Riot Jersey

 Apparently, as an update, there now a facebook event titled 'Riot Jerseys' at this link:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=110746972338315

The information of this event reads as follows:

"Hey everyone, we thought it would be an awesome idea to immortalize the RIOT THAT IS KEGS AND EGGS 2011. This is UAlbany. We go hard. We aren't stopped by authority, automobiles or anything else. If you're in our way we'll crush you. Show your UAlbany pride and represent.

We're selling t-shirts of any size, just post on the wall and let us know what you want. They're going for $6.00 for one, or two for $10.00 . We'll need at least 24 people to order so add anyone you think would buy."

 Maybe this is the other side to my argument? Maybe it's funny? I feel that there are so many students, and people at the parade, who were upset about what happened, and don't find it funny. In any event, I marked this as offensive on facebook. Am I missing something? Seems like crushing people is a gendered statement. Something about this being a jersey is also gendered. 

Saint Rose V SUNY Albany

'http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Riot-a-rift-in-town-and-gown-1132965.php

So here's an article about the recent Kegs and Eggs incidents on Hudson ave, which is in 'the student ghetto.' Having lived on the intersection of Hudson and Quail, I had some violent, interesting responses to this article.

"While the shaky videos of the mayhem burned up local websites, UAlbany officials -- who have taken pains to distance the university from its former No. 1 party school reputation -- condemned the students' actions as "reprehensible" and "hooliganism." In an apology letter issued to the news media, University President George M. Philip said the school "shares the outrage of community members and wants to assure them that UAlbany does not condone such behavior." The full letter is published in the Letters to the Editor section."

So, the SUNY kids are Caught! Those out of control renagade degenerate, whatever other rhetoric we can think of to vilify anyone at a public institution sorts of kids have been caught! We have irrevocable evidence that they are guilty. We're assuming here that everyone involved was a student, and more specifically a SUNY student. We also assume that in such a large group of people, everyone was just fine and dandy with what was going on. These are false assumptions. A large number of the houses on Hudson are rented to Saint Rose students. Not everyone drinking in the streets are from Albany.

"What many said was the worst incident in the city's student neighborhood in recent memory also underscored long-standing friction between permanent residents of Pine Hills -- perhaps the city's most diverse middle-class neighborhood -- and the transient student set known for trashing low-grade rental housing one semester at a time."

So here's some nice rhetoric pitting established home-owners against students. Not all students 'trash' apartments. Believe it or not, many land lords do not follow state laws in terms of keeping apartments neat and clean, and students choose this housing because it is near to campus. Students who have leases lose their security deposit, and are held responsible for damages when they leave the apartments on the street in question. 

"In an unguarded moment, one College of Saint Rose official recently suggested to the Common Council that it may be too late to save those blocks, which are now nearly devoid of resident homeowners.
"We've lost Hudson and Hamilton," said Mike D'Attilio, Saint Rose's executive director of government and community relations, "we don't want to lose Morris and Myrtle as well."

I'm not even sure how to respond to this chunk. Way to demonize your own students, that themselves or through their parents pay for your school, and your salary. Way to assume that SUNY students are vandals and that Rosebuds could have nothing to do with property damage. Way to assume the home-owners have rights that outweigh those of people who don't. Saint Rose suggests in this article that the way to 'save' Morris and Myrtle is to have college faculty live there and buy houses. 

Saint Rose apparently also did not receive any reports that it's students were involved. The article goes on to say that Saint Rose has students with parents so disgusted by Albany they do not want their children staying there (read: will not pay for their children to stay there). Were no Saint Rose students involved? How about Siena? HVCC? Or is Albany being criminalized in a way that no one wants to contend with. What happened, happened. It's not ok to start riots and cause property damage, but who gets blamed, who is pitted against each other, and who gets more police attention are not accidental and should be a factor in the analysis of what is going on in Albany, and what happened on Saint Patrick's day.

Standing in Solidarity with UHPP

I have an inter-uterine device, or IUD. I got said device from Planned Parenthood. I get my annual at Planned Parenthood. I want to work with Planned Parenthood.

So, the news that funding to them is being cut, though not terribly surprising, is pretty terrible. I can't help but wonder if this has something to do with Obama's  reversing the Global Gag Rule? Last semester I wrote a research paper about this.The Mexico City Policy was created under Reagan, and said, no funding to Non governmental organizations for abortion... you know, unless you were raped or there is incest. Clinton overturned the rule, Bush the second re-implemented it, and Obama overturned it again.
Many of the NGOs who had their funding  (USAID funds) revoked under Reagan never reapplied for funding from the US government. The international Planned Parenthood was embroiled in a lawsuit about the original policy, and I'm not sure how it ended.

In any event, the Mexico City Policy became something of a rhetorical device, or a political football, and opposition to or support of it by a president was more about being partisan than it was about actual funding.

So recently, the GOP is trying to re-define rape, so that the funding we are again willing to give to NGOs, will be reduced. They're trying to say that it doesn't matter if your father rapes you, you can't have the US of A's money for an abortion. Plus, how can we be sure rape victims aren't making it up.. or maybe just unclear about what rape is? The GOP would just like to clarify things... and make sure we're talking about 'rape rape' before we go all willy-nilly handing out tax-payers' money. You know... less than a tenth of a penny per tax payer, whereas half of your taxes go to fund the military.

Daily Show <== this is the link the the Daily show where they they discuss the difference between 'rape' and 'rape  rape'


And now, after the GOP is up in arms about pennies, our representatives are voting to cut funding to planned parenthood, and PP's response seems to be "what the hell are you doing; we aren't an abortion factory?"

And they aren't. The do STD screenings, give birth control, do annual checkups, and are totally depended upon by the women in upstate NY, including myself, who use them. But I am a little worried that the abortion debate isn't really in the response. Just leaves me feeling a little sick that, while the funding seems to be cut because of abortion debate, the response is not about the abortion debate.

Sickened, and hoping she still has a health provider when she thinks something might be wrong with her IUD,

Javateer

Like Clarified Butter

I commented on thestrenuousbrief's blog earlier today with my own explanation and paraphrasing of one of our articles, and I'm going to post it here so that if there is anything to be gained from it it will be more public:

Privilidged standpoints looks at epistemology (or, metaepistemology which is different). Similar to the discussion we had about discourse, metaepistemology has to do with looking at the ways we know things, or the ways we construct what we know. Epistemology has to do with (what feminist recoil from) the knower and the production of knowledge, and the author is making a complex argument that says standpoint theory and epistemology are not polar opposites, and that maybe they even inform one another. Standpoint theory teaches us that there is no objective reality, and that we have much to learn from looking at an issues from the social standpoints of many groups (like looking at black feminism, global feminism, and power from the bottom up). Epistemology is about the production of knowledge, and because there isn't ONE knowledge, feminists see this as reductive and verging on essentialism, which is our death wish. The author here is saying that epistemology attempts to be as objective as possible, so as to create 'good' and 'true' knowledge. She argues that using standpoint theory, epistemologists can come up with much more 'good' knowledge than by using a white, upper-middle class standpoint only. The author is suggesting that objectivity should not be a dangerous word for feminists, and social location should not scare off the epistemologists.

I hope this helps, or at least creates conversation if I have completely misrepresented the author. 

Challenging, yet Refreshing

Two of this weeks readings are somewhat dangerous, because they discuss biology, essentialism, and philosophy... not subjects that are part of our usual interdisciplinary team. Gut Feminism, by Elizabeth A. Wilson  refers to Freud in the first line. The piece discusses bulimia though the lens of Freud's writing, and finishes with a connection to feminism. Wilson explains that Freud conceives of physical hysteria, that is organic, as being different from hysteria that is more cognitive. Wilson writes:

"This model of hysteria, and Freud's emerging preference for psychogenic etiologies over biological ones, has been enormously influential on feminist accounts of embodiment. The idea that psychic or cultural conflicts could become somatic events was one of the central organizing principles of feminist work on the body in the 1980s and 1990s. This model allowed feminists to think of bodily transformation ideationally and symbolically, without reference to biological constraints." 69

Biological determinism as feminism's enemy has been written on by many a feminist scholar, so seeing an argument that suggests Freud's contributions to feminism is shocking albeit interesting. Wilson explains this by saying, "...it seems that the very sophistication of feminist accounts of embodiment has been brokered through a repudiation  of biological data. Too often, it is only when anatomy or physiology or biochemistry are removed from the analytic scene (or, in what amounts to much the same gesture, these domains are considered to be too reductive be analytically interesting) that it has been possible to generate a recognizably feminist account of the body." (70)

Much feminist work has been done recently concerning the body. Gut Feminism, 2004, is in the midst of that work. One book comes to mind that I read during undergrad. Sexing the Body, by Anne Fausto-Sterling also discusses biology and its relationship to feminism.

Wilson discusses the mistake of line drawing between physical and mental. "Materializations are not the effect of a leap from the mental to the somatic; rather, they are the product of a regression to a protopsychic state. That is, hysteria materializes the protopsychic (ontogenetic and phylogenetic) inclinations native to the body's substrata." (74)

Later in the article we find a discussion of organic becoming a synonym for biological and from this Wilson argues "...these Boolean demarcations among organs and between psyche and soma are intelligible only within a conventional (flat) biological economy... Perhaps the lability of eating and mood - their tendency to align and dissociate under the influences of certain medications - speaks to an ontological organization that is at odds with organic rationality." (83) The way things have been thought of is not whole. The physical is engaged in a dance with the mental and the emotional, and line-drawing does not reduce the entire equation to biological determinism, just as it does not deny the existence of biology.

Another sticky situation is explained by Kourken Michaelian in Privileged Standpoints/ Reliable Processes, where the author looks at standpoint theory in terms of epistemology (or metaepistemology). I have a deep love of existential philosophy, which means that reading this article was a joy. I have been trying to link my interests, and finding that the bridges between philosophy and women's studies are poorly kept.
Both of the articles mentioned tackle subjects that, if they are seen as the sole lenses through which to view the world, would mean the death of feminism. Again arises the question of what to do about the dead white men. Women's Studies reacts to a framework that has always taught and valued the dead white man, and these articles engage with ideas rather than acting against them. I am extremely interested in existential philosophy and its connection to modern day feminism. Because of this, these articles were challengingly  refreshing.

Really?

In my last post I noted that Women, Race &: Class by Angela Davis is a fantastic book. One of the chapters in said book addresses the myth of the black rapist. So today, when I stumbled across this, I couldn't help by blog about it.

The story here is that a frat at Yale went to the first years' dorms and chanted "no means yes, yes means anal." I don't think I'd find that a welcoming speech if I were, say, a first year female student at Yale. Welcome to the Ivy league, ladies. There's also a clip where you can hear the actual chanting.

No means different things for different people?

Thank you, Lorde and Davis

That the Mothers  May soar and the Daughters May Know Their Names: A Retrospective of Black Feminist Literary Criticism, by Farah Jasmine Griffin, offers an exposition of black feminist literature. Barely two pages into this article I found a striking point:

"Today many shcholars and critics continue to contribute to and expand the field. Nonetheless, black feminist criticism ( as well as women's studies and African American studies) has experienced a backlash from both the left and the right. The overall assault on multiculturalism and political correctness as well as those critiques that fault the field for being a bastion of identity politics and essentialism have targeted black feminist criticism and challenged its adequacy as a mode of critical analysis. Interestingly, it i quite likely that the latter critique of essentialism was made possible by the very terms and successes of black feminist literary critics who were among the first to call attention to the constructed nature of racial and gender identity."

ESSENTIALISM!!!! The feminist recoils at the thought! To somewhat contextualize my reaction to this piece, the reader should know that within the week I have read Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde, and Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis, both of whom were mentioned on page 485 of the article. The latter book gives a comprehensive history of the Women's rights movement, as well as the history of slavery. Thusly, when I read "...masculinist bias of the civil rights..." and "...black people were gendered male, and women most often meant white women..." (pg 485), I nodded furiously.

Griffin writes "These writers published in genres as diverse as as the novel, drama, poetry and autobiography; in so doing they openly challenged any notion of the black community as a monolith of like ideologies, politics and standpoints," (486). This is a central point, and one reason that black feminism has been and is so crucial to critical thinking. "From the beginning, black feminist have been committed to the freedom of all people, especially black people."

Griffin's conclusion expresses that black feminism has withstood attacks from within and without, and still survived (502).

Discourse, Discourse Everywhere: Subject "Agency" in Feminist Discourse Methodology, by Carol Bacchi, offers a critique of how feminists use and understand the term 'Discourse.'  Bacchi writes, "The identification of discourse(s) as institutionally supported and culturally influenced conceptual  and interpretive  schemas that influence the understanding of an issue, has as its goal interrogating those premises, and showing how they operate to delimit an issue in specific ways. By contrast, the tendency to use the term discourse as shorthand for ways of talking about and issue like prostitution or quotas is ambiguous in its intent," (202).
A dead white man, Jacques Derrida, warned that language has been around for a long time, and has entrenched meanings, and therefore is a loaded gun as a tool for communication. We can not expect to communicate exactly what we mean by speaking. I found this argument useful for understanding this article and the implications for using the term in question.

In Feminist Reverberations, by Joan Wallach Scott I found two one-liners that were especially impactful:

"don't expect lawful behavior from those who are not allowed to make law," (7)
and "When you save someone...you are saving them from something. You are also saving them to something," (9). Both of the quotes are taken from others and used by the author.