The week that our class discussed sex work was definitely the most intriguing and insightful classes we’ve had this semester. A lot of the discussion revolved around the idea of porn and watching porn. Dchin expressed discomfort while watching the documentary Live Nude Girls Unite! because of specific details while the girls at The Lusty Lady were stripping. It wasn’t exactly the blatant nudity that bothered her, but the scene where one of the customers is watching the stripper strip. She said, “It didn't strike me as odd while watching the film that I wasn't uncomfortable seeing the women's naked bodies but instead uncomfortable watching one of the male patrons watching the women dance.” She explains why saying that it made her feel like she could easily be in the position of the stripper and the power of the gaze would be too invasive for her. She couldn’t imagine being the same place as the stripper and being watched in such an intrusive manner.

Several things inspired the idea for MC and my teach-in for this class.  The thought of engaging all of our senses in Feminism is fascinating. Recalling the "This is What A Feminist Looks Like" movement that went around recently, we thought that perhaps we could go further than just looks.  We got the idea to do something similar to the "This is What A Feminist Looks Like" movement, and ask people what they thought about the other senses.  We chose to ask them what FEMINISM looks/tastes/smells/sounds/feels/emotionally feels like, as opposed to what A FEMINIST etc.  This was because A) it would be more useful to explore feminsm as an ideal as opposed to the people who perscribe to it, and B) we were probably going to get a lot of flesh-related responses that were not going to be useful. In class we dealt a lot with taste and feminism, and for the Book of Salt we even did a small taste workshop; Anne even talked brieftly about how she had once started the class with a "sensory smorgasboard," an idea that caught us and brought us to the final project we presented.  We decided to take the responses people gave us and bring them into class so that the class could experience feminism the way their peers were experiencing it.  

For our presentation with rayj and w0m_n, we created a zine series called "Sexytime." 

Our topics included:

Anatomy (male, female, intersex bodies): with fold-out diagrams!
Consent: anti-slut shaming, body image, virginity
Pleasure: masturbation, sex toys
SM/kink: safety, yes/no/maybe lists
Interpersonal relationships: deciding when to/not to use a condom, emotions, negotiating in sexual relationships, consent once is not consent always, asking people on a date, asking for sex
Safe sex: pregnancy, contraception, stds/stis, infections (yeast infections, etc), UTIs. Emergency contraception. include queer sex. Also where to get stuff for free.

With one main goal in mind: encourage exploration.

Over the past year, I've been working across several classes and with several other students, as well as some people out in the world, to try to improve the way we handle gender on campus.

This project started with a post on tumblr from a young trans woman who was very angry at the idea of trans women being excluded from a women's space.  

At first, I and a few other mawters reacted defensively, but then I started thinking about gender on campus and all the ways we don't talk about it effectively.  

I started a conversation with her on serendip, wherein we discussed some of the problems of a Women's College in a post binary world.  (Post binary in the sense that not everyone identifies on the binary)

At the same time, Aybala was doing her work within the administration of attempting to determine the potential of admitting transwomen into the college.  She's already provided a link to that work in her post here.

Recently, and with a lot of help along by this class, I have begun to think about how the BMC community exists in several places at once.  

We are defined by the admistration as a space for women, women here presumably meaning people with vaginae, but we are not all women, and not all women are admitted here.

I decided to take this course, because I think Bryn Mawr College is a nice place to learn about feminism. Also, having never properly and professionally learned about feminism, I did not understand the reason and the purpose of learning feminism. I did not have a full understanding of what part of feminism is so intriguing that some people choose to pursue Ph.D. in this subject. Hence, by taking this course, I not only wanted to get exposed to a subject that I was not familiar with but also wanted to know the purpose and the foundation of feminism.

I enjoyed using serendip a lot. I followed several students’ web events throughout the semester. I loved reading papers on different topics that each student is interested in. Reading the posts and the web events on serendip helped me think about feminism even outside of class. It definitely helped me read more articles about feminism. By posting on serendip, I was able to ask questions that I did not get to ask during class. Also, since there is no time limit for the serendip posts, I was able to put more time thinking before making statements. Though I was not too familiar with the online posts in the beginning of the semester, I learned to take advantage of the benefits of online media, on which I could embed articles and videos. I think one of the best part of the course was serendip.

To Begin. . .

As an avid TV junkie, I have stayed up many a night to watch re-runs of the shows “Teen Mom” and “16 & Pregnant.” I know you are probably rolling your eyes if you're not a fan of the “reality” TV phenomenon, but these shows have affected me in a way that other “reality” based shows never could. (...So understandable when thinking about their consistent lack of depth: there are not a multitude of thought-provoking conversations that follow the documentation of rainbow Jello shots and women pulling out other’s hair extensions). These shows have affected me partly because I am the product of unplanned pregnancy to a fifteen-year-old girl myself, and a subsequent adoption. I find the show to be a way to help me begin to understand what I meant to my birth mother at age fifteen, the prime time for being a devoted Frito Lay consumer and wearing exactly what the mannequin wears.

       For my final project, I would like to focus on our pop culture discussions in the beginning of each class session, or “Setting the Scene.” Our assignments to bring in a pop culture item, usually a music video or a post from the blogging website, Tumblr,   as a potential lead in to our intended academic texts and their subsequent dialogues (particularly the ones revolving around music videos) often were cut short—much too short for a satisfying analytic reading of the often multi-faceted material we were presented with. Some classmates suggested we process topics of our discussions prior to class meeting to allow for a more comprehensive reading. However, my qualm did not arise from ability of lack thereof  to process what I was seeing, it was the way in which most discussions  ended, an ending reminiscent of our “Is this a feminist text?” conundrum: an ending that reached for the shallow aim of finding our own preset definitions of feminism within these three to four minute worlds. I was most disappointed by the feminisms we didn’t see, even flat out ignored, in certain “setting the scene” presentations. Of our discussion of non-conventional feminist music figures my interest was most peaked by our rather curt reading of Nicki Minaj’s video, “Stupid Hoe.”  Her overtly sexual and aggressive music video presentation was quickly judged as trite and not worth the time of the class to watch the entirety of.

I felt present during discussions, whether or not I seemed like I was.  In class, I tended to direct the conversation with questions because that kept the conversation going better than stating my opinion, which is what I tended to do online. Now that I look back, I’m surprised at the conversations my posts started.  Most of my class work was for my own learning purposes, honestly. I contributed to the conversation when I felt like it needed another opinion, and that usually worked out well.  Speaking in class has never been my strong point, but I am working hard to improve that.

My favorite readings were Goblin Market and Persepolis, and Book of Salt and Middlesex to a lesser degree. I did not like Jimmy Corrigan or Lifting Belly because they were difficult to understand. As a reader, my learning edges are at reading things that I do not like and learning from them.  Reading has always been a fun pastime for me, so reading something I do not like seems counterintuitive, but a necessary obstacle to overcome in college.