Kiwi, 12/6

Our last class of the semester was probably on of my favorite classes we have had this year. Class was very informative and engaging. It was unlike any other class we have had this year, it was very different from a “normal” class. Both readings by Cixous and Butler had to do with the feminist’s idea of “Herstory”.
We started class off first by discussing the term logocentrism that Derrida talks about and how it is everything that is revolved around words. Then we briefly talked about phallologocentrism and how it is the language itself that is somehow or another driven by the masculine. It is dominated by the masculine gender chief argument behind feminists.
Dr. Casey asked the class, “ How can we reframe history and make it, “herstory”? Heisenbergs principle of uncertainty—“you cant conduct the experiment without influencing the experiment yourself, because you become part of it. It is impossible for a male teacher to teach, because it could be suspect, he has a masculine voice.”
Dr. Casey handed over the class to the females as the guys were silenced in class in relation to woman’s equality. At first I thought that it was really awkward and I was a little timid of speaking up. Thanks to Louisa for speaking up and getting things started I started to feel more comfortable and after a while wasnt scared to speak up and say my opinion. I actually really enjoyed speaking in front of the class and for the first time felt like whatever I said was going to be heard. I thought that there were many interesting things that were brought up in class and one thing I thought was most interesting was when the quote, “writing is woman’s” came up. We talked about how we tend to assume that what we read is written by man. I think that we just assume this because males are the ones that have most of the voice in our society, so when we are reading an article or something we tend to fall under the hegemonic ideology of male domination, assuming that it is a male providing us with the information.
I also thought a good point that was brought up of how men don’t really ever write novels because of their fear of becoming emotional, which is related to women. They fear of not living up to their “manhood” and falling under the lines of being gay. Everything that defines the masculine identity is in opposition to women. For example, you many be good enough to play with the boys, but you cannot be better then them.
So how do we (females) want this to be different? Feminism wouldn’t even be an issue; there wouldn’t be binary oppositions. It would just be normal for women to be dominant like males .It is a privilege to be one of the “guys,” but the guys never want to be one of the girls. No matter what, people are still going to find something to complain about. Our society gives the males authority, we feel more comfortable with a male walking down a dark alley… these are things that I believe are never going to change and are always going to be the same. However after an hour and fifteen minutes of females being able to have the authority to talk and not be interrupted may have reinsured ten people on what we believe and although that is not many it still is an extra ten people that are now more aware of our opinion and who know maybe they will spread the word to another ten other people.
I really enjoyed CMC 300 this semester with Dr. Casey, and I would have to say that this class is by far the best CMC class I have taken as well as, one of the most interesting classes I have taken here at Rollins. As I continue on my journey through the rest of my college years I hope to use the information that I have learned about all of these theorists and their ideas daily studies.
Thank you Dr. Casey and Louisa for everything!!!