Wst Blog 10

So it is the end of blogging. I wanted to write something clever to make people think or laugh or something, but to be honest my brain power is just about zapped. Therefore, i'll say that I will treasure my zines from my classmates, because I think we really did exactly what Kipnis asked us to do. All the zines take interpretations of theory and apply them to an action in our zines. I think that we all recognized pieces of ourselves in each other's zines, or at least had an appreciation for where each other was coming from. As for blogging... even if it is something I decide to keep up on a regular basis, it too will not quite have the same meaning for me. This blogging experience has been interesting because I know that there are people reading these posts every week, the community of our class has come to know the way each other writes and to some extent thinks, and have 'cyber' gotten to know each other better. Therefore, this is radically different than other blogging experiences because those generally tend to be a more personal experience, and not a subversive practice as Rhodes would encourage. Anyways, it's time for me to finish, and to bid this little blogging space a farewell....

Wst Blog 9

Due to zine-mania, this week I have been thinking a lot about Kipnis and what she means by disarticulating and rearticulating. What I have discovered is this.... once you start thinking about how to refunction things, especially with pop culture items, it kind of takes over your existence. Now it seems like every magazine I read and every billboard that catches my eye are being refunctioned in my head. However, to actually go out and physically refunction these items so that they are in the public eye takes time and money - neither of which I seem to have a lot of these days. If we are being affected by forces of acceleration and decceleration and have no time to reflect upon things as Baudriallrd claims, then it seems difficult to fit the rearticulation of pop culture into the mix. While I want to spend my time undertaking projects like zines and spraypainting on STOP signs to send a message, I wonder how likely it is that I can fit these activities into my already packed schedule. This is something that I think we all run into in our lives, the question of which causes to support, which activities to participate in, or what products of pop culture we can refunction while still doing all the things we need to do. While I can juggle school, work, volunteering, and the occasional act of vandalization in the name of a good cause, I wonder if this is enough. Kipnis seems to be asking for a major call to action, not merely the analysis of theory but the reappropriation of pop culture as we know it in order to achieve feminist goals. How do we decide what action to take, and how do we know if it is enough? Does anyone else ever feel like this, like there is just too much to do, and you're not quite sure if the things that you manage to fit into your schedule are the 'right' ones?

Wst Blog 8

This week my life seems to be more chaotic than usual. I don't know if it's the winter blahs, the realization that there is only one month left of school, or the fact that I've had the same cold for the past three weeks, but I'm definitely starting to lose it a little bit. I was talking with a friend the other day and we both realized we were feeling major anxiety over some of these things, yet at the same time this feeling of total apathy that made us just want to tune out of everything and stay on the couch watching television. As we both expressed this feeling, I realized this sounded awfully familiar, that I was in fact having a Baudriallrd moment.
Baudriallrd claims that we are facing a loss of history due to the forces of acceleration and deceleration which have resulted in us living in a hyper reality where we accept images (simulackra) as reality. This concept of a loss of history is disturbing to me, especially when I realise that I have not taken the time to reflect on my personal history very often.
I can only hope that it is not as Baudriallrd claims, and that this is not entirely out of my control. I want to investigate further Baudriallrds claim that deceleration results in our apathy and indifference so that we live in a hyper reality and accept television as our history. Does Baudriallrd include all forms of media in this hyper reality? Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Baudriallrd say that television is hyper reality because it is a copy of so many tiny little pieces of images coming across the screen? Therefore, would he view newspapers and radio in the same way? Can I avoid the hyper reality if I try to take the time to reflect and avoid the evil television? Can we take news from the television and still maintain our history if we recognize that what we are viewing is simulackra?
Signed, a girl on the edge of losing it all, possibly already soaring through hyper reality who needs a little shake back down to earth. Please.

Ranty Pants

OK. So i've never really used this blog thing as a place to vent out my frustrations. But today seems like a perfect time because of something that happened in one of my classes this morning. First of all, it's in the morning and i'm not a morning person so i'm already a little grumpy and not really at the top of my intellectual game. This class, which was meant to be a historical overview of feminist movements in the 1960s quickly spiralled into a discussion of 'what feminism is now' with my professor insisting that certain things could be neatly and historically categorized into the three waves of feminism. I talked for awhile, trying to explain that feminism today is about way way way more than what he thought it was (binary between the sexes where women are fighting for equality against men) but he was having a hard time understanding it. Fine fine, whatever. I'm tierd, nobody in the whole damn class knew what the hell I was talking about, fine. BUT THEN, he proceeded to use the argument that the Harper government is doing good things for women by (and I'm not sure what he was talking about here) introducing the concept of 'equal pay for similar work'. I thought this battle had already been fought and won to some extent with the whole Air Canada flight attendants being paid the same as pilots thing but whatever. So I said, 'well, what about the major cuts he has made to funding for child care? doesn't that basically serve to shove women back into the home because they will not be able to afford to put their kids in day care? etc...' Another member of my class turned to me and actually said, "this is why i hate feminism. that's so not true. i think that if parents want to put their kids in day care that's up to them and this cut actually will serve to get women in rural areas out into the work force because they will not have the money to stay at home.' Anyways, I told her that I completely disagreed with her point of view and that I was pretty sure she had no idea what she was talking about. Though I tried not to let it bother me, the whole situation really did. I guess because i'm in a lot of gender studies type classes, live in a house full of feminists, and honestly try to believe that not all people are ignorant assholes I forgot the sad truth that some of them are. OK. Feeling better. Just needed to get that out.

Wst Blog 7

Ok, so this week I think I may have broken my brain (is this possible?) over the midterm plus illness is resulting in a very fuzzy head. Anyways, I have been trying to think about how the articles pertaining to pop culture we have been reading relate to feminism, and for some reason i've been thinking about Mr. Louis Althusser. Althusser says that the state apparatus reproduces the conditions of production through the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus which includes includes religion, culture, education, etc. For feminists, the ideological state apparatus is something which can be interrogated, because it is encompasses so many aspects of society. Education particularly can be examined because it is a major influence on individuals in our society, and this portion of the ideological state apparatus can be said to reproduce conditions of production in several ways.
I guess what got me thinking about all of this was the ways that sexual education is taught in our schools. In elementary school, I was taught that sexual education meant that a man and a woman who "really loved each other" got together and made a baby. This form of education reinforced heterosexual norms in society, and in my school there was never any mention of family structures that were different. Also, 'sex ed' surrounding sexual abuse or assult often centered around telling children that if they were touched innapropriately, this constituted an offence and they should report it. However, there was little mention of other forms of sexual assult, such as verbal abuse or controlling behaviour, and the perpetrator was most often male. This served to propagate the male as 'dominant,' and sexual abuse as something which occurred in the private realm. As I got older, sex education focused on abstinence, and I witnessed several presentations which painted a picture of youth who had sex too early as being abnormal or 'bad.' This seems to reinforce some kind of a hierarchy where the kids who are having sex are the 'bad kids' or those from the 'wrong side of the tracks' and the kids who aren't are 'good' and have been properly educated by their upper class parents. This also generally applies to girls, because girls who have sex early are labelled 'sluts' whereas if menI am of course, basing a lot of this on personal experience and what I witnessed in school.
Anyway, in this example the methods of sex education serve to reinforce the conditions of production (where what children are taught to normalize certain relationships while abnormalizing or 'othering' others, as well as normalizing social hierarchies of class).