I would say my initial reaction to the leaked draft was that of fear and helplessness. I was immediately struck by the enormity of the impact this decision will have. My fear stems from the scores of women who’s lives this will affect, the hardships they will face as access to abortions is denied, and the frightening alternatives to legal abortion that will follow. Though I know the judicial branch is part of our democratic system, something seems decidedly undemocratic that this can all happen with the stroke of a pen. My fear also comes from this, in recognizing how quickly so many of the other rights that we had secured in recent decades can be dismantled. All of which left me feeling helpless.

I did not know that abortion laws originated during slavery to force pregnancy upon slaves. This historical context heightens my disgust at Alito’s argument that abortion advocates might have eugenics based motivations. Firstly, abortion is not preventing women from having children, it is providing them the ability to determine the time that is right for them to do so. Secondly, denying women access to abortions is many cases condemning them and their families to poverty. If women of color are more likely to seek abortion, then you are disproportionately condemning them to this fate. It is hard to see this policy as anything other than racist. “Because if you can prevent abortion, you can keep people poor. And when you keep people poor, you can control them”, as Gomperts says,

Though I knew payment was sometimes an obstacle for women seeking an abortion, I was unaware of the Hyde Amendment, or how much women could face paying out of pocket. “Abortion Helpline, This is Lisa” perfectly illustrated some of the many reasons women might seek an abortion. I feel this is an important thing to keep in mind at this time. Too frequently I feel the media sensationalizes the topic by bringing up the most extreme cases of rape and incest. While I understand the logic in mentioning it, I think it diminishes the other reasons women and families might make this choice and creates a space where rape and incest are the only justifiable reasons to seek abortion. I think we need to continue advocating for all women to have access to abortion, as otherwise we face further reinforcing stigma. I think it is also important to keep in mind that, regardless of what laws or rulings come to pass, women will still get abortions, though access will be limited to people of means. The result will be further reinforcing racial class lines, with disproportionate burden and punishment falling upon women. Female oppression is inescapable if women do not have control over their bodies and the ability to shape their own path in life.

Luncheon in Fur (Oppenheim, 1936) is a precursor to the feminist art movement. This surrealist work’s title specifically references Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass (1863) and the novella Venus in Furs. The Luncheon on the Grass was a critique of bourgeois society, depicting a bourgeois lunch in an idyllic setting, with two clothed males and two female nudes. Previously the only female nudes that were deemed appropriate were mythic depictions. Manet’s depiction of real life women was considered vulgar and highlighted the hypocrisy and voyeurism of what was considered gentile and appropriate for art. Luncheon in Fur makes a similar critique of bourgeois sensibilities with the tea set immediately invoking bourgeois custom. The fur coated cup implies the vaginal, with the fur coated spoon implying the phallic – to be dipped in the vessel. I feel this piece, by a female artist, represents how the “personal is political”, particularly its depiction of female sexuality, bringing the cup to one’s mouth implying oral sex and female pleasure, a controversial idea for its time. 

I would say I was most surprised by the level of shame and embarrassment the women in “Period: End of Sentence” had in discussing their periods. I had heard of the Period Project before, and their efforts in India. I had also read about some of the beliefs held there of women being seen as tainted or dirty while on their periods. I had read about women in Nepal dying in the winter’s cold, banished from their house while on their period. So on some level I knew the worst of it, but I was still surprised to see the way these women carried that burden of shame in their lives. To see the way it made them shrink away. I think that’s what was so powerful to see in the film, the way they became empowered in learning about their periods, working to produce pads, and the change having accessible pads made in their lives. I’ve only read about the situation in India, and I think of the different formats, seeing the physicality and emotion of the women on film was the most impactful for me.

I felt the films and readings were united in illustrating the callous disregard people can face in receiving the most basic and fundamental of care, and the harm that can cause. I was horrified by LeConté walking her baby to the postpartum floor after what she had already faced in giving birth. The concern she must have had in her premature birth. Fear for her child’s health. Fear for her own health. And to have no reassurance that anyone was advocating for her, or to feel that she was somehow a burden. It must be so humiliating to feel so helpless in a situation where you are so vulnerable. Humiliation is another experience that unites all of these stories. The humiliation non-binary and trans men and women must face in seeking medical help to only be degraded and have your identity questioned. The humiliation and disdain the women in India face in managing a natural function of their bodies. But I guess it’s also the ignorance. People not wanting to know, not caring to know, and not tryin got help people. All of this is so much worse when it’s doctors and medical professionals who perpetrate this harm. In all of this I have to say its disheartening and alarming to hear the specifics of how this plays out, but not surprising to hear that it happens. To some extent I feel I don’t have a way of elaborating on the issue because I’ve experienced it to some degree myself and it’s left me feeling defeated. I’ve felt shamed by doctors before. I’ve had a doctor yell at me for taking preventative HIV medication. I’ve been denied care that I’ve asked for. I’ve had doctors assume that I’m HIV positive because I’m gay. It’s always humiliating and degrading, and I don’t really know what to do about it.

In further examining identity politics in this weeks’ readings of “The Power of Identity Politics” by Alicia Garza and “Too Latina to be Black, Too Black to be Latina” by Aleichia Williams, I particularly appreciated Garza’s sentiments on grappling with the histories of oppression. That unless we are able to examine how powers of oppression were first formed and perpetrated, we are unable to comprehend the ways in which they still exist. There is a strong desire to dismiss oppression as something of the past, as though we aren’t still participating in it. But I think this is why identity politics are so powerful. Who better to understand and speak to our own oppressions than ourselves. We have unique insight into the effects our oppression might have on us. Especially when facing intersections of oppressions, we can see the ways those oppressions layer and compound on top of one another.

In these past weeks I have really enjoyed our explorations of gender and would love to pursue that more. Following last week’s assignment I read bell hooks’ essay “Is Paris Burning?”. I agreed with her criticisms of Livingston for the most part, but I sometimes struggled with her criticisms of the gay, drag, and trans performers. While all of her criticisms were more than valid, I felt they perhaps oversimplified or took a singular perspective on what I think is a multi faceted and layered experience. Perhaps I view the film through a modern lens, so while I see the misogyny and idealized white femininity, I know that is not true of all drag, at least not today. I do agree that, with the exception of Dorian Corey, most of the subjects do not seem to consciously critique race, gender, and class in their performance, or at least are not portrayed to do so. Does this mean that the criticism doesn’t exist? 

As I’ve said before, I never come away from watching this film with clear answers, however reading bell hooks’ essay did make me think of her writings on language in “Teaching to Transgress”. She sites the line “This is the oppressor’s language yet I need it to speak to you” from Adrienne Rich’s poem, “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children”. She goes on to discuss English as the language of colonization; diminishing black vernacular and erasing native languages. Her discussions of the power of language and reclaiming make me think of our visual expressions of race, gender, and class in the context of “Paris is Burning” and how frequently in these cases we only have the oppressor’s language to communicate with. She goes on to explore the power of the oppressed claiming the oppressor’s language:

I imagine them hearing spoken English as the oppressor’ language, yet I imagine them also realizing that this language would need to be possessed, taken, claimed as a space of resistance. I imagine that the moment they realized the oppressor’s language, seized and spoken by the tongues of the colonized could be a space of bonding was joyous. For in that recognition was the understanding that intimacy could be restored, that a culture of resistance could be formed that would make recovery from the trauma of enslavement possible. I imagine, then, Africans first hearing English as “the oppressor’s language” and then re-hearing it as a potential site of resistance. 

hooks, “Teaching to Transgress”, 171

And then discusses the ways the oppressed then reshaped the language:

Needing the oppressor’s language to speak with one another they nevertheless also reinvented, remade that language so that it would speak beyond the boundaries of conquest and domination. In the mouths of black Africans in the so-called “New World,” English was altered, transformed, and became a different speech. Enslaved black people took broken bits of English and made of them a counter-language.

hooks, “Teaching to Transgress”, 172

I see this transgressive quality of claiming and reinventing the language present in “Paris is Burning” in the representations of white wealth on black bodies. An assertion and defiance that they are deserving and capable of achieving the status that white supremacy has barred them from. 

Beyond “Paris is Burning”, I see this oppressor’s visual language, if you will, exhibited in gender expressions. In some way one must use this language of the binary to express their deviance from its norms. It is true that there are gender neutral forms of expression, but if one wishes to express either more masculine or feminine facets of themselves, it seems they are almost forced to use this language of gender oppression to subvert it.

Perhaps I am misconstruing both bell hooks’ writing and these forms of expression, but if anything I feel that illustrates how I might benefit from further exploration and discussion of these ideas.

I believe that the quote from the Combahee River Collective, “We might use our position at the bottom to make a clear leap into revolutionary action.  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.” refers to the various systems of oppression that face black women, and the greater effect of dismantling them. As the most oppressed group, the intersections of their oppressions represent the confluence of all systems of oppression. Thus, destroying the systems that oppress them would mean liberation for all.

I have long enjoyed “Paris is Burning”, and have watched it at least a dozen times. I will say I always fail when in my attempts for deeper analysis, and I’m not sure I will succeed in this attempt either. There are concepts of identity that I’ve never been able to reconcile, concepts that perhaps elude me due to my race, privilege, or other perspectives that I am lacking. Regardless, throughout there is a huge play on the performative aspects of identity. The performative aspects of gender, wealth, heterosexuality. Sometimes these portrayals come across as aspirational, sometimes as critiques, as if to say that these various statuses are nothing more than their outward appearances. Gender, sexuality, and to some extent even wealth (or at least its outward appearance) are all just constructs. And repeatedly these children of the ball are saying that they are deserving of the status they portray, as capable as any white person or anyone else who is readily accepted within these categories of society, all the while confronting the fact that they are barred entry due to being black, gay, trans, or some intersection of those. When Combahee River Collective refer to identity politics, they refer to the politicization or pursuit of an agenda rooted in one’s own identity. I believe in “Paris is Burning” identity politics can be seen in this conflict their reality and why they are trying to portray.

Capitalism has always been reliant upon an oppressed class in its pursuit of profit. If equality truly existed, capitalism’s main profiteers (white men) would be incapable of reaping the rewards they do now. Thus it vital to capitalism’s survival to maintain and reinforce the systems of oppression to sustain an underpaid and overworked working class. Thus capitalism has actively sought to oppress people. Of course this is most notably evident in American slavery, and as America ended slavery it sought to find its next means of cheap labor in its most oppressed classes.

After reading “The Politics of Housework” by Pat Mainardi and “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” by Anne Koedt, I thing I might define a liberated woman as a woman who has freed herself of the strictures and labels that society has placed upon women. A woman defines her own wants and needs and does not subscribe to the oppressive notions thrust upon her. A liberated woman not only has autonomy of her body and actions ( be they day to day or larger aims of life and career) but actively seeks to define herself.

A liberated woman, in pushing against society’s mandates to shape herself, can forge new paths and set a new example of what is possible. Even if she herself does not seek to liberate other women, she illuminates aspects of life for others that they had perhaps never considered, allowing them to follow or fight for the liberation of others. She can challenge or question norms and custom just by existing in opposition to them. And enough women united in challenging the status quo can together inspire a movement.

There are few problems we face that are unique to our circumstance. Almost any trouble we have can be linked to a larger societal issue. In the examples of “The Politics of Housework” and “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” show how personal circumstances of housework and the female orgasm relate to larger societal issues. In the case of housework, the tendency of women in heterosexual relationships to be responsible for housework is to say that women are deserving of this menial work, or that men are above it. It is something we universally recognize as undesirable, and the fact that housework is unending only adds insult to injury. But this personal issue of delineating housework in a relationship echoes society’s pattern of placing men on top. Men are consistently put ahead of women in promotions and leadership roles. Just as women are not seen as equals in the boardroom, they are not seen as equals in home. And those views play off of each other. How can you view a woman as equal to a man outside of the home but not in it. In the delegation of undesirable work, no one should be considered above it based on their sex. Similarly, a woman’s sexual pleasure is frequently secondary to that of a man. The idea that a woman should put a man’s desires above her own, be it alleviating him of housework to allow him his own pursuits or putting a man’s sexual needs before her own. And society has done an amazing job of gaslighting women to help maintain this line. I think the fact that we have stigmatized female desire speaks greatly to this in a addition to Koedt’s points of the medical establishment concocting explanations for female frigidity. A sexually liberated woman is synonymous with “slut” to some people. We have shamed women for there sexuality as a means to keep them oppressed. Again, this personal issue of prioritizing the male orgasm echoes society’s need to put men first.