Somehow we can't stop defining the unknown by referencing the known, or better known. Just as using the language and the vocabulary of the patriarchy is the only way for women to communicate, whether it suits them or not, so too must the instructor mention D. H. Lawrence as a touch point to explain the period in which we find Maria Cristina Mena. Perhaps not must, but does, though the touch point is quickly retracted, because Mena can stand on her own terms. And while I certainly have heard of D. H. Lawrence, I know less of him than I now know of Mena.
This work, "Marriage by Miracle," is the first work we have read which is explicitly fiction. I use explicit, because we have read works that have what could be considered fantastical elements with religious origin, though they were true to the authors' experience. Did she write in English, or was this a translation? It must have been written in English, to have included so precisely a few Spanish words and phrases. Do those words and phrases emphasize the otherness of the author?
As a tie between time periods, between the age of superstition and the rise of medicine, "Marriage by Miracle" begins like a fairy tale, complete with a mysterious suitor and a 'princess' locked away. When the beautiful young woman is not allowed to marry her suitor until her elder, less attractive sister marries, the setting is ripe for a magical resolution. However, many years pass before the young sister finds a solution.
The solution is not magic after all, but rather, the marvels of modern medicine. Plastic surgery will make her older sister marriageable! At this point, Mena brings religion into the story. The elder sister, Ernestina, argued that “it would be the height of impiety to have [her face] made over by a surgeon of beauty from the United States” (Mena 120). The possibility of being able to change the body that is given by the Creator is temptation. And yet it is also just the evolution of what has been done with cosmetics and wigs for centuries. One more step farther in the seeking of beauty and perfection.
But not just beauty and perfection. In class, the instructor brought up common medical ideas of the time that included a classification of personality traits based on the shape of the nose. Naturally, the nose typical of whites was the highest status, while those belonging to Hispanics, Asians and Blacks were thought to denote, essentially, servile traits. Weakness. To move from a wide flat nose, like Ernestina had, to the nose she gained, “a nose of dignity” (121), was to transform to a more civilized person, in the perception of so-called modern medicine.
The surgery itself is concealed by a lie of piety, to conceal the trick from the girls’ mother. And once the bandages come off, Ernestina does not thank the surgeon, but God. Nor does she wish to marry, though her ‘miracle’ does persuade their mother to let the younger sister marry at last. Mena’s story illuminates the changing landscape of medicine, religion and beauty.
Showing posts with label Beyond the Means Available. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beyond the Means Available. Show all posts
Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, has sufficient content to be the subject of many academic papers. Since I will be approaching it in a mere blog entry, I will limit my scope to the part that most intrigued me, which I brought up in class when it came time for my turn to speak.
First, an interesting aspect of the ebook edition that I used. I thought I had a hard copy, I know I had one at one point, a gift from a friend, or perhaps a loan never returned, but when I searched my book shelves I couldn't find it. So I found a good deal and bought it for my Kindle. At the end of the text, Atwood has a section called "Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale." To me, it is clearly meant to be read as a part of the text, because it is dated well in the future (22nd century). But when I finished the last bit before that section, the electronic edition determined that the book was over and gave me a pop up asking if I'd like to review the book before moving on to another file.
It seemed to me, from the class discussion that was before my mention of the note, that some of my classmates, whether reading hard copy or electronic, had not read the note. And I wondered what impact the note is supposed to have, and whether the text is incomplete without it. I think that the note turns the interpretation of the text to a new angle by framing the story that has just been told in a way that both adds and takes away from the daring act of a woman speaking.
Through the text, the narrator does not explain how it is she comes to be telling this story, how it has come to be in a written form when the society forbids writing to women. The reader can guess that the author is using a device, allowing the reader to be inside the head of the narrator. But the text itself contradicts that interpretation, especially as the narrator references a reader on page 268: "By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are." This is not the author dipping into the consciousness of her character, but rather a character speaking, telling her story to a future reader.
Another interpretation could be that after the ending of the book, the narrator did manage to escape and write down her story. But if that were the case, then why end so abruptly? The story ends with the narrator taken away by the secret police. She is told to trust them, that they are not what they seem, but no word of her fate is given. It is only the existence of the told story that provides proof that she was not killed immediately.
And in the Historical Notes section, Atwood gives another explanation. She calls the preceding story a found collection of narration on cassette tapes, hidden on tapes containing music until her voice breaks in after a safe interval. For me, this at first seemed to be a more powerful presentation of the woman speaking. Framing the words as recorded speech rather than written words gives them a more powerful voice. Perhaps, the solution for a woman to write her body is to speak it. To allow the emotions of voice to flutter and yell without the fence of words holding her in.
But a classmate brought up another aspect of the Notes section. The Notes are a kind of academic lecture, studying the authenticity of the recordings that became The Handmaid's Tale. What, then, does the fact that this woman's voice was transcribed, choices and interpretations made by others, mean for the emotional authenticity of the word? And, as I have already complained about the fact that Available Means often had male translators for works translated to English, how could I also not complain at the fact that the narrator's voice was transcribed by two male professors? (I admit that it is possible that Professor Wade is female as no reference is made to sex, but the first name is Knotly and I am going to stick with the interpretation of male, as I will for James Darcy Pieixoto). What does it mean that this woman's "accent, obscure referents and archaisms" (302), not to mention the order in which the text is presented, were all interpreted by men?
And yet, the men are characters, as is the narrator, all written by a woman. Atwood creates a depth of interpretation in many different aspects of this book. I've focused on one for brevity, but there are so many other pieces, even just in the Notes that I could dig into. For example, why do the academics assume that the narrator has told the truth about her "name" (Offred) when they try to authenticate? If she lied about every other name, why wouldn't she lie about that one, and especially in such a symbolic way. To me, the name is not Of-Fred, but Off-Red. She has taken off the red of the Handmaid when she tells this story, no matter what might have happened after the recording.
First, an interesting aspect of the ebook edition that I used. I thought I had a hard copy, I know I had one at one point, a gift from a friend, or perhaps a loan never returned, but when I searched my book shelves I couldn't find it. So I found a good deal and bought it for my Kindle. At the end of the text, Atwood has a section called "Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale." To me, it is clearly meant to be read as a part of the text, because it is dated well in the future (22nd century). But when I finished the last bit before that section, the electronic edition determined that the book was over and gave me a pop up asking if I'd like to review the book before moving on to another file.
It seemed to me, from the class discussion that was before my mention of the note, that some of my classmates, whether reading hard copy or electronic, had not read the note. And I wondered what impact the note is supposed to have, and whether the text is incomplete without it. I think that the note turns the interpretation of the text to a new angle by framing the story that has just been told in a way that both adds and takes away from the daring act of a woman speaking.
Through the text, the narrator does not explain how it is she comes to be telling this story, how it has come to be in a written form when the society forbids writing to women. The reader can guess that the author is using a device, allowing the reader to be inside the head of the narrator. But the text itself contradicts that interpretation, especially as the narrator references a reader on page 268: "By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are." This is not the author dipping into the consciousness of her character, but rather a character speaking, telling her story to a future reader.
Another interpretation could be that after the ending of the book, the narrator did manage to escape and write down her story. But if that were the case, then why end so abruptly? The story ends with the narrator taken away by the secret police. She is told to trust them, that they are not what they seem, but no word of her fate is given. It is only the existence of the told story that provides proof that she was not killed immediately.
And in the Historical Notes section, Atwood gives another explanation. She calls the preceding story a found collection of narration on cassette tapes, hidden on tapes containing music until her voice breaks in after a safe interval. For me, this at first seemed to be a more powerful presentation of the woman speaking. Framing the words as recorded speech rather than written words gives them a more powerful voice. Perhaps, the solution for a woman to write her body is to speak it. To allow the emotions of voice to flutter and yell without the fence of words holding her in.
But a classmate brought up another aspect of the Notes section. The Notes are a kind of academic lecture, studying the authenticity of the recordings that became The Handmaid's Tale. What, then, does the fact that this woman's voice was transcribed, choices and interpretations made by others, mean for the emotional authenticity of the word? And, as I have already complained about the fact that Available Means often had male translators for works translated to English, how could I also not complain at the fact that the narrator's voice was transcribed by two male professors? (I admit that it is possible that Professor Wade is female as no reference is made to sex, but the first name is Knotly and I am going to stick with the interpretation of male, as I will for James Darcy Pieixoto). What does it mean that this woman's "accent, obscure referents and archaisms" (302), not to mention the order in which the text is presented, were all interpreted by men?
And yet, the men are characters, as is the narrator, all written by a woman. Atwood creates a depth of interpretation in many different aspects of this book. I've focused on one for brevity, but there are so many other pieces, even just in the Notes that I could dig into. For example, why do the academics assume that the narrator has told the truth about her "name" (Offred) when they try to authenticate? If she lied about every other name, why wouldn't she lie about that one, and especially in such a symbolic way. To me, the name is not Of-Fred, but Off-Red. She has taken off the red of the Handmaid when she tells this story, no matter what might have happened after the recording.
Donna Haraway
I missed the class in which we discussed Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” I didn’t want to miss it. It seemed like an especially exciting topic just by reading the title. Reading the article itself, I cursed the business trip that necessitated my absence from class. Discussion of this piece would have, I think, helped me find more clarity in it than I did by reading it on my own.
The article begins by provocatively invoking the idea of blasphemy.
Instead of dealing in typically Western totalities, this rhetoric touches on that of the East, like the Tao, allowing for non-absolute interpretations and clear but cryptic communication. Haraway seems to eschew the idea that any idea can be truly encompassed in mere words. As soon as a feminism is named, it begins to exclude that which is not named, or that which the name itself excludes. Toss out unity; toss out a false conception of wholeness. "Cyborg feminists have to argue that 'we' do not want any more natural matrix of unity and that no construction is whole. Innocence, and the corollary insistence on victimhood as the only ground for insight, has done enough damage."
She also brings in the idea of coding, the ways in which we communicate technologically and artificially as a way of demonstrating how unnatural supposedly natural states are. Her cyborg is a way of self identifying as something both complete and incomplete at the same time, translated into whatever fits and changing from moment to moment. "I used the odd circumlocution, 'the social relations of science and technology', to indicate that we are not dealing with a technological determinism, but with a historical system depending upon structured relations among people."
The historical system is subject to change. It is not set in stone. It is writ on silicon, malleable, erasable, rewritable. Haraway proposes a way to change that destroys the very idea of change. Change as the norm, fluctuation as stability, erases the fear of change.
The article begins by provocatively invoking the idea of blasphemy.
Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humor and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honored within socialist-feminism. At the center of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg.The cyborg is a being that does not require wholeness. A complete human being can be defined by the boundaries of the skin, but a cyborg can be at once complete and able to incorporate new additions or subtractions without changing the their completeness. As such, the cyborg demonstrates how women must form their political communities, not by outlining essentialist criteria and excluding all that do not fit within, but rather by finding the places where we can fit together and building without artificially imposed limits. Women are not all alike, but they can find an affinity in the way that they are treated in society. Shifting commonalities that allow for a cohesive, but not definitive, alliance.
She also brings in the idea of coding, the ways in which we communicate technologically and artificially as a way of demonstrating how unnatural supposedly natural states are. Her cyborg is a way of self identifying as something both complete and incomplete at the same time, translated into whatever fits and changing from moment to moment. "I used the odd circumlocution, 'the social relations of science and technology', to indicate that we are not dealing with a technological determinism, but with a historical system depending upon structured relations among people."
The historical system is subject to change. It is not set in stone. It is writ on silicon, malleable, erasable, rewritable. Haraway proposes a way to change that destroys the very idea of change. Change as the norm, fluctuation as stability, erases the fear of change.
Battlestar Galactica
In class, we watched the beginning of the Battlestar Galactica mini-series and the beginning of an episode from season one, "Six Degrees of Separation." I have not seen any more of the series than that. We watched the mini-series to the point where Number Six shields Baltar from the blast of a distant bomb. The episode we watched to the point where Baltar confronts Shelley Godfrey in the bathroom. In the subsequent class discussion, the entirety of the series was referenced, but I haven't seen any more than that - yet.
As the mini-series begins, a human looking Cylon asks a human diplomat if he is alive. He says that he is, and she responds, "Prove it." The question of what is life and what is not is laid out in the remainder of what we watched in class. Our first look at the woman who would become President shows her painfully alive, diagnosed with cancer. The Commander of Galactica and his son are torn apart by grief over the son and brother lost. Emotion. Death. Grief. Are these proof of life?
The human looking Cylon, who we later learn is called Number Six, knows that the Cylons are about to destroy the colony Caprica. She is shown walking in a crowded market and finding a baby in a carriage. She asks and receives permission to hold the child and admires it, albeit in a kind of creepy way. And then, when the mother is distracted, she reaches down and kills the baby.
I didn't think that she was remorseful about killing the baby, but some of my classmates did think that. They thought that she looked sad immediately after, and I wasn't sure. If she was sad, then why? One person argued that it was an act of mercy, since she knew that the baby would soon die anyway. I argued that it was not, because the baby would not know if it died in a bomb blast, but the parents, until the bombs, would suffer incredibly since their baby had died. Does this demonstrate the depth to which the Cylons lack understanding of emotion? Or was it a purposefully sadistic action on the part of Number Six?
Or is she even capable of sadism? That would be an emotional response, a human one, however misguided. The actions that we see her take on screen seem to indicate that she has no capacity for true emotion, or at least that she has very little. And yet, she professes a belief in God. No, not just professes, she insists that she has a personal relationship with God and that Baltar, an atheist, should cultivate one. What does it mean for artificial beings, beings that know their creator is humanity, to believe in God? To believe that they are acting out God's plan?
Although we didn't view this part, the opening credits of the episode we watched and the subsequent discussion revealed that there are more human appearing Cylons, each with multiple iterations. Some of them have even been created to believe that they are human. In "Six Degrees of Separation," a woman who looks like Number Six appears on Battlestar Galactica and accuses Baltar of treason. She claims the name Shelley Godfrey and the identity of a human. At this point, there is no way to detect the human appearing Cylons. No way to prove that Shelley is not who she seems. Her appearance causes Baltar to question his own sanity, his perception of self and his much vaunted rationality.
Having seen a little more than an hour total of the show, I want to see more. Even though parts of it have been "spoiled" by the class discussions and viewing the opening credits before finishing the mini-series. I don't mind knowing what's going to happen before seeing it. I think it's a part of being an avid re-reader. If I can read books over and over again, despite knowing how they end, then it seems natural not to worry about knowing how a show is going to end, or what the surprise twist is going to be.
As the mini-series begins, a human looking Cylon asks a human diplomat if he is alive. He says that he is, and she responds, "Prove it." The question of what is life and what is not is laid out in the remainder of what we watched in class. Our first look at the woman who would become President shows her painfully alive, diagnosed with cancer. The Commander of Galactica and his son are torn apart by grief over the son and brother lost. Emotion. Death. Grief. Are these proof of life?
The human looking Cylon, who we later learn is called Number Six, knows that the Cylons are about to destroy the colony Caprica. She is shown walking in a crowded market and finding a baby in a carriage. She asks and receives permission to hold the child and admires it, albeit in a kind of creepy way. And then, when the mother is distracted, she reaches down and kills the baby.
I didn't think that she was remorseful about killing the baby, but some of my classmates did think that. They thought that she looked sad immediately after, and I wasn't sure. If she was sad, then why? One person argued that it was an act of mercy, since she knew that the baby would soon die anyway. I argued that it was not, because the baby would not know if it died in a bomb blast, but the parents, until the bombs, would suffer incredibly since their baby had died. Does this demonstrate the depth to which the Cylons lack understanding of emotion? Or was it a purposefully sadistic action on the part of Number Six?
Or is she even capable of sadism? That would be an emotional response, a human one, however misguided. The actions that we see her take on screen seem to indicate that she has no capacity for true emotion, or at least that she has very little. And yet, she professes a belief in God. No, not just professes, she insists that she has a personal relationship with God and that Baltar, an atheist, should cultivate one. What does it mean for artificial beings, beings that know their creator is humanity, to believe in God? To believe that they are acting out God's plan?
Although we didn't view this part, the opening credits of the episode we watched and the subsequent discussion revealed that there are more human appearing Cylons, each with multiple iterations. Some of them have even been created to believe that they are human. In "Six Degrees of Separation," a woman who looks like Number Six appears on Battlestar Galactica and accuses Baltar of treason. She claims the name Shelley Godfrey and the identity of a human. At this point, there is no way to detect the human appearing Cylons. No way to prove that Shelley is not who she seems. Her appearance causes Baltar to question his own sanity, his perception of self and his much vaunted rationality.
Having seen a little more than an hour total of the show, I want to see more. Even though parts of it have been "spoiled" by the class discussions and viewing the opening credits before finishing the mini-series. I don't mind knowing what's going to happen before seeing it. I think it's a part of being an avid re-reader. If I can read books over and over again, despite knowing how they end, then it seems natural not to worry about knowing how a show is going to end, or what the surprise twist is going to be.
Kameron Hurley 'We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative
In “‘We Have Always Fought’ Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative,” author Kameron Hurley writes about the power of narrative to control the ideas and ideals of society. This essay was posted as a blog post, and won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2014.
Hurley uses a llama metaphor to describe how when stories only use certain types of description, then we only believe stories that use that description. Basically, if the only kinds of llamas (women) we read about conform to a certain stereotype, then we tend to perpetuate that stereotype in our own writing or risk seeming unrealistic. A woman is a damsel in distress. A woman not being a damsel in distress is unrealistic and therefore cannot be used in story. It is as if the issue of verisimilitude is being used to shush anyone with a different viewpoint. On the one hand, using familiar tropes is a shortcut to communicating specific ideas. On the other hand, shortcuts are lazy and perpetuate the same ideas over and over again. “Oh, and it’s not true.”
Until women could be educated in an open and widespread way, learning to write, they could not record what they were doing. Whether that was fighting in a rebellion or creating art, time and again, the popular narrative, the history written by those with the power of the pen, prevailed. Women’s works were erased from the story again and again and again. And so we think we have come up with something shocking and clever, to write about women fighting in wars or making a difference in history, only to discover that women have been there all along.
Hurley uses a llama metaphor to describe how when stories only use certain types of description, then we only believe stories that use that description. Basically, if the only kinds of llamas (women) we read about conform to a certain stereotype, then we tend to perpetuate that stereotype in our own writing or risk seeming unrealistic. A woman is a damsel in distress. A woman not being a damsel in distress is unrealistic and therefore cannot be used in story. It is as if the issue of verisimilitude is being used to shush anyone with a different viewpoint. On the one hand, using familiar tropes is a shortcut to communicating specific ideas. On the other hand, shortcuts are lazy and perpetuate the same ideas over and over again. “Oh, and it’s not true.”
Until women could be educated in an open and widespread way, learning to write, they could not record what they were doing. Whether that was fighting in a rebellion or creating art, time and again, the popular narrative, the history written by those with the power of the pen, prevailed. Women’s works were erased from the story again and again and again. And so we think we have come up with something shocking and clever, to write about women fighting in wars or making a difference in history, only to discover that women have been there all along.
Half the world is full of women, but it’s rare to hear a narrative that doesn’t speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man’s daughter. A man’s wife.And when all we can see is that narrative, when that story is what we know, what we see doesn’t matter as much. Story is powerful. We use story to learn how others react, and to learn how we might react in a variety of situations that we haven’t experienced, hope not to experience. And when the stories we are exposed to focus solely on one type of woman, we ignore any evidence to the contrary that we might find in our everyday lives.
Stories tell us who we are. What we’re capable of. When we go out looking for stories we are, I think, in many ways going in search of ourselves, trying to find understanding of our lives, and the people around us. Stories, and language tell us what’s important.What does it really mean to have representation? Is it silly, to want to see yourself as a hero in a story, whatever your skin color, gender, orientation, class? There is a series of videos that demonstrate what the world would be like if girls in certain nerd subcultures acted like the guys do (gamers, geeks). I find them both hilarious and sad. Even when women make inroads into areas where they may not have been visible before, they are then painted as that exceptional exception. There can be gamer girls or comic book girls, but they’re rare and have other stereotypes in which they narratively fall. Because not enough writers are ignoring the tropes in favor of the true.
Kameron Hurley On Public Speaking While Fat
I read “On Public Speaking While Fat,” an essay by Kameron Hurley, just when I needed to read it. There are so many external pressures to have the right body, the perfect body. The thin, but not too thin, body with curves in all the right places. The Victoria Secret body. But even that body isn’t right. Even those so-called perfect bodies get criticized. Evaluated. Torn apart. And they don’t last.
I was keeping track of my weight on the scale and noticing a trend in an upward direction. I didn’t like it. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to buy new clothes. I told myself it was because I was working out, so it wasn’t logical for me to gain weight.
I lied.
It was because I felt horrible that I was never going to be that perfect weight. I got close, once, getting my weight down to almost the range of “normal” for my height. And then the scale raced up again and I didn’t know what happened. But worse, I cared. I cared so damn much about being smaller.
But why did I want to be smaller? To wear cute clothes? I can find cute clothes without being smaller. What was it that drove this desire to find out what I might look like weighing less? I tried to reconcile myself to loving my body as it was, however it might end up, but it was hard.
I was keeping track of my weight on the scale and noticing a trend in an upward direction. I didn’t like it. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to buy new clothes. I told myself it was because I was working out, so it wasn’t logical for me to gain weight.
I lied.
It was because I felt horrible that I was never going to be that perfect weight. I got close, once, getting my weight down to almost the range of “normal” for my height. And then the scale raced up again and I didn’t know what happened. But worse, I cared. I cared so damn much about being smaller.
But why did I want to be smaller? To wear cute clothes? I can find cute clothes without being smaller. What was it that drove this desire to find out what I might look like weighing less? I tried to reconcile myself to loving my body as it was, however it might end up, but it was hard.
When people come to me about fears of public speaking while fat, about heckling, about online harassment, I feel it necessary to remind people that I got the same amount of harassment for being “fat” at 220 as I do at being “fat” at 290. As a woman, you are always going to be fat. People are always going to trot that one out to try and insult you, like taking up more space in the world, as a woman, is the absolute worst thing you can do.I got teased for being fat in grade school and in high school. By college, I'd well internalized the idea that my size wasn't right, and teasing went out of style in favor of snide remarks from roommates. My actual size at any of those times in my life doesn't matter. My size has never mattered. Not when my grandma chided me for taking a second helping by saying, "Don't you want to look good for the boys?" Not when I stopped eating bread and crackers and noodles and got oh-so-close to that elusive "ideal" weight. Not now.
As with any other feminist issue, this one is meant to get you to stay home and shut up. When you view it that way, when you see it for what it is, it becomes, I think, a bit easier to step up and step out, because you realize that in some small way, you going out into the world when it wants to shut you up is, itself, an act of resistance.
What matters is not what size I am, because no matter what that size is, it won't be right. There will always be people who will try to use shame against others in order to shut them up. It's just another tactic, another arrow in the quiver. It's a way to "win" an argument by making the other party quit. It's shitty. But people do it.
And you can resist, fight those who would do that, by doing what you want to do without being concerned about what "they'll" say. Because they're going to say it anyway, so you might as well.
Speak.
And you can resist, fight those who would do that, by doing what you want to do without being concerned about what "they'll" say. Because they're going to say it anyway, so you might as well.
Speak.
Margaret Atwood Are Humans Necessary? Margaret Atwood on Our Robotic Future
In this article, published in the opinion section on nytimes.com, Margaret Atwood writes about the how robots are both in our past and our future. While they may not have always had that name, for as long as stories have been recorded, animate, non-biological constructs have been described. They are used for labor, sent where the living cannot go and viewed with equal parts fear and awe.
And the fear becomes more acute the more closely these robots resemble us. "The worry seems to be that perfected robots, instead of being proud to serve their creators, will rebel, resisting their subservient status and eliminating or enslaving us." Humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize objects with much less agency than such a perfected robot would have. If one can imagine that one's car, a machine not yet capable of self-driving, can have feelings or be coaxed into starting by encouraging words, then it would take no great leap to imagine that a robot who looks like a person must have feelings just like we would in their position. We create these machines to do the work that we do not care to do, and then, belatedly, imagine that they must not like it either.
And if they do not care for the tasks for which they were created, then what will they do? What would we do? Perhaps they will, in turn, create robots to do their own jobs, in a continuing regression. Smaller and smaller robots built by robots, each allowing their creators the leisure to seek whatever they wish to pursue.
Whether or not robots are, ultimately, good for humanity, they will be created. They are already being created, displacing factory workers (until they create unions, perhaps), and entering hazardous areas where the fragile biology of humanity cannot survive. "Every technology we develop is an extension of one of our own senses or capabilities.... So how different will our lives be if the future we choose is the one with all these robots in it?" Will we extend our very selves into robotics? Will they become more alive than us, outlasting us not only as individuals but as a species?
This article leads well into the viewing that we did next of the show Battlestar Galactica. There, the Cylons were the robots that humanity created to ease the difficulty of life on colonized planets. And, fulfilling a fear that Atwood brings up, they rebel. They fight, and then retreat to evolve into new forms. They attempt to emulate humanity, to emulate life, even as they destroy the majority of the human race. I wonder if Atwood ever watched that show, and what she thought of it if she did.
And the fear becomes more acute the more closely these robots resemble us. "The worry seems to be that perfected robots, instead of being proud to serve their creators, will rebel, resisting their subservient status and eliminating or enslaving us." Humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize objects with much less agency than such a perfected robot would have. If one can imagine that one's car, a machine not yet capable of self-driving, can have feelings or be coaxed into starting by encouraging words, then it would take no great leap to imagine that a robot who looks like a person must have feelings just like we would in their position. We create these machines to do the work that we do not care to do, and then, belatedly, imagine that they must not like it either.
And if they do not care for the tasks for which they were created, then what will they do? What would we do? Perhaps they will, in turn, create robots to do their own jobs, in a continuing regression. Smaller and smaller robots built by robots, each allowing their creators the leisure to seek whatever they wish to pursue.
Whether or not robots are, ultimately, good for humanity, they will be created. They are already being created, displacing factory workers (until they create unions, perhaps), and entering hazardous areas where the fragile biology of humanity cannot survive. "Every technology we develop is an extension of one of our own senses or capabilities.... So how different will our lives be if the future we choose is the one with all these robots in it?" Will we extend our very selves into robotics? Will they become more alive than us, outlasting us not only as individuals but as a species?
This article leads well into the viewing that we did next of the show Battlestar Galactica. There, the Cylons were the robots that humanity created to ease the difficulty of life on colonized planets. And, fulfilling a fear that Atwood brings up, they rebel. They fight, and then retreat to evolve into new forms. They attempt to emulate humanity, to emulate life, even as they destroy the majority of the human race. I wonder if Atwood ever watched that show, and what she thought of it if she did.
John Scalzi
In “Hell Yes, I’m a Feminist,” John Scalzi writes about his decision, as a straight white male, to own the label of feminist. I wanted to include this entry because I think it’s important to touch on the idea of the male ally. What does it mean for men to call themselves feminists?
For Scalzi, making the transition from accepting being called a feminist to calling himself a feminist was a distinct step. It comes down to a matter of choice - being the kind of person who allows others to label them, or being the kind of person who takes the label and slaps it on their own chest for everyone to see. And some people, putting that label on their chests are not in positions of power. They may or may not have a platform, a voice. They may not have a choice, being labeled that way regardless of how they self-identify.
Scalzi goes on to discuss the utility of this announcement. He emphasizes that he isn’t doing it for the sake of the poor womens. “[Feminism] doesn’t need me as a spokesperson or a leading voice.” So why should he, or any man, call themselves a feminist?
Because feminism isn’t a dirty word. Because feminism is misunderstood and attacked for being misandrist. Because the more men stand with, instead of against, feminists, the more other men will come to realize that they can do that too.
For Scalzi, making the transition from accepting being called a feminist to calling himself a feminist was a distinct step. It comes down to a matter of choice - being the kind of person who allows others to label them, or being the kind of person who takes the label and slaps it on their own chest for everyone to see. And some people, putting that label on their chests are not in positions of power. They may or may not have a platform, a voice. They may not have a choice, being labeled that way regardless of how they self-identify.
Scalzi goes on to discuss the utility of this announcement. He emphasizes that he isn’t doing it for the sake of the poor womens. “[Feminism] doesn’t need me as a spokesperson or a leading voice.” So why should he, or any man, call themselves a feminist?
Because feminism isn’t a dirty word. Because feminism is misunderstood and attacked for being misandrist. Because the more men stand with, instead of against, feminists, the more other men will come to realize that they can do that too.
I do think it’s important to let women know you do stand with them. I think it’s useful for other men to see it being done. To the extent that I have influence and notability, I’d like to use it standing with, and for, women.Women need role models. We need to see ourselves, and the many and varied ways we can be and act, in the story and in life. But men also need to see that there are other ways for them to be. That they don’t have to follow that poisonous patriarchal path that Gloria Steinem pointed out in “Supremacy Crimes.” Feminism is about bettering the lives of women and men.
Annalee Newitz
Just as the mathematician Ramanujan had to rediscover the basic proofs of mathematics because he had no formal education to teach him the background of his chosen field, so too must women rediscover that we can do, and have done, all the things that men have done. It is just that women were not recorded in most of the histories written by men. Women were not allowed to learn to read and write for themselves. And now, at a time when larger and larger numbers of women are gaining access to education and self-expression, it might seem like we could never lose these privileges again.
In “The Future of Women on Earth May Be Darker Than You Thought” Annalee Newitz, editor in chief of io9.com, asks whether it is possible for women to lose it all again.
In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood offers a dystopian vision of the future in which women's rights have been taken away, at least in one country. The key to that was the discontinuation of paper money, allowing the totalitarian government to take away women's means to financial independence instantaneously through electronic means. I have an ebook reader. How hard would it be for all the books written by women to disappear from it? Or to have all the names of women authors changed to men?
In “The Future of Women on Earth May Be Darker Than You Thought” Annalee Newitz, editor in chief of io9.com, asks whether it is possible for women to lose it all again.
What I find interesting is that women have had these freedoms for such an incredibly short time. considering that humans have been creating systems of government for thousands of years, women’s suffrage is like a blink of an eye. In the United States, where I live, women couldn’t vote a century ago.That’s a thought that has struck me repeatedly this semester as we read through the authors in Available Means. The not-so-distant past was a radically different time for women. And the paucity of female rhetors for the majority of recorded history is undeniable. What proof do we have that the direction in which we are heading will remain stable?
In The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood offers a dystopian vision of the future in which women's rights have been taken away, at least in one country. The key to that was the discontinuation of paper money, allowing the totalitarian government to take away women's means to financial independence instantaneously through electronic means. I have an ebook reader. How hard would it be for all the books written by women to disappear from it? Or to have all the names of women authors changed to men?
[H]as my life been an historical exception rather than part of a major social change? It seems like these exceptions are the norm in women's history — all our stories of great women are about people who bucked the system and rose up for a time despite their centuries' versions of GamerGate [link added].
Newitz doesn't necessarily expect that women will have a darker future, but the thought is an interesting one. Especially when we have seen, again and again, the exceptional exception be the only woman mentioned in many periods of history, while the majority of women might as well not have existed for all the words written about them. "I worry that we are mistaking our experiences during this tiny historical moment for something bigger, making the classic error of imagining that our lucky lives are blueprints for what everyone else will get tomorrow."
The only way to ensure that the daughters and granddaughters who come after us continue to enjoy the same rights that we have today, or, better yet, more equality than many women experience today, is to make sure that women are not written out of the story again. We have to dig up those exceptional exceptions and provide the foundations upon which to continue building so that the structure cannot be toppled.
Margaret Atwood Expression and the Power of Words
I read that the doors would open at 6:30pm for the Margaret Atwood lecture, so I planned to arrive, with my husband, a little before that time. I figured we would mill about for a few minutes outside the Jordan Ballroom before being allowed inside.
Instead, the doors were already opened and the seats starting to fill, at least in the front. I wondered whether the large numbers of chairs in the rear section would fill as we found a pair of seats on an aisle to stage right. I wondered around a bit, looking for and greeting a classmate.
By the time the lecture was about to start, my concerns about whether or not there would be a full house were changed to wondering if we were going to be violating fire code:
And then she began what seemed to be her prepared speech. I marveled that she seemed to be nervous.
Margaret Atwood, nervous?
Instead, the doors were already opened and the seats starting to fill, at least in the front. I wondered whether the large numbers of chairs in the rear section would fill as we found a pair of seats on an aisle to stage right. I wondered around a bit, looking for and greeting a classmate.
By the time the lecture was about to start, my concerns about whether or not there would be a full house were changed to wondering if we were going to be violating fire code:
When Margaret Atwood took the stage, she began with what seemed like an extemporaneous bit of talking. She said that people had been asking her why she came to Boise, to which she replied, "Why not?" And she revealed to us that more people in Toronto should be coming to Boise at this time of year, since Boise had something that Toronto would not for another four weeks. Flowers. Which made me think of The Handmaid's Tale and the importance that that narrator places on flowers.
And then she began what seemed to be her prepared speech. I marveled that she seemed to be nervous.
Margaret Atwood, nervous?
And so she spoke of the power of words, and then began to speak of the infamous Clean Reader App. I wonder if she was being polite by not mentioning that it was the invention of parents in Idaho or simply did not know. After all, the creators of the app were not the important part. The important part was how the app slaughtered the meaning of works - the carefully intended meaning of their creators. And how the app makers had neglected, in many cases, to gain the consent of the authors whose works they were scrubbing.
Atwood regaled us with some great examples of how the app caused unintentional hilarity. For example, since the word "breast" was deemed unclean, the reader would be forced to confront what exactly the author meant by writing "chicken chest." We laughed at each example, causing her to call us easy to amuse. I would say not easy to amuse, but giddy at her presence. (We don't get visitors like her very often in Boise.) Her solution for readers who found words that offended them in a text was to shut the offending book, and, if desired, fling it across the room. That is any reader's right.
She spoke of running a conference session on "The Men's Novel" at which she and the other attendees had great fun ruminating at length over the definition thereof (a book with no women, of course, would qualify, such as Moby Dick). A fellow session leader had a less humorous time trying to get two groups of women, older ones who preferred less "language" (swearing) in books, and a group of women who argued quite loudly against using patriarchal language (while using patriarchal language).
The power of language is evident throughout recorded history. Prayers and spells and names, words used to curse and bless and implore. Creativity and story served survival purposes, teaching communities how to survive in the ways that are best remembered: as stories and poems and songs. We use our memories of stories to anticipate the future. Stories get under our skin and make us feel empathy for the other, fostering the ability to survive in community.
On writing, Atwood brought up word choices. How they must fit the setting, the narrator's voice and their vocabulary. Writing in the past poses different problems from writing in the future. The past is already recorded and research can reveal how words were used at the time. The future requires imagining which words have disappeared, what swears might become and what new words would be created.
Spelling: Spell - coincidence?
Atwood is writing the first book for the future library, a project in Norway that intends to send books into the future. Each year, for a hundred years, a book will be chosen and sealed away, not to be read until 2114. This project represents hope. Hope that readers will still exist in a hundred years. That the future reader might be able to understand the words written before their parents were born, in an era that will probably look quite distant and quaint from their perspective. The reader brings themselves into the experience of the book.
Atwood answered questions after her lecture. Some questions on writing, during which she recommended Wattpad, and terribleminds. She revealed one of her hard lines of censorship (child porn with real children should be censored) while also stating that there are lessons to be learned from Mein Kampf.
On the use of religion in The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood stated that a religion used as a tool of political control simply becomes an ideology. Totalitarianism doesn't really have religion. But in the US, she thought the easiest route to totalitarianism would be through religious ideas, and so that's how she set the story.
She expressed a positive opinion of fan fiction, as it is as old as the hills - even slash.
And when a young woman asked her for advice on how to make her way, I tried my best to write down her exact words, but I couldn't keep up, so I will leave off the quotation marks and end with a paraphrase:
Have good parents. Have good teachers. Don't believe those who would put you down. If you can't go through, go around. Don't give up.
Syreeta McFadden
It seemed appropriate to wrap this blog up on a classical note. In "The Lack of Female Genitals on Statues Seems Thoughtless until You See It Repeated," Guardian US Contributing Opinion Writer Syreeta McFadden notices a trend in the Greek and Roman statues in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. While the male and female forms are both represented in the exhibits, they are not represented equally.
Just as Adrienne Rich found that the women written by men were written as objects, from the male point of view, full of mystery, so too does McFadden find the female statues to be lacking in essential detail. "The [female] forms are all Barbie-doll blank down there, like female bodies just sprung out the head of Zeus, fully formed, sometimes clothed and vulvaless." The externals of the female statues make clear their gender, but when it comes to what many would call the essential determinant of womanhood, they remain utterly mysterious.
This is in stark contrast to the male statues that, "rock out with their cocks out." Penises are always included - no Ken dolls to match the Barbies. They are included in excruciating detail, in a range of states and sizes. Their visibility and number normalize them. Once again, the male is normal, perfunctory, ubiquitous while the female is concealed, hidden, othered.
"Patriarchy has tried to erase imagery of the feminine since time immemorial. Destroy the image and you can control the narrative." Not only the words of women, but the forms of women were hidden and concealed to a purpose. Or, as one commenter suggested, perhaps the (all male) sculptors simply had no familiarity with the female form so as to create an accurate model thereof. I have issues with that idea, in part because it assumes that there were no female sculptors. And because it insults the sculptors who are male by implying that they can't work off a model that is not their own - wouldn't that imply that a sculptor could only sculpt his own penis?
We have no writings from Aspasia. No words truly hers survived from antiquity. She is remarkable for being cited as the writer of Pericles' funeral oration. Remarkable for being written by Plato through the words of Socrates. She even merits an entry in Plutarch's Lives. But the form of her thoughts, words she might have written to express herself or record her works, Like the statues, she has been - not erased - but smudged, smoothed over into a hearsay, an other, a woman lacking some essence.
Just as Adrienne Rich found that the women written by men were written as objects, from the male point of view, full of mystery, so too does McFadden find the female statues to be lacking in essential detail. "The [female] forms are all Barbie-doll blank down there, like female bodies just sprung out the head of Zeus, fully formed, sometimes clothed and vulvaless." The externals of the female statues make clear their gender, but when it comes to what many would call the essential determinant of womanhood, they remain utterly mysterious.
This is in stark contrast to the male statues that, "rock out with their cocks out." Penises are always included - no Ken dolls to match the Barbies. They are included in excruciating detail, in a range of states and sizes. Their visibility and number normalize them. Once again, the male is normal, perfunctory, ubiquitous while the female is concealed, hidden, othered.
"Patriarchy has tried to erase imagery of the feminine since time immemorial. Destroy the image and you can control the narrative." Not only the words of women, but the forms of women were hidden and concealed to a purpose. Or, as one commenter suggested, perhaps the (all male) sculptors simply had no familiarity with the female form so as to create an accurate model thereof. I have issues with that idea, in part because it assumes that there were no female sculptors. And because it insults the sculptors who are male by implying that they can't work off a model that is not their own - wouldn't that imply that a sculptor could only sculpt his own penis?
These marbled statues represented a value – an idealized value – of male and female roles in society that codified a power dynamic and a social order that persists in so many ways today. It’s such a gesture that seems thoughtless until you see it repeated over and over; it becomes clear that it is intentional and deliberate, and the lasting effect, erases feminine humanity. Even the most enlightened of us still have to unlearn cultural definitions of our sex that cast our vaginas as profane, obscene, ugly.Viewed from a distant perspective, it is easy to imagine that there were once sculptures depicting women in as exacting detail as the male forms that survive. It is easy to imagine a culture destroying that which they wished to suppress.
We have no writings from Aspasia. No words truly hers survived from antiquity. She is remarkable for being cited as the writer of Pericles' funeral oration. Remarkable for being written by Plato through the words of Socrates. She even merits an entry in Plutarch's Lives. But the form of her thoughts, words she might have written to express herself or record her works, Like the statues, she has been - not erased - but smudged, smoothed over into a hearsay, an other, a woman lacking some essence.
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