Notes Towards Day 16: Freaks and Other Outlaws

To our new mood music (courtesy of Elephant and holsn39 and eshaw)

please sign up on board: which Bornstein book did you read=are prepared to "teach"?
[images courtesy of holsn39: what's the backstory here....?]
 

"Standing outside a 'natural' gender, I thought I was some monster" (Gender Outlaw, 12).

"we've...positioned ourselves in the area previously marked 'freaks only'....But standing with freaks never hurt anyone" (Gender Outlaw, 81).

"outlaws...'ve got no place to conveniently hang our identities while we get on with the business of living life....We're each to some degree oppressed, held in check, violated, silenced, or shamed by one or more aspects of...perfect identity" (My Gender Workbook, 273).

"One of the most difficult things about being a recognizable freak or outsider is the loneliness" (Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws, 167).

Before we get to work on Bornstein's integration of disability
with transgender (i.e. both are forms of "freakishness")....

I. a little coursekeeping

--next! to! last! round! of! naming!

--looking back: your seeds (any comments on that beginning writing process?)

--looking forward:
4:30 this afternoon: Lynn Morgan's talk in Chase 104, HC:
"Reproductive Rights and Wrongs in Contemporary Latin America"

5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1: 6-pp. paper due on-line (unless you
haven't yet had your conference w/ Kristin : then 2-day extension....)

for Tuesday: we'll go on talking about "transcending gender";
finish reading your self-assigned Bornstein book;
be sure to post your thoughts in response to it/this conversation
on the week 8 forum, to help me figure out how better to direct this conversation.

next Thursday: open conversation w/ Kate Bornstein @ 10 a.m. in Quita Woodward
big performance @ Villanova @ 4 p.m.--> sign up sheet for cars:
who/what kind of car/where/how many passengers?

In preparation for those events--> moving from disability writ large
back to the particular disability that is gender identity:

II. You've now read either Gender Outlaw (1995),
My Gender Workbook (1997) or Hello Cruel World (2006).

I asked you to come to class ready to teach
your text to those who haven't yet read it:
--in what ways does it pick up on (challenge,
extend?) our recent discussions of disability?
--what did you find important, what problematic, in it?
--what have you learned from reading it,
--what do you want to understand better?
--how do the three books repeat/extend/challenge one another?
--what do you want to ask Kate Bornstein next week?
--what do you want to tell Kate?
Break into groups of three (w/ 1 reader of of each book....?)
and answer these questions. Then we'll come back together...
to teach one another some more....

Reading Notes on Gender Outlaw

Reading Notes on My Gender Workbook

Reading Notes on Hello Cruel World

For Tuesday, we'll be thinking about
1) Bornstein's refusal of all binaries; and
2) her invitation to create art forms that
reflect a more fluid sense of our identities.
3) we'll be doing some more writing exercises
(courtesy of both Lynda Barry and Kate Bornstein)
to nudge us all in that direction....