Ok,
only a couple more to do of these and then i can begin blogging about my BFA journey
so I read this about two weeks ago, so on the bus on my way to lecture I will be revisiting this text and adding on to this blog. i just don’t want to be told that I am late because it takes me so long to get home so i am going to do this half ass one and then improve on it.
So i will start this by saying that I thought Simone de Beauvoir was from the 18th century – apparently not. I feel like such a dork, but I am sure that in Manon lescaut they say that name at some point.
I totally get that women have been subjugated through out all of time, and trust me I am totally on her side. But I just find some times through out the text she goes a bit melodramatic (I hear Ola and Ariela shrieking right now).
I don’t know how much I agree with her view that “the eternal feminine corresponds to the ‘black soul’ and to ‘the jewish character’ i think what happened to the african americans/Europeans had it much worst off. Women were for sure misused because of their sex but most were not mass murdered via gas chambers or thrown on board a ship and left to rot as you were sold into slavery.
It is hard for me to criticize a piece of feminism because I am a white man and therefore if I am not 100% gungho then i am labeled as a misogynist and stuck in the middle ages. I am not. I agree whole heartedly that women are equal 9if not better) than men and should be treated as such and not like walking vaginas. I just think sometimes the way people go about expressing this is wrong and mean and vindictive,
Her text and her description of the sufferage of women reminded me of how women are treated in Gilead in Atwood’s THE HANDMAID TALE. Not completely, but similar
So the lecture was awesome (as per usual with Jill) and she highlighted something very interesting. She saying that when making out identity, we make the Others. It is very interesting i think. We all make a slave/master thing no matter what, even if we don;t mean too.
Simone de Beauvoir seems like a real cool lady. I desperately wants to read “She came to stay”. Sounds like an interesting look into a strange/intriguing menage a trois.
I have also come to realize that since january I have really stopped enjoying writing these blogs. I find myself not having anythign interetsing or thought provoking to say. I am so done with all this. I miss reading stuff for the enjoyment of it and can’t to be in the BFA and reading stuff that doesn’t have to do with boring stuff that I am too pea brained to understand.
so close.
I can only try to imagine what it must be like to be a white male trying to say something critical about a feminist text. I do see that sometimes things like that are taken the wrong way and people are criticized due to who they are when they’re trying to make a comment about an argument in the text. Thankfully I don’t see that too often, but I do see it and it’s too bad because we should just be able to objectively say whether we think something in an argument is right or wrong and not have it tied to who we are!
I can see that women haven’t been mass murdered in the same way as Jews (though they are sometimes murdered for living immorally, even by their families), or enslaved to the same degree as Africans (though there are even now women sold into slavery for sex at young ages). I think that when Beauvoir says that the “feminine” is like the “black soul” or the “jewish character,” she may just be saying that for all these groups there is this identity that has been socially constructed and applied to people, and which may not be true at all but a stereotype (or people may end up living up to the label like how Hacking describes with the looping effect. Beauvoir criticizes the idea that we have to have a certain “essence” like a particular identity associated with a group, because we have the freedom to define ourselves as individuals. We’ll talk about this a bit tomorrow.
Sorry to hear you don’t feel like you have much interesting to say…though I have to admit that I start to feel this way towards the end of the term as well, what with getting overwhelmed with work. But it sounds like you haven’t been that excited since January. We have been doing a lot of non-fiction this term, that’s for sure; it’s something I noticed partway through the term and I’m going to be sure we try to rectify next year–balance more fiction and non-fiction so we aren’t doing a whole bunch of one at once!
Also, could you reactivate the plugin that allows commenters to check a box to get an email if there are any replies? Go to the dashboard, click on “plugins,” then activate “subscribe to comments.” Thanks!
SHRIEKING.
Aha in all seriousness I agree with some of your points, but in the end this is a feminist piece. I understand why she doesn’t focus on all the minority groups attacked in such things as the holocaust and slavery (of which women have been heavily persecuted in both, and continue to be. Both human trafficking and the sex trade are still going on today!) She wants to write a feminist critique/ discussion, therefore she can’t afford to focus on other points that would take away from her argument. All authors do it. Sometimes you have to only touch on certain issues to be able to delve into others!
Anyways, I’m sure we’ll talk about this more in class! 🙂