Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes, Turn and Face the Strange

For my final project in my fem lit class I was told to construct a theory loosely based on the theory of somebody we read in class. I was about to say "a woman" instead of "somebody" but I double checked and there was one male co-author who worked with Cixous on the Laugh of the Medusa article. While I find it interesting that a class on gender only looked at works written by women, I feel that discussion is for another time and another place. Here is the space in which I invite you, the reader, to join me as I retrace the steps in finding my own little theory on gender.


My first instinct was to follow the path of destruction. Tear it all down! For tears make tears that fertilize the seeds of change. My theory was going to analyze the emotion of anger present in Zine publications. I figured the angry feminist is already an image that comes to people's mind, why not define what it means to be an angry feminist, and what it accomplishes?  I couldn't think of a good way to go about it so I took a study break and did some online psychology experiments for another class. Whilst doing one particular experiment I had a Archimedes moment...!


The experiment was surveying something they called benevolent sexism. I thought to myself, I could write on benevolent sexism. The concept is simple, men behaving a certain way toward women with good intentions but really they are promoting stereotypes of weakness in women that is considered sexist. As I sat down to create my benevolent sexist theory, here is what I came up with.


It has been a long standing belief of mine that humans have a desire to identify aspects and elements of the world in which we inhabit, from abstract emotions to a grain of sand. The usefulness of this identification process is not in question. Certainly the very concept of language revolves around the labels created for identification purposes. But incredible usefulness does not make the process of identification impervious to criticism, especially when identifying people. In fact the word “label” has had negative connotations for a long time. Soren Kierkegaard is best known for his quote “once you label me, you negate me.” But what, exactly, is negated? Kierkegaard says “me” in a holistic fashion, not distinguishing between body and mind. Yet because of the labels of mind and body, they are discussed separately in the world of gender theory. My goal in this piece is to critically evaluate Virginia Woolf’s concept of the androgynous mind alongside Judith Butler’s commentary on body and gender in an attempt to find an appropriate means of talking about people


So as you can see I changed my topic yet again. But I like where I can go with this last idea of looking at society’s acceptance minds and disapproval of bodies. So yeah.

Madness? THIS IS BERTHA!!!

A Girl Interrupted my reading of H.P. Lovecraft to tell me about the Wide Sargasso Sea that really made her mad. Naturally I asked her why a raven is like a writing desk? She didn't answer but she did asked me which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man? As I was giving my response to her, my roommate with a Beautiful Mind walked in and asked me why I was talking to myself.

Madness, lunacy, insanity, Linsanity, Mickey Rooney... if you think about it too long you become it, like philosophy and philosophers. Ok, so maybe you won't become Mickey Rooney, but if enough people say you're crazy it pretty much will come true. This was the case for Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea. I don't believe she was actually crazy. I mean, if some guy married me, blatantly cheated on me, vowed to out-hate me and started calling me Bertha for some reason I'd go berserk too. This got me thinking of the concept of madness and how much it depends on perspective. When we take plain Jane's POV, Bertha is stark ravin' mad. But when we live a life from a new perspective, that is Antoinette's, she seems a lot more normal... just drunk. Of course, one instance doesn't make a trend.

I used my sain brane to dig for more instances in which the point of view determines sanity. Susanna Kaysen's book came to mind. She talks about her experiences of being admitted to the loony bin because the suits think she's crazy. But getting her side of the story makes her seem like any other teen filled with hormones, angst and confusion. Another instance is a short story by H.P. :Lovecraft. I'm going to omit the title not because I want to seem hip by dropping title-less references that can only be detected by proficient movie-watchers and book-readers with a good memory, but because I can't remember the title and I don't feel like googling it. At any rate, in the story a race of alien scholars study other species by switching consciousnesses with them over huge spans of time and space. One of these cognitive trades is with a human, let say Joe. While the alien learns about humanity through Joe's body, Joe's mind is in the alien body and kept locked up for the alien society's protection. When Joe's mind is returned to it's rightful place he tells everyone what happened and everyone thinks he's crazy, when in reality (the reality of the story that is) he's right.

I'm not saying every crazy person is sane, but I do believe craziness is relative. Drop me in any pre-depression era and suddenly "Joe texted me to google J-Lo cuz she tweeted a pic of her new 64gig ipad" becomes crazy talk. I wanted to wrap this all up somehow with a cool message about perspectives, insanity and a detailed Beautiful Mind reference but I can't think of one. So instead I'll just comment about how this entire blog is basically me talking to myself, so now who's crazy?!?!

Be Not Ashamed of that Which You do in Private

Let's talk masturbation, but not the taboo autoeroticism that causes pubescent teens to have moral dilemmas... okay maybe a little. But really it just serves (in this web-log at least) as an analogy for writing. But don't give me all of the credit, the analogy comes to us from the mind of Helene Cixous in "The Laugh of Medusa." While commanding women to write with an assertive exclamation point, Cixous draws a comparison between the presumably female reader's current writing and masturbation.

 "you've written a little, but in secret... as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty - so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until the next time."

I can relate to this passage... because of my writing that is. But I am curious as to the direct comparison to masturbation because Cixous tells me that writing is for me. Not that everything people do for themselves is masturbation, but if I'm writing for me why should it matter whether or not I write in secret? I suppose what Cixous is really driving at is the concept of not being held back from writing due to some perceived finger wagging of shame from "the man." So while writing can be like masturbation, it doesn't have to be, in fact it probably shouldn't, according to Cixous. This is all well and good for women, but what about male writing? I know that male writers do not face the same challenges of women writers, but that doesn't make male writers impervious to the pitfalls that lead to masturbatory writing.

Take William S. Burroughs' "The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead" for example. This text is an example of a male author running the risk of masturbating in public... in literary terms of course. Burroughs' novel faced criticism from a critic whose full critique I cannot remember, but one part accused it as Burroughs playing with himself in an autoerotic fashion. Sure, the book is filled with a lot of graphic sexual encounters of men on men, and as a gay male author it's easy to see how it could be construed as a masturbatory act, but that's not what the critic was driving at. Instead, he accused Burroughs of not conveying any sort of message, and that the novel was purely for self satisfaction. I have a problem with that criticism though, because I agree with Cixous, to an extent.

I'm a firm believer that not all writing has to convey a message, because writing is indeed for the writer. Even works purely meant to convey messages (such as pamphlets) are for the author, because they have an inner desire to share a message that is satisfied through writing. Accusing an author of being selfish or writing to a narrow audience is dumb because all authors have a self motivating reason to write, or else they wouldn't do it. Holding all writers to the standards of "great male writers" is not only limiting to women but all writers. You need not be great to write, you only need a desire. Ultimately, I agree with Cixous in that writing is for the writer, but I don't see the harm in masturbatory writing. While it may be limiting to some, it may be a place of comfort for others. So here is my message to the world... of writers: what you do in your own time in the privacy of your bedroom is your business, but you need not be ashamed of it ;)