The softball lesbian stereotype is not unique. There are also stereotypes about female hockey players, soccer players, etc. being lesbians. I don’t believe these stereotypes are totally unfounded, because when I watch the Olympics, I recognize my LGBT sisters on the teams and doing commentary. I see them on the basketball court, in the soccer field, flying across ice hockey rinks. This causes me to reflect on my own relationship with sports.

My theory as to why lesbians are drawn to sports like softball is because for a short period of time we are totally free from the male gaze. I left every game with dirt on my pants from sliding in the sand and my hair knotted and sweaty from being tied up and tucked in my cap or helmet. This was liberating as a catholic school student forced to wear kilts and ‘sit like a lady’ all day from elementary to middle school. We had to constantly perform traditional femininity to avoid being ostracized or ridiculed by classmates and other parishioners. Despite being a lesbian, I was socialized to appeal to the male gaze out of fear. Being around a lot of boys and men made me self-conscious and hyperaware of every movement I made because being too sloppy or aggressive got me nasty looks from male classmates and even adults. I carried this self-consciousness into gymnastics and cheerleading. Even though I am hyper-femme, I’ve never felt petite, demure, and graceful, like the expectation in patriarchal catholic parishes.

Before softball, I did gymnastics and then for about 3 weeks or so, cheerleading. I was terrible. I hated it and my teachers didn’t like me much either. I did not possess the same grace as the other girls in gymnastics and cheerleading did. I was an overweight, inflexible kid who noticed on day one that I looked nothing like the star students in those classes. But when I started playing softball, I embodied it fully. It felt so good to throw my whole body into a swing, feeling the crack of the bat slamming into a softball, and seeing the ball soar to the outfield. I was giddy the day we were taught how to slide to a base. The dirt on my softball pants felt like a trophy every time I slid.

I’m sure none of my experiences with sports and patriarchy are exclusive to lesbians. However, the brief reprieve where gendered movement and hyper fixation on being ‘pretty’ falls away can feel like home to queer women and I believe this is why so many of us love softball.

by

A New Breath

Recently, over the summer, I began trying out sprinting and running. I’ve never really enjoyed the idea of doing cardio; what could possibly be so enjoyable about running in a circle or running long distances? Nonetheless, I gave it a shot anyway, and to my surprise, it was one of the best feelings imaginable. Don’t get me wrong, the actual running part was horrible. I felt like I was going to collapse at any moment, but the feeling of not giving up and completing what I set out to do at the first point was an amazing feeling that I just wanted to run after (no pun intended). What amazed me the most, however, wasn’t the liking I took towards running but how my body kept adapting. I would avoid taking the steps to classes because I hated the feeling of being out of breath, but the stairs no longer caused that reaction out of me. I began to experience things differently, with all the running I was doing, I noticed that I was more eager to go eat then before. I noticed how I started preferring taking longer routes to my classes just so I could get more steps in, and overall, I noticed how much happier I was. As my body adapted more and more to longer distances and faster paces, my perception of time and distance changed. I could judge things based off how far I personally could run in a certain amount of time, if I could beat a car in traffic to its destination, and my sense of rhythm seemed to get better as well. My perception of the world around me changed drastically and it felt like I caught a new breath of life.

by

What The Hell Are You On About?

I have always been made brutally aware of how I look and how much space I take up. From an early age, I would be taunted for my widened belly, dark skin, and braided hair, but always praised for my silence, attention, and “proper” speaking. Within that, I was taught to internalize these statements, and I unfortunately projected them. It was what I thought was right and wrong, and in being a child, I wanted nothing more than to be virtuous. So that’s what I did, I told myself loud was wrong, small was right, and obedience is everything. That internalized hatred festered within me so much that just my reflection could bring me to tears. As life went on, I learned to expect to be deemed stupid, incapable, and a waste of space. I learned to make myself smaller, hunching my shoulders, not eating in front of people, never looking anyone in the eye, you know, the whole shabang. It wasn’t until 13, the first time i realized that all I have is myself in the world, so why spend so much time hating it?  Why was I made to think these things? Who fed these ideas to me? No other than the people who wanted me to remain docile. They knew that if I unlocked my mind and started thinking I could be more, I would be more. Nothing is worse than a woman, let alone a black woman, with a voice. No one wants people to expose how there are still confederates in the white house and Nazis running the polls, never. So what do they do instead? Pump the media full of slim bodies, obedient wives, and diet pills, give people A LOT of small issues to deal with, so we forget the big ones. Much like how Charlie Kirk gets shot and all of a sudden everyone forgets about Epstein, one small assertion to distract from the life-changing facts. As a matter of fact, I didn’t take up ENOUGH space, and I was TOO silent. So while you are busy judging people on their looks, or hair, or whether or not they lost the 3 pounds they were supposed to, while our nation is literally on fire, I ask you:  What The Hell Are You On About?

woman looking at her sad eye in a broken mirror
Photo by Ismael Sanchez on Pexels.com
by

Burping, Modesty, and the War in her Head

The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: download.jpg

Why? Why does she have to sit up, sit right, sit tight and not take up space?  Why just because she has a larger chest does she have to “cover up” because god forbid there be a man around and stare at her.  But also yeah she should sit tight and right because that’s who she is. That’s what she was taught but that’s also what she believes.  Not wanting to fit into that docile body stereotype but also why not.  What if she wants to be that 1960’s nun wife.  What if she wants to cover up her body so that other people don’t have that access to her.  These two conflicting worlds colliding together in her brain not knowing which one to conform with.  Does she say forget societal norms and burp in public because she can or does she hold it all in til she gets behind closed doors.  Does she want to actually go against society though because what’s so wrong with wanting to cover up and be pure and be content with not being so out there.  But why is this such a struggle?  Why is this such a debate? Why can’t she just live her life without having the weight of society and her own beliefs and her own thoughts on her shoulder.  Who cares what the world thinks?!!  Actually she does. But she doesn’t. What if she was raised differently?  Would she still think like this, would she still think that these two ideas of her body still couldn’t become one identity.  What If her thoughts would be different or beliefs would align with the worlds or the stereotypical society. 

by

Her Body Versus His Name 


*Spoilers for the halfway point of the play John Proctor Is The Villain* 

Last year I had the pleasure of reading John Proctor Is The Villain for the first time. A new play written by Kimberly Belflower about girlhood, friendship, and what it means to believe women.

My whole life I have been told that I am too much, too loud, and most of all, “too dramatic.” and I’m not alone. Women are taught that their bodies should be smaller and unseen. Women don’t get to take up space; that’s for the boys. Belfower sees and explores this thought through her cast of high school-aged girls discussing the Crucible in their drama lit class. 

Now, in case you don’t remember anything from reading The Crucible in high school, I’ll catch you back up.
Arthur Miller created a famous example of a “tragic hero.” A man who gave up his life to protect his good name. He chose not to lie and be killed rather than say that he was a part of the witchcraft. 

And then there’s Abigail, she is 16 and works for John Proctor and his wife. Abigail likes to go out into the woods with her friends and dance. When some men caught onto this they accused the girls of witchcraft. Abigail is quick on her feet and rapidly throws the blame onto someone else when the witch trials first begin.

When John Proctor is questioned about her use of witchcraft, he originally lies for her because of the affair/ feelings he has for Abigail. 

Usually, Abigail’s story is perceived as one of a manipulative and conniving girl who sets out to destroy John Proctor’s reputation…Does this sound familiar?

Belflower sets her piece in a one-stoplight town in Georgia in the heart of the MeToo movement(2017).

Let me give you a run down of the characters from the scene I will be looking at:

Shelby: Quick thinking 16 year old. Her mouth often moves quicker than her thoughts. She’d been out of school for a month or two and no one knows why. She just returned earlier this week.

Carter Smith: Fun-loving English teacher. Cares about his job; the students love him.

(The other students are important to the plot but are less so important to the text I am showing you. )

Our bodies and the space we take up is fact. They stay with us for eternity. From a young age we are told not to take up space and that we can’t because we’d be stealing it from men. Oppressors want our space and are terrified of what will happen if we take it back. This is the same concept that Iris Young states in Throwing Like A Girl. The feminine space is supposed to be enclosed and confining. But it doesn’t have to be.

We’re told that a man’s reputation and his “future” are more important than our facts. We shrink ourselves and our experiences so that way the people who hurt us can go on and be happy. His name and reputation means nothing in reality. He can move and change his name and no one will know what happened.

However, our bodies can’t do that. Our bodies remember.

In this play, Carter took Shelby’s space and girlhood away from her, and we get to watch her fight in taking it back.

If you are interested in reading the whole play, here is a link to a PDF:

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-notes/24356801 🙂