A woman's place in her own body

Kelly Oliver sheds light on the insufficient representation of female reproductive choice in the media.  Still heralded as "choice" Hollywood film and television continues to corner women into choosing life over abortion.  Oliver recognizes that in no way does the media or popular culture ever glorify choosing an abortion.  Movies that condone abortion rarely, if ever,  allow the audience to visibly see the woman's pregnant body.  I found this to be a fascinating connection and one that I had never noticed myself.  By showing the woman's pregnant body before she has an abortion, certain sympathies could arise in the audience that generate sentiments of protection for the child.  Similarly, those women who go through abortions in a film end up more frequently becoming psychologically terrorized or die from either medical complications or other freak accidents.  Association of abortion and death go beyond the fetus and extend directly to the mother, despite a third common association that frequents less of the big screen and more of the States' legal arena: the physical separation of mother and fetus.  Some states have recently tried to pass legislation on allowing the fetus a separate defense from the mother, oftentimes resulting with the mother becoming locked away.  Oliver's best success in this article is to point out the contradictions regarding female reproductive abilities in both the media and legal realms.  It seems as though women and the idea of "choice" are viewed specific to the situation.  If a woman wants an abortion, it would not be the "right" choice because that child is part of her and at the same time, that child remains a separate being that has it's own individual rights.
Oliver makes note of the way a woman's choice remains not her own.  Despite discussion and changing support for pro-choice legislation, choice is still a questionable reality.  A woman's womb is a dangerous place because the moment a girl hits puberty and her reproductive cycles begin, this part of her body becomes the property of other entities.  Oliver asks her readers to consider how we can restore a part of someone's body back into personal possession.

Pregnancy, Excess, Abortion in Films

I really liked this article about pregnancy and specifically how it is portrayed in contemporary film. The article details all of the ways that pregnancy, womanhood, and abortion are portrayed mostly inaccurately in Hollywood films. Pregnancy is portrayed as an excess, and abortion is almost never a viable plot option. Films often co-opt the rhetoric of pro-choice movements about a woman's right to choose in order to give the female character the right to choose to keep the baby. This made me think, I wonder what a successful Hollywood film that portrays and woman choosing to have an abortion would look like? I wonder if it is even possible, now or in the near future.

I really like the way she commented on race and how the racial make-up of the women who are portrayed in these films is directly related to social anxieties about race. Hollywood  and Hollywood executives specifically are made up of primarily white males, so of course using pregnancy as a the main plot of a film is a crucial move towards gender-inclusivity, it is still blatantly obvious how whiteness permeates these sort of stories about accidental pregnancies. She states that, "In this context, Hollywood's preference for middle-class white women choosing to have babies rather than abortions, could be interpreted as a racist anxiety over the 'browning of America'." These portrayals are inaccurate because white women are actually choosing not to have children more frequently, and also abortion is more accessible to those who can afford it. I definitely agree that choosing not to portray an accurate image of the racial make-up of American pregnancies points to a sort of fear by some of the continued mixing and changing of the racial make-up of America as a whole. To portray stories about women of color experiencing unplanned pregnancies would indeed carry a lot of political and cultural context that I doubt older white men, who normally direct and produce these films, would be able to portray accurately and compellingly.

On Choice

Kelly Oliver problematizes what we think of as a woman's "choice" as it relates to pregnancy, abortion, birth, and family planning in general in Chapter 3 of Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture entitled "Pregnancy: Choice and Excess." Oliver is quick to note that for the vast majority of women in the world, the choice to start a family in the first place is not even really a choice due to financial conditions (Oliver 52). Hollywood, Oliver argues, romanticizes a woman's choice to have a baby after accidentally becoming pregnant. What is more troubling to me, though, is the cultural taboo surrounding abortion and the implication that having an abortion will be some sort of emotionally traumatic event for the pregnant person. If that is how popular media approaches the subject of abortion, how can a woman really have a right to choose if every cultural message tells her abortions are either immoral, last resort, emotionally taxing, or simply too expensive to go through with?

The rhetoric surrounding pregnancy is very problematic to me in regards to the choice of the woman. We say phrases like "She got pregnant," as if the act of getting pregnant is a one-person task. Assuming the pregnancy in the first place is the responsibility of solely the person with the uterus not only removes the existence of the second person involved, but also obfuscates the true complications of deciding to keep a baby after an accidental pregnancy. Oliver also discusses the rhetoric of "accidental" versus "unplanned" (Oliver 54). Debates like this put motherhood at odds with feminism, which I think is the biggest takeaway from Oliver's piece. The feminist rejection of forced motherhood does not necessarily constitute a rejection of motherhood in general. On the other hand, feminist pro-choice rhetoric is also not a rejection of maternity or maternal instincts. Cultural conversation surrounding pregnancy, motherhood, and abortion needs to change to realistically accommodate the very real choice that women face between having a fulfilling career and raising a family (which even in today's society is still the primary responsibility of the woman). The work-life balance many speak of is virtually impossible in a climate that treats abortion so contemptuously.

Philosophical Feminism and Pop Culture 3

This week’s chapter is on the confluence of reproductive politics and feminism. The authors touch base on the two present dichotomies of motherhood; one termed baby hunger and the other termed fertile myrtles. The idea is that women who are privileged enough to have and execute career goals and other social opportunities may feel pressured by society, particularly in their older years, to have a raise a child (baby hunger). Conversely, lower class women (particularly minorities) may be robbed of this opportunity as it’s believed that their reproductive abilities are far too uninhibited and in fact need to be tamed using medical or governmental intervention. This leads to the victimization of certain groups of women who are sterilized without their knowledge and typically against their will.

I personally find it fascinating that the very same act (childbirth) can be construed and interpreted so differently depending on who is birthing the child. Lower class women on government assistance may be demonized for having children, whether or not the general populace is aware of their actual ability to take care of the child or not. In addition to that, white women of lower socioeconomic classes are typically not ridiculed as much as their non-white counterparts (despite being from the same social class). There is also the issue of single parent child-rearing (often the mother) that is looked down upon in poor black homes but a wealthy white women who chooses to have children outside of marriage may be lauded for her ability to balance both motherhood and a demanding career. 

Excesses of Pregnancy

This essay highlights the concept of the fetal paradox. The fetal paradox are representations of the fetus as separate from the maternal body, and the maternal body at odds with it. Oliver makes the interesting point that the paradox is a product  of the emergence of ultrasounds that allows us to see the fetus thereby establishing the fetus as the other within the maternal body. The establishment of the other within is the cause of  Hollywood's  depictions of pregnancy as either the fetus or the mother.  There is a need for the subject to be autonomous so it is impossible to view both the fetus and the mother as one which is why debates on reproduction poses the rights of the fetus as separate from the rights of the mother. This creates a narrative that either pro-life i protecting the rights of the fetus, or pro-choice protecting the rights of the mother leaving no middle ground.

Oliver describes a the plethora of stigmas regarding abortion, including terms such as, bloody, dangerous, monstrous,  and unethical.  They are exacerbated by within the Hollywood film industry. Oliver references the  Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days that exposes the consequences of the illegality of abortion. In films like these the overall message is if a woman decides not to have an abortion, she will be happy with some sort of fairy tale ending. However, if a woman contemplates whether or not to have an abortion she will die, suffer, or have a miscarriage. 

Choice & Excess

This weeks reading is centered on “pregnancy as a choice and excess”. I found it interested how the reading explored whether women do indeed choose to become pregnant or not. Even if a woman wants to get pregnant and has sex to become pregnant there is no guarantee that she will become pregnant, which therefore suggests there is always an unpredictable element to pregnancy. Furthermore, the reading also delves into how societal pressures can influence a woman’s “choice” to become pregnant whether she realizes it or not. Moreover, tabloids that remind women, especially older, career-driven women, that their biological clock is running out could lead to “baby hunger”. Baby hunger is described as an excessive craving to have a child. This is contrasted against the depiction of fertile myrtles who conceive with ease. 

Furthermore, this reading also touches on the intersections between women’s issues and issues of race and class. It is not everyone that can put off having babies; moreover, it is not everyone that is portrayed by the media as delaying pregnancy. On television, it is typically white middle class women that want to have babies at a later age. Whereas, women of color are seen as fertile-myrtles, that probably live in poverty and receive welfare. On television, women of color are portrayed as not having the option to choose when they get pregnant. In addition to this, films about women of color that accidentally become pregnant usually start off on negative note and continue on a negative note. Whereas, stories of white women accidentally becoming pregnant may start of negatively, but they usually end on a positive note. This ties in with Hewlett’s disgusting comment that “white women have a duty to produce babies because they will produce better babies than uneducated nonwhite women”. This implies that who is giving birth influences the eugenics view of whether that birth will improve the human population or not. When women of color give birth, or even before they give birth, they are criminalized as these demonic figures set out to destroy the economy through signing up for welfare. Furthermore, reading this has made me reflect on the fact that in California, between 2006 - 2010 around 150 women were forced to be sterilized in Californian prisons. Reports have indicated that there was a racial component to whether women were selected to be sterilized or not (in California women with Spanish last names were sterilized at a higher rate than women of any other race). In this case, these women had the choice of whether they wanted to become a mother or not taken away from them. 

Also, I was made to think of Dispossesion when I learnt about the “fetal paradox”. “Two in one” is viewed by some as “excessive”, which leads to either the mother, or the baby being dispossessed. Typically, if the fetus is shown then the maternal pregnant body is not shown - the mother is displaced from an image that she is essential to. 

Humor and Power

The first chapter of Philosophical Feminism and Pop Culture entitled "The Seriously Erotic Politics of Laughter" made me consider heavily the overlaps between sex, power, and laughter. The authors Willett indicate that "various forms of humor or irony might be a more appropriate means of philosophical suasion than fact or argument," which I interpret to mean that humor's effect on "oppressive networks of power" can be more effective than more conventional means of awareness-raising (Willett 16). I also wonder what the relationship is between provocation and eroticism, as the authors imply that they go hand in hand with one another. In a very Foucaultian sense, this essay makes the argument that the right joke can dismantle oppressive norms in ways that are subtler than we even know.

For example, the authors imply we ought to interrogate our own "will to power" through humor and that the "ironic voice should not be viewed as a distraction from the analytic mindset of social critique" (Willett 26). For me, the most compelling version of this argument is that humor is a means by which to address oppressive power structures and even ridicule them in a way that is not paternalistic. The Willetts' critique lies in the implicit idea that some feminism becomes self-righteous; whereas humor diffuses one's own privilege because all people are fair targets.

Finally, this essay made me ponder the relationship between jokes (not just any jokes, of course, but ones that explicitly deal with social problems and inequalities, i.e. rape jokes) and standpoint feminism. I've recently been thinking about what types of jokes certain people are allowed to make, and whether identifying as an oppressed group makes it permissible to make jokes about that oppression. There is obviously no clear answer to this question. However, there is an argument to be made that such jokes from a specific standpoint rather than another may be more constructive in helping us understand that "self-determined norms and social bonds [are] both limits and sources of identity and power" (Willett 28). That is, there is value in testing a joke for social benefit; if it is effective when told from the oppressed perspective -- if it is "successful" (which is itself a contestable term) -- then perhaps it has contributed to social change.

Humor and Stand Up Comedy

I read the first two essays on cultural humor and stand up comedy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In The Seriously Erotic Politics of Laughter by Cynthia and Julie Willett and Black Female Crossover Comedy by Naomi Zack address the social complexity of comedy.  There has to be some truth in a joke, otherwise it becomes unrelatable and therefore uncomical.  Cynthia and Julie Willett discuss the nature of turning harmful prejudices and derogatory stereotypes around on the audience through humor, however it is necessary for those who suffer from both to be the comedian in question.  If a member of another class or race attempts to joke about the suffering of another, the joke becomes less of a relatable commentary and more of an ignorant validation of social norms.  Only the sufferer can joke about his or her suffering.  Naomi Zack addresses black stand-up comedy in more depth than the Willetts especially regarding the intricacies of comedy which make it successful. At the end, Zack concludes her piece noting the important incorporation of both repelling and humorous material into a joke.  This duality is often prevalent in black stand-up both male and female.  She notes that with it comes the successful creation of psychological buffers to pain.  Both pieces discuss the somewhat uncomfortable nature of eroticized humor and the interesting psychological effects that such discomfort may bring to an audience.

These two pieces thematically address the nature of language.  As we have often discussed in class, they ask the subliminal question: who has power over certain language?  What kind of diction are black people allowed to use and white people are not and vice versa? What about women and men? It brings to mind the fundamental goal to reclaim certain words and phrases by marginalized groups.  The nature of one's social stature marks the differences that come with culutre.   However, is strict cultural variation a goal, or even unavoidable? Or perhaps, are we moving towards a culture so complex and integrated that there will come a point when the rules of comedy become obsolete and we will one day laugh at the eggshells so many tip-toed around (or didn't) in the past?

Laughter!

I really enjoyed this weeks reading on “The Seriously Erotic Politics of Laughter: Bitches, Whores and Other Fumerists”.  The reading explores the idea of being the subject of the joke to be the person that produces the joke. This ties in well with the Lugones and Spelman reading that touched on the idea of insiders and outsiders. In that the reading the writers spoke about the idea that the stories of outsiders are told by the insiders. Furthermore, even though these insiders belong to a different race and ethnicity than they outsiders they believe that they have the authority to speak on their behalf.  I see parallels between this and the idea of women often being “outsiders” to a joke and having jokes told about them and their stories. Through comedy women have the power to transform the words, behaviors and norms that have been used to oppress them into something that can be liberating. In essence, there is a swap in the insider-outsider dynamic.

However, the book does express that these jokes are not always jokes for jokes sake they can be “democratic and not reactionary for sheer fun” (24).  Furthermore, in many cases a stand-up comedy routine has sparked social outrage. For example, last year Hannibal Buress went on stage and called Bill Cosby a rapist during his stand-up routine. He managed to integrate this very serious accusation into his hilarious set. Even though the audience laughed at his comments serious conversations were re-ignited after the show about Bill Cosby’s rape allegations and more women came forward stating that they were also raped by Bill Cosby. Even though this is not an example of female comedian, it shows the power and place comedy has in the political sphere.

Furthermore, I found it interesting when the reading explored the figures of the “playboy bunny” and the “chauvinistic pig”. In particular, the idea that the word “pig” was first used to speak about the police; however, many white feminists may be unaware of that. As a black woman, I think that it is important that these interrelationships are exposed and reflected upon, so that one movement does not undermine the other. 

Philosophical Feminism and Pop Culture 1

This week we address some of the themes present in the first few chapters of Crasnow’s book titled Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture. In chapter one, she addresses the erotic politics of humor in feminism. She talks about how humor and feminism are often viewed as mutually exclusive categories, in part due to the image that comes to mind when one thinks of a feminist (a no-nonsense serious faced woman) and also due to the implicit silencing that revoking humor from the feminist discourse does. In her words, “This common failure to recognize the importance of humor for feminism might be expected given that all too often feminists themselves have been treated as a joke while humor has seemed to belong to a more exclusively male terrain” (15).

The implication of this, she also mentions, is that the removal of humor from feminist discourse impedes upon the power that can be invoked if feminism were given its due credit in the erotic sphere and the comedic sphere. As whole groups of feminist comics are ignored, including Tina Fey and Roseanne Bars, in an effort to divorce feminism and humor, the confluence of both the erotic sphere and the comedic sphere cannot adequately produce the power they would otherwise garner and effectively disperse.

Poltics of Laughter

The Seriously Erotic Politics of Laughter by Cynthia and Julia Willett analyze the power dynamics behind comedy. They argue that humor is a powerful tool for feminists. They reevaluate comedy from harmless fun to powerful communication, a way to “unravel and disrupt conventional norms through ridicule” in order to “free our thinking” (16). This argument has great validity in it that it reestablishes communicative norms, and has the potential to further feminist ideas into traditionally non-feminist arenas. I see great parallels with the comedian Dave Chappelle. Dave Chapelle is able to poke fun at racism, faulty politics, and prejudices of people while at the same time showing how ludicrous these ways of thinking are. 

In principle I agree with the authors. Comedy is essential to the proliferation of the voice. However, it is important to note that not everyone has the power to use comedy in that light. If we look at modern day late night Tv hosts and Comedy News such as the Jon Stewart show, women are never hosting the show or are in a support role. I see a lot of potential in this idea of comedy and feminism however, until Ellen DeGeneres is not the only comedian with a television show, this potential cannot be realized. 

Chapter 19: Conundrums of Solidarity

I chose to focus on chapter 19 due to its intriguing title, Conundrums of Solidarity. Anthanasiou poses the question, "How are we to struggle for a desire to exist and to be free, when this desire is not exactly "ours," in fact can never be exclusively ours". Today's current events such as the Ferguson, Israel & Palestine Conflicts, as well as other racial and gender biased incidents there is always a call for some form of solidarity with the victims. While at first glance solidarity is a noble and just cause, Anthanasiou implies that solidarity is an, "injurious yet enabling mode of concerted action in conditions of dispossession". She backs up her argument by citing the Israeli Palestine conflict. Anthanasiou looks at the many forms of solidarity among Palestinian locals, Palestinian Israelis, Israeli dissenters, and international activists. While these citizens have similar aims, they also seem to ignore or disregard the contributions of the Palestinian gay community. For example according to Butler, the Palestinian queer community is against the Israeli occupation,in favor of giving rights to expelled refugees, discontinuing land confiscation, and compromising the rights of Palestinians who are partially recognized as citizens of Israel. However, they are still not recognized alongside their peers in the struggle.

 In essence the concept of solidarity is somewhat of a double edged sword. Anthansiou states, "Solidarity is unavoidably interwoven in the normative violence inherent in the ways we come to imagine and recognize a viable life in accordance with given prerequisites of intelligibility. At the same time, though, it somehow offers a space for exposing and perhaps exceeding such prescribed limits".  This is an interesting dynamic in that solidarity offers a remedy to dispossession but also provides a foundation for its dis-possessive tendencies. Butler offers a solution to this problem. Solidarity is not simply about being equal or interdependent but it is about "expanding our affective alliances beyond claims of similitude and community".

I thought this article was especially relevant to current movement in the US today. For example although minorities still fight for equality within the United States gay minorities are often asked to stand in solidarity by the very people in these movements who at times seek to ostracize and leave them out.

Chapter 21

I chose to read chapter 21, which I called “Spaces of appearance, politics of exposure. The main thing that really caught my attention with the chapter is when Butler describes the symbolism of assembled bodies in the public domain. She describes this presence as meaning “we are still here”. She unpacks this statement further by stating, “We have not yet been disposed of. We have not slipped quietly into the shadows of public life: we have not become the glaring absence that structures your public life" (196). I thought that this was a powerful description of what it means to be truly present. It made me think of the Mike Brown protests. Through protesting against how disposable black lives are in society, people were also making another statement through being visible, which was “we are still here”. This illustrates that performative politics allows people to embody the same thing they are fighting against though visibility.

Moreover, right at the beginning of this chapter, Athanasiou sums up the entire book as discussing the cycle of being “doing, undoing, being undone and becoming, as well as multiple forms of giving and giving up” (193). The fluidity that we have discussed in class with regards to gender and sexuality are also relevant to continuous cycle of dispossession. Even if we may not currently be dispossessed, or think we are disposed, we are always under the constant threat of being dispossessed.  We are dependent on others for our place in this cycle of being undone and becoming.

Furthermore, in this chapter there is talk about a “body politic”, which ties in very well with everything else we have read from Butler. This body politic is used to represent the idea that when people demonstrate in the street even though one person speak it is not that they are speaking on behalf of everyone, but instead they are asserting “presence as plural”. This reminded me of what we read last week as Butler previously mentioned that “I” is social, which can be tied back to my previous example of the black lives matter protests. Unity comes about through recognizing that there is a shared struggle. A more powerful unity can come about when the group decides that they will transform that struggle into resistance. It is this “body” that allows protests such as the “Un(occupy) Albuquerque” movement to come to life.

Chapter 20

Athanasiou and Butler support their political ideologies with a thematic continuity of literal space and occupation.  One sees this especially in this chapter regarding the literal spaces in society that invite or exclude certain individuals from gaining a literal seat at the table of debate and conversation. Butler and Athanasiou criticize the inherently capitalist nature of universities.  Once a space becomes dependent on the market, it immediately cuts out certain sectors of society that cannot enter based on economic circumstance at minimum as well as the other social exclusive tendencies that foster such economic divisions.  The issue of higher education has been rampantly discussed for a long period of time.  There are obvious problems with it beginning with the mere price tag attached to a B.A.  By attending a private university like Emory, I know that I am validating the absurdity of such institutions.  I recognize that perhaps I should have chosen a public education in order to prove the importance of equal opportunity for all, but then again, I recognize that I chose Emory over a public institution for reasons that are important to my beliefs on education.  However just as the two authors discuss, can these institutions of higher education even teach the tools that dismantle the master's house? If certain individuals cannot even access a literal seat at the table of debate, what kind of truth can we access in these debates at all?

Dispossession 21

Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou discusses spaces of appearance and politics of exposure in their last chapter of the book. In fact, this chapter does indeed appear to be a culmination of the performative politics that they discuss at length throughout the book. Spaces of appearance often take the form of the performative arena, as they allude to, and exposure to this performative arena has its own political implications. For example, the undocumented worker who wants her rights and humanity to be recognized must face the risk of exposure when she makes herself visible; sometimes this risk is more ideological in that she can face political and rhetorical backlash, and other times this risk is more literal with the fear and threat of deportation. Another example is that of a transwoman who wishes to have her rights respected and her humanity recognized but must risk exposing that she is a transwoman; not something that every transperson wishes to do (especially after a complete change or shift form their previous gender). In this way, the marginalized group must determine whether visibility, or in this case, exposure will lead to the desires political results or whether the ramifications of visibility will interrupt the gains experienced from doing so.

This reminds me of one of Ortega’s earlier readings on the visibility of minority women in feminist discourse. On the one had the need for minority voices and experiences to be included in feminist discourse (and subsequent policy) comes at the expense of making these identities painfully aware of just how marginalized or “different” they are. One cannot engage in discourse in an attempt to include differing identities until the recognition of these identities as “different” is made. The politics of this exposure can be both beneficial to the wider scope of feminist understanding but also marginalizing as it remains complicit in the notion of difference.

DIspossession Chapter 20

A few points made in Chapter 20 of Dispossession caught my attention. First, the chapter discusses "the marketization of higher education" (Butler, Athanasiou 189). I've never thought about knowledge as a commodity before, but this chapter made me reevaluate the sources of my knowledge. I wonder if what Butler is referring to contributes to classist notions about education. For example, the marketization of formal education (i.e. a private university education) contributes to the designations of "skilled" and "unskilled" labor. So, those with university bachelor degrees qualify for "skilled" labor, while those performing working class jobs, such as an employee at a body shop, are considered hierarchically less "skilled." I think designations like that frame our conceptions of personhood in general. Knowledge is a source of power in our society, and those with access to more knowledge receive material (capitalistic) benefits in ways that others do not. The only way for knowledge to "begin...radically to circulate outside the university" is for institutions to stop viewing paying for an education as an investment, or people as sources of economic gain (Butler, Athanasiou  190). Knowledge ought to be a public good.

This chapter's discussion of "prevailing market standards" reminded me of the Ortega eading. That is, the reason why certain people are selected out of the education system is more than just for financial reasons (Butler, Athanasiou 192). For example, most literature curricula are English-language writers who are usually white. This is because the "prevailing market standards" designate those particular books and authors as economically valuable to study, whereas books written by people of color are underrepresented in curricula.

Finally, I connected this reading to Emory's recent announcement that it will begin offering privately-funded financial aid to undocumented applicants. Citizenship as a barrier to education is another way in which the commodification of knowledge (wherein some groups have a monopoly and others don't have access for reasons out of their control) harms certain groups but also ultimately harms our collective conception of knowledge. My feeling is that formal education ought to be accessible to everyone in the same way that knowledge ought to be a public good. I suppose there is a lot of room for debate about what constitutes an "education" and what constitutes "knowledge."