Thank you for your understanding last week. Unfortunately, this week I need to undergo some procedures. WE WILL NOT MEET ON ZOOM AGAIN.

What I have done to make this a little less taxing on me is have created a column in the grade center that says “FINAL COURSE GRADE.” When you post your final exam, I will add your final course grade there. Those of you who have already submitted your final exam can see that grade now. If you have concerns about that grade once you see it, please let me know then. I won’t be able to tally everything up individually before that.

The final is very easy. If you complete it by Wednesday, December 15th at midnight, you will receive full credit.

My apologies for the abrupt end of the semester. I have enjoyed working with all of you and, if you would like to discuss anything from the course that I was not able to give you feedback on, I am happy to do that via email – I just can’t do it this week.

Best wishes for your future, and please keep in touch if you wish.

Hello All – 

I have unexpectedly found myself in the hospital and will be here another day or two. As such, I am amending our course in a way that I hope you will find helpful. We will not have another week of content, thus there will not be a snapshot or content response 13. Please use the time you would have to complete a missed assignment for full credit. I will review your work for snapshot/response 12 on Disclosure when I return home. We will discuss Disclosure in class on 12/15 and we will not meet tomorrow, 12/8.

I am also sharing the final now, and asking that you complete it by Wednesday 12/15/21 at 11:59 pm. As always, if you need more time, email me and we can make that happen. Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfvIO1HAoXVMPlAGAwOh0c-UwnJyE0yn6v25nwgWLqfoC7JNQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

I will also post this as an announcement. Please feel free to write with questions, but know that I probably won’t respond until this weekend at the earliest. Apologies for this abrupt change. I hope it is helpful rather than hurtful.

Best Regards,

Brianne

I wanted to let you know that NYC Service is offering paid internship opportunities which are a great fit for your particular majors for the spring 2022 semester. The office of Internships and Experiential Learning staff can gladly assist students with their résumés for this from now until Friday, December 3. It is highly recommended that those who seek assistance send a message to experience@bmcc.cuny.edu to schedule an appointment. Available Positions: 

• Youth Leadership Councils – Attachments.ashx (nyc.gov)
• Apply here: NYC Office of the Mayor 2022 Spring Internship Program Application
• Public Private Partnership –Attachments.ashx (nyc.gov)
• Apply here: NYC Office of the Mayor 2022 Spring Internship Program Application
• National Service – Attachments.ashx (nyc.gov)
• Apply here: NYC Office of the Mayor 2022 Spring Internship Program Application

Payrate: $15.75/hour  (Max 20 hours/week) Spring 2022 Timeline:

• December 5, 2021 – Application closes for the 2022 Spring Internship Term
• December 20-24, 2021 – Internship Acceptance Notification Period
• January 31, 2022 – 2022 Spring Internship Term begins
• May 13, 2022 – 2022 Spring Internship Term ends

I have updated the Blackboard grade book. As we approach the end of the semester, I will update it regularly. In blackboard, you can see how many snapshots and content responses I have recorded for you. You can also see the midterm. If you have a green checkmark, then you received full credit.

If you have any questions, please drop me an email.

DISCLOSURE is an unprecedented, eye-opening look at transgender depictions in film and television, revealing how Hollywood simultaneously reflects and manufactures our deepest anxieties about gender. Leading trans thinkers and creatives, including Laverne Cox, Lilly Wachowski, Yance Ford, Mj Rodriguez, Jamie Clayton, and Chaz Bono, share their reactions and resistance to some of Hollywood’s most beloved moments. Grappling with films like A Florida Enchantment (1914), Dog Day Afternoon, The Crying Game, and Boys Don’t Cry, and with TV shows like The Jeffersons, The L Word, and Pose, they trace a history that is at once dehumanizing, yet also evolving, complex, and sometimes humorous. What emerges is a fascinating story of dynamic interplay between trans representation on screen, society’s beliefs, and the reality of trans lives. Reframing familiar scenes and iconic characters in a new light, director Sam Feder invites viewers to confront unexamined assumptions, and shows how what once captured the American imagination now elicits new feelings. DISCLOSURE provokes a startling revolution in how we see and understand trans people.

A LETTER FROM THE FILMMAKERS

We all need to be seen, and often, being seen is what puts marginalized people in harm’s way. It is that paradox of visibility which inspired us to make DISCLOSURE. We looked to one of the most compelling modes of storytelling—Hollywood film and TV—to consider how trans people have learned to think about ourselves, and what non trans people have been taught to think about us.

For three years, we worked together researching, producing, and editing DISCLOSURE. Along the way we collaborated with over 100 other trans filmmakers, assembling a history of trans representation in mainstream film and TV. While sharing footage, articles, and ideas, we wrestled with the dehumanizing stereotypes, tropes, and sometimes empowering aspects of this history. It’s often been painful to confront some of this material, but we think it’s meaningful to show it here and now. Together we were able to acknowledge and sometimes find humor in the absurdity, which has been cathartic.

We did not want to demonize any one person or any one story; we wanted to construct a nuanced film that includes many, often conflicting ways of seeing. We can love something and look at it critically.

There are so many more people, materials, and stories to tell and ways to tell them, which didn’t make it into this film. There is more within and outside of Hollywood that is crucial to trans audiences. There are so many trans filmmakers who have created pivotal stories.

DISCLOSURE won’t be the only history of trans representation. It’s just a start. We can’t wait to see how it is received, built upon, and grappled with. And we can’t wait to see what comes next.

—Sam Feder, Amy Scholder, and Laverne Cox

DISCLOSURE Toolkit

Questions to think about after viewing:

DISCLOSURE shows examples from popular film, television, and news media. People in the film talk about seeing themselves and also seeing distortions in those examples. Where do you see yourself in these media stories? Was there any particular clip that triggered a memory for you? Compare your reactions then and now.

Who stands to benefit from problematic depictions of transgender people and what do they stand to gain? How might this intersect with who benefits from other forms of discrimination and hate like racism, sexism, or homophobia?

Entertainment media only rarely depict the fullness or nuances of real life. Yet, through repetition, they have the power to shape our perceptions of reality and, in turn, culture. What are simple actions you can take to challenge misrepresentation, erasure, or invisibility?

How have media influenced your own perception of your gender? How have media shaped your idea of “normal” ways to express your gender? Have you felt or seen judgment placed on gender nonconformity?

What messages have you learned about how to perform your gender, how to conform to prescribed gender norms? What’s one thing you’d never do or always do to express your gender identity?

What are some of the ways the film shows us that distorted media depictions of transgender people are harmful to transgender people, as well as the larger society?

What does it mean to say that gender is a “social construct” or that there is such a thing as a “real man” or a “real woman”? Who gains power by declaring that some people do not fit within the boundaries of manhood or womanhood?

What’s the significance of the film’s title? What should people have to disclose about themselves to be in relationship with other people and why? What are the differences between what should be disclosed to colleagues, lovers, partners, friends, family, classmates, employers?

For more information on Title 42, see this link.

Last year, the journal I edit, Women’s Studies Quarterly, joined with the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the Graduate Center CUNY, and the journal, Feminist Anthropology, to recognize and celebrate the international 16 Days Campaign. We welcomed stories on any activism-related subject in a multitude of media and received many amazing submissions that we are so excited to share with everyone. This year, we are also joined by The National Women’s Studies Association as the central host for this initiative.

We have started sharing the 16 stories for 2021 on social media and they are now all available on the 16 Days of Feminist Activism Website. Please take some time to check them out.

You may also wish to join us for our celebratory webinar on Friday, December 10 at 5 pm. Please register in advance.

Over this past week and you have been watching videos about reproductive justice. According to SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, the first organization founded to build a reproductive justice movement, reproductive justice is “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.

Reproductive justice is different than the reproductive rights movements of the 1970s. The term is a combination of reproductive rights and social justice. It was coined by a group of black women who called themselves Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice and is rooted in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an internationally accepted body of laws that details the rights of individuals and the responsibilities of governments to protect those rights. The reproductive rights movement focused primarily on pro-choice vs. pro-life debates and legal rights. Frequently, women with low incomes, women of color, women with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people felt marginalized in the reproductive rights movement. Reproductive justice is more intersectional and considers how race and social class can limit the freedom of some women to make informed choices about pregnancy. Reproductive justice focuses on access to services like abortion, Plan B, affordable care, and education. It goes beyond rights and looks at the barriers that exist and inhibit access (such as cost, distance to providers, etc.). The reproductive justice framework also considers a wider range of issues than reproductive rights. Issues that impact marginalized women such as access to contraception, comprehensive sex education, prevention and care for STI/Ds, alternative birth options, adequate prenatal and pregnancy care, domestic violence assistance, adequate wages to support families and safe homes are considered within the reproductive justice framework.

The videos assigned include The Abortion Divide which focuses on a clinic and the debates around access. The other video is a satirical explanation of the Burwell v. Hobby and Birth Control case of 2014.

In the devastating Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling, on June 30, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed certain bosses to block their employees’ access to birth control. The decision on this Supreme Court birth control case applied to more than half of all U.S. workers — that’s the tens of millions of workers at companies in which five or fewer people own more than 50%. Two privately-owned companies brought the case: cabinet manufacturer Conestoga Wood Specialties, and the Hobby Lobby national chain of craft stores, which employs 28,000. The owners of these companies objected to having health insurance plans that included birth control — a coverage guarantee under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that has allowed nearly 63 million American women to access affordable birth control and has saved existing benefit recipients at least $1.4 billion on birth control pills alone since the provision went into effect (in 2013).

https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/birth-control/burwell-v-hobby-lobby

These two videos certainly do not encapsulate all that is involved with reproductive justice. But they are a start. I also recommend the film Vessel, which follows Women On Waves, an innovative reproductive justice intervention to help pregnant people internationally. I included a playlist of many videos that address other areas of concern for reproductive justice advocates, including history, organizing, paid family leave, consent, menstruation, birth control, surrogacy, and more. I encourage you to take a look. Some other resources I recommend include this short audio track about a network of clergy that helped people seeking an abortion 50 years ago, and this short film Abortion Helpline: This is Lisa:

Last week you read The Combahee River Collective Statment (1977).  This statement introduces us to black feminism and the term “identity politics,” and expands the feminist adage “the personal is political.” Black feminism has an undeniable personal genesis – a political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual black women’s lives. By “seemingly personal,” they mean that each individual has a unique experience but as a group, they have common or similar experiences of racist/sexist experience. By recognizing the similarities in experience, members of groups can support one another while also knowing there is variation in their experience.

The Collective writes “Many black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions of their lives cannot risk struggling against them both.” And this is what they claim the importance of identity politics: “This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression.” Because the members of the collective (and I hope all of us) have a “shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s may because of our need as human persons for autonomy” they also argue “If black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” The personal is political because everything that is seemingly personal is always already an experience one has within a system of interlocking oppressions. Therefore nothing is truly “just personal” but is always an effect of the political.

At the same time, Combahee adopts a decidedly anti-capitalist, socialist agenda that encourages us to analyze the relationship between gender and capitalism. They argue that “the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy.” Capitalism creates hierarchies that serve to separate people into groups. As socialists, they believe that all work should be organized to benefit and be equally distributed amongst the workers (the actual people making the products), rather than constitute profit for the bosses (as in capitalism). However, their socialism must be a feminist and anti-racist one in order to be revolutionary. To be revolutionary, they argue, “We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives.”

In the 1990 film, Paris is Burning by Jenny Livingston, we get a personal look into ball culture and the lives of those who live it. In many ways they have created their own revolutionary society wherein they create their own families, share monetary resources as well as housing and other necessities, and the ball world in which they can live their true identities that are excluded from the normative worlds of high fashion, modeling, and royalty. They are doing identity politics, while outside of the ballroom they still experience the oppression they momentarily leave behind at the balls. It is important to note that politics is at work with this film too. Many of those filmed accuse Jenny Livingston, a white middle-class lesbian woman, of being predatory. Indeed most of the people in the film did not benefit monetarily, while Livingston did. While the culture became mainstream, it was people like Madonna popularizing vogue who were celebrated, not those who originated it. Feminist thinkers such as bell hooks and Judith Butler (and others) debated the film as well. In 2006, a new documentary How Do I Look, made by Wolfgang Busch revisited some of the people in the film who gave their accounts.

This week, we continue investigating identity politics. This time, with a chapter, “The Power of Identity Politics,” from Alicia Garza’s 2020 book The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart. Garza, one of the founders of #Black Lives Matter and organizer of Black Futures Lab, explores how identity politics has been used and misused in the 40+ years since Combahee. You will also read Aleichia Williams’s creative prose piece “Too Latina To Be Black, Too Black To Be Latina” in which she interrogates her own identity and others’ reactions to it, thereby enacting identity politics.

Not assigned, but encouraged, is Gloria Anzaldúa, “La Conciencia de la Mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness” (1987). I usually assign this piece along with Combahee, but this semester I have tried to assign less reading. In “La Conciencia de la Mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness,” Gloria Anzaldúa builds on the concept of la raza cosmica as articulated by Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos. In this article, Anzaldúa emphasizes the existence of Chicana women in a space she calls the Borderlands—she calls these women the new mestiza. She explains that these mestiza women are the product of constant cultural exchanges and recognize their position in life as one of multiple identities converging in one mestiza woman. Throughout the essay, Anzaldúa switches between using English and Spanish to emphasize the Borderlands that mestiza women inhabit. She challenges the constant attack of white, patriarchal ideals attacking Mexican and Chicana culture. Anzaldúa explains that mestizas learn to embrace cultural ambiguity and develop ambivalence to the world around them. She claims they can only be removed from ambiguity through “an intense, and often painful, emotional event which inverts or resolves the ambivalence.” Throughout the essay, she calls for an intersectional form of feminism that recognizes the struggles of indigenous women as well as other women of color. She also criticizes white feminists for lumping all men together as oppressors without recognizing the ways people of color and queer men fall outside of hegemonic ideals.