Unbinding feminism has been the greatest challenge presented to me yet in this course.  All semester, our class has explored the confined of being a feminist—the varying components (and intersectionality) within feminist identities.  To deconstruct the goals and desires of feminism feels impossible without questioning the word itself.  The word suddenly feels inefficient.  Not incorrect, yet still inadequate for a form of activism that no longer relies on gender or sex to define itself.  I first question the possibility of feminism’s unbinding.  Then, alternate terms.  I’m pretty fascinated by the etymology of the word itself, and supplemental terms used by varying groups of intersectional identities to better define themselves.  As Wendy Brown asks, “Are we proposing to be after sex and gender, no longer bound by them or perhaps no longer believing in them, and yet in the peculiar offering that only temporality makes, bringing along what we are after even as we locate it behind us?” (Brown 98).  In the unbinding of a term that at first felt so simplistic, yes, that is quite what we intend.  But are we left with feminism?

This morning I ate 5 sugar cookies for breakfast. Immediately after I washed down the last cookie with some lukewarm English Breakfast tea, I began carefully planning the rest of my meals for the day, excluding anything sugary, whilst reminding myself that I exercise twice a week (but that’s enough to keep off the weight, right?). This worried, calculating, self-shrinking mentality accompanied my logic for skipping meals in middle school, telling my mom that the cafeteria food too hard to chew with my braces so, yeah, of course, Mom – I had eaten when I got home when, in reality, I hadn’t.

It’s nearly 2014. Never before has there been a time more centered on self-care and abolishing the extreme, inaccurate mass-media portrayals of women. Despite this, though, how can women still have these self-defeating, body shrinking thoughts?  

Some Huffington Post statistics have taught me that women experience an average of 13 negative thoughts about their body each day, while 97% of women admit to having at least one “I hate my body moment” each day.

And women are bound quite literally by their clothes. Skin-itching, thigh and stomach suffocating, sequined, short, skinny clothes. So much so that the damage is left irrevocably on their skin with grooves in their shrunken skin from skinny jeans and bras. Only 5% of American women naturally have the body type advertisements portray as ideal.

(the first picture is the view out my window, as I was waiting for your arrival,
and the last one is the same view, after the snow had stopped...)

            The phrase "feminism unbound" is strange to me. I thought at first I understood it, but when we began to discuss this phrase in class, I got even more confused. So I sat down to think about it on my own. I thought about the rigors of society, the boundaries have set for ourselves and others, the world we have been told should exist. As someone who has chosen to go to an all-women's college I know I follow certain boundaries within the walls of Bryn Mawr College, regulations the college sets for me. I began to think of similar institutions. A friend of mine also goes to a single-sex institution, Wabash College, an all-men's college in Indiana. Wabash sets regulations for its students as well. A potential new regulation is a gender studies graduation requirement. This debate struck a chord with me, especially when I discovered the contorted view of gender studies some members of the institution had created around this issue . . .

            "[The] wimpy, neutralized guys that gender feminists are trying to create:  men who are not committed to constructive struggle and conflict and fighting for a cause and coming out the winner." (Michaloski and Allman) This statement was made by Dr. David P. Kubiak, a Classics professor at Wabash College in relation to the debate at Wabash over the proposition of a gender studies graduation requirement.

Today is cold and snows heavily. I went to Barne's Museum in the afternoon. When I arrived at the museum, I was tired and upset because of the bad weather. However, the museum inside was pretty warm, which delight me a lot. Everyone has been there, thus I think I do not need to describ more. I enjoyed the artworks and found interest during the 30-minutes observation.

...during our go-round, after dim sum, @ my home this evening, to report on the time you spend on your own, during your final jaunt in the city for the semester, please do so here-and-now--with images, if you have them. thanks!

(I thought we were going to write a paper about this so I didn't wrote everything I wanted to say. So I added something later. )

The mural surprised me. I expected it to be color blocks and white letters according to the photos, but it was more than that. There were portraits on the color blocks and scribbles of very hopeful words on the letters. Comfort. Voice. Inspired. Dreaming. Attitude. Love. Soul. We believe life. I thought the letters should be completely white in order to shine and be seen from afar, but in fact they are filled with scribbles. I guess things don't have to be impeccable to be brilliant. 

The area can't be called aesthetically beautiful. It is run-down and imperfect indeed. But exactly because of that, it has potential for improvement. It has hope. 

The weren't much people on the street and all the stores were closed except Chinese restaurants, so I was having a hard time looking for a souvenir. Then I saw a girl's abandoned boot on the ground, bright pink in the white snow. I thought it might be a good representation of that area but picking it up and taking it all the way seems really creepy. So I just took these photos of different other murals.  

We spend our lives saturated with the ideas in media. We experience different types of media in varying degrees depending mostly on our positions in social power structures, but we all experience it. It is where the value system of our society is taught; it is where the foundations of our mythology our formed. Patriarchy is disseminated through media, where it affects the participants in and the audience of the media.

Unbinding Power Feminism

It’s easy to envision feminism as female CEOs breaking the glass ceiling, or an upper class woman who seems to “have it all” and lets nothing in her way. Many think of this as evidence that feminism is pushing women closer to equality to men. However, they forget that this is only pushing certain (and privileged) women towards equality. As with any other movement, the voice that everyone seems to hear in the feminist movement is the voice that has the most power. Privileged (often white, upper class, and educated) women seem to shape what the mainstream view of feminism is, pushing the voices that strive for equality not only in terms of gender, but also race and class. This creates a “feminism” that works within a system that caused oppression in the first place. This “power feminism,” while it helps achieve equality for certain women within the already-standing system, it also promotes the oppression that system caused in the first place.

The definition of unbinding is formally “to release from bonds or restraints.” When I think of feminism unbound, I think of it in terms of unbinding the traditional idea of feminism, “queering” it in the sense that normative views and ideas on feminism are released from bonds or restraints. Everything goes beyond the surface of its normative definition and in this case, feminism and mourning can be related in terms of unbinding traditional definitions of the two. Mourning on the surface is grieving the loss of something or someone that meant something to you. Mourning an idea sounds like it is making a mockery of the process, how can you mourn something that was all in your head? Unbinding the traditional sense of mourning offers that mourning can be a process done by anyone for anything that has been lost.