“What I want is for you to write "fuck me” on your chest. Write it. Do it! And then I want you to walk out that door and I want you to walk down the street, and anybody that wants to fuck you, say, “Sure! Sure! No problem!” And when they do, you have to say, “Thank you very, very much.” And make sure that you have a smile on your face. And then, you stupid fucking coward, you’re going to know what it feels like to be a woman.“
That is Jennifer Schecter’s impassioned reply to a trusted male housemate after he postulates insight into the female condition, gained through a violation of privacy (hidden video cameras) and cinematic objectification.
As a wide-eyed (shocked to see a gay couple with a kid) but jaded (wrote a short story about sucking her Editor) twenty-two year old, she ventured out into the world to try to forge her own identity separate from the "Jenny” that was projected onto her. The best way she saw to achieve autonomy and spiritual independence was to bulldoze the false personas of Jenny already cemented. She accomplished this by breaking cultural and religious taboos (extramarital affair, same-sex unions, shouting
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”I think I’ll die without you.“ She let herself be reliant on him threefold for physical safety and emotional stability, which was horribly crippling to her growth as a twenty-first century woman and unfair to Tim Haspel. She was using him and his selfless love and support–he renovated the garage into a Writer’s Workshop, told her he understood her detachment and moodiness was needed to channel creative juices into poetry and prose–as a crutch to feed into her destructive urge. She settled, denying herself and in the process denying him. ”Every time I think everything’s going really well. I mean, I try really hard. It all fucks up. And I think that maybe I’m just one of those people that…doesn’t deserve…to be
Butler, Judith. "Besides Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy." Ways Of Readers An Anthology For Writers. Ed. Davis Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 240-257. Print.
In the graphic novel Fun Home, by Allison Bechdel, sexual self-discovery plays a critical role in the development of the main character, Allison Bechdel herself; furthermore, Bechdel depicts the plethora of factors that are pivotal in the shaping of who she is before, during and after her sexual self-development. Bechdel’s anguish and pain begins with all of her accounts that she encountered at home, with her respective family member – most importantly her father – at school, and the community she grew up within. Bechdel’s arduous process of her queer sexual self-development is throughout the novel as complex as her subjectivity itself. Main points highlight the difficulties behind which are all mostly focused on the dynamics between her and her father. Throughout the novel, she spotlights many accounts where she felt lost and ashamed of her coming out and having the proper courage to express this to her parents. Many events and factors contributed to this development that many seem to fear.
“She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight,” (11). The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching, God by Zora Neale Hurston, tells a story of a woman, Janie Crawford’s quest to find her true identity that takes her on a journey and back in which she finally comes to learn who she is. These lessons of love and life that Janie comes to attain about herself are endowed from the relationships she has with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.
During the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth-century women’s sexuality was dictated by the family and society as there were specific rules put in place for each gender. This became problematic for women in the century, as they could not express their sexual identity. However, the protagonist in both Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) and Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop (1967) demonstrate the consequences of going against the family for women. Jeffrey Weeks states, “The very idea of sexual identity is an ambiguous one. For many in the modern world-especially the sexually marginal-it is an absolutely fundamental concept, offering a sense of personal unity. Social location, and even at times a political commitment.” (Capaln, 1989:
In Amy Hempel’s Short Story “Going,” we take part in a journey with the narrator through loss, coping, memory, experience, and the duality of life. Throughout the story we see the narrator’s struggle through coping with the loss of his mother, and how he moves from a mixture of depression, denial, and anger, to a form of acceptance and revelation. The narrator has lost his mother to a fire three states away, and goes on a reckless journey through the desert, when he crashes his car and ends up hospitalized. Only his thoughts and the occasional nurse to keep him company. He then reaches a point of discovery and realizations that lead to a higher understanding of mortality, and all of the experiences that come with being alive.
Like Esther, Joan Gilling grew up in the same small town; she also won the writing competition and was sent to New York to work for the same magazine. Joan was also very conscious about how the world identified her as an individual. She didn’t want to conform to what society sa...
Esther Greenwood was a scholarship student attending an all-women’s college in New York. While in school, she wrote for a women’s magazine under the supervision of her editor Jay Cee. Writing was her passion and she especially loved poetry. Unfortunately, the college life and New York City were not exactly what Esther had thought they would be. She always found herself being a third wheel or the outsider of the group. This may have been the spark that began her battle with depression. Either that, or the realization that her childhood crush Buddy Willard, a medical student at Yale, was a hypocrite. He and Esther had known each other since a very young age through the church and their parents had intended for them to eventually be married. After Buddy invited Esther to attend Yale’s prom, they began spending a lot of time together until she found out that he had lost his virginity to a sleazy waitress. This contradicted everything Buddy was and had claimed to be. His whole good and pure act was flawed whenever Esther discovered these facts. She was especially hurt, because they were very competitive with each other and she now wanted to lose her virginity so as to no...
In the featured article, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” the author, Judith Butler, writes about her views on what it means to be considered human in society. Butler describes to us the importance of connecting with others helps us obtain the faculties to feel, and become intimate through our will to become vulnerable. Butler contends that with the power of vulnerability, the rolls pertaining to humanity, grief, and violence, are what allows us to be acknowledged as worthy.
These final words sum up her feeling of helplessness and emptiness. Her identity is destroyed in a way due to having children. We assume change is always positive and for the greater good but Harwood’s poem challenges that embedding change is negative as the woman has gained something but lost so much in return.
Bartholomae, D., & Petrosky, A. (2011). Ways of reading: an anthology for writers (9th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. “Judith Butler; Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy.”
In her article “Shitty First Drafts,” Anne Lamott creates an argument attempting to prove to her readers that every good writer begins with a “shitty” first draft. This is a very bold claim to make about writers, and obviously should have some solid evidence to back it up. However, contrary to what one might think, Lamott has little to no “real” evidence to support her statements. Instead, she uses humor and sarcasm to cover the fact that she has no real support for her views. By doing this, Lamott lacks much of the credibility (usually) needed in a rhetorical argument, and her humorous tone does not suffice for a convincing argument. Even though Lamott incorporates a great deal of sarcasm and absurdity in her work, she lacks the most important
She continues in this sequel to talk about the abuse she faced and the dysfunction that surrounded her life as a child and as a teen, and the ‘empty space’ in which she lived in as a result. She talks about the multiple personalities she was exhibiting, the rebellious “Willie” and the kind “Carol”; as well as hearing noises and her sensory problems. In this book, the author puts more emphasis on the “consciousness” and “awareness” and how important that was for her therapeutic process. She could not just be on “auto-pilot” and act normal; the road to recovery was filled with self-awareness and the need to process all the pieces of the puzzle—often with the guidance and assistance of her therapist. She had a need to analyze the abstract concept of emotions as well as feelings and thoughts. Connecting with others who go through what she did was also integral to her
The American social environment has revolutionized the ways in which people express their sexual identity. Years ago it was taboo for a young lady to talk about sex or even arouse her interest about the topic. Sheltered under her parents wings a girl was not given the opportunity to explore her sexuality. Parents molded their children in their image and did not allow them much choice or opportunity for diversity. It was not as socially acceptable for a young person to be allowed to express themselves through clothes, music or lifestyle as it is today. Stuart Ewen presents an excellent point in his article “First Impressions'; about young people and how they have come to shape their own identity . Although this article is about the influence of urban styles on materialistic impressions, he makes a remarkably strong point about the historical transformation of individual identity. Ewen states “The old world of the parents was rooted in a continuity…the new world on the other hand, demanded a sense of self that was malleable, sensitive to the power of increasingly volatile surfaces. Addressing the historical transformation of individual identity, historian Warren Susman describes it as a shift from the importance of “character'; to the importance of “personality'; (Ewen, 411). Audrey Lorde incorporated this theory throughout her book “ZAMI a New Spelling of My Name'; Lorde takes us on a journey through her life starting with her early childhood years. As a young black girl being raised by a strong, independent homosexual mother living a hetrosexual lifestyle, Lorde shows us how she secretly takes on many of her mother’s characteristics. Audrey Lorde uses her mother’s sexual identity as a foundation in developing her own sense of sexuality while struggling to express herself as a young, homosexual black woman in an extensively critical society.
She tells of the risks involved in marriage, the possibility of being essentially sold off to some monster, the dangers of child birth, and the shame should a woman be unable to conceive and then be returned to her family. Within this she speaks of how women’s fears and wants are seen as frivols and vain. Women’s fears and desires are often mocked and ridiculed today as well. Women complaining about catcalling are told they are ungrateful and should be glad to receive compliments, even though these “compliments” are often unwanted advances that cause women to fear sexual violence and that they are merely objects. It’s also not uncommon for people to ridicule women for complaining about pregnancy, even though it is a long, uncomfortable, painful and sometimes dangerous term that permanently change a woman’s
Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal girl with aspirations of growing up and finding a mate that she could soon marry and start a family, but this was all impossible because of her father. The father believed that, “none of the younger man were quite good enough for Miss Emily,” because of this Miss Emily was alone. Emily was in her father’s shadow for a very long time. She lived her li...