tychoish, now without a net

I have this paper to write, that basically asks me to address how an emphasis on the difference between the sexes, (and the concentration on the gender binary etc.) maintains systems of oppression. While this is a subject I’m interested in, I’ve found it hard to write about it in the past because I’m ambivalent about a couple of key issues.

Mostly the fact that to blur the lines between genders too intensely is to stray too close to the “I don’t see color” or “I don’t care if people are gay or straight” which I think is a position that should be avoided. At the same time, I completely agree with the idea that the gender binary is tool used to oppressive means. In fact, I could argue that the gender binary is perhaps *the* oppressive tool, but I don’t think I will at this juncture.

I don’t think that difference alone can create oppression, and even if it can, I don’t think that’s a particularly strong position to argue for social change from. See, people are different from each other. Entire groups of people are different from other groups of people. This doesn’t in and of itself create advantage and disadvantage or oppression. The other side of this “difference coin” is that despite all of the differences that people have with each other (on any social level), we ultimately have much more in common.

But difference, or at least perceived difference, remains the primary cause for a system of advantage.

Additionally, I think I have to examine the function of the binary form itself, separately from the issue of difference. Even though binaries claim to be supported by difference, and in a historical sense *are* caused by differences, after a period of time, the difference dissolves and blurs. This leaves a “superficial” kind of difference, and a very strong binary system/logic that creates and maintains patriarchy (and other systems of oppression).

For better or for worse we’re limited to a handful of sources which we read in class, and I think that the sources I have either agree with what I’m trying to argue, or can be interpreted to agree with what I’m saying.

Now all I have to do is pull all of it together in some sort of logical, coherent, and reasoned sort of way.

*sigh*

Cheers…

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I have a couple bits of news/theories for the “Beyond John Wayne” category but I’ll keep them brief in favor of other forthcoming TealArt posts.

First off this Beyond John Wayne category is more than a year old now. I’m looking back at this last year plus and thinking, “my god, I’ve learned and changed a lot.” This gender studies/masculinity project thing that I’m forever enthralled with has gone from being a “what does it mean to be gay in the world today, to a what does it mean to be a man in the world today, to a combination of the two: this is the whole “Beyond John Wayne” idea, that it’s possible to be a man outside of “the man box” to some sort of weird where I am now place. I think more reflection on this transition is defiantly required, but that’s fairly low on my list right now.

Having given it a suitable breathing period, I’m going to go back and edit/rewrite/revise my proposal for the Affinity Story Project (I really need a better name, don’t I?) and see what I can come up with. It’s something concrete and something real, and it feels good to finally be working on something like this.

The third, and probably most important reason why I made this post is to express the following theoretical statement (which in typical form is a question) that I scribbled on the back of a paper in class today:

Is the claim that the differences between men and women are natural, oppressive because “nature” is used as a tool for justifying the non-egalitarian distribution of opportunity and resources, or because of the nature/nurture dichotomy/opposition is inherently gendered.

Actually I wrote “is nature oppressive because itís a (tool for) justifying “different but equal” or because of the nature/nurture dichotomy/opposition.” With the parenthetical written in the super-text. You be the judge of what makes more sense and is more coherent.

I’d explain more, but I’m not really in the mood for answers now.

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I had a conversation last night, wherein I discovered perhaps the best name for a narrative of life at Beloit College, but I can’t remember now. Whatever. Today is Sunday, my day for updating the world about my status. Phone calls will occur later this afternoon (after my cell phone charges) and of course the requisite TealArt entry.

My classes are going well: nothing difficult yet. I have my first paper (feminisms) due in a couple of weeks, and I don’t think I’ll get the assignment for that until Thursday (maybe,) and it promises to be dead simple. In a fun and exciting sort of way. I have an “assessment” (psych) on Monday, which looks to be simple enough to complete in my sleep, which is really convenient given the time slot of that class. There’s another test-like thing in the Sociology class at the end of the week or the beginning of the next, which is the only thing I have to do actual work to prepare for, (other than general reading and stuff like that). So the school-work progresses much as I expected it, which is a very good thing indeed.

I have four friends who speak Russian in some degree. One is an exchange student, another immigrated as a child: so speaks it with her parents, and her (flawless) English is occasionally peppered with Russian. The last guy, did an intensive summer emersion program, and has taken a number of classes. The surprising thing is that I understand a surprising amount of what gets said. I have the vocabulary of an 18 month old, but I can kind of translate the important parts. It’s interesting, because I don’t think I’ve ever been in situations where my language skills have been semi-useful. Which when you consider the last time I had a Russian class was six years ago, is kind of good. On another linguistic level, my Spanish is also a lot better than I think it is, and I could probably Tutor people in first year Spanish. For all the faults of the last four years of my Spanish experience, my teacher did know the language really well, and her explanations have stuck. Maybe it wasn’t all for nothing.

I’ve become a little discouraged about the gay boy situation here. Fiveish in my class at last count: that works out to somewhere between a percent and a percent and a half of the class. I don’t think Kinsey was that far off. From what I can tell the percentages for the other classes aren’t appreciably higher, at this point. Now either there are people that I don’t see/can’t find (a distinct possibility), this place isn’t nearly as hippie/”liberal”/open as people claim it is (a certain truth, but I don’t think that’s it either,) or Kinsey misplaced a decimal. The perhaps more interesting observation is somewhere near half of them are “very-much attached” which strikes me as really uncommon and strange. Anyway.

Not to babble too much about this kind of thing but here goes another line of observation. I’ve been in the situation where I’ve had to kind of “come out” again. It’s really just a part of that continual coming out process, but it feels like “again” sometimes. I’ve not had problems or anything, but it’s weird. The “exciting” sigh of relief that I used to love so much, has mostly been replaced by anxiety and annoyance. I really want the gay thing to be a complete non-issue, but it doesn’t feel like a non-issue to me, and sometimes I feel like a one song-singer because I think about it *a lot.* There’s a lot more to be than this gay thing, but it’s still fairly important, and my position with myself is that heterosexuality is a bigger deal for straight folks than they/we think it is, but perhaps that’s part of the benefit of normativization (if that isn’t a word, it should be/is now.) It means walking a lot of fine lines, but there’s not much I can do really.
In other news, I think I’m going to join the Breakdance club. It’s a pretty big time commitment. No, it’s a huge time commitment. But it’s not too much, there’s a very slight possibility of getting some credit for it, but I would do it anyway. It looks so fun, it’ll be good exercise, and just like Morris and International, I have a great desire to know how to do it. I haven’t given up on the idea of a Morris team, but I’m fairly convinced that I’ll need at least one other person whose familiar with the ways of Morris before I jump into that.

The other really exciting thing that’s happened of late is that I wrote up a proposal for the Affinity Story Project, I have to do some revisions, which I’ll probably get to sometime this week. I have the time it’s more about getting distance from the work so that I can make better revisions. Then I just have to get an example of a story or two (probably one from Chris and whatever I put in to it,) write a cover letter, and send it out to publishers. I’ll start looking for stories after that. This is quickly becoming real, and I think it’s really exciting.

On that note, I’ll leave you for now. See you later in the week!

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I have a knitting post, and a few other ones that I’m thinking about writing, and they’ll probably appear later in the week, but for now I hope this little ditty keeps you happy. Cheers!

I was minding my own business and checking my mail today, when I saw a poster. It was an advertisement for the Beloit Christian Fellowship. Gag me with a spoon, but they’re doing a pretty good job of advertising and there is chalk and posters all over. Whatever, it’s cool.

Anyway, the poster in question had a picture of a pile of hay and a sheep, with the words “hey + ewe” written under the pictures. Very clever I guess, if you’re into that kind of thing.

My first thought was, “but Jesus was a carpenter.” And then I remembered the good Shepard metaphor, which clashes with the carpenter idea, but no one asked me.

They never do.

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There are a hundred jokes about how the best men are either taken or gay, and I tend to agree with this. Availability, or more properly unavailability is very attractive and it shows prospective suitors that a person is mature enough for adult relationships, and able to commit. There’s some truth to this, and I want to try and distance myself from this in the rest of the post, but at the same time it’s worth mentioning.

In my opinion, the best ones are taken and gay.

Before I dig myself into a really deep hole, I’m going back up and address the real issue: long distance relationships, and my reactions to them.

Ok, so here on the second week of classes at glorious Beloit College, I’ve noticed that there are a hell of a lot of people, regardless of orientation who are in some sort of committed long distance relationship. I remember reading something on the accepted student boards (people who were going to be attending Beloit in the fall had the option of opening a dialogue on a message board. Anyway, someone said, lots of people come to Beloit and try to have long distance relationships with boy and girlfriends back home, and that college often changes people a lot often bringing about the end of these people’s relationships.

Well I haven’t seen a relationship end yet, but I would completely agree with all of these statements. There are tons of people who are in long distance relationships, and I suspect that the majority of them won’t last. This is kind of frustrating to me, both on one level, as I’ve been on both ends of the leaving stick, on anther level as there are tons of people that I view are taken: and unnecessarily at that.

Let’s start off with my view of the problems with distance relationships.

I have a very strong opinion that, one shouldn’t try to sacrifice the present for a hope in the future. Who knows what’s going to happen between now and then? People can die, fall in and out of love at the drop of a hat, people turn into assholes, become drug addicts, and develop emotional instabilities without any notice.

I’m also of the opinion that if people are meant to be together, that they will end up together in the end. I trust fate like that, which probably stupid on so many levels, but I’ll take that risk.

Given these things, I absolutely refuse to engage in anything that could be considered a long distance relationship. I won’t date people who I can’t reasonably see on a fairly regular basis.

At the same time there are people, like AW, who lives at least a thousand miles away. To deny that we have some sort of meaningful connection would be foolish and untrue. At the same time, we’re individuals, we’re living our own lives in the present (more or less) but we’re not just friends. Long distance relationship? You tell me. At the same I’d wager that all of my peers here who are have significant others back home are getting no more than I get out of such relationships, and I almost guarantee you that they’re putting the same amount of energy and likely into it.

My relationship with sexuality has also changed a little recently. I used to think that exclusivity was not only desirable but also requisite for any kind of relationship, and I suppose I don’t feel the same way anymore. This isn’t to say that in a stable relationship where two people live with or near each other couldn’t be exclusive and I do think that monogamy is desirable. But I also know that it’s possible to love more than one person, to be interested in more than one person, and even theoretically to sleep with more than one person, without it being a critique of anyone. That is, one can have a committed relationship with Person A, and still love (or etc) Person B without it being a criticism or a degradation of Person A. I think there’s room in a singular human experience to love more than one person, perhaps even at the same time.

How people act out the implications of this, is another issue completely, and one everyone should fully discuss with their partners and blah blah blah, I’m not terribly interested in dispensing advice at the present, just outlining what I believe to be true and possible at the moment.

So why am I writing this? In part to kind of stick my nose in the air, and say, I’ve reached the perfect compromise for myself at the moment. In part because there’s at least one fellow who I’d be all over, if he didn’t have a gentleman caller halfway across the country, and also in part because I’m tired of listing to people moan about the (usually) boyfriend that’s back home.

Interesting gender point here: I can’t think of a guy whose in a distance relationship with a girl at the moment. Ponder away.

But I can be patient, and ultimately I think things will settle down and people will come to their senses, in the mean time I’ll just have to make do with what I have. For now. Despite a little frustration, I think I’m pretty happy. So there!

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Ok, I know my TealArt break was only supposed to last a week, but to be honest with you folks, I’m kind of surprised that it didn’t last a whole month. I’ve started college, for real. It’s everything that I expected, basically. I like the classes I’m taking; I like the classes that I’m planning to take next year. I like how my high school experience has prepared me for this shift, I also like how so many of the classes I took in high school are going to be transferring here. Once St. Louis University gets it’s act together, and I figure out how to request AP transcripts, I’ll have 7.75 units, or 31 hours of credit. The whole notion of getting done in three years is very much a reality, and I love it.

Thus far my experience with my classes as also been generally positive, and as I expected it; this is to say that, I enjoy the subjects I expected myself to enjoy, and am a bit ambivalent about the classes I expected myself to be ambivalent about. I like the fact that things are working out. There certainly is the possibility for change in the future, but for the moment things are peacefully staying as they are.

I’m not really happy about my room assignment and the smoking status of the dorm I’m in. The smokers aren’t happy because they can’t smoke in the lounges, and the asmatics/allergic/non-smokers aren’t happy because the building reeks and people can smoke in their rooms. So it’s about. The consensus is that res life is using people with a non-smoking preference to change the culture in this dorm (which reaches far beyond the smoking of tobacco products). Frankly, it isn’t fair to either group. In anycase, I have a draft of a very polite and friendly email to the dean of students and the director of residential life that I’ll probably send out pretty soon depending on how I feel. In the mean time, I’m looking for a roommate so I can move into a special interest house next semester. I’ll probably post more on this in the future.

In other news, for one of my classes, we have to do a feminist activism project, and I’m kind of at a loss of what to do. The prof, said “take something you’re angry about, and something your good with, combine them, send a number of hours on that and you’ll be fine.” I’m not worried about the anger, and I’m good at computer stuff, knitting, writing, and traditional Anglo-Celtic ethnomusicology. I could knit some sort of avant garde, binary coded message into some sort of lace shawl. But that wouldn’t reach enough people, and the truth is I don’t want to do that, it was just a funny idea. Computer stuff and writing are easily combined, and I might end up doing something with a TealArt sub site, which I’ve wanted to do for a while, but that would require perfecting that code, which I’m stuck on. In any case, I’ll be writing more about this soon.

I’ll shift back to the total college experience for a moment. I have an awesome schedule. I’m only taking four classes, which no matter how hard the classes are it’s not that bad. The thing is that I’ve got this huge block of time in the middle of the day that I can use to nap if I need to and I can do my work. Without particularly trying to be an over achiever, I’ve been really good about getting my homework done at least 12 hours before it’s due. Getting up hasn’t been a problem either, though I suspect that this will change a little bit as it starts getting light later.

I must complain about the Internet situation though. Apparently the network is riddled with viruses because of people bringing their computers back from the summer. This means the wireless network is inoperable, which is more annoying than anything mostly because it makes it more difficult to avoid being in my room, which I’m trying to do as much as possible.
On that note, I’ll leave you all for now, stay tuned for more updates and developments.

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