I feel like it was yesterday that I picked up Listen Up and read the very first reading assignment of this class -- Your Life as a Girl by Curtis Sittenfeld. I can still vividly feel how did I feel then that I felt like suddenly opened my eyes to my life of the past 17 years “as a girl”. In that article, Sittenfeld does not discuss any feminism theory but depicts some fragments of a girl’s life. These fragments suddenly challenged my view of the world. And it was then that I started questioning myself; why I was very energetic and “boyish” when I was a kid that I liked competing with boys and I felt free to roll on the ground (I really did) but since nobody-knows-when that I started pretending to be weaker than boys, which in other words is considering the appearances and sensibilities of boys, and pretending to be neat to show girls’ character?
But then I felt quite frustrated because not everyone else around my routine life is feminist, actually none of them is. So I tried to discuss what I had read and how I felt with every friend, it turned out, as “usual” and “expected”, that none of them actually agreed with me. A boy thought that feminism is a complete non-sense which is developed on an imagination and he asked me not to imagine that women are always live under oppression. Another boy said that he did agree that the balance between men and women is not completely fair, but he thought that because women are biologically naturally weaker than men, and he tried to persuade me by recounting the history of human that women were biologically determined to be weaker than men since the origin of human beings. There was some boy else that thought marriage and children are the most important things in any woman’s life. And the most frustrating speech to me was from a upper-class girl who actually took Intro to Women’s Studies in her freshman year but she thought that feminism is an Utopia that can never be achieved just as communism, and after learning Women’s Studies she just wanted to be a housewife. I did not know how to properly persuade them then because I myself still had no idea about feminism and I even sometimes questioned it myself; I just felt that women are still living under oppression but I had no idea about what exact forms are the oppression in and I wondered if the oppression took place only in particular situations or regions since it seemed that women in the societies which I had lived in live as equals of men. So I decided to stay quiet but keep my position until I can strongly defend feminism.
Today, after reading Enloe’s articles I finally know that the very reason of the oppression imposed on women and of the forces that firm the oppression is the incuriosity or, in other words, laziness of most people. Most people are incurious about the things happen around them and they rarely question things that they have been so used to, such as why men fight in the war while women working at home. Because being curious requires putting effort in thinking and searching what is going and these processes are basically viewed as energy-consuming. Therefore, most people do not bother to use their abilities of being curious. It turns out that, now I finally know, the boy who thinks Women’s Studies actually had no single knowledge about Women’s Studies at all when he was charging feminists as fanciful and completely denying feminism saves his energy from searching the basic foundation of feminism. Also, the boy who does agree with the inequality nature of sex and who tried to justify this inequality by using biological history does not truly understand the biological differences between the two sex and believes that what is thought to be “natural” is “natural” without questioning the term of “nature” itself. Just so is the boy who values marriage and children upon everything to women but he has never bothered to be curious about where does his value come from. As for the upper-class girl, it is her laziness too that makes her want to be a housewife because she has learned how “hard” it can be to be curious as these feminists do and she tends to set back and live under unawareness that she knows would definitely be easier.
Also, we can actually apply Enloe’s idea about the importance of being curious in every aspect of our lives. And being curious can keep us being enthusiastic about everything we are doing and everything in our lives. And we should give up thinking what we cannot do. Because thinking “we can’t be investigating everything” actually makes us to think “we would be better not to investigate anything”.
I am so glad that I have taken this course before getting 18 so that I still have time to effectively train my awareness and curiosity.
I really liked how Xinke related Enloe's first two chapters to the first reading that we had for this class. I thought that it was a great way for us to be able to tie the whole class together and see how all of the concepts that we discuss do loop around and effect women as a whole. I also thought that it was nice how Xinke brought the concept of being "uncurious" as to relating to both men and women. I do however, have to disagree with the thought that it is being uncurious and lazy is what makes upper class girls want to be a housewife. I think that women can be any profession, and that they can be capable of being a "housewife" and be a feminist at the same time. I think that is one of the major concepts that I have gotten out of this class. Every women can be a feminist regardless of their profession, they just need to make sure that they stay true to their beliefs and make sure they are aware of the positions that they are in and question why it is that they are placed in certain positions.
ReplyDeleteI also liked the way that Xinke went back to the first reading that we had for class and connected it to the last reading for class. This was very thoughtful and creative on her part. I also agree with Xinke when she says that she says that people in her routine life lack in feminist beliefs. This is why it becomes extra difficult to find the inner strength to become a curious feminist with confidence when one does not have a role model to look up to. It is classes like this, Intro to WMST, that open are minds and give us a head start in fully developing our curiosity.
ReplyDeleteI think it is clearly shown in this post how much power and knowledge this class has given you Xinke (and given us all), and I think that is a very positive thing. I enjoyed reading about how you questioned your friends and the society we live in, and can't help but agree in realizing that it is not just with gender issues but in every aspect of our lives that we have become lazy and uncurious.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has hit the nail on the head. I love how Emily questioned Xinke's comment about being lazy and uncurious is what makes upper class women want to be housewives. Anyone can be a feminist--even housewives. I think we have all opened our minds into so many realms of this subject. Women and work, women and family, women and history...it has sparked so much curiosity for me as well. These gender issues will not let up in the future, we know that. I appreciate and value this class and my classmates for making it interesting and fun to learn and grow as a woman in our society.
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