Listmania List

While my independent study didn't actually go where I wanted it to, and while I'm still struggling to get my newer blog off the ground, there are some really helpful things that came out of my research last semester. I actually have an almost 50 item annotated bibliography about sources for research on female sexuality which I have compressed into an Amazon.com listmania list on sources for female sexuality. Certainly, since you have to edit reviews to only 400 characters, the list doesn't quite do the sources justice, but, as I have said before, part of my project was to try to make the research I was doing universally accessible and that is exactly what a listmania list does. Please feel free to check it out and e-mail me/post/etc. if you want the full annotation for any of the sources.

More on sex education

My former roommate, currently a graduate student at Brown, posted this on her blog and I thought it was worth sharing. I think that sex education is such an important topic when you think about all of the issues that it (sometimes) tries to help young people with: pregnancy, disease, consent. I know that my own sex ed was abstinence only, but I've found that an increasing number of my friends have had different experiences that have shaped the way they think and talk about sex. I wish I could have been at this same panel, because I think the woman my friend mentions who emphasized the relationship aspect of sex education has a really important point. We need to be teaching our young people more than just mechanics, because the scars from having some STDs are incomparable to the scars from having forced intercourse or from the accumulation of negative self-image.

Thoughts on campus sexual assault prevention

This evening, people on campus got an e-mail regarding a rape that took place last week. A news report about the event can be read here.

In his e-mail to students (and as it explains in the article) Sam Sadler encouraged students to call Campus Police if they needed a ride home after hours. For my women's studies Community Action Project last year, my group initially investigated some issues related to sexual assault prevention including safe forms of transportation in instances of perceived danger with specific questions about how the intoxication of the student seeking help might cause problems. The police station was not very receptive to the idea of helping to get a drunk student out of a dangerous situation without it resulting in his or her potential arrest for drinking underage. Recently W&M enacted a policy that provides amnesty to students who seek medical help because of alcohol poisoning and to others who may have been drinking underage who are involved in the process of seeking medical care for their friends. It makes sense, in my mind, that this policy be extended to women and men who seek assistance in getting out of unsafe situations that could potentially result in sexual assault or rape. Preventing sexual assault means changing the ways in which students view consent and sexual activity, but it also means providing safe, reliable ways to get out of bad situations, particularly when an individual is intoxicated.

In light of this recent case of rape, and with the tendency of alcohol to be involved with cases of acquaintance rape (I realize this specific incident does not fall into that category), I decided to write Sam Sadler, Vice President of Student Affairs, an e-mail detailing some of my thoughts. I don't know if anything will actually come of the e-mail, but I felt like I needed to say something while people were actually listening. It was disheartening to know that the best advice Sam could offer to students out late was to call Campus Police since they have seemed really hesitant to help in the past. I am hoping that even by shining a little light on this problem, I might actually see some campus policy changed (or at least have the police be encouraged to respond to student's pleas for after-hours transportation).

What follows is the text of the e-mail that I sent to Sam. I know it isn't very formal, but I wanted to post it here to hopefully get people thinking about ways our campus could work even harder to prevent sexual assault, particularly since it's been such an important topic on campus over the last few years.

Sam,

Last year for my women's studies CAP project, one of my group members called the Campus Police and asked if they would be willing to give rides to students after hours if they felt like they were in an unsafe situation. They said they would only do so if they didn't have better things to be doing. In addition, when the question of the involvement of alcohol came up, they explained that they would not be able to treat the student who felt they were in danger with amnesty. It would seem to me that were an intoxicated student (underage or not) to feel safe contacting the police and certain of their positive response, unnecessary incidents that potentially put students in dangerous situations could be avoided. Honestly, I think it is unfortunate that we can only really rely on campus police to intercede once an act of assault has been committed and that while we are willing to grant medical amnesty to students who go to the hospital, we are not willing to grant amnesty to students, particularly women, who ask for help when they feel unsafe.

In light of this recent event, I would love to see some sort of reinforcement of police policy on willingness to transport students after hours in the form of an e-mail sent out to the campus police officers, and I would be hopeful that there might be some sort of conversation initiated with the office of sexual assault prevention about an extension of the amnesty policy to women and men who seek law enforcement assistance when they feel threatened. Barriers that exist to seeking help make dangerous situations that much more dangerous. Particularly since alcohol is so often a factor in acquaintance rape, I think that it is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Beginning to conclude

Haste suggests in Sexual Metaphors that feminism must work to re-inform the ideologies that shape our institutions in order to actually create change, and it is largely the input we get from various sources that shapes our ideologies--what we buy, who we vote for, what we believe. That makes it important to read/receive the best knowledge possible in order to allow for the ideal shaping of our ideologies. Now, when there is so much information in so many forms readily available, this can be an extremely challenging task.

When I started work on my independent study, I was challenged by the incredible number of resources out there, and the lack of helpful information when it came to selecting the best/most relevant. Part of this problem is that the best academic criticism is only really available in elite places--like inaccessible theory in databases and academic publications that can't benefit anyone without the time, discernment and support systems afforded only in specific situations (like being a college student). I could read on university websites or in JSTOR reviews and suggested lists about which books would be the most useful (which I did), but at the end of the day I had to order my books from somewhere else. On Amazon, the reviews and comments about all of these dense theoretical books and compilations of essays were spare and generally not very helpful.

Because of this, I greatly overshot on reading materials for the semester, and have had a hard time figuring out what comes first. I realized that there needed to be a space out there where someone really provided information on what theory/books to read and what movies to watch. One of the most meaningful ways to have my work this semester make an impact on the larger discipline of women's studies, especially since as an undergrad it is hard to get ones work into more traditional public (and academic) forums, was to post reviews of the sources I was consulting on very mainstream resources, like Amazon, imdb, and Netflix.

Originally I thought that the most important thing in electronic resources was to keep each topic focused on a separate weblog, but now I think that I need to have everything in one place, linked to my identity. So, I m rolling this site over into my larger, new Wordpress account. I am calling this site "Collection Plate." I am eventually going to ask the women's studies department, Reves Center, IR department, Monroe Scholars/Charles Center staff and maybe even the English department to link my site on their pages once I get it fully up and running. I would hope they would continue to keep it accessible at least while I am studying at Oxford next year where I think I'll be moving towards research in nonviolent methods for sustainable international development with a focus on women. I want to keep my new site live then and update regularly, and in the future work towards featuring sections on each of topics in which I am engaged along the course of my studies in and outside the classroom. I am planning to have several pages including freshman year; Kyoto, Japan: classwork and case study; mytwolips; my classwork in my masters program at Oxford; and my case study international peace work/research in Rwanda in 2009-2010.

Academic blogging thoughts continued

I wanted to include here a segment from the first post of another blog project I am planning to work on in the future that documents a lot of my ideas about academic blogging and contains a significant number of links to sites/blogs/articles that address some of the issues central to the discussion around using blogs for academic purposes. The excerpt, in it's original context here, follows:

I feel like blogging will continue to be important for me, at least while I'm in school and maybe even particularly once I'm out in the world working. I know some people say that blogs are meaningless drabble and worthless, but I think that they are a really exciting tool that allows nearly immediate and virtually free access to various forms of knowledge produced not just by those in our immediate geographical/academic/traditional social communities, but actually worldwide. I also recently found out that there are projects to collect this knowledge and organize/legitimize it for general and academic use. There are certainly problems that exist for blogging academically including: academic refereeing (peer-review) and reliability/verifiability/legitimacy as a source and issues of plagiarism (particularly because of potential differences in copyright law since there is not an official international law) and citation both for the blogger and those who want to use its content. Even just in that set of links about academic blogging, a fair number of them are blogs and, regardless of whether the moderators are said to be librarians or college students, it is almost impossible to know for a fact who is actually producing the ideas and words because of the lack of a definite connection between an actual and an online identity. And even then, all these thoughts are tied into traditional systems of valuing information which are constantly under scrutiny and revision.

That concludes the excerpt. I think this post is really important, because as I've been working on this blog for my independent study, I've realized that I have had to do as much research on utilizing this medium for academic purposes as I have actually gotten to research my initial topic.

I've got a lot to say...

and it would seem, not always enough time to say it. I have been thinking and talking a little bit more recently about some of the specifics of using blogs as a medium for independent study and education. I have noticed in the past few weeks that I've gotten really far astray from my initial project, and while I've certainly produced a lot of posts comparatively, they're all over the map. I think it's because I was allowing myself to be so influenced by everything else that was out there to link to and experience, but I am going to definitely try to do some reigning in this week so that I get back on the right page before the end of the month and the end of the semester.

I was thinking too, though, about my posting style and the difficulty I have had in posting rapidly and thoroughly about a lot of the things I'm experiencing and working with because, since I know they are "for class," I feel like they are supposed to be of a certain caliber and academic value. I was observing one of my friend's own process for blogging, and found that there is a distinct difference in the ways in which we post. I made a comment on his most recent post exploring some of these issues, but I'm not exactly sure where to go from there. I just know that I think this medium is really worthwhile, I just have to figure out how to keep it focused enough to always be relevant to its mission.

Sexual Assault Awareness Week II & CAP Projects

I am super happy that the intro women's studies classes are doing their Community Action Projects (CAPs) again this year. It seems to create this really wonderful, open space where women can talk about body issues, sexuality issues, fashion issues, abuse issues, etc. because of the various groups that are hosting all of these really wonderful events, talks, displays, and whatnot around campus. It also certainly doesn't hurt that some of them were during Sexual Assault Awareness week which is a similarly inclined opportunity to talk openly about some pretty serious issues.

I attended a couple of events during the week, including one I posted on earlier and also the pilot for a new co-ed program run collectively by members of 1 in 4 and Every Two Minutes that will allow freshmen to engage in an open dialogue about giving and receiving consent, particularly when it comes to sexual situations and will help them think about the involvement of alcohol. I wish I could tell you more about the program, but because of the fact that is is currently just a pilot, it was agreed that we would preserve the safe space of the room by allowing all of the discussion that took place to remain between those who were there. I am excited, though, that there is at least an ongoing discussion taking place.

The other events I wanted to mention, though, are both CAP projects. The first was a wall that had pictures of various women in different amounts of clothing that was meant to address body image and show pictures of real women. I am always glad to have this sort of display, but I was walking through with a male friend and his comment was: "All of the women who are less clothed are the ones we would typically think of as being more comfortable with their bodies." I also felt like maybe there wasn't enough of an opportunity for the people photographed to have their feelings about the pictures directly attached. I'd love to see a picture of a really pretty girl with the description "Looking at magazines makes me feel fat and ugly." Surely, I don't want people to feel fat and ugly, but I think that it would demonstrate that there are a lot of people who feel negatively about their bodies who others of us look at and are jealous of. I think it would help my understanding of my own body image to know what other women actually think about their bodies.

Finally, I went to an event called "Fashion Shouldn't Hurt," which was all about the different ways that fashion is bad for women. It included several sections including one that depicted the W&M approach to fashion, a lecture from a local doctor on the potential hazards of high heels and a fashion show of cute but healthy fashions. The group also maintains a website about their issue. The models were legitimately all shapes and sizes and the room was packed full of people who were supportive of everything that was being discussed. I felt like I learned at least a little bit, and I have been way more conscious of the things that I personally do on a regular basis for the sake of fashion that might not be the healthiest for me, and I guess that's the point, but my friend pointed out that most of the people in the room were probably already concerned about the issue and that it was the people who weren't there who really needed all of the information the most. I would agree that a lot of events are based on preaching to the choir. At least, though, the events are being held and the ideas are getting talked about.

Academics in the military

Funny that I decided to write about women in the military last night because that topic carries over into what I'm looking at today, which is the position of academics in the military. I wrote a paper last semester about transnational feminism that included a section on its practical applications, one of which I believe is to assist in better understanding the gender relations within the countries with which we are at war or are occupying.

Tonight I attended the Reves Center's McSwain-Walker Lecture given by anthropologist Montgomery McFate. She was discussing the military's new Human Terrain System, a program that basically amounts to deploying people with cultural knowledge(read: people with PhDs) into the field with the military in an attempt to reduce the negative impact of the military. After listening to McFate's lecture, I was inclined to believe that it was a worthwhile program. It seems to make sense that if you're walking into a room with open eyes you're going to bump into fewer things than if you go in blindfolded. Having people in the field who actually know something about understanding the culture of Iraq means that they can work smartly instead of just slinging around big fists. At the same time, though, there are a number of people who are against the HTS including the friend I attended the talk with who discusses it on his blog where he mentions the Network of Concerned Anthropologists who are also pretty anti-HTS.

I guess I hadn't really thought about how complicated the practical application of things could be. The point the anti-HTS crowd stands firm on is that since these anthropologists (and other social scientists) are working for, therefore becoming a tool of, the military, they are complicit with the imperialist system. Their data is used to further the military's purpose which generally seems at odds with the academic discipline of anthropology. Their conclusion is that this can in no way be a good thing. Now, I don't know enough about it to say for certain, but I guess my own personal feelings are mixed.

My way of looking at it is this: while perhaps the entire system has flaws, most systems have flaws, and while it may be true that there are many evils in war, I don't think the HTS necessarily has to be one of them. If you have good people who go in and gather information and try to do some good with it, maybe some good will happen. War isn't ever good, but in the long run, if we have a bit of help with cleaning up the mess we've made over there that doesn't seem so bad. Surely the information gathered is not in itself bad or good, it is knowledge. If that is what the anthropologists are doing, gathering and passing on knowledge, that is a neutral action. It is how that knowledge is then used that is the problem. I'm not sure that I want the line between anthropology and military intelligence blurred, but I also think that where this knowledge is being employed to "fix" things or handle things in a non-violent manner, there is some merit.

Looking back to women's studies, though, what I would have to say is this: while I think that it is necessary to understand the customs relating to women of any given country in order to interact with them appropriately out of respect and cultural sensitivity, to act on their behalf or to tell them what they want or need is too much. We must instead seek to provide tools to a community that will allow them to act for themselves. When I think about how I personally want to shape my interactions with people from other cultures, I know that I want to try to facilitate workshops and programs that are desired by the participants rather than force upon them my own ideas about female empowerment, but I know that is easier said than done.

Women in the military

So a topic that I often confront is gender equality and the military is often a prime area where the discrepancies between the way men and women are viewed is the most clear. For instance, in this this story about a woman who served during WWII, her bravery and leadership in battle couldn't be rewarded because women were ineligible to receive certain honors. It's easy to think that in today's more gender equal world that women would face fewer restrictions, but that is not true. There are plenty of positions within multiple branches of the military that are completely off limits to women and as recently as 2005 there was discussion in Congress over whether or not to regulate some of these restrictions by law rather than simply military bylaw. My really good friend served in the National Guard and was a door gunner, but she ran into the problem of being infrequently selected for missions making it hard for her to rack up the number of hours she needed to become eligible for further training and other various positions. I understand that women are also not drafted, so quite obviously their role within the military is different, but I think that it's intolerable that a great woman who has sacrificed just as much for her country would be unable to be given the appropriate level of recognition. I don't know a lot about today's military, but I really hope no awards or honors have gender limitations or requirements.

Sexual Assault Awareness Week Events, I

So, this week on campus is Sexual Assault Awareness Week. The event is participated in by a variety of different organizations and offices and is composed of a variety of events both enjoyable and educational, informative and "just for fun."

The event I attended tonight was a double film screening of Svetlana's Journey and Cargo: Innocence Lost presented by two students from the Third World Feminisms class being taught by instructor Hilary Marcus. The event information also linked the wikisite the two have produced in the course of their classwork.

Svetlana's Journey is a film by director Michael Cory Davis about a Bulgarian girl forced into prostitution. The project was an attempt to depict the brutal reality of sex work with three main purposes (as espoused by the website): show that that the victims of forced prostitution are not to be blamed for their situation, change the minds of any girls who had considered sex work as a viable option and to demonstrate that Bulgarians care about the rights of women. I would have to say that while I thought the film was able to show how terrible life was for one girl and did depict her struggles graphically and realistically, I didn't think it did a terrific job of meeting some of its other stated goals. If I hadn't been watching the film in an academic environment, I am not sure I would have understood that this was specifically a Bulgarian film or had access to information about how and why these women end up in forced prostitution situations. Certainly the project at large does raise awareness for the issue and the website provides a link to Face to Face, a non-profit group actually working against child and forced prostitution in Bulgaria.

The other film being screened, Cargo: Innocence Lost, was also directed by Davis, but did a much better job to to paint the bigger picture of international sex trafficking and the United States role within the larger transnational industry. Cargo blends reenactments of various parts of the trafficking process with interviews with victims and others involved in the fight against against forced prostitution including police officers, social workers and people involved in attempting to persecute the traffickers. The film illuminated the trafficking process, explaining how and why women were able to be convinced to come to the U.S. in the first place and showing the process of how they are eventually, often violently, wrangled into prostitution. I definitely thought this was a much more informative and interesting film and really thought the screening would have gone better had Cargo been showed first. Still, though, it was a worthwhile event and I am looking forward to the rest of Sexual Assault Awareness Week.

Continuing to explore the potential of the Internet

So, I posted part of this as a comment a few days ago, but enough has developed with this situation recently that I wanted to put it on my main page:

Last night one of my good friends from high school contacted me to say that he found my weblog "inspiring." He and some of his friends who are at U Penn architecture school have thought about starting a weblog with a variety of information related to their field of study. It was cool to know that people are starting to use this sort of tool as an extension of their academic study.

I have recently started talking with a graduate student here who has some academic interest in the Internet who is also keeping a blog. Right now it's largely just random thoughts, but a lot of them are based with the work he is doing in anthropology.

I would love for this sort of use of the Internet to be a growing trend, but I know one important thing will be for there to be some sort of way to make sure that people can actually find these blogs when they're looking for things online. I really do think that these links need to be all collected together in one place. I know that my old study abroad program used to link all student blogs from the college's homepage. Maybe if universities provide students with the ability to link their work from the Arts & Sciences page or even a subdivision of it it would allow these things to be getting read by other people interested in the same field. That's an issue I'm still working on.

Something else, though, is that reading these other blogs has made me realize how my own writing can be a bit pretentious sometimes. A la the discussion that was taking place on Will's livejournal about how college kids can use crazy terminology that makes everyday problems into these academic concepts and arguments, I think it's really true that a lot of what is said is inaccessible to others. I want people to read this and get it...not feel like they've opened up a text book or something. I think that's going to be a continuing goal of mine: to ensure that what I am writing isn't a Judith Butler piece, but is instead something that could be read by a college freshman endeavoring to understand female sexuality for the first time.

two recent poems

These poems aren't super recent, but they do both mention some of the issues I've been thinking about with my independent study, though in a bit of an indirect way. I still wanted to link them here so that you could explore them at your leisure.

Train to Brugge


night driving


Also, I posted links today on Fork... for people to hopefully follow. I would love to get more regular traffic because that would encourage me to actually post every day instead of only once in a while. I also finally posted some information about my first sources although its way back in the archives at this point. I have a lot of other notes to transcribe from my notebook, but it's sort of a slow process since they're a bit scattered.

Internet as academic dialogue.

I have been engaged recently in a debate on one of my good friend's livejournals, Fork.... I have talked about it and linked it here before.

We've been talking about one of his posts that included his views on the relationship between his friends from his high school days with his college friends, especially when it concerned academic dialogues. One of the key examples was racism.

I sent him an e-mail of a post I had written that I couldn't publish because it was too many characters and started a correspondence with him. It felt good to be talking to other people in my community about real issues we both care about. Even more than that, I felt like the forum of a blog or livejournal does provide a class-like atmosphere. The moderator is the owner of the blog; they teach us something, even if only how to start thinking about the issue.

I have considered most of the people whose livejournals I read religiously (Fork..., pragueislife, XCKD, subtled) to be my teachers. I have learned about male sexuality, poetry, gay life, teaching English overseas, physics math and humor all in the same package and the military, but not just from anyone--from my friends.

I love that this is a community I am participating in more actively. I think it is one of the most important learning and educational tools we have ever created. Now, with a stable cable or phone connection, the world is at one's fingertips even with very few other resources available. Bloggers have been looked at as maybe an unnecessary trend, but maybe that's because we're reading the wrong types of blogs. I think if there were a site to connect all of these really important conversations together in a moderated way that it would be really incredible. A way to provide a space for certain topics of common interest. Maybe this is one of the things that could eventually develop into an opportunity. I already know girlfriends that I would hire to help with the operation and people I would ask to contribute.

I realize that I have so much information right now on my hands with regards to my independent study and I have been having all of these very tangible conversations about my subject matter but I sometimes forget I might not have actually published a post on these things. I need to find the right balance between these non-visible experiences and ones that result in academic dialogue.

words for women writers part one.

Don't tell long stories that don't change subject or have a greater meaning.

They're never as interesting to everyone else as they may or not may be to you.

I know that probably sounds pretentious, and that's not my purpose, but it's not fair to you for you to go on in life not knowing that. It's one of those things that your friends will never tell you because they love you, but it is not one of your more redeeming qualities.

I wouldn't call it child pornography...

One of my most meaningful continuous dialogues about literary expression of sexuality, kids and all things worthwhile continued tonight and culminated in this post, a poem, on that individual's livejournal. Just thought I'd share since one of the discussed topics was the question of the nymphet (think Lolita) and the difference between kidding and not and the fine line of appropriateness.

This was a topic that had been breeched earlier in the day at dinner when a few girlfriends and I were talking about what it means to take naked pictures of your own children and how careful you have to be about it because of the media's obsession with child pornography. My one friend, who works as the assistant director of an art gallery and is quite aesthetically savvy, mentioned a woman, Sally Mann, whose photographs bring the aforementioned fine line of appropriateness into question. It should be noted that the pictures she takes of naked children are all her own, but her exhibit (later turned into a book) stirred up controversy. She also has a book called At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women which is a series of pictures of girls on the verge of womanhood. I am excited to look over this book which we do have at Swem and to respond to the way that these pictures portray these girls. Another interesting thing to note about Sally is that she is from Lexington, Virginia so I feel like she's of particular interest to those of us here in the state. And a personal "cool fact" is that she attended Friend's World College, now Global College, the program through which I did my semester abroad.

Also, I came across this news story this evening and thought it was worth linking.

Children's Literature

One of the things that I have realized is important over the last few months while I've been reading and thinking about the childhood development of girls is that there is a definite need to provide our female children with empowering and worthwhile literature that teaches them to believe in their own power and abilities as women rather than simply casting them as the "damsel in distress." While I was visiting with the Shakespeare & Company Bookshop writing group in Paris, France over Christmas break one of the other writers suggested to me to pick up a book his sister had written because it was a collection of stories from around the world that featured strong female heroines. I don't have the title with me right now, but as soon as I get into that section of my notes, I will make sure to post it. I have been looking to find it at the library or somewhere else accessible and hopefully will read it soon. Tonight while I was visiting with a friend I came across a book she had titled Booty: Girl Pirates on the High Seas by Sara Lorimer. I was really moved to read through it because it struck me as the perfect book for young women. It is about pirates-- a group of exceeding interest to and often of great reverence for young kids, who we generally only have male examples of. To introduce to young girls the female version of these off-color heroes is to entitle them to believe that they are capable of kicking ass, taking names, and being in charge. I will look over it and get back to you.

STI rate in teens

So, when people ask me why I focus on the body and sexuality within women's studies I consistently say that it is because I think we are approaching a crisis within the realm of women's bodies because of some mixed messages about weight and sexual activity. An article on BBC today confirmed some of my fears. A study conducted by the CDC showed that one in four girls aged 14 to 19 tests positive for a sexually transmitted infection and that the percentage is even greater for black teens. My fear is that if something doesn't change these numbers will continue to increase.

We live in a society in which sex is permissible for young people outside of wedlock and quite obviously many of these teens are choosing to engage in sex, but they are also obviously not being informed of how to take care of their bodies. I know that I personally went through a sexual education course that was based on the abstinence-only model and I know a good number of my friends had similar experiences.

I was even recently talking to one of my close friends and she said that since sex was something that "just wasn't talked about" in her home and because she always felt guilty and uncomfortable about sex, she has a fair amount of unprotected sex. She said that having a condom and using it made it more real and made her feel more like she was deciding consciously to have sex instead of just letting it happen without protection.

My question is "what do we do about it?" In my mind a lot of these problems could be solved by frank, honest, open, thorough discussions about sex and sexuality with young people in an attempt to help them through the challenging and frustrating process of figuring out their own bodies and how they work, but I'm pretty sure that at least some places in our country are too conservative for that type of sex education.

One of the things, though, is that if children don't receive thoughtful information about sex from reliable resources like teachers, parents, and counselors, they're going to learn about sex from pornography, television and peers instead. Some conservatives think that if we don't teach our kids about sex we are protecting them, but instead we're just leaving them to misinformation from these other sources.

Many teenaged boys begin masturbating to pornographic movies and magazines which they can download off of the Internet or get from friends and older brothers. For anyone who has ever watched a pornographic video or looked into an issue of Playboy or Hustler I am sure you must agree that this is a pretty poor source for boys to be learning about the complexity of sexuality, particularly female sexuality. Porn is even more easily accessible now with the Internet. For instance, youporn.com, an explicit version of youTube, provides hours of free videos and all a person has to do is click a button claiming to be 18. I know that I personally would never want my sons, if I ever had any, to learn about sex from a resource that promotes the message that it is okay to objectify women in the bedroom. Even if you do have a good content filter in place on your computer, you can't stop your young kids from getting messages about sex. Commercials these days treat sex almost like a joke. Men slathered in Axe have women licking them and crawling all over them. A couple dressed in costumes (one as milk) goes to the doctor to ensure that they don't have to worry about lactose intolerance as a barrier to sexual intercourse. It's a commercial (if I remember correctly) for some sort of food product, but it uses this idea of sex to sell itself. And certainly we all remember our first sex talk with our friends. We were all completely wrong in most of the things we thought about sex and our bodies, but we didn't have that many resources. Point being, kids are going to learn about sex whether adults want them to or not and I sincerely think a lot of good could come out of this sex education being purposeful, thorough, and sensitive to many of the issues that are specific to teenagers.

There is a need for a change. The statistic tell us that. 1 in 4 girls 14-19 have a sexually transmitted infection. 1 in 4 college women have survived a rape or attempted rape. Something is wrong when this many women, 25% in each case, are falling victim to our imbalanced system of addressing sex and sexuality. Maybe a massive, universal change is not something that will be possible any time soon, but we can individually make a difference. I am planning on being open and frank with my children about sex and their bodies and would encourage all parents to do so. Make sure your kids are learning the real facts about sex from a source they trust instead of from porn or television. And if you don't feel comfortable talking to your kids about sex seek out other resources that can. I know that I personally would be more than happy to serve as a sex educator and I'm sure there are other people out there who would be more than happy to do the same: guidance counselors, sex educators, national touring groups like 1 in 4, etc. I also know there are great books that address issues of sex like the one I read when I was younger, All About Sex and Growing Up.

I personally think it's great that we have a sexually liberated system in a lot of ways, but I think we need to be making sure that our kids are better prepared to live and function within that system. Even something as small as providing your son or daughter with condoms, instructing them on how to use them and why they are important and offering to help your son or daughter seek out counseling or STI testing if these become issues can make a big difference. I just know I don't want the number of women who are being negatively affected by their sexualities to continue increasing.

Anatomy of Hell

I sat down to write the review for this movie and it felt strangely familiar to me and then I remembered why I never posted on it. I had written the entire review but my internet was out so blogger didn't save it and then my computer died and the post didn't get saved. I was totally bummed and gave up for a while, hence why I'm a little backlogged with movie reviews. Well, here it goes and hopefully I'll get quite a few done this time before I get fed up with the Internet.

It took getting a lot of distance between me and the film before I could actually produce this review. The French film by director Catherine Breillat was disturbing in a most real and visceral way and my first few days after having watched it I couldn't get it off of my mind. It purposefully reaches into the not-so-innocent pasts we all had and attempts to show the ways in which they have affected our sexual developments. It is literally written, at times, with menstrual blood with its provoking dialogue about the sexual relationship between a man and woman. It also really raises questions about the politics of looking and the fine boundary between looking and touching. My one complaint was that the film, while doing a great job about turning this woman's consumptive sexual and emotional crisis into a discussion of the psychological reasons for her sexual fears and compulsions, it completely simplified homosexuality into a condition of being repulsed by women. Obviously, it's far more than that and many men just prefer men and don't have a particular dislike of women. In all, though, this film prompted me to really do a long of soul searching about my own sexuality and relationship to my childhood so I would have to say that it is definitely worth watching.

You can see edited versions of this post on imdb, Netflix, and Amazon.

Back from Break

So, I am back from spring break now, and did a good bit of reading and thinking over the course of the week but was away from the Internet. One of the things I have been having a hard time with is posting regularly and in a timely manner. With weblogs, one of the important things is to post when things are happening, not weeks and weeks later, but I sometimes feel like I need a bit longer to really let my thoughts stew before I'm prepared to post about them. Basically, this is why I never ended up posting about the Sex Workers Art Show and I Love Female Orgasm, both really important, relevant things going on on campus that I had a lot to say about. I realized in retrospect that it wasn't necessarily as important for me to say everything exactly right as it was just to say something and get it out there while people were still thinking and talking about the event, so in light of this and in light of my recent return to campus, I am going to make an effort to post at least three times a week for the rest of the semester. I have a couple of drafted posts that will hopefully go up soon, but in addition to these, I'm going to try to have intermittent posts that summarize everything that I've been doing by way of my project.

This past week I led a service trip of a small group of W&M students and most of the reading material I took with me involved my independent study. Because of that, I ended up getting a chance to discuss a lot of the things I've been reading about and thinking about which was really wonderful for me. I've realized that I do actually have a lot to teach people when it comes to women's bodies and sexuality, especially since these are really sensitive topics and I am really comfortable discussing them, so hopefully I'll be able to continue formulating a conversation from my studies long after I'm done with the official independent study part of things. I know I'm already planning to maintain this weblog through my graduate work.

I've been watching at least two films every week on the broad theme of women's sexuality and bodies, and I have a lot of these I haven't written on yet and I've also been reading some poetry and a few books on the topic, so look for responses to these soon. Also, I would really like for my webpage to show up in searches, but I don't really even know how to go about getting it to show up on search engines, so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know!

Techno-Ethics

I get concerned, sometimes, about the proper way to cite ideas coming from readings in the technical world. I just posted on my goals site, What I Will, a post entitled "some realizations." In this post I am drawing on some of my own ideas and experiences about everyday life and linking them to things I have learned recently, specifically from my Management Skills for Public Service Seminar I am taking through W&M's Career Center. On my goals post, I do not specifically cite where I am drawing the idea from, namely because in the presentation we had the man demonstrated two primary sources that use this same idea and since he was a secondary source, I don't feel the need to actually attach a bibliography. At the same time, I did feel the need to come here to this blog, linked under the same common blogger.com identity, to comment on my concerns about technical ethics. See, this section could just count as the bibliography. I also thought, then, that I should probably somewhere have a list of everything I am reading at any given time posted. There is a Facebook application that does that, but I generally don't add my textbooks, but maybe it would be worthwhile. And, then, would that count? I'm not sure.

Absurdist Livejournal Poem

Second Coming

Confidence

I realized tonight that I have gotten into a habit of thinking that I am the "ugly girl." You know how you are casually dating or sleeping with someone and he and his friends are always talking about the other sweet parties they go to? Sometimes it starts to feel like the girls at all these other parties that they bring home are smoking hot and you're just the one they feel ashamed to mention to people. The interesting thing, though, is that when you are actually around them, for whatever reason, often enough to find out about the other girls they're bringing home, or if you were to randomly stumble into an awkward situation one night, sometimes you realize that you're not the ugly one. In fact, you're pretty smart, funny, laid back, cool, and assured, comparatively. It made me wonder about why sometimes powerful women have a hard time finding happiness in romantic relationships. I think it has to do with what a man (or another woman) can handle at any given time. A strong, worthwhile woman is a lot harder to play games with than someone equally attractive but a little less headstrong both because she can see what's going on and because strong women do command a decent amount of respect. Thinking about all of these good things made me realize that I have been forgetting about the power of positivity over the past semester or so. I had been forgetting that worry about things makes them true instead of just believing in yourself, wanting certain things, and waiting to see what happens, which generally brings out the best of all circumstances.

I'm going to breathe now, for a while, and remind myself of all of the good that is life and of all of the good ways of looking at things. That's it, for now, but I'll probably have more to say on it later.

Sitting in a booth

Last few times I've gone out with my girlfriends and met up with a couple of guys, I've noticed the tendency men have of squishing me and my girlfriends on the inside of booths. I had gotten pretty frustrated. To me it seemed like a type of control. They were between us and the rest of the restaurant, bar, or world. They could determine who we did or didn't talk to just because they were blocking access to us. I felt significantly trapped, at times, and definitely felt like it wasn't an ideal situation. But then I went out to dinner last night with a few of my girlfriends. Instead of sitting on the inside of the booth, I sat on the aisle side. I expected to feel more freedom and, in some ways, I did, but I also noticed an enormous downside to sitting on the outside.

Particularly, depending on what type of atmosphere you are in, sitting on the outside of the booth can be limiting. As you sit and talk to the other people at your table, you have to turn in towards the wall to be able to address everyone. As you do this, you shut out the outside world and are left only with the option of looking at the other people at your table. On the other hand, the person sitting on the inside of the booth can turn their back to the wall and look at at everything happening in the rest of the room. Certainly there is a person between them and everything else going on, but at least the inside person has visual access to everything. In some ways, this ability to see what else is out there is empowering because if the person on the outside of the booth isn't being interesting enough, you don't have to pay attention.

Relationships

I just realized last night that I might have been too busy idolizing the past to enjoy the present. I'm relating this to my independent study because I think that relationships and dating are a women's issue. A central one. And they have a lot to do with body image and sexuality because so much of how our ideas about these things are shaped have to do with our past experiences with men and women in dating situations. I realized that I talk about one of my exes an awful lot. Like all the time. Granted, he was a good friend and I dated him for two years, so that's a pretty significant amount of time I shared with him. And I talk about past relationships because we learn a lot from the things we did during them and mistakes we made. But I also am becoming aware that in remembering the relationship as a whole and in looking for similar qualities in someone new, I'm not allowing myself to be happy with the beginning phases of new relationships because I am so eager for them to become something else. I am not content just to date someone occasionally or to run into them around campus and have something happen after a few weeks or months, I am much more interested in making it all happen at once, and I think that is a false hope. I definitely believe in the power of being present in the moment, so I'm going to try to revise the way I'm handling things, and I would tell anyone else who has hit some relationship bumps to do the same. You can't look for your old partners positive qualities without ultimately ignoring all of the good things in your new interests. Sure, you can have certain things you know you like in a person, but you need to separate them from being possessed by any one person and instead let them become simply adjectives and character traits.

I'll let you know how it goes for me. You let me know how it goes for you.

Breasts: A Documentary

The hour-long documentary Breasts directed by Meema Spadola (who also made a film called Private Dicks: Men Exposed) is a great resource for open dialogue about female bodies, specifically, breasts. Composed of a range of viewpoints--large and small, young and old--the film allows the women to talk about how they feel about their upper bodies and how breasts affect their interactions with the world. Although I am not sure I learned much from watching the film, it was refreshing to hear other opinions on breasts.

I watched the movie with a male friend of mine who I assumed wouldn't enjoy the film much, but afterwards we talked a little bit about his experiences. The film was a good jumping off point for the two of us to discuss other body issues that women have and initiated a few questions about breasts and how women might feel about them. He thought, though, there could have been a larger diversity of breasts and viewpoints and that by limiting the film to 22 voices, many of whom are only shown in specific segments, there were a lot of perspectives excluded.

I thought the film attempted to show women from various walks of life, but it is true that many of my own feelings about breasts were not echoed in what the women on-screen were saying. I did particularly enjoy the mother-daughter pairs who appeared together and discussed not only their own bodies but their feelings about each other's bodies. I think these scenes revealed a lot about how women feel about the bodies of those around them. I also particularly enjoyed the historic clips that were interspersed throughout the interviews because they did a lot to show different ways in which breasts have been depicted over time as well as kept the tone of the film lively.

One issue I did have is that the film raised the question of the power of breasts, something my male friend immediately picked up on and was joking about, without doing much to provide an answer. None of the women really were able to describe the power of having breasts in a clear manner. Instead, it came off as a vague and questionable notion. I would have liked to have seen a few more academic and scientific voices in the mix that could have possibly explained things like biological reasons for the power of breasts and sociological and psychological points of interest. However, as a film that provides a frank glance at what some women think about their breasts, I thought this film was worth seeing. Only an hour long, it easily held my attention and I was disappointed when it was over.

Even though many women assume that they are the target audience, I think this film is particularly appropriate for men. It allows them an opportunity to see women's bodies through the eyes of the women they belong to and to understand a little about what breasts mean to those of us who have them. I also thought the film would be an excellent resource for women with questions about body image who might need some reassurance that the way they feel about their breasts is completely normal.

You can see edited versions of this review on IMDB, Netflix, and Amazon.

The Great Happiness Space

This film, The Great Happiness Space by Jake Clynell, was an intriguing, thought-provoking and sometimes disturbing glimpse into a culture that is, to most, unfamiliar if not unthinkable. It engages the audience in a no-holds-barred look at the Japanese male companionship trade, providing insight into reasons for why men become hosts as well as why women seek out their services. Question after question was raised in my mind not only about the lives of the men working at Osaka's Cafe Rakkyo but also about a culture in which this industry can exist and thrive. What are these women lacking in life that makes them shell out thousands of dollars just for amusement, entertainment and male company?

Many reviews and even the synopsis on the website, compare these male hosts to geisha, citing them as a contemporary male version of this ancient tradition, but I have to disagree. Geisha were well trained in a variety of art forms and provided dance and music in addition to their intelligent conversation to the men who paid to spend time in their presence. The male hosts at Rakkyo lack these talents and, instead, offer a different set of services and fill a very specific niche in a Japanese society that has an interesting relationship to sexuality and intimate relationships.

This is a movie to watch, not just to learn about the sex trade in Japan, but also to spark thoughts on why men and women both seek intimacy in its different forms within the service industry. Having lived in Japan and possessing an interest in gender and sexuality issues, I thought I knew what I was getting into when I pressed the play button, but this film introduced ideas and concepts that I shuddered at and could not stop thinking about for days.

See an edited version of this review on Netflix Amazon and IMDB.

Initial Sources

I first started listening to Edward Fischer's lecture series from The Great Courses series entitled Peoples and Cultures of the World. There were lectures on family and marriage and after listening I felt like I had a much more open mind about various notions of marriage and family. I know these things and some examples Fischer uses will come up as I proceed along with my research.

After this, I headed with a group of my friends to Europe. I carried with me a copy of Ann Lamott's Bird by Bird. This book , on the art and craft of writing, detailed a contemporary woman's perspective on writing and new millennium life. Her reflections helped me think a lot about my experiences last semester taking class with the fiction author David L. Robbins. I had really struggled to navigate the path between how I write and how Professor Robbins wanted us to write. I was actively examining gender and sexuality in several of my stories (Behind the Bathroom Door and Sonata in C Sharp), but I wasn't always feeling like I was supported in some of my decisions about subject matter.

Once the new year began, I traveled to Paris where I participated in a writer's workshop at the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookstore and went to the Musee Dorsay where I saw, among other things, the Ferdinand Hodler exhibition, one of the special collections. His women were so strong and powerful and the sexuality was so frank I was almost shocked to find out that he was painting in the 19th century. I lost my friend in the museum, so I picked up a book in the library to read while I was waiting called Art, Women and Society. I am still in the process of reading it as I'm getting ready for the beginning of school.

Venus Boyz

Venus Boyz, a documentary film by Gabriel Baur, is all about the exploration and expression of masculinity by women. These individuals range from women who are primarily heterosexual and simply enjoy the power and entitlement they feel while wearing men's clothing and attitudes to women born as hermaphrodites who have, after years of classification as female, opted to explore their inner leanings towards masculinity and male-ness. This range of viewpoints was a key element of why Venus Boyz is a film worth watching.

Unlike their male drag counterparts (queens), drag kings don't have as may films that celebrate and explore why women sometimes feel the need to dress like men, although there are some. Other than Brandon Teena's story, which remains in the spotlight due to his traumatic death and Hillary Swank's portrayal of him in Boys Don't Cry, the individual tales of these female cross-dressers and trans-sexuals are often unheard. Venuz Boyz gives us a range of these stories and a chance to take a glimpse into the performer's lives both on and off stage. Although their tales are sometimes accompanied by kitschy performances, I felt like it was the less showy parts of the documentary that were really able to communicate to me some of the politics, problems and positives of cross-dressing and of exploring female masculinity.

I wouldn't recommend this documentary to everyone. Certainly, you have to be willing to listen with an open mind about these womens' experiences with the gender-biased world; but, for those who are interested in exploring how a group of women are working individually to redefine gender, this is a worthwhile film. Even though I had a very open mind going into the film and have a background in similar topics, I had no idea that the range of women who choose to cross dress was so diverse. I was also reassured to hear that many of the "protagonists" of the film have been able to find funding and support for their artistic explorations and expressions.

There is a reason that this film has won awards and been featured at major GLBTQ film festivals, and that it is because it offers an insight into a world not found in other films. And, if you have ever wondered about your own female masculinity, this film will likely offer you comfort and familiarity.

See slightly edited versions of this review on Amazon, Netflix, and IMDB.

Film Comments

Part of my independent study is dedicated to watching films, both documentary and fictional, that are able to contribute to my understanding of gender, the body, and sexuality. Originally, I had thought that my comments would be restricted to observations I would make either on this blog or in formal writing, but last night I started thinking about the whole point of my study. I'm interested in how contemporary women are working to remap the body and redefine female sexuality, but I am not completely sure whether I am content to sit on the side, watching and reporting what other women are doing. I am maintaining this blog in the attempt to reach people who are interested in similar issues, shooting my thoughts out into cyberspace where they may be helpful or useful to people searching for answers regarding any number of topics I may explore through my studies. I realized that if I am watching a film to find answers and am committed to reacting to it in writing, I might as well make sure that other people see those thoughts and comments. So, rather than only posting movie reviews and reflections here, I am also planning on contributing to various other forums including Amazon, IMDB, and maybe Netflix. I'm not really sure which of these spaces I will find to be the easiest to navigate, but I will play around with them a little bit until I really a routine that works. I will probably put the same comments in each place, but I know that there will be different formats and whatnot. So, stay tuned for updates on what I decide and the things I've been posting.

Intro Part I.

This blog, My Two Lips, was created as a reservoir for all of the written pieces and ideas produced as a part of my Spring 2008 independent study within the women's studies department at the College of William & Mary under the supervision of Professor Christy Burns.

I have recently been watching a lot of films, including Yesterday and Venus Boyz, and reading some books and poetry that are directly or indirectly related to the things I'm seeking to explore in my independent study and I realized that a lot of my initial thoughts were becoming lost as I sought time to sit down and write a more formal analysis.

I have still been toying with my ideas about the final product I want to result from my work, and while I still think that a scrapbook that contains formal work, images, reflections, and a significantly annotated bibliography is going to be extremely important, I wanted to ensure that I had a space in which to think "out loud" about my ongoing readings and projects wherever I was and regardless of what I was doing. To this end, I decided to create this blog as both an extension of my independent study as well as a resource from which I may later be able to pull ideas, information and even entire bits of text for my scrapbook.

The Internet has become such an important way through which to collect, link, and disseminate information and web logs are one of the quickest and easiest ways to produce a website where information and personal thoughts can be shared that this seemed like the right solution. All of the original work presented here is the sole and individual work of myself, Ashley Slaff, and is protected by copyright laws as such.

Thank you, again, for reading, participating and thinking. Please feel free to comment at your leisure. I'll be sure to keep you updated.

My Two Lips: Introduction Part II

So, the formulation of my independent study has been a work in progress. All through my graduate school applications and the fall semester, I've been reworking my ideas and they've finally started to crystallize. Partially this clarity comes because it is the beginning of the semester now and I'm counting the things I've done, said and read over the past few weeks as part of my research.

I started out largely with a dream and a dream advisor. I knew I was interested in women's studies and women's expression and I knew that I wanted to try something on my own. I had been dwelling on the ideas from a couple of classes, namely Nancy Gray's Modern Women Writers and The Politics of Storytelling by Women and Christy Burns' Theories of Visual Culture which was later revised into Film, Feminism and the Body. The themes of these courses culminated in my mind and I was thinking seriously about women's bodies and sexualities and the way in which these topics are explored--remapped and redefined--through contemporary literary and artistic media.

I wanted to engage in a study that would let me explore these topics--sometimes vulgarly and unscientifically--and write about it. The title "My Two Lips" developed from my ideas about the intertwining relationship between women's literature and expression and female sexuality. To speak--to desire. These ideas wrap themselves tightly around each other in my mind. When I read about women writers--from Virginia Woolf to Ann Lamott-- the idea of a woman writer is inherently tied to her motherhood which is inherently tied to her expression or repression of of her sexuality and sexual desire.

So, I started thinking, applying and reading. I thought a lot about what I wanted to learn and targeted some specific materials, a list of which will soon be included, but in reading some other books that I picked up along the way, I've realized that the topic can be found everywhere. I want to mention these resources now so that you all can participate in the formative process of this project, not just the finished product.