Day sixty-two in Oxford

Oxford picture of the day:

My shadow at noon. The low angle of the sun makes it feel like a perpetual late afternoon.

Day fifty-eight in Oxford

Oxford picture of the day:

He was an abandoned beer bottle. She was a lone glove. They said their love would never last.

They were wrong.

Sunday mornings in Oxford: coming soon to a theater near you.

Feminist Theory Bingo

As I think I've mentioned before, I've spent seven years as a high school teacher. And when you teach high school English, you spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to keep kids interested in your class. You try to think of fun (if cheesy) activities to help them learn in a non-judgmental environment, discussions to have that will relate the texts to their everyday lives, and competitive game to help them review material.

This last category is the one I'm writing about today.

I'm also a believer in being a bit irreverent. If you can't laugh at yourself, what's the point?

So, in the spirit of irreverence, I give you Feminist Theory Bingo, compiled from the readings, lectures, and discussions during this term's Fem Theory course.

Print these out and bring them to your next Fem Theory lecture.

Notes on "The New Homonormativity"

The New Homonormativity: The sexual politics of neoliberalism
By Lisa Duggan

As always, I've tried to put direct quotes in quotation marks, but since this is a typed transcript of my handwritten notes, I might not have been as effective as I'd like. However, this time I have included page numbers!

IGF – independent gay forum. Wants: full LGBT inclusion; equality under the law; they deny the conservative claims that gay s pose a threat to morality or order; they oppose progressive claims that gays should support radical social change.

This idea of a “third way” rhetoric that’s somewhere between conservative and progressive keeps coming up as part of neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is pro-corporate, and anti big government.

Its cultural politics are often discussed separately from its economic. (She’s implying that you can’t really separate them). But, its antidemocratic, antiegalitarian agenda has shaped the discussion.

Neoliberalism has often been presented as being non political – more into economic stuff. Very into privatization. However, Duggan points out that their rhetorical universe doesn’t match their reality. For instance, they think it’s good when the state supports private business interests, but not when it supports the public interest. She believes that they’re very conflicted in the arenas of cultural and personal life.

The new neoliberal sexual politics of the IGF can be called a new homonormativity, that upholds heteronormative institutions and promises a privatized, depoliticized gay culture.

She sees as consistent the gay movement goals of: right to sexual privacy, expansion of gay public life.

In the 1950s and 1960s (postwar) – conservatives saw the state as intrusive, while progressives thought it should guarantee equality of access. Conservatives thought that only the “favored form of family life” should get privacy, while progressives wanted a right to sexual and domestic privacy for all.

In the 1970s, gay politics interacted with feminist and antiracist rhetoric and strategies. There was an emphasis shift away from privacy toward visibility. They wanted a right to privacy in public, and the right to publicize private matters.

1990s – a new gay moralism attacked promiscuity and the “gay lifestyle” – advocated monogamous marriage as responsible and disease preventing.

Dramatically shrunken public sphere, narrow zone of “responsible” domestic privacy. Bawer – invokes “most gay people” as conventional and anti left. He wants a trickle-down of gay-positive sentiments from the elite boardroom to factories.

(184)

Attacks the “’extremes’ of what he calls prohibitionism and liberationism.” Again with the “third way” approach.

He sees prohibitionism as that which “would morally condemn and legally punish homosexuality.” Heterosexuality is the norm, and is essential to society.

Sullivan rejects this as inconsistent (non-reproducing hetero couples would also “have to be condemned”) and wrong.

(185)

He sees homosexuality as “an involuntary condition,” and because of this, that there’s no point in “attacking it morally and legally.”

He’s against liberationism for the same reason – they say that “sexual identities are socially constructed” but he says they’ve always existed. But, apparently his “description of what he calls liberationism is… more cartoonishly reductive than his description of prohibitionism.”

He describes “queer” as “a uniform and compulsory identity” when the whole point of “queer” is the opposite.

(186)

Sullivan “defines liberalism as the commitment to a formally neutral state and to the foundational freedoms of action, speech, and choice”.

He claims that the agendas of the civil rights movement are “the wrong road in contemporary liberal politics,” and says that things like affirmative action and other antidiscrimination laws are “veering too far away from the proper goals of state neutrality.”

(187)

He endorses “conservative goods” except the idea of “private tolerance coupled with public disapproval of homosexuality.”

Sullivan’s plan is to legalize gay marriage and military service, “then demobiliz[e] the gay population to a ‘prepolitical’ condition.”

Duggan thinks that Sullivan’s support of gay marriage as “social and public recognition of a private commitment” is too close to what he warned against before with the ideas of civil rights movements, as he feared that the law would be “forced into being a mixture of moral education, psychotherapy and absolution.”

(188)

Sullivan worries that domestic partnership could open a whole barrel of legal worms, since frat brothers or an old person and live-in nurse could qualify. Also believes that it “chips away at the prestige of traditional relationships and undermines the priority we give them.”

Duggan thinks that domestic partnership is actually more like his idea of “state neutrality about ‘values’” than the “hierarchy and subjective judgment” of traditional marriage. Believes that he sees “the most conventional and idealized form of marriage as lifetime monogamy… in utterly prefeminist terms”.

His view is in line with the rest of the neoliberal movement in that he wants “to construct a new public/private distinction” that involves “very few policy decisions”.

“Marriage is a strategy for privatizing gay politics”. He also believes that marriage and the desire to serve in the military are not actually political: “The family is prior to the state; the military is coincident with it.”

(189)

David Boaz, VP of libertarian Cato Institute: domestic partnership “undermines marriage’s premium on commitment.” But he also believes that “welfare programs offer resources especially to poor women, who are thus enabled to make undesirable choices.”

(190)

“The privacy-in-public claims and publicizing strategies of ‘the gay movement’ are rejected in favor of public recognition of a domesticated, depoliticized privacy.”

Primark chic: dark florals edition

As I wrote about here, I'm trying to work some British looks into my style without breaking the bank.

A look I've been really drawn to recently is the idea of dark, winter florals (for examples, see Domestic Sluttery and Vogue). Florals have always seemed very English to me; before moving here, my idea of the quintessential English cool-girl outfit involved a floral dress over black tights with cool rock-and-roll booties, and perhaps a denim jacket or slouchy cardigan and "infinity scarf" (which the Brits call a "snood" - so much more fun).

However, straight-up floral just isn't me. I need something a little darker and edgier, with just a hint of punk or goth. So when I started noticing these floral blouses with black trim all over the place, I was excited. The combination of floral and buttoned-up was a look I loved, and the black trim kept it from being too girly.

As I always do, I shopped around. Here are the results, at various price points.

If you have £80 lying around, head over to Topshop for this one (or, you know, buy one of the other ones and give me the rest of the cash!)

For a more reasonable £35, you can have this darker, more subtle print from Miss Selfridge.

And compared to the other two, this offering from New Look is an absolute bargain at £22.99.

However, as a graduate student paying my own way with no income to speak of, all three of those are well outside my budget (the New Look one would feed me for a week!).

So, as I tend to do in this case, I headed to Primark, as I'd noticed a GORGEOUS dark floral shirt there on an earlier trip, and even though £12 was a little more than I'd like to spend, I figured it was pretty enough to be worth the splurge.

HOWEVER.

When I got there, I found that this lovely:

had been reduced to £5. Yes, you read that right. I wore it yesterday and got so many compliments on it. I'm thinking of replacing the garish gold buttons with more subtle black ones, but really. You can't beat that.

Moral of the story: know what you want, and shop around!

Day fifty-six in Oxford

Oxford Picture of the Day:

Ferris wheel at the Oxford Christmas Light Night street fair.

Day fifty-five in Oxford

It's Thanksgiving back home, and I was going to post a picture of my poor little makeshift Thanksgiving dinner here (gravy in a tube!). But the picture looked highly unappetizing, so here's one I took this morning on my way to study.

The Radcliffe Humanities building; home to the philosophy library and the closest printers to my dorm.

Day fifty-one in Oxford

Oxford picture of the day:

Christmas decorations over Cornmarket Street: Tom Tower in the distance.

Notes on "A Politics of Imperceptibility"

A politics of imperceptibility by Elizabeth Grosz

1. Recognition and “identity”

We have to start destructuring and realigning social relations of domination, as Cornell and Murphy posit in “anti-racism, multiculturalism and the ethics of identification”.

Rethink multiculturalism to facilitate change.

Question identity in relation to recognition, subjectivation, and identification.

Cornell and Murphy said that a politics of recognition is not just tied to an authentic identity but also bestowed on strategic or provisional identities. People whose identities are in process or are changing. It aims to disconnect a claim to authentic identity from a demand for recognition.

Identities can be produced through self-cultivation.

C&M “affirm the value of self-representation and self definition” in constructing an identity (moving beyond stereotypes, etc). However, there are limits, “at least for those in dominant positions” (I would think that there would be more limits to those in subordinate positions).

Race as a concept may be fluid, but the social reality still is what it is. There are real limits to identity but no limits on imaginative identifications, like identifying “with racialized, minoritarian cultural phenomena” – like the “I had an abortion” or “I am a Jew” thing.

Sets of restraints on this; one from without, one from within. The “structure of recognition” means you have to be acknowledged by an other in order to be a subject. From within, you’re limited by your own “structures of identification.”

The subject only becomes a subject by being recognized by another subject. Identity is bestowed by an other, and can be taken away as well.

Things I don’t understand:

“Identity comes only as a result of a dual motion of the internalization, or introjection of otherness, and the projection onto the other of some fundamental similarity or identification with the subject.”

• introjection = an unconscious psychic process by which a person incorporates into his or her own psychic apparatus the characteristics of another person or object.

I’m not sure if I’m confusing other with Other, or if I just don’t get that concept.

Subject-projection structure of recognition and subject as creature of internalization (taking in another’s representations of the subject as part of the subject’s identity).

(Is internalization an active or passive process?)

This is the “uncontested discourse of minority cultures.”

Nietzsche focuses on forces or wills, not identity – action and activity. “What marks the subject as such is its capacity to act and be acted upon, to do rather than to be, to act rather than to identify.”

2. Imperceptibility

Totally don’t get this part:

“It is one of Nietzsche’s most profound insights that will, subjectivity, consciousness, the human, identity, are not causes, and that causation is indeed a habit or explanatory model that puts the subject’s position as a being of habit at the center without adequate recognition of that which ‘causes’, produces the very fiction that is the subject. A subject is not produced through the recognition of another subject, for the subject is itself a productive and activating fiction”.

(That last sentence seems to directly contradict what she said before about “the subject can only become a subject as such through being recognized by another as a subject.”).

(So those things are not causes; causation puts the subject at the center, but without recognizing that which causes?)

According to Nietzsche, we only see events as having been caused by intentions. “Every event is a deed, … every deed presupposes a doer”.

Nietzsche might help us understand that politics, subjectivity, and the social are consequences of “active and reactive forces that have no agency, or are all that agency and identity consist in.” (Not sure I understand the second part of that sentence).

“What is it that subjects seek? To be recognized?” by whom? “From whom do oppressed groups and individuals seek identity through recognition?”

I don’t understand this:

“While two equal self-consciousnesses seek recognition from each other, the dialectic rapidly transforms this apparent or provisional equality into the very structure of lordship and bondage.”

Majority doesn’t bestow identity. If this is true, and the majority is concerned with “non-recognition” and “non-comprehension” of minority, “then why is recognition necessary and what does it confer?”

(Not sure I understand – if she’s saying that the majority is concerned with NOT recognizing, and that that makes it seem like recognition isn’t necessary… I don’t think that follows. Regardless of whether the majority does or does not bestow identity, isn’t their recognition crucial? Or does “recognition” here mean something more intellectual than I’m thinking?)

Instead of a “desire for recognition” as a “condition for subjective identity,” we need different assumptions to cover identity politics without resorting to language of recognition.

(so we want to make identity possible without relying on recognition?)

C&M want politics without identity but say we still need a concept of recognition.

Grosz thinks we need to be able to talk about identity without having to talk about recognition.

Aligns the desire for recognition with “the annihilation of identity without the other”. Says that we depend on the other. We need to change those things.

Political struggles as pragmatic – can’t be chalked up to a lack of recognition.

Your identity isn’t how you present yourself, but what you do. (Does this imply that identity formation isn’t conscious?)

Big focus on force.

“force is always engaged in becoming”

“force is always a relation of intensity”

“it is differences in the quantity of forces that produce differences in quality”

“each force seeks its own expansion” so forces end up “in relations of hostility and competition with each other”.

“force is that which produces competition and struggle”.

Let’s rethink the subject in terms of force.

Forces act THROUGH subjects to create them (we talked about this earlier in the term I think).

Theoretical choice: ascribe to a theory of a subject that wants to be affirmed through relations (this is the basis of performativity, the idea that performances produce, don’t express, identity), or the theory of the impersonal with the inhuman forces.

Instead of looking at feminist politics as a struggle of rights, they may better function as a “mode of rendering the subject the backdrop to a play of forces”.

Feminism “is not simply the struggle to liberate women,” but “to render more mobile, fluid, and transformable the means by which the female subject is produced and represented. It is the struggle to produce a future in which forces align in ways fundamentally different from the past and the present.”

“it is a useful fiction to imagine that we as subjects are masters or agents of these very forces that constitute us as subjects, but misleading”

“instead of a politics of recognition, in which subjugated groups and minorities strive for a validated and affirmed place in public life,” we should “consider the affirmation of a politics of imperceptibility, leaving its traces and effects everywhere, but never being able to be identified with a person or an organization.”

Notes on "Feminism and Postmodernism"

Notes on "Feminism and Postmodernism" by Sabina Lovibond

As always, I've done my best to quote any phrasing that isn't my own, but since this is combined from my handwritten notes and highlighting, I may not have gotten it perfect.

“Aversion to the idea of universality”

“refuses to conceive of humanity as a unitary subject”

The Ideal of Consensus

Justification and legitimation are practices – communities “recognize this and not that as a good reason for doing or believing something.”

Postmodernists “question the merit of consensus.”

Language Games

Non-teleological:

Postmodern objections to working towards consensus:

1. Marxism is outdated – people no longer buy into the idea of universal emancipation.

2. “the pursuit of ideal consensus is misguided”. (So how would this affect feminist goals of freedom and equality for all women? It’s definitely relevant to ideas of racism, classism, and ethnocentrism within feminism. Postmodernism is pro-innovation, but thinks that you can’t term something new as “better” or “progress” based on some absolute criteria. “since history has no direction” we can’t assume that our new ideas are any better than the old.

Rorty wants conversation to replace enquiry. MacIntyre concludes that “mythology… is ‘at the heart of things’.”.

Neither conversation nor mythology aims “at a single, stable representation of reality” or “truth”.

They seem to want to separate “intellectual activity” from the pursuit of “ideal consensus”. Rorty: a life NOT aiming for actual truth is “better”. Lyotard: a focus on “truth” suppresses difference.

Lyotard says that while it might suck to “place constraints on liberty in the name of social order,” you can’t try to bind all thought “into a single ‘moral organism’ or ‘significant whole’. (I’m not sure how these two ideas connect, especially given his previous one. He thinks that aiming for truth suppresses difference; does aiming for truth mean trying to come up with a singular truth? In that case, it makes sense. Or I guess trying to come up with a singular truth in any one situation).

Enlightenment thought that what exists should justify itself. Postmodernism opposes that, seeing “justification (or legitimation) [as] always local and context-relative”. This is anti Platonism. Plato thought that truth transcends our “criteria of truth”. Postmodernism thinks that idea is obsolete, and that it’s “no longer possible to believe in a transcendent truth”.

Dialectic = of, pertaining to, or of the nature of logical argumentation.

Postmodernism is also skeptical of Plato’s WAY of thinking. Plato’s dialectic method of enquiry was about questioning an idea until you came down to some essential truth that could not be corrected any further. According to his view, at this point the “thought would come to rest”.

The idea of postmodern conversation instead of that kind of dialectic is that “it aims, not at its own closure, but at its own continuation.” It wants agreement and disagreement.

According to Plato, the increasing coherence of the idea corresponds to “coherence in the mind of the enquirer”. Basically you’re supposed to get to a point where “no sudden access of emotion, no previously unconsidered aspect of things, is able to disturb the ordering of my beliefs and values.”

Positive Liberty

Negative liberty (Hume) = no external restraints, spontaneity.

Positive liberty = autonomy (didn’t we discuss autonomy vs. agency the other day?) In positive liberty, any “commands issued by the true subject… cannot be overturned by recalcitrant impulses or ‘passions’.” (To me, that sounds a lot like what Plato’s ideas were in the last section – is this supposed to be the postmodern view?). We’re supposed to be free from anything that we see as irrational.

You can only be free if you’ve fully realized your potential for reason (achieved perfect rationality). Right now we might feel subjectively free, but if we continue to develop intellectually we will later see, in hindsight, now not free we really are in our “current patterns of behavior.”

In the Enlightenment, the “centered subject” “was free because he was no longer at the mercy of unpredictable bouts of passion or appetite.” Now, the modern subject is free by being liberated from “the influence of social forces which s/he does not understand, and so cannot resist.” (So we’re liberated by gaining an understanding of these forces and then being able to resist them). In Marxism, it was learning about “the capitalist economic order;” in feminism, to look at ways we’ve internalized patriarchal views. Head for autonomy by “making ourselves less susceptible to external determination” = transcendence. (Is this related to De Beauvoir’s transcendence?).

Transcendence is connected to the idea of universal reason, and postmodernists don’t like this. Feminists also don’t like it. Western philosophy seems to see man as this “normal or complete” being, associated with the mind and civilization, and woman as body, associated with nature, hanging out in the background. In Plato’s writings, men “emerge from the womb-like Cave,” and Hegel’s men leave the home, therefore the private, where women had dominion. “the passage from nature to freedom, or from ‘heteronomy’ to autonomy, has been represented in terms of an escape by the male from the sheltered, feminine surroundings in which he begins his life.” This seems to signal a “convergence between feminism and postmodernism”.

Tradition and Modernity

Sexual equality as a political goal can be seen as a way that tradition is moving aside to modernity.

“Modern conditions” as “created by technological progress.” (the next few sentences seem to frame modernity as a negative thing). “Sooner or later, arbitrary authority will cease to exist” is a very Enlightenment thought.

Sex and gender-based aspects of the social system are the parts of tradition that seem to be the hardest to change.

Modernism repudiates “unearned privilege”.

Some people claim that we missed our chance to rebuild society “on rational, egalitarian lines”. She’s suspicious – how are we supposed to give up our dreams of emancipation when we’re not emancipated? (Not sure I’m interpreting that correctly). “universal reason”.

The Enlightenment ideas of “emancipation” or “autonomy” are “complicit in a fantasy of escape from the embodied condition” and reinforce harmful hierarchical binaries. Naturalist philosophy has looked at “institutions of knowledge-production… to expose the unequal part played by different social groups in determining standards of judgment.” In doing so, it’s been able to reveal how value systems we’d previously seen as objective aren’t.

She’s going to introduce three distinctly postmodern themes and question “whether postmodernism can be adopted by feminism as a theoretical ally”.

Dynamic pluralism, quiet pluralism, pluralism of inclination.

There’s nothing in the idea that standards of judgment are social constructions that would explain why postmodernists are hostile to the idea of consensus. You can understand that knowledge claims have perspective but also want to use enquiry to bring these perspectives together to create a body of thought that can be accessed from any starting point. (almost like using a bunch of 2-D drawings to create a 3D model).

Kant had talked about an imaginary point, “located beyond the limits of possible experience, upon which all lines of rational activity appear to converge”. The fact that it’s imaginary shows that it’s irrelevant to worry about we’ll ever “reach the goal of enquiry”. Theory itself would be impossible if we didn’t care about its maxims (general truths or principals; rules of conduct). However, theoretical effort is non-contractual – you do it even if you have no guarantee that others will help to achieve the goal. (not sure about that last part).

Dynamic Pluralism

Lyotard’s writing on the “eclipse of ‘grand narratives’” gives suggestions on “postmodern mental health.” Lyotard thinks that people don’t care about the idea of consensus. The desire for legitimation of knowledge is eclipsed by “quest for discursive novelty”.

“The authentically postmodern consciousness is experimental”.

Modernity wants to impose form on to chaos; postmodernity wants to jump into the chaos feet-first.

Nietzsche thought that idealism led to nihilism, which was a sickness.

He thought that godlessness was like innocence, and it’s harder to achieve that than you’d think because positivists “still have faith in truth” and therefore can’t achieve godlessness or freedom.

Nietzsche’s critique was aimed at those who think knowledge rests on the foundation of experience.

Socrates wanted to eliminate conflict by having everyone gradually converge to one point of view. Nietzsche thinks that this goal (of eliminating conflict) will appeal to the weak. You only use dialectics when you “have no other weapon left”.

Rationalism – wants to move conflict from physical to argument, so the underdog has more of a chance of winning (I have to imagine this is more metaphorical?). Nietzsche thinks that social conditions of rank are necessary. They want to get rid of class relationships.

“Truth as a regulative ideal is the creation of a socially inferior type of mind”. It comes from the hostility of the lower class trying to make the upper class feel guilty for being “naturally good” (What??)

Nietzsche doesn’t think that self-contradiction is a fault, but that it’s human beings who came upon “coherence as a criterion of value”.

Nietzsche and the Enlightenment

Nietzsche thought we had to recover from the Enlightenment. He sees feminism as part of the rationalist movement – as trying to “end the war between men and women” and move to communication.

Nietzsche doesn’t agree that being morally repulsed by war is a good thing. He finds rationalism and pacifism repulsive in the category of sexuality.

Nietzsche defines virility as loving war and refusing to compromise.

“In a world without truth…the interpretation of experience is itself a field for invention”.

“The cognitive activity of a …better… humanity will involve not the suppression of individuality… but rather their subordination to a commanding will.” (Not sure I get this).

The more perspectives we consider the more objective we can be (?).

Nietzsche describes himself as hostile to feminism. He sees feminism as part of idealism and wants Europe to be more virile. He saw feminism as the mental impotence in binding the mind “to regulative ideas such as truth.” Looking for the stability of truth emasculates the mind.

“We should be on the watch for signs of indulgence in a certain collective fantasy of masculine agency or identity”.

The attack on universality (theme two – quiet pluralism)

Dynamic pluralisms’ roots lie in distaste for move toward sexual equality.

We’ll be looking at the “postmodern ‘rediscovery’ of the local and customary”.

She thinks there’s a big difference between these two points:

Nietzsche renounced a truth-oriented way of life.

Postmodernists want to scrap ideas of absolute letigimation.

To read this second one as just an update of Nietzsche misses the point, because “postmodernism does not condemn the pursuit of truth or virtue within local, self-contained discursive communities.” “truth” as distinct from “Truth.”

Postmodern theory concedes the ability of groups “to reflect on themselves and to pass judgments of value”. So a scientist can ask “is this a valid contribution to scientific theory”?.

MacIntyre says that “a healthy [moral] tradition is sustained by its own internal arguments and conflicts.”

If groups are capable of self-criticism, how far are they going to take it? Can’t you always make some kind of criticism?

Rorty hopes that the post-enlightenment culture will be “better,” and that nobody will be thought more “rational” than another.

“admiration of exceptional men and women who were very good at doing the quite diverse kinds of things they did”.

“liberal individualist” and “Modern self” are only externally connected to the roles they take on. To be separated from any of these roles would not hurt their integrity – they would not become so wrapped up in them.

MacIntyre thinks we should stop trying to transcend and instead construct local communities to sustain intellectual and moral lives.

Postmodernism – “there is no such thing as a ‘pure reason’ dissociated from” culture or context.

But – feminism wants postmodernism to explain “how we can achieve a thorough-going revision of the range of social scripts, narrative archetypes, ways of life, ways of earning a living, etc. available to individual women and men.” How can we actually revise the scripts, archetypes, and options available to individuals?

If there’s no “systematic political approach” to issues of “wealth, power and labour,” how can we effectively challenge a society that distributes privilege and burdens unequally between the sexes?

How can we achieve sexual equality if we’re not allowed to “address the structural causes of existing sexual inequality”?

MacIntyre’s Moral Epistemology

Discusses mythology. When we picture our lives as “unified chains of events” we’re drawing on mythology. But, when discussing sexual politics, myths aren’t very reassuring. MacIntyre lists “the Bible, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and the Greek and Latin classics”. The actual mythology that affects us is more TV or media-based.

Can we reclaim the available roles? According to MacIntyre, modern social roles all draw from the Enlightenment, so are fictions.

Feminism wants to construct a “life worthy of human beings”.

MacIntyre treats “the individual enterprise as a source of insight into the collective one”. You ask “what is good for me,” and the answer to “what is good for man” occurs where all of the previous answers converge.

But this blocks the way to theory and pushes you back to mythology.

Pluralism of Inclination

Feminists as embracing fashion.

Discussion of pleasure – especially (for women) the pleasure we get from making others happy “thereby justifying our own existence.”.

“conventional femininity” can “be pleasurable for women”.

If feminism is accused of racism, there’s a new political agenda, so the movement becomes less unified. This “calls attention to a certain respect in which feminism has fallen short of its own idealized self-image as an occupant of the ‘universal standpoint’.”

Overheard in Oxford

Cyclist #1: I'm not that drunk!

Cyclist #2: You don't feel it when you're cycling.

Cyclist #3: Where are you going?!?!??

Day forty-nine in Oxford

Oxford picture of the day:

Brasenose Lane at night.

Bank Drama: Part 1

I tend to be pretty bad at what I consider “grown-up things”. I have no idea how my health insurance works, filling out a form can reduce me to tears (but what do they mean previous address??), and I’ve never started my taxes before noon, regardless of the day, because I need a glass of wine in hand to keep my blood pressure from going through the roof (although it’s been pointed out to me that at least I do my own taxes, so… go me?).

Anyway. When it came time to move to England, I tried my best to be really responsible and on top of things. I researched the vaccines I would need to have. I went online to make sure the prescriptions I needed were readily available in the UK, and emailed the college nurse to find out the best way to go about transferring prescriptions from the US to UK. I looked online to make sure my Irish passport would prevent me from needing a visa, and I confirmed that fact by emailing the immigration office at my college.

I called my bank several times, to let them know before I bought the plane tickets (figuring a one-way ticket might arouse suspicion), again to raise my purchase limit when I was buying my new laptop, and again before I left to make sure that they knew I would be overseas so they wouldn’t flag my purchases in England.

When I’d been here for about three weeks, I called them again to raise my purchase limit so that I could pay my tuition. They couldn’t raise it high enough to pay my tuition in one fell swoop, so I had them raise the limit to half the tuition so I could pay it over two days. They were, as always, helpful and friendly.

Now, after spending all of this time on the phone with my bank, I was feeling pretty good about them. The customer service representatives were helpful and friendly, and while the few times my account was flagged were annoying and embarrassing, I appreciated that they were trying to keep my money secure. I really thought that they had my best interests in mind.

Boy, was I naïve.

(And yes, I will admit that I am sometimes naïve. I work really hard to be a good person and do the right thing. As a teacher I try to be fair with my students, making choices that will help them learn and grow without stressing them too much. I reward them for making good choices and try to point out the ways in which making bad choices will hurt you in the long run.)

I had spent so much time emphasizing values and fair play that I began to believe in them.

After I’d been here for a month (and about a week after paying my tuition), I went online to check my bank statement, partly just to check it, since it had been a month, but partly to make sure that the tuition payment processed smoothly.

I was shocked to notice that a fee (3%, as I was to later learn) had been imposed onto every debit card purchase I had made in the last month. Including my super-high, non-resident tuition.

NOW. Before you roll your eyes and shake your head at the fact that this news “shocked me,” a little background.

I joined my bank (um… we’ll call them “Convenient Bank” so as to not unfairly represent anybody) way back in 1999 for two very solid reasons. First, they were the bank in my hometown. Second, they had an ATM in the student center on my college campus.

Done.

Over the years I had nothing but positive experiences with Convenient Bank. When I lost my card, they were reassuring and prompt in their service. When a rigged ATM at the gas station on 36th street stole my information, they very quickly put a hold on my card and called me to let me know that someone was buying stuff in the Midwest on my card. And the eight times that I traveled outside the country in that time (five times to England, once to Ireland, once to Aruba, and once to Israel), I had no problems with my card, no fees at British Bank’s ATMs, and – and this is the important one – no international purchase fees.

About a year ago, Convenient Bank was bought by Other Bank. Other Bank obviously sent me several reams of paperwork outlining their new policies, etc.

Does anybody read that stuff? I know I don’t.

Now, I’m sure that somewhere in those stacks of dead trees mailed to me by Other Bank was a bullet point explaining that any international purchases would be charged a fee of 3%. Let’s be clear that I’m not saying they were wrong to do so (I think it’s ridiculous, especially to have the fee be a percentage, but whatever. Not my place).

However. Over the half a dozen times I’d called Other Bank in my attempts to be a responsible adult (including the many times I mentioned that I would be living overseas, or, you know, the time I told them that I would be making a very large overseas purchase on my card to pay my tuition), not once did any of them mention that I would be charged.

Again. You are rolling your eyes at my shock that the world is not a warm and fuzzy place. That’s fine. I’ve learned this one the hard way.

So I called Other Bank and explained my situation. That they had taken almost a thousand dollars from me in fees. That I had spoken to many people at their establishment before making these purchases, and that obviously the fee was a new one, instituted since the buyout of Convenient Bank. They agreed with me on all of these points. The lovely lady on the other end of the line even generously offered to refund half of my most recent purchase fee; the purchase had been at the grocery store, and the refund would have been less than a dollar. I literally laughed in disbelief and requested that she refund both of the big fees on my tuition payments. I reiterated that these fees had never existed with Convenient Bank, and that in all of the time I’d spent on the phone with their customer service representatives, who were always soooo helpful and friendly, nobody had thought to mention that this fee would be imposed.

I kept talking about how great they had been in the past, how this fee was obviously a new thing, and how nobody had mentioned it to me on the phone.

Eventually she said she could refund half of one of the big fees. I asked to speak to a manager. Eventually I was able to convince them to refund half of each of the big fees, a total of a little over $400. I asked to speak to someone higher, and she told me that anyone I spoke to would tell me the same thing that she was telling me; this was as good as it got.

But when I hung up the phone, I was not satisfied. They still had a lot of my money, and I still felt as if they had not been as forthcoming with their fees as they could have been.

I called my mom, who is not only brilliant with stuff like this, but is also pretty damn adamant that nobody should ever take advantage of you in any kind of way, especially with stupid fees. She always speaks with pride of the way my sister will call and cry when she has an overdraft fee, being overly dramatic and emotional, and how it always works. She encouraged me to try that tactic, but I was reluctant; I would feel silly trying to get emotional over this, and I wasn’t convinced it would work.

Dad encouraged me to get angry; to say things like “this is how you treat your customers?” and “How am I supposed to pay my rent?” and to threaten to write to my state’s attorney general. But I don’t like behaving in that way; I felt like it would be a little bit beneath me, and I know that in dealing with disgruntled students, someone who approached me that way would get a LOT less out of me than someone who was polite and logical. I wanted to believe that persistence and reason would win the day.

So I took to the Twitter.

I tweeted at Other Bank, mentioning that while I’d always had great experiences with them in the past, I was seriously disappointed in the way they were handling this. They responded by giving me a phone number that was supposedly for a higher office than the customer service number I’d been calling.

While I was waiting for their reply, I filled out an online customer service form and emailed Other Bank’s international offices (not really thinking that they would be able to have any say in this, but I had to feel like I was doing something). Online customer service said they couldn’t do anything, and after I’d sent the international representative my account number, I never heard from her again (making me a little suspicious).

When I heard back from Other Bank’s Twitter account, I called the corporate office. Now, this was probably the night after I’d realized what had happened, and I’d spent hours of time online and on the phone trying to get my money back. I was exhausted, angry, and frustrated.

The woman who answered the phone was about as professional as they come: brittle, cold, and uncaring. Her measured responses and party line of “there was no bank error so we can’t refund the money” sounded well rehearsed. She even pointed out that “it looks like we’ve already helped you out a couple of times here” in reference to the refund of half of my money, as if to imply that I was pushing my luck.

Obviously the rational approach wasn’t working. So I tried dad’s approach, telling her that this was my rent and grocery money, and asking how I was supposed to eat. I cited Other Bank’s “values statement” online, pointing out that I’m furthering my education, living the American dream like the smiling families featured on their website. I even – and I’m not proud – began to cry.

Her response was chilling. She did not care. I was telling her that, as a student with no income who is paying all of my tuition and bills myself, her bank’s fees might mean I could not pay for a roof over my head or groceries.

She did. Not. Care.

Now, my situation is not dire. Yes, I am paying my tuition, rent, and all other expenses from my own pocket. I am wiping out my savings to pursue this degree. I have no loans, financial aid, or scholarships, so I am living very carefully. I don’t eat at restaurants or go to coffee shops, subsisting on instant coffee and whatever food was on sale at the least fancy store in town. There are a lot of ramen noodles, about-to-expire vegetables (trying to eat healthy on a budget is as tough as you’d think), and store-brand peanut butter on store-brand bread. When I’ve felt an urge to go shopping, I’ve bought £5 dresses from the sale racks at the local fast-fashion store and £6 sweaters from the neighborhood thrift stores.

I have a bit of a financial cushion. Even without that last $450, I would be able to eat. I would be able to pay my rent. I would have to keep a bit of a closer eye on things, but I would be fine. However, all I could think was, what if I wasn’t? What if that $450 actually meant the difference between paying my last month’s rent and not paying it? Between going to the grocery store and not going to the grocery store?

The bank’s level of uncaring was, as I said, chilling. This is what people are facing every day. While I was still upset about my money, I was even more upset about the implications of their response.

When I asked for the phone number of someone who would be more able to help me, she smugly told me that this was as high as it went.

I thanked her (always polite) and hung up.

... to be continued ...

Notes on Mary Astell's "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies"

Ok, for this week's Early Feminisms class, I had to read Mary Astell's "A Serious Proposal to the Ladies." It's kind of awesome, especially if you're an English-teacher-type who loves teaching persuasive writing and rhetorical techniques (shoutout to Thomas Paine!). Plus, every time I read the title, I just think of this.

Ladies,

There is a proposition that wants to improve my charms and fix my beauty, putting it out of the reach of age and sickness “by transferring it from a corruptible Body to an immortal Mind.” It would procure inner beauty for those who aren’t pretty (ouch).

Wisdom. Wit. That which is truly valuable. Virtue. You would be glorified, blessed, and admired.

I won’t have to talk a lot or use rhetoric to get you to agree with this proposal. You won’t be so unkind to yourself to refuse.

You’re awesome. Why are you so humble? Why don’t you aim higher? Why are you ok with being just pretty? I look at you with pity and resentment that your “Glorious Temples” that god made so beautifully are so empty. You’re beautiful but your soul is neglected and growing weeds.

Time is an enemy to faces but an improver of souls. Screw “Butterflies and Trifles!” “Vanity and Folly”. “break the enchanted Circle that custom has placed us in”.

“And not entertain Such a degrading thought of our own worth, as to imagine that our Souls were given us only for the Service of our Bodies, and that the best improvement we can make of these, is to attract the eyes of men.”

Be good and wise and have wit; that is greatness.

I don’t mean to imply there’s something wrong with you. I just want to “rectify your Failures”. We all have faults; men too! But they think they’re too wise to take advice from a lady.

Be as happy as you can in your imperfection. I want you to achieve your rightful dignity.

God gave women more natural goodness, since we’re “denied opportunities of improvement from without”. I want you to desire to be better!

Men have said that women can’t act wisely; I can’t accept that. Women can avoid folly. We do have some disadvantages. We don’t have to do bad when we can do the best! God made us ornaments to our families and useful to our generation, so we can’t be content to be useless or a burden in the world. Sad that so many don’t know their worth.

The cause of this belief in our defect is the mistake of our education.

The soil is rich – if well-cultivated would produce a noble harvest. We are barred from advantages then reproached because we lack them.

You’d think parents would educate daughters. Procure that we should live wisely and happily. To neglect to educate kids (against temptations, etc) is wicked.

We are capable of being instruments of God. But if our nature is spoiled through ignorance, well, ignorance is the cause of all sin. What hope do we have if we’re brought up like that?

That we’re “unprofitable” to men is their own fault for denying us education.

Feminine vices are caused by ignorance. God has made us to want to advance ourselves. If we’re haughty in disdain of doing something mean, or pride in trying to be better, that’s fine. Given the means to understand, women will try to perfect their nature. Kept in ignorance, they’ll go for the first thing they think represents their desires.

If she has nothing else to value in herself, she’ll be proud of her beauty, money, or stuff. This will lead her to follow any guy who flatters her or gives her stuff. If she’s only raised on plays and romances, froth and emptiness, she won’t be able to see the fallacy. Educated, she’d see through all that, value her own virtue, not care what others say but focus on what she herself does.

(Through this part implies that, educated, she won’t do these things). Uneducated she’ll get love through base ways. She’ll think she’s great because she has money or a better tailor than others. She’d undervalue her judgment.

If she understands herself, she won’t be affected by praise or criticism of worthless people.

“Thus Ignorance and a narrow Education, lay the Foundation of Vice, and imitation and custom rear it up.”

Custom – if not given better means, of course she’ll follow others. This is why people do irrational things.

“we go on in Vice, not because we find Satisfaction in it, but because we are unacquainted with the Joys of Virtue.”

Between this and the “hurry and noise of the world” we don’t have the time or mind to reflect. (again – demand for quiet and solitude).

“till our minds themselves become as light and frothy as those things they are conversant about”

Add to all of that the energy bad people use to corrupt the good, and you can see why we’re not improving.

If all a girl learns to value is to dress well, you can’t blame her for putting her energy in money into that. When she sees the vain parading around and being admired, of course she’s dazzled.

If she was taught more earnestly of heaven, she’d be interested (I think). She’s taught the “what” of religion but not the “why”. Her piety may be tall but it lacks roots, so a temptation overthrows it or it withers on its own. But don’t blame her.

A woman made to display her reason, to look into motives of religion, ”who is a Christian out of Choice, not in conformity to those about her,” who isn’t just good, but can “give a reason why she is so” can’t be tempted by sin.

The heart may be honest, but understanding may be ignorant. This is why we see people falling in their piety. “Reason and Truth are firm and immutable.”

It’s useless to pray for graces if we don’t practice them; a mockery to praise perfections we contradict.

So now we know the disease and the cure, so let’s apply a remedy. I know you’re all good people who love god and want to better yourselves.

Let’s erect a Monastery – a “religious retirement” – a retreat from the world and an institution that will work to improve the future. People who are sick of the vanity of the world can come here. Those who want to do good for themselves and then for others. Want to avoid the temptations of the everyday world. Service of god, improvement of minds. “recess from the noise and hurry of the world”.

Ladies, you’re invited. You’ll avoid insignificant people. You’ll have real conversation. Avoid flattery, have “wholesome counsels”.

All you have to do is be as happy as you can.

“ you Shall feast on Pleasures, that do not, like those of the World, disappoint your expectations.” There are no serpents here to deceive. No competing except for god’s love. No ambition but procuring his favor. No envy. No covetousness. It will be like heaven, since all you have to do is glory god and love each other.

It will be a mix of contemplation and active good works. You won’t be cut off from the world (and doing good in it). It will be a “seminary to stock the kingdom with pious and prudent ladies”.

“ Shall be to expel that cloud of Ignorance, which custom has involved us in, to furnish our minds with a Stock of Solid and useful Knowledge, that the Souls of women may no longer be the only unadorned and neglected things.”

She cites a book talking about women reading Greek and Latin in the 15 and 1600s. If god gave us intelligent souls, why can’t we try to improve them?

The only reason women’s conversations are so insipid is that we’re not educated.

Ignorance isn’t the right way to prepare for heaven.

Again, if you don’t give us worthy materials with which to educate our minds, “’tis like to take up with Such as come to hand.”

I’m not saying women should teach in the church or usurp authority.

Let us read philosophy like the French ladies do, instead of idle novels and romances. I know ladies will like this idea and men won’t, “Women invited to taste of that Tree of Knowledge they have so long unjustly monopolized.” I can’t imagine how this could hurt anyone.

Women will spend part of their days praying, the rest doing charitable useful stuff like studying or teaching, works of mercy, healing the sick, comforting the afflicted, etc.

Religion religion religion.

“ For true Piety is the most Sweet and engaging thing imaginable,”

As to Lodging, Habit and Diet: The ladies who subscribe can decide. They’ll probably choose what’s plain and decent. She’d never spend on herself instead of the poor or jeopardize her place in heaven.

There will be no envy. No censure, but friendly admonition. They’ll live the life of heaven while on earth.

Tutors will be “persons of irreproachable lives”. Great Christians. Lists all the ways they’ll be great. And everyone who comes here will be amiable and charming, and will be corrected by sweetness. No vows or obligations.

Something about how it’s hard to develop new thoughts and ideas when the old ones are crowding your mind. So, if you see people “respected in proportion to that pomp and bustle they make in the world” that’s what you’ll think is important, and that’s what you’ll strive for. That’s why if you try to talk to people about religion they’ll appear dull, but if you bring up something shallow “they’ll appear very quick, expert, and ingenious.” We have to get rid of the “Toys and Vanities” before we can enlarge our ideas.

Complaining about little things, like ladies do trying to be grand, ruins your joy. Disposes you to inconstancy, which is a sign of a weak mind.

Temptations are a danger.

Life is short and we have great work to do. We can’t waste time. There’s no time for thoughtfulness or recollection. This is a mechanical way to live; we repent the mistakes of the day before, making improvement impossible.

“how hard is it to quit an old road?”

Well, it will be hard to shake off the censures and scoffs of society if we try to better ourselves in its midst, so we have to “retire from the world.” That removes us from temptation and prevents us from squandering time on frivolities. “As Vice is, so Virtue may be catching”.

We will “awaken our sleeping Powers” and “begin to wonder at our Folly” that we never worked on our souls like this before. The holy spirit will come to us and we’ll be able to hear because we’ll have gotten rid of our distractions. Simplicity. We won’t be focused on this world, but the next.

(who’s her audience? Ladies? Does her rhetorical style support that or is this really aimed at men as well to convince them to let women be educated?)

We’ll “obtain truer Notions of God”.

We’ll see that the allurements of the world “are no better than insignificant Toys, which have no value but what our perverse Opinion imposes on them.” We’ll be happier without them. What you’re pursuing now isn’t pleasure, it’s amusement.

We’ll get to pursue “the purest and nobles Friendship”! (she uses exclamation points here). Friendship is a virtue. “were the world better, there would be more Friendship, and were there more Friendship we should have a better world.” But she doesn’t mean shallow friendship, but a deep love. But it’s dangerous to do so, in case you’re deceived. And it’s hard enough to know yourself, much less another. So don’t haste. Friendship should be a matching of souls and should better each of you.

Religion will become our second nature. “what a blessed world should we have”! we’ll try to show others the way. Women’s conversations will be virtuous, and “a Lecture on the Fashions” would become as disagreeable as at present any serious discourse is.” “Ladies of Quality would be able to distinguish themselves from their Inferiors by the blessings they communicated, and the good they did.”

She who doesn’t glorify god and help her neighbors will be vile and despicable.

“Modesty requiring that a Woman Should not love before Marriage, but only make choice of one whom She can love hereafter”

They will educate “Children of Persons of Quality”. Their teaching “Shall be the particular care of those of their own Rank”. This will be an advantage to the nation.

“many souls will be preserved from great Dishonors”. Her wisdom will be her dowry, not her money.

Some may ask, but can’t people be good without removing themselves from society like this? Well, yeah, and I wish that all women “were of this temper”. But removing the temptation is really good. “For those who have honest Hearts have not always the Strongest Heads”. These tender people need a place to be supported and nurtured.

Sadly, “bad people are not so apt to be bettered by the Society of the Good, as the Good are to be corrupted by theirs.”

Removing ourselves will not only strengthen our souls, but so purify them that they’ll be antidotes “to expel the poison in others.”

Sure, a little education will make women vain and increase their pride, like it does to men (BURN). But they’ll have to learn deeply, and the wisest will be she who admits she knows nothing. The more she knows the less she’ll talk, since “the most difficult piece of learning” is knowing when to talk and when not to, “and never to Speak but to the purpose.” (when I have nothing to say…)

Men have no reason to oppose women’s education. In fact, a man would be a brute to rebuff his wife’s efforts to reclaim him. Piety can be offensive, but if she’s as wise as she is good, she’ll win him. He’ll be happy and won’t give into temptation. Sure, it’s dangerous if she’s smarter than he is, but then it’s his own fault for not improving himself, unless he’s naturally stupid, in which case he needs her to hide that fact from the public and cover his defects.

So how could ANYONE oppose this? Even if you have to pay for it, she’ll easily make it up w/her frugality. You can give us your extra daughters! (?). The money you give us with them won’t be lost to your family. You can use it “to preserve their money, their honour, and their daughters too”. Gives an example of an old maid who marries a dishonorable guy – wouldn’t it be worth a few thousand pounds to prevent that??

Unless you’re extremely prejudice, you’ll see how this is useful. You’re stupid if you let idiots’ scoffs turn you away from this. Of course they object – they’d have nobody as vapid to talk with. Nobody to gossip and criticize with.

“Is Charity so dead in the world that none will contribute to the saving their own and their neighbours Souls?”

The only motive to vice is the being accustomed to it. Acquaint yourselves with virtue; you’ll love her! She’ll preserve your honor, enlarge your souls, “preserve even the Beauty of your Bodies” (that’s a bit of an exaggerated claim), and make you happy in this world and the next.

“Let those therefore who value themselves only on external Accomplishments, consider how liable they are to decay, and how Soon they may be deprived of them”.

Implies that wisdom and learning will make for a longer, truer marriage.

“Whereas, a wise and good Woman is useful and valuable in all Ages and Conditions”.

To close all, if this Proposal which is but a rough draught and rude Essay, and which might be made much more beautiful by a better Pen, give occasion to wiser heads to improve and perfect it, I have my end. For imperfect as it is, it Seems So desirable, that She who drew the Scheme is full of hopes, it will not want kind hands to perform and complete it. But if it miss of that, it is but a few hours thrown away, and a little labour in vain, which yet will not be lost, if what is here offered may Serve to express her hearty Good-will, and how much She desires your Improvement.

Ladies,

Your very humble Servant.

Reflection paper on Women in Education

This week’s reading took several different perspectives on women’s education, specifically their access to (and reasons that they should be allowed this access) reading, writing, the classics, and each other’s company.

McGrath and LeDoeuff, in their articles, seem to agree with the assumptions of Astell and Cavendish that in order to attain pleasure, education, or both, women must remove themselves from society in a very literal and physical way. This idea of seclusion echoes both Woolf’s “Room of One’s Own” and the utopias put forth by the writers in last class’ readings. However, each woman sees solitude as necessary for a slightly different purpose. For instance, the purpose of Astell’s solitude is to remove the woman from the temptations of society; her focus is not on quiet, except in the sense that quiet is a relief from “the noise and trouble, the folly and temptation of the world.” In Astell’s view, the world and its associated noises are all instruments of temptation.

Obviously the question of women’s places in society and the public world is one discussed by almost every reader who addresses women. Therefore, it is possible that Astell is responding to the view of women held by writers such as Vives, who claims that in order to preserve her reputation and not act as a temptation for men, “a woman should live in seclusion.” Vives’ claim happens in the context that a woman in public is doomed from the start, since any choice she makes will prove that she is not good, virtuous, and chaste. For example, he claims that “if you speak a little in public, you are thought to be uneducated; if you speak a lot, you are light headed.” While the framing of Vives’ statements seems to acknowledge the double standard contained within them, he does nothing to implicate the structure of his society in this frustrating contradiction, but places the responsibility squarely on the heads of the women being judged. It is possible that Astell, exasperated by his impossible demands, subverted his demand for women’s seclusion in order to further her own arguments. Vives’ demand seems almost self-contradicting in light of McGrath’s view of “women’s participation in pleasure and privacy as means to subjectivity.”

LeDoeuff, in her focus on women gaining access to male circles of thought, seems ambivalent about seclusion as promoting thought. In relation to the male philosophers she writes about earlier in the article, solitude is something that is “needed” and termed “precious.” On the other hand, as she discusses the theme of solitude in the writing of Gabrielle Suchon, she seems to see the isolation of “the poor woman” as a “tragic position if there ever was one.” I have to wonder if her own resentment at being excluded, as a woman, from the community of French philosophers colored her reading of Suchon’s position. Indeed, Suchon did not seem to feel this kind of pity for herself; LeDoeuff admits that she even “advocated solitary reflection as the proper starting point of intellectual development.” Suchon went even further to imagine societies of women that would nurture thinking and conversation, and to engage in “a conversation with both past and contemporary authors.” While it is lamentable that Suchon did not have the external intellectual community that she desired, she seemed to be able to own her solitude in a way that, in the context of all of our reading this term, can only be called feminine.

Gabrielle Suchon’s image of a world where women could talk, argue, debate, and learn from each other echoes the demand for women’s spaces and communities in the context of women’s learning that seemed to flourish in the seventeenth century. However, they did so with varying levels of practicality, from Astell’s practical ideas for funding her monastery to Cavendish’s obviously fantastical convent. In LeDoeuff’s framing, Suchon seemed to call upon women themselves to begin this process of learning and thinking and society-forming; LeDoeuff does not mention Suchon’s calling for a changing of any kind of structure that currently prevented women from doing so. Astell’s proposal addresses some of these issues. While Devereaux points out that Astell adheres to “conventional structures of masculine hierarchy,” in developing her “feminotopia” (and indeed, her occasional use of phrases like “stock the kingdom with pious and prudent ladies” is, from a feminist point of view, problematic), we should not be too quick to criticize this aspect of her work.

Astell was obviously aware that her piece would be read by people of many minds; she would be read by women who supported her cause, by those who were still steeped in the time period’s patriarchal and Christian views of women’s roles in the world, and by men who had the money and influence to make real changes in their societies. In order to appeal to all of these demographics at once, Astell mobilized an impressive arsenal of persuasive tools that makes this piece simply fun to read. Her use of rhetoric is clever and, at times, biting, but she manages to address her readers in ways that would persuade even the hardest of hearts.

First and foremost, Astell keeps her arguments strongly grounded in the Christian ideology that surrounds her. She appeals to the stereotypical desire of woman to make those around her happy and the world around her a better place; with this, and not personal fulfillment as the ultimate goal of education, she keeps her demands clearly within the lines of what is acceptable at the time. She also echoes the ideas that Speght so passionately put forth in Mortalities Memorandum in prioritizing the soul’s afterlife over the body’s earthly life. She bases her logical appeals on a Christian belief system, arguing that a woman “who is a Christian out of Choice, not in conformity to those about her” – who isn’t just good, but can “give a reason why she is so” - will not be easily tempted by sin. Another logical appeal she makes actually addresses one of the more practical aspects of this separate society: funding. As made clear in Devereaux, one of the points of educating women (according to Astell) was to help society and make the women into good wives. Astell proposed that fathers pay their daughter’s intended dowry as her tuition; since these funds would be used to educate the women, therefore making them more valuable as wives, it is seen as a gain, not a financial loss. While this idea could be seen as perpetuating the commodity exchange view of women, it is unarguably a solid, logical argument for the education of women. Astell also uses her logic to point out the irony present when women are denied advantages but then reproached because they lack the skills those advantages produce. Furthermore, she implies that if a woman is useless to a man or to mankind, it’s men’s own faults for denying her a proper education.

The more emotional parts of her appeals continue to address the idea of education as conducive to better Christianity. For instance, she appeals to the emotions of parents by implying that neglecting to educate children is “wicked,” then influences them by asking the rhetorical question “is Charity so dead in the world that none will contribute to saving their own and their neighbours’ souls?” (hoping, obviously, that the answer is “no”). Astell’s imagery is also closely tied to religion; the images of a soul so pure that it would be like an antidote to evil, able to “expel the poison in others” would have surely been appealing to a good Christian of her time. Furthermore, her allusions to the Garden of Eden that place men in the traditionally female role, implying that they will resent the idea that women are “invited to taste of that Tree of Knowledge [men] have so long unjustly monopolized.” By doing so, she subtly implicates men in the fall from Eden, perhaps to emphasize that they do not have an exclusive claim on knowledge and education. Additionally, Astell’s metaphors echo Biblical metaphors that use common, recognizable images of nature to make her points; for instance, she posits that a woman’s piety may be large and visible, but if it lacks roots a temptation can knock it down, or it may wither of its own accord. Her argument also likens women to rich soil that, if cultivated properly, would yield a bountiful harvest; readers would have immediately recognized this image, along with the previous one, as familiar from the book of Mark, which talks about seeds falling on rich soil providing a plentiful crop as a metaphor for Jesus’ parables: only those “in the know” would be able to understand the parables and learn from them. Astell’s use of this familiar imagery makes her readers feel like “insiders” who understand her message; this understanding, hopefully, would make them more likely to agree with her points.

Astell wraps up her textbook-thorough use of rhetorical devices by dropping a few snappy and quotable aphorisms into her writing, making claims like: “were the world better, there would be more Friendship, and were there more Friendship we should have a better world.” The confidence implied in this phrasing would ideally inspire confidence in her readers.

While it has been a recurring theme of the writers we’ve read this term that many are not aware of or do not address issues of class in their time, limiting their subjects and audiences to middle or upper class women, I was surprised to see the same kind of elision of class issues in one of the modern writings. Michele LeDoeuff, in her discussion of seventeenth-century women writers, does not acknowledge the challenges that women faced in accessing knowledge and information; she claims that in the “post-Gutenberg era,” when printed books were more affordable than they had previously been, even “a lower-middle-class woman could invite herself to discussions held in the filed without anyone’s permission.” McGrath obviously believes that it was not that easy; if an “eloquent, educated woman bore a worrying kinship to the curious Eve in pursuit of… knowledge,” it would take more than a few coins for her to have easy access to education. While I don’t want to diminish the difficulty that LeDoeuff and her peers may have faced gaining access to the inner sanctum of the philosophy community, it seems that her struggle and waiting for the male philosophers to break “the sacrosanct male contract” so that she and other women philosophers could sneak into the discussion was a much more manageable task than the consciousness-development that women of the seventeenth century would have to undergo in order to demand access to education. LeDoeuff believes that “every woman had always had a natural right to learning and philosophizing. But this right remained dormant until the concrete means (affordable books) came along.” However, even though the physical tool of learning, the book, may have come within reach, there was as yet no infrastructure in place to support women’s learning.

One last point that I found interesting, but that I’m not sure is important or not, was the positive and negative connections made between clothing and education and each of their relationship to frivolity throughout the readings. For instance, McGrath makes a point that in the seventeenth century, women’s learning was often posited as analogous to dressing frivolously; this devaluation and trivializing of women’s learning perhaps acted as a rhetorical argument against it. However, Astell counters this point by arguing the very opposite; she says that learning will help women resist such frivolous talk, and people who want to gossip about fashion will have nobody to talk to if women choose to be educated. In light of these, I was a little conflicted about Cavendish’s work; her description of the Convent of Pleasure seemed rather decadent, as if the imaginings of an aristocratic lady in her spare time. However, if, at the time, the opinion was that “For a woman, the ‘desire for information’ always risked the appearance of frivolity, perhaps of self-indulgence,” could Astell’s virtuous monastery of learning be viewed as no more chaste than Cavendish’s luxurious pleasure convent?

Day forty-eight in Oxford

Oxford pic of the day:

Nobody told this rose that it's November.

Day forty-six in Oxford

Oxford picture of the day:

Sunday mornings in Oxford always feature leftover drinks left quietly on windowsills, stoops, and curbs.

More dissertation progress

Ok, after a few days of being sick and unable to read or think, I managed to get some stuff done today.

First! I went to the OII library and got myself approved! I can take books out! Yay!

So then I came home and sat for hours on the internet looking up election stuff (Boo! Not productive!)

I sifted through the six journal articles that I'd downloaded on Saturday and decided that two of them, "Threaded Identity in Cyberspace: Weblogs & Positioning in the Dialogical Self" and "Virtually Speaking: Girls' Self-Disclosure on the WWW" look the most potentially useful, so I sent them to print.

I then went through all of the books I found through Google Scholar, cross-referenced them with the OII's holdings (ok, I just thought "cross-referenced" sounded fancy - really I just looked each of them up on SOLO), and got the shelf marks for my top three.

I also ordered a book from Amazon (dot com so my card didn't get charged international fees!).

(Update: just found a website where I could see some pages from the book and I canceled my order. Just didn't seem relevant enough to spend $20 on this early in the dissertation game).

I guess my next steps will be to try to figure out which blogs / online platforms to look at. I think that the Twitter-fying of Facebook makes it harder to use for this kind of thing; there's less of a stable idea of a profile than there was a couple of years ago.

What I'm really interested in as a person is the way that comment sections on various blogs work; i.e., you know that on Jezebel you're always going to get someone being really PC and accusing others of being offensive, no matter how much the original commenter tried to avoid that. So far the comment sections on XOJane have been very supportive, and I haven't really spent much time on Rookie, but since it's super trendy and up-and-coming, I'm really interested in it. Also, Tavi is basically who I wished I was back in the 90s - hip and edgy and quirky and confident and stylish.

I wonder if this format of blog, where there are several regular posters, a few recurring guest columns, and a regular core community of commenters would be worth studying.

Charity shop WIN

One thing you may not know about me is that I read a lot of fashion and style blogs.

I say that you "might not know" this because, well, I don't LOOK like I read a lot of fashion or style blogs... or ANY, for that matter.

Sadly, I was born without a style gene (and the languages gene, and the music gene...). Things that look cute and put-together on other people look random and frumpy on me. Most of the time, if I get a compliment on an outfit, it's because I spent a LOT of time thinking about it, or I copied it from was inspired by someone else's look.

I've spent a lot of time here in England looking at the way girls dress. There's something so effortlessly layered, so hip and indie and just a little bit grungy and twee (mixed in with just a touch of posh horsiness) all at the same time, that I will never in my life be able to emulate.

That doesn't mean I won't try.

HOWEVER, as we all know, I am on a budget. A hardcore, dollars-to-pounds, bank-taking-my-money-in-exorbitant-fees (more on that later) budget.

So here is part one in my efforts to look a little more stylish and a little more British without breaking the bank.

First: I'm working on killing the impulse buy. While 10% of the time I end up with one of my favorite items ever, 90% of the time I end up regretting it. Partly because I often end up seeing the same item for less not too long after.

This step is extra-essential when you're in a new town or a new country, especially if you're working on a new currency system. I have no idea what's trendy, what's likely to show up in all of the stores, what's a unique one-off, and what a good price is. Therefore, like my momma always said, I shop around.

I figured out pretty quickly which stores I could afford and which I could not. Since buying clothes is pretty low on my priority list (you know, after rent and food), and I have no income to speak of, I'm on a budget of... nothing. Enter cheap fast-fashion stores and charity shops. Obviously, I feel better about shopping the charity shops, as buying second-hand is more ethical (also, there's the potential for finding higher-quality clothing!), and the money is going to a good cause, but I'm also not perfect.

One of the great things about shopping charity shops is that the merchandise turns over pretty quickly. At first this bummed me out - a pretty powder-blue sweater I was thinking about disappeared in a matter of days - however, it also got me in the habit of going back every few days, trying a few things on, and not buying anything I didn't love.

Last week this finally worked out for me at Mind, as I found a super-cute plaid Topshop shirtdress in my size, and a mid-weight cotton Esprit cardigan, for the grand total of £13.25 - just over $20.

The cardigan was an awesome find, as any sweaters I've seen in the stores that are even REMOTELY in my super-tight price range are 100% acrylic, which I cannot STAND. Call me a snob, but between the weird slippery itchiness and tendency to pill, I just cannot do it.

The dress was an ever awesomer find, as it turns out; I was browsing Refinery 29's slideshow on flannel, and saw a Gap dress that looks JUST like the one I bought, only much more expensive!

Mine isn't flannel - it's a lightweight cotton - but I layered it with a pair of fleece tights (more on those later!) and a cable-knit sweater, and it totally worked (I think). Plus, layering is TOTALLY British.

Day Forty in Oxford

Oxford pic of the day:

The photo is actually from Sunday, but I've been too sick to think.

This glass, along with its brown liquid remnants and double-stirrers, sat there politely from Friday morning to at least Sunday morning. I haven't been past there since to check on it, but I'll update later!