Issue No.1, March 2009
Speakeasy: An Undergraduate Journal of Research and Creative Art
Cover By Karen Lew
Speakeasy: An Undergraduate Journal of Research and Creative Art
University at Buffalo Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender
Spring 2009, Issue no.1
Cover Art by Karen Lew Editor’s Page
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Seneca Falls: Past and Present by Marina Wright A Woman’s Right to Vote by Crismarlyn Valentin Arias
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Razor Burn by Melanie Bailey
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“I’ve Had an Abortion”: Abortion Stories from Real Women
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Genital Mutilation and its Consequestial Destruction of Female Autonomy by Jennifer Cloft
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Open Mic- Creative Arts by
Various Artists
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“Sharp Times” The Crucible and the Gendering of American Crisis by B.D. Flory
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Mythic History of Women by Marina Wright
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by Michelle Matthews
Table of Contents
Our Staff Managing Editor Marina Wright
Editors
Erin Cotter Michelle Matthews Carly Clemons
Layout Design Marina Wright
Contributing Artists Karen Lew Holly Wright Danny Pittelli
Helping Hands. Thanks Everyone! Karen Lew, Brittiny Vollmar, Metin Sarci, Jared Sais, Alyssia Tucker
Thank You!
A heartfelt thank you to Patricia Shelly, Dr. Margarita Vargas, and Dr. Rosemary Dziak at IREWG Thank you to Sub-Board for their funding and support. Also a thank you to Mary Foltz, who was instrumental in every phase of this publication from conception to advising and editing.
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Carly Clemons is a junior Sociology major. She is a certifiable bookworm and has an undying love for peanut butter. She is attempting to learn Spanish and would love to be fluent one day. Aside from feminist issues, she is very interested in the fight against cancer and hopes to help as much as she can. Carly also wishes she had a good singing voice and is absolutely terrified of whales.
Erin Cotter is a sophomore English major. And no, she does not want to be a teacher. Erin has considered herself a feminist since the age of 13, and at one point was a dreaded femi-nazi. Luckily, those days are over. In addition to feminism, her interests include food, books, running, dancing, and animals. Particularly cats. And she has no problem admitting that someday she will probably become a crazy cat lady. When not working on Speakeasy or schoolwork, Erin is a vice president of the Cross Country and Track Club at UB which she helped establish last year, and a member of the UB Swing Club. She also has an unhealthy addiction to teen fiction novels, and has a pet frog named Voltaire.
Your Feminists and Their Mission We are a small group of undergraduate students who feel strongly about supporting the struggle for female autonomy and women’s rights, both in the U.S. and over the globe. Here are our goals for this publication Provide a place for undergraduate research focused on issues of gender and sexuality Provide an opportunity for undergraduates to meet and exchange ideas Provide a space for dissenting views and community as well as global activism augmented with academic research Provide creative outlet for students who support the cause of feminism and women’s rights Provide the opportunity for students to showcase their work in a journal dedicated to undergraduate academics Okay so you’ve got the paper. Your professor saw it. She says it’s great. What next?
Send your research, poetry, stories, and artwork to: mewright@buffalo.edu Anyone interested is welcome to join us on April 7th in 207 UB Commons for a general interest meeting. All are welcome!
Marina Wright is a junior English major. It is debateable as to whether Gerri Spice or a certain book series by Tamora Pierce that landed under the Christmas Tree a decade ago is responsible for her passion for feminism. She has an unhealthy attraction to the Sci Fi channel but has yet to watch Star Wars or Star Trek. She also has a deep love for world mythology and folk tales. She danced ballet and jazz for 10 years before college and will still sign on for the occasional belly dance or yoga class.
Michelle Matthews is a senior English and Global Gender Studies
major. Her academic interests are the fields of queer bodies and spaces, 18th century literature by women, and crushes on cute professors. Her future goals are to go to law school and specialize in either gender or labor law, and subsequently save the world from the oppression of gender-specific bathrooms and capitalism.
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University at Buffalo Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender
Seneca Falls: Past and Present by Marina Wright Seneca Falls, NY has a rich history in the field of women’s rights. The Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848, led by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was one of many public, political movements in the struggle to gain equal political rights for women in the United States. In the conference, Stanton took the Declaration of Independence and used it as a springboard for her Declaration of Sentiments, in which she states the rights and equalities needed in the U.S. for all people, men and women. And while women now have the right to vote, 200 years later, there are many men and women now who would say that the struggle is far from over. Marilyn Tedeschi and the participating panelists for the first biennial Seneca Falls Dialogues held last October would agree. The event, held over the weekend of October 11th and 12th, offered discussions, research panels, and academic and political presentations in which the state of women’s rights in the U.S. and the state of basic human rights on a global scale were discussed and examined. Marilyn Tedeschi with Mayor Diana Smith of Seneca Falls presented a truly dialogic conference for all interested in the women’s rights movement and its progress— locally and globally. Keynote speakers, Congresswomen, students and faculty from around New York State participated in what was one of the most exciting academic and political conferences to take place in Seneca Falls since Elizabeth Cady Stanton graced the town with her own passionate views on women’s rights. Women’s rights in the U.S. and abroad were discussed by American students and professors, and by U.N. Director for the Division for Advancement of Women Dr. Carolyn Hannan and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. Everything from media representations of politically powerful women like Hillary Clinton, to the stigma of the Feminist label were examined as crucial parts of a greater whole: women’s rights. The first night of the Dialogues ended with an equally powerful event. Mayor Diana Smith read a letter addressed to the Seneca Falls Dialogues by President Barack Obama, stating his ambitious goals for the progress of women’s rights in the United States. Soon after was a rededication of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments. The Seneca Falls Dialogues presented a series of academically stimulating and politically prescient projects from research on the literary letters of women in 17th Century France to the nature of feminism and politics regarding women in present-day Palestine, to performance art presentations and poetry readings. Throughout each panel, the keynote speakers, panelists, and facilitators of the Seneca Falls Dialogues strived to ask and to answer important questions. How can we achieve women’s rights on a global level? How can we progress as a nation? What laws and bills can be passed, and what actions can be taken to show the world that the issue of women’s rights is a vital one? In each presentation from students to politicians, the message was clear: women’s rights have not been fully achieved in the U.S., nor on a global level, and will continue to be ignored unless women and men are willing to be outspoken, to bring to the public view the injustices and the urgency for powerful actions to be taken.
Among keynote speakers was Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney, author of Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, who had equally amusing and distressing stories of her struggles to display statues of women’s rights leaders amidst male protests that the women were not very pleasing to look at. Her response to that was, “Have you looked at Lincoln lately?” Dr. Carolyn Hannan, Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women at the United Nations, had equally pressing insights on the state of women’s rights both in the U.S. and abroad. Both women spoke of the importance of women’s rights and the lack of support by male-dominated Washington, and the reluctance of politicians, including Former President Bush, to sign U.N. documents like CEDAW that would grant some safety to women at risk for both domestic and military violence. Panelists ranged from students to professors from the University College at Brockport, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, St. John Fisher College and our own Uncrowned Queens Institute here at the State University at Buffalo. The Seneca Falls Dialogues ended with the World Café, in which the men and women who had all weekend listened to researchers and watched presentations were given a chance to present their own questions and opinions. All of those who attended the Dialogues were given a chance to state their opinion on the state of women’s rights and how to bring about progress and political change that would benefit the world. The microphone was passed around, names and numbers exchanged, and ideas explored in a true dialogue about women’s rights.
A Woman’s Right to Vote by Crismarlyn Valentin Arias
It’s amazing to see this year’s election with a woman presidential candidate as well as a woman vice-presidential candidate. It is almost hard to believe that prior to 1920, American government viewed women as second-class citizens who were denied the right to vote. Women activists including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott fought for their basic human rights. This fight led to the Women’s Suffrage Movement in 1848. This seventy year struggle to secure the right to vote began at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York. The suffrage battle was finally won on August 20, 1920 when the nineteenth amendment granted women the right to vote in all United States elections. Past campaigners of women’s rights such as Susan B. Anthony not only defended women’s rights in the American government, but their stories in history books today continue to remind citizens of the struggle women endured in order to gain right to vote. Susan B. Anthony, in her essay, “Women’s Right to Vote” (1873), portrays her personal experience as a woman in politics. In 1872, during the presidential election between Ulysses S. Grant and Horace Greeley, Anthony tested out the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The constitution, the system of fundamental laws, guarantees equal rights to citizens of the United States. It does not discriminate against race, religion, or gender. Taking this into consideration, Anthony went out to exercise her voting rights just as males were able to do so, but was arrested. After being indicted for the alleged crime of having voted, she argued that she had not committed any crime, but simply exercised her natural given citizen’s rights. In order to support the fact that she too had natural given
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rights, Anthony took quotations directly from the Constitution. For instance, she claimed that “The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution…all alike propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given right” (Anthony 411). She then endorsed her claim with a quote from the constitution, “All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” (Anthony 411). Another claim that Anthony makes which is supported by the Constitution is, “It was we the people, not we…the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union” (412). The introduction of the Federal Constitution begins by saying, “We the people of the United States…” (412); thus, it does not specify citizens by gender, but as a whole. In the constitution, there are amendments that protect specific rights. Anthony used the Fourteenth Amendment to demonstrate that rights are indeed given to every individual in society, not just men. The first sentence Anthony used states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and the subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside” (413). The second sentence settles the equal status of all citizens, by affirming that “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…or deny to any person…the equal protection of the laws” (413). To further clarify her point, Anthony wondered how women’s rights are being protected and asked, “Are women persons?” (413). By asking this question, she challenged anyone who tried to refute her argument, because “any…opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not” (413). Women now hold the greatest weight in presidential elections, which influences who is elected president. According to “The Gender Gap and the 2004 Women’s Vote” (2004), “women vote in higher numbers than men, and have done so since 1964. In 2000, 7.8 million more women voted than men did” (Gender Gap Advisory, 2004). Also, 68.7 million women were registered to vote in 2000 compared to 59.4 million men. The 2008 presidential election showed the best outcome of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. For the first time in United States history, we witnessed a woman presidential candidate, Hilary Clinton, and a woman vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. The fact that neither candidate won this year’s election shows that women are still fighting battles of political power. This year’s Seneca Falls Dialogues gave women the hope that someday a woman president will run our government.
References
“Women’s Right To Vote.” Creating America: Reading and Writing Arguments. Joyce Moser, and Ann Watters, eds. New Jersey: Prentince Hall, 2005.
Razor Burn by Melanie Bailey Just about every morning, with the exception of the winter season, I spend an extra ten minutes out of my day taking a pink plastic handle with a sharp blade attached and shaving any presence of hair from my legs. I convince myself in the supermarket to buy the pink Bic-brand Lady Shavers rather than the yellow razors often used by men. There really is no difference other than color, but I feel more feminine using a “Lady Shaver.” If I rush during an attempt to cut down these ten minutes, I risk an awful cut on my knee or an ugly razor burn on my thigh. The reason that I, along with many other girls in America, subject myself to this time-consuming activity is in great part due to the definition of beauty, influenced by popular culture. As a member of the female gender who takes pleasure in looking my best, I am expected to maintain a hairless appearance in areas such as exposed legs and underarms. Robin Friebur, in her article “Shaving is the Pits,” questions female acceptance of the shaving practice. She writes, “The idea that we must pluck, shave, wax or otherwise remove body hair to achieve the smoothness of a baby’s bottom is impractical and destructive… Shockingly, women’s transition to shaving occurred without significant protest” (37). She blames the “transition” on a razor company’s ability to take advantage of women, and their business, by tapping into their vulnerable body images. “Around 1915,” Friebur writes, “sleeveless dresses became popular, opening up a whole new field of female vulnerability for marketers to exploit….By 1920, the Gillette Razor Company…had ingrained in women the idea that underarm hair is unnecessary and objectionable” (37). The unfortunate truth is that many women, including myself, still cannot accept having any presence of hair on an exposed body part. I catch myself agonizing over a missed section of my leg on a day I wear shorts. To a friend, I will exclaim, “Oh no, I missed this spot! That’s embarrassing!” as if to prove that my hairy patch was not left on purpose. My perspective of beauty is clearly filtered by the media in the sense that I see beauty as it is displayed in advertisements. Noticeably, advertisements promote having smooth, hairless legs in order to be successful in looks, life, and love. These advertisements become ingrained in the minds of women so that female viewers come to believe that if they do not have perfectly shaved legs, then they have no chance. In fact, hairlessness is likened to goddessness in current advertisements for women. Advertisers take advantage of our generation’s mindset that we have an infinite variety of choices as to the sort of person we want to become. Have a credit card? You can drive the nicest car, own a beautiful house, and wear expensive clothes—even if you can’t afford this lifestyle. Now, advertisers have revamped the image of the razor with a new line named for Venus, the Roman goddess of beauty and love. The Gillette Venus razors are marketed with the message that one swipe of the Venus razor will uncover the hidden goddess within a woman. The advertisements for the Venus razors employ female models with tanned, hairless legs paired with the slogan “Reveal the Goddess in You.” Essentially, the Gillette advertisement shows potential customers that a level of beauty thought to be mythological and impossible is now attainable in the form of this razor. Unfortunately, women look to advertisements to see what is feminine and stylish. There are no mainstream magazines or commercials in popular culture
Speakeasy: An Undergraduate Journal of Research and Creative Art
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University at Buffalo Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender
by Karen Lew
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that promote a woman’s right to go natural—it is seen as not being lady-like. As silly as the Gillette advertisement may seem, the influence resulting from the Venus razor’s message further reinforces the idea that female beauty does not include body hair. I was once a baby who for a few moments in my life remained untouched by pop culture. In these few moments, people were more concerned that we had all of our fingers and toes, rather than the amount of hair on our legs. It does not take long before we are all assigned our gender roles to partake in for the rest of our lives. The influence that pop culture has over our lives are rather inescapable. I find that we are all exposed to media outlets which form our ideas about society and beauty. I have learned that popular culture leaves its mark on the way others view us, how we view ourselves, and how we interact in the world. Even if someone elects to rid popular culture’s influence from her life, she will almost certainly come across media-influenced beliefs in the people she meets throughout her life. Her stubbly legs could receive more than a few snide comments if seen by malicious eyes. From the moment the nurse first placed the color-coded baby hat on our heads, we entered into a pop-culture influenced world. The reality is that others remain influenced and will continue to bring pop culture into our lives. References Friebur, Robin. “Shaving is the Pits”Off Our Backs. 35.5 (May-June 2005): 37- 38.
Is Shaving REALLY The Pits??
We gave it some thought, and here are our stories.
Junior year in high school, my friends and I all thought it would be pretty funny if we made a bet to see who could go the longest without shaving her legs. So we waited until November, when no one would be able to see our hairy man-legs (as we called them), and put aside our razors. Three months later, the hair hardly even bothered me anymore. That was, until it was time for the dress rehearsal of the school operetta. My costume, in addition to being hideous, also exposed my legs. In a panic before the start of the show, I went to the costume designer in the hopes she would at least give me a pair of nylons. She did, but only after I explained that I had gone three months without shaving. With a half-horrified, half-appalled look, she finally gave me a pair of nylons. That look was all the inspiration I needed that night to take up my razor once more and spend half an hour restoring my legs to their former, significantly less hairy, state. (Erin Cotter) It was during summer camp circa 1998 when I first realized how vitally important shaving your legs was. I was ten years old and until that point had thought very little about my personal appearance. My grandparents thought I was good looking, and that’s all there was to it, right? You can’t mess with genetics. Apparently you can. I learned almost instantly from the other fifteen girls in my bunk that unless my good genetics could prevent me from growing leg hair, there was still work to be done. How could I pos-
Photograph by Marina Wright
sibly think of facing those ten-year-old boys with hair on my legs? I wouldn’t dare. I was given a razor and some shaving cream by one of my bunkmates. Later that day, as I walked back to my bunk from the showers with my legs covered in little nicks, I could not have been prouder. I was officially a member of the club. I am woman, hear me roar!...From the pain of razor burn. (Carly Clemons) Shaving is weird. I don’t really understand why we feel compelled to remove our body hair. I’ve felt this way for a long while, so about 8 years ago, when I was 15, I decided to stop shaving altogether. At first it was a really political thing, you know, like, “Fuck you oppressive beauty standards, get a load of my arm pit hair!” I laid off the Bikini Kill for awhile, and my politics surrounding shaving definitely cooled off. About a year and a half ago, I got a free shaver from the bookstore when I purchased my textbooks. I don’t know what happened, but for some reason I decided to spend an hour shaving my legs and everything for the first time in years. It felt nice. It definitely made me feel feminine, and it was almost a counter-rebellion to my original rebellion. It was like “Fuck you arm pit hair, I can totally shave if I want and still be a feminist!” Now, I don’t shave again, but only because I am lazy. Moral of the story: Do what you want and what feels good. No one should philosophize body hair as much as I have. (Michelle Matthews)
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“I’ve Had an Abortion”: Abortion Stories from Real Women by Michelle Matthews One day, a woman might find herself lying down on an examination table; her feet are harnessed in stirrups. She’s been given anesthesia, but it’s not working how she thought it would. Everything’s foggy and strange, and meanwhile, a medical student holds her hand tightly, chanting, “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.” At the time, she can’t help but feel like it’s all a lie, especially when the bright lights overhead shine through her eyelids, while the doctor asks her to prepare herself for a “slight cramp.” She wasn’t even supposed to remember this. And right then, on that table, the last thing on her mind is how she’s ever going to mutter the phrase “I’ve had an abortion.” Those words are taboo, even on a generally liberal college campus like the University at Buffalo. But according to the Guttmacher Institute, half of pregnancies are unwanted, and 40 percent of these are aborted. From 1973 to 2002, over 42 million abortions were performed, and more than half of those among women younger than 25. With the Roe vs. Wade in its thirty-sixth year, tensions over the abortion debate are rising. A lot of philosophical and scientific jargon is passed around between both sides, but the most important voices, the one’s of those who have lived through the experienced, are less often heard. Photograph by Danny Pitelli
Decisions, Decisions
Lynne is a University at Buffalo student, majoring in Occupational Therapy. She likes to play video and board games, go jogging, and study hard, like a lot of students. When she was 19 years old, her sister became pregnant. “When she got pregnant my mother told her simply that she wasn’t keeping it. I consoled her and told her it was okay and it was for the best, all the while sure that if I were ever in that situation I would just give it up for adoption instead. It was okay for everyone else to do, but not me.” A few months later, after a family vacation, Lynne saw the two pink lines on the pregnancy test. After her mother reacted less than supportively to her sister’s pregnancy, Lynne was filled with anxiety and confusion. “I knew how my mother had reacted, and it was like, I knew that this was not okay.”
Finding out one is pregnant often calls for celebration. For some young women whose lives might not have room for a child, the discovery can be heartbreaking and devastating. Shelly, a 22 year-old undergraduate English major at UB, remembers feeling embarrassed and alone when she became pregnant at the age of 19. “I took the test, and then I waited, and waited, and watched the TV in the waiting room, and I thought I was going to vomit,” she said. “I went to Planned Parenthood and all they did was point to this plus sign on a piece of paper. I was in the middle of the waiting room, and I just froze up. They might as well have told me I had some sort of terminal illness...” Shelly said, “I did not feel a connection. I knew that this was not what I wanted right away.” Many women feel lost and alone once finding out they’re pregnant and the time before the abortion can be the most painful. Shelly describes it was like she “had a tumor that needed to be cut out.” “I don’t think there’s ever been a time in my life where I felt alone, more alienated from everyone,” she says. Shelly personally felt as though she was lacking a supportive group of people because she was ashamed to tell those close to her that she was pregnant. “It wasn’t the abortion itself that depressed me,” Shelly says. “If anything, I was mostly ashamed because of the stigma that people place on abortion. I didn’t feel like I could tell anyone.” Shelly was encouraged by her partner to keep the pregnancy a secret, leading to a bout with depression. Though there is little research on the subject, according to National Post, The American Psychological Association (APA) recently removed an old statement about abortion and mental health from its Web site, a statement that declared abortion to be largely benign. Without a support group, Shelly felt alone. Additionally, her partner discouraged her even discussing the issue with him. “He wouldn’t talk about it,” she said. “I know it sounds demented, but every day I would track the formation of the fetus. I wanted to know how big it was…he would just say things like ‘That’s gross don’t tlk about that.’ I didn’t think it was fair that he
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couldn’t at least listen to me. I was the one who had to deal with it first hand, every day, and he wouldn’t even listen.” Amy, a 24 year-old Buffalo State College and SUNY Fredonia student in medical biochemistry, was 22 when she found out she was pregnant. “I had missed my period so I took a home pregnancy test. I guess it was hard to believe, because I ended up doing four more tests,” she said. These three women had to make an important decision. But when a woman makes such a decision, how easy is it to make it informed and rationally? “Part of me wishes someone had brought adoption to my attention. It just never crossed the radar at the time,” said Lynne. In a whirlwind of stress and confusion, sometimes women don’t have the opportunity to truly think the decision through. “I see now that, had I been capable of thinking clearly at the time, my choice might have been different,” she said. For others, the decision is much easier to come to. Shelly knew the second she was pregnant that she was going to have an abortion. “Having a child was just not possible for me,” she said. “It was before I started school, and I was unemployed and barely capable of taking care of myself. I would feel terrible bringing a child into that sort of situation. I would feel selfish knowing that I had the choice to not have it, and instead, I brought it into a world that was unprepared for it. And since I really do want to have a child someday, I didn’t think I could handle the pressures of having to give the child to someone else through adoption.” Amy also didn’t second guess her choice. “It seemed like the only option for me, actually. Going through with the pregnancy didn’t even cross my mind. It seemed natural.” Another way to understand the abortion decision is to understand the reasons why women have abortions. Amy reflects on how she reached her decision to have an abortion. She said, “Money was an issue in deciding about the child. I plan on marrying my boyfriend someday… and we definitely want children someday, but at the time we were both full-time students with two part-time jobs, each trying to afford all our living expenses.” Shelly’s decision was also heavily influenced by finances. “I was poor. There was no way I could be expected to take care of a child, especially as a student. It makes you think about how much choice is actually up to the individual’s desires to either keep or abort the pregnancy over what their socioeconomic status forces them to do.” Shelly was completely financially independent from her family when she discovered she was pregnant. While many girls her age in the same situation might be able to ask family for help, this was not an option for her. “Even if I thought they’d give it to me, they didn’t have it,” she said.
The Procedure Regardless of how the decision is made, about 20 percent of all pregnancies are aborted. In Western New York, there are several clinics which perform this operation including Buffalo Gyn Womenservices, which is one of the busier locations in the area. After a woman decides to have an appointment, depending on the location, her appointment will be scheduled within two to six weeks. “One of the worst parts of the process is the in-between,” says Shelly. “I think that is the time that your hormones are the most unstable. I know that I was acting pretty crazy and felt very de
pressed.” For some, once the appointment date rolls around, it doesn’t get any easier. “I couldn’t really sleep the night before. I was so nervous and crying and shaking, not [be]cause of my decision, but because I was scared of the actual procedure itself,” said Amy. “When I woke up, I went to my morning class at school, but I didn’t even pay attention. I came home and changed into a hoodie and sweatshirt, and my boyfriend drove me to the clinic.” Depending on when one arrives at the clinic, they might run into an onslaught of local pro-life protesters. “I took the subway to the clinic, and I saw them [the protesters] walking up right when I was,” said Shelly, who had the procedure with Womenservices. “One of them yelled ‘You don’t have to do this!’ I remember thinking in my mind ‘yeah, duh, it’s called a choice.’” A Womenservices doctor, Dr. Slepian, was murdered by an anti-abortion fanatic. Since then, security was heightened to protect the staff and the patients. Most of the women described having to go to the back door.“You have to buzz in and tell the secretary you have an appointment,” said Amy. “I remember having to spell out my first and last name and look directly into a camera. That was really surreal and I felt kind of like I was a criminal or something,” said Shelley. When you make an appointment with Womenservices, they tell you that your appointment will be approximately four hours. For some, like Shelly, who reported being there for over eight hours, it can be even longer. However, only a small fraction of that time is spent in the procedure – the bulk of it is spent in a series of waiting rooms. The first waiting room is like a gamble, according to the different experiences that each woman has had. Lynne, who had her procedure at a private hospital, has said, “There were plenty of people there for many other procedures as well. It was like going in to have my tonsils out (which I did this summer). No one knew why I was there except the nurses and they were all very nice.” Liz, a sophomore at SUNY Fredonia, found the Womenservices waiting room to be a positive experience as well. “The waiting room was quiet and awkward, but full. It made me feel a little better to know that there were other women there besides me having the procedure done. I was surprised by the lack of teenagers. Most of them looked like they were in their twenties or older,” she said. Shelly recalls a different experience at Womenservices. “It was kind of awkward. When you make your appointment you are told to only bring one other person. They stress this on the phone, but it looked like some people had brought their entire families. It was so full that people were spilling into the hallway. They also had this terrible movie on that actually made abortion jokes. It didn’t bother me too much, but if there was someone in there who was less comfortable with everything, I can see how it would bother them,” she said. Amy’s visit was also very crowded, but she found comfort in that. She said, “It made me feel better that so many people were going to be going through what I was doing.” “After waiting for what felt like hours, they eventually brought me in for counseling and a sonogram,” says Shelly. “The sonogram was especially rough. I was only six-weeks along, and the old lady doing the sonogram was so annoying. She had to really dig it in because I guess it was just so hard to see, and she kept saying things like ‘Oh look, it’s so tiny!’ It was sort of strange to have to acknowledge that there was an ‘it’ inside of me.”
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After the preliminary examination is over, the patient is usually moved to a second waiting room. It’s usually a small room with about three to six women, where they will change into their surgical gown. This is where they remain until they go into the operating room. “The girl next to me got called in first, and about 15 minutes later the girl across from me [was called in]. Then, during this time, two more girls were entering the room to wait, and I remember thinking ‘This is the weirdest assembly line ever,’” says Amy. “I don’t think the feeling was necessarily mutual, but I really felt bonded with those girls. Maybe it was just how I dealt with things, but we all sat there in silence. Sometimes someone would laugh at something playing on the TV and we’d all just give each other these knowing glances, and those were usually followed by these sympathetic smiles. We were the only ones who knew what each other was going through at that exact moment,” describes Shelly. “I think those girls are the only reason I made it to the examination room.” After what might feel like hours of anticipation, eventually each and every patient is moved to the examination room. If the patient paid for it, this is also where they will receive sedation. Eventually, the doctor will join them, and the procedure will take place. According to Womenservices website, a typical first trimester abortion “procedure usually takes from 5-10 minutes and is usually performed during the first 5 through 12 weeks of pregnancy. A local anesthetic is used to numb the cervix, which is gently dilated. A small vacurette is inserted into the uterus and suction is used to remove the pregnancy.” For some, this can cause severe cramping or other discomfort. Other patients feel nothing. “All I can really say was that it felt like she stuck a little suction thing up there and it only took like three minutes total. It didn’t really hurt, but kind of just felt like cramps and was a little uncomfortable,” says Amy. “I don’t know if it was the sedation or what, but I did not react well. I think it might have been just the stress of the whole situation, but I was very nervous and paranoid, and the cramping was probably very severe because I most likely resisted or something,” says Shelly. For some, just the sheer fact of putting their feet in the stirrups was enough to make the experience uncomfortable. “I was sitting Indian style because I always do; it’s a comfort I suppose. They made me straighten my legs out I remember, and they said I couldn’t even cross my ankles, and that made me more upset. Like sitting Indian style is a way of curling up and hiding. Having to straighten my legs out while lying on that table made me vulnerable,” says Lynne. Finally, after a short, quick procedure only five to ten minutes long, the patient is usually brought out to the recovery room. “I was so groggy. It sounds strange, but I felt like a giant infant. The nurses needed to make me drink water, and I wasn’t even able to drink it; it would just dribble down my face,” Michelle describes. “After a couple of minutes, another girl I was in the recovery room with came out. She wasn’t doing well. She tried to crawl out of her seat and her pad fell down to the floor, and she fell down after it. She kept yelling, and it messed with me really bad because I still felt really, really fucked up from the sedation.” After a half hour or so, the nurse will judge whether or not a patient is ready to leave. If they are, they will give them a month’s supply of birth control and a prescription for antibiotics. The pa-
tient will change out of their surgical gown and back into their clothes. Once they get their bearings, they are free to go, within an hour of the procedure. “When it was all over, I remember walking into the waiting room, and seeing my boyfriend sitting there, and just crying. I don’t even know why I cried. Maybe it was my hormones or something, but I just couldn’t keep it together. I had to sit in the waiting room another 20 minutes before leaving,” says Shelly.
After the Abortion
After what could be perceived a traumatic event like an abortion, some might think instances of depression would be normal. However, most women feel emotionally fine immediately following the procedure. A spokeswoman from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which provides abortions, said: “From our experience, abortion does not cause depression, as long as a woman has discussed all her options and made a fully informed decision. “I was a little sad a couple of days later, but that went away,” says Amy. “I think I was too elated to have it over with to get depressed,” says Shelly. And none of the women interviewed report regretting their decision. Lynne said, “I think that every choice we make leads us to where we are now, and I’m happy with where I am now. That makes me think it was the best thing for me to do. Not the right thing necessarily, I don’t know that I can ever say it was right or wrong…but it was the best thing I could do at the time. There is so much that I’ve done that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I was pregnant.” Most of these women, having gone through the experience in relative secrecy, are very nervous about sharing their experience. This is common amongst those who have had abortions, which is shocking against the sheer number of women who undergo the procedure every day. “It’s scary. You never know who is and who isn’t going to judge you,” says Shelly. “I’ve opened up to a few people, mostly women though. There are some really close male friends of mine who as far as I’m concerned will never know. But sometimes sharing this with women, I actually find others who have gone through the same thing.” Regardless of how brave she feels, Shelly describes a bit of hesitation in sharing her story with everyone. “For some reason, no matter how much I trust a person, I’m sometimes so scared that it’s sometimes physically difficult to get my lips to actually move when I try to say ‘I’ve had an abortion.’” *Only first names have been used to protect the privacy of individuals kind enough to give their accounts.
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Genital Mutilation and its Consequential Destruction of Female Autonomy by Jennifer Cloft
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a traditional practice involving the cutting away of all, or some, of the female genitalia (Amnesty International U.S.A.) It is also referred to as “female genital cutting” or “female circumcision” (United States). Female genital mutilation is commonly practiced in areas of Africa, and in the Middle East. FGM is extremely dangerous and robs women of their physical and mental autonomy. It is a medically unnecessary procedure that denies women’s rights to their own sexuality. It is my belief that female genital mutilation should be outlawed, though there is no guarantee that the procedure will end without proper law enforcement. It should be noted that FGM is in wide debate, and that even some groups of women who claim the feminist title in these cultures do believe in and support female genital mutilation. My purpose in this essay is to educate those unfamiliar with the types of FGM and to provide an argument against these procedures. There are four major types of FGM; Types: clitoridectomy, the partial or total removal of the clitoris; excision, the partial or total removal of the clitoris, the labia minora, and occasionally, the labia majora; infibulation, the narrowing of the vaginal opening by creating a covering seal with the labia over the vagina; and any other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, such as piercing or scraping the genital area (World Health Organization). FGM is an extremely dangerous procedure, usually performed
in unsanitary conditions. For example, some of the objects used as a scalpel include broken glass, tin lids, scissors, and razors. Once the procedure is finished, the girl’s legs are bound together for up to two months, leaving her immobilized while the wound heals (Amnesty International U.S.A.). It is estimated that 135 million girls and women have undergone surgery to remove their genitalia, with two million girls a year at risk. This amounts to six thousand females every day! (Amnesty International U.S.A.) FGM is practiced predominantly in twenty-eight countries in Africa according to the U.S. Department of Health and Women’s Services Office on Women’s Health. The most dangerous operation, infibulation, is practiced in Sudan, Somalia, and parts of Kenya and Ethiopia (Hosken). The age of the girls involved varies, from cases in between infancy and 15 years old. However, it is typically performed on girls between the ages of four and twelve. More often than not, FGM is performed by medically untrained people from the villages. Although cases of FGM have been found throughout history, there is no definitive evidence documenting why or when this ritual began (United States). There are numerous reasons given as to why FGM is still practiced, or as a rite of passage to womanhood. Some societies require FGM as a prerequisite for marriage. Other societies think FGM enhances male sexuality and curbs female sexual desires, preserving virginity. Some even argue that the clitoris is an “unhealthy,
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unattractive, and lethal organ” (United States). It is even believed that touching the clitoris will kill a baby during childbirth, therefore it must be removed (Amnesty International U.S.A.). FGM has become an intergral rite of pasage to some cultures, and traditions that go back thousands of years, regardless of how harmful emotionally and physically, are extremely difficult to be reversed. Many people are also simply not open to change. There are numerous physical complications that can result from FGM. Short-term effects include pain, severe bleeding, and infection. Longterm effects include complications with pregnancy, urine retention, urinary infections, obstruction in menstrual flow, and infertility (United States). Other consequences of FGM include painful sexual intercourse, increased susceptibility to HIV/AIDS, and pelvic inflammatory diseases (UNICEF). Along with these detrimental consequences of FGM, females undergoing these procedures may lose all ability to orgasm (World Photograph By Danny Pittelli Medical Association). There are absolutely no health benefits to FGM. FGM is a human rights violation in its simplest terms because it is a form of violence against women. The procedures and consequences constitute a violation of a person’s right to physical and mental health (United States). FGM attempts to control women’s sexuality and autonomy (Amnesty International U.S.A.). Women are unable to orgasm once this procedure is performed. It is an attempt to make men superior and women inferior, since they are unable to enjoy sexual activity. Many girls need to be restrained to receive the procedure, and the leg bondage used to control them is a clear form of violation against autonomy. Since FGM is most commonly performed on young girls, it is a violation of children’s rights. The practice also violates health rights, physical integrity rights, the right to be free from cruelty, and the right to life when the procedure results in death due to excessive bleeding or shock (World Health Organization). FGM has become one of the most discussed topics in women’s groups in Africa. It is no longer a subject left in the shadows. International and professional organizations, along with many governments, have realized the FGM is a violation of human rights and has evolved from gender inequalities (United States). An example of proposed legislation to prevent, investigate, and punish violence against women is the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW. Of the twenty-eight states that practice FGM, twenty-six have ratified this (Amnesty International U.S.A.). Interestingly, Former President George W. Bush refused to sign this, and Senator John McCain said that we would refuse to sign it if he won the presidency. However President Barack Obama has indictated that he does plan to sign this legislation and have the senate ratify it. It is hard to comprehend the number of girls and women af-
fected by FGM in the world, roughly five percent of the female population has undergone these procedures. Some African Women’s groups, like the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children are educating other women about the dangers of FGM (Hosken). These groups believe that without knowledge, there is no way to fix the problem. Even though legislation has been passed in some countries to protect females from FGM, I do not believe that these procedures will stop without further education and support for these actvist groups. If FGM must be performed, I wish it to be under much safer conditions. Anesthesia should be administered, painkillers should be given after the procedure, and a professional doctor or healer should be the only one allowed to perform the surgeries. Hopefully the societies still performing FGM will re-evaluate what traditions they hold dear, and start a new tradition of respecting and revering women and girls. Female genital mutilation should be banned in all countries, and this ban should be enforced to prevent unnecessary harm against women. Not only does the procedure deprive women of their sexuality, but these procedures show a hatred or fear of the female body, and therefore, female autonomy. Only with education about the harmful consequences of female genital mutilation, along with legislation that is actively enforced to prevent more procedures, can women begin to take back the sexuality that rightly belongs to them.
References Amnesty International U.S.A. Female Genital Mutilation: A Fact Sheet. 2008 10 Oct 2008 <http://wwww.amnestyusa.org/violence-against-women/ female-genital-mutilation--fgm/page.do?id=1108439>. Hosken, Fran P. “Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).” Feminist.com. 10 Oct 2008. <http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/inter/fgm.htm>. UNICEF. Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting. 10 Oct 2008 <http:// www.unicef. org/protection/index_genitalmutilation.htm>. United States. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Services Office on Women’s Health. “Frequently Asked Questions: Female Genital Cut ting.” 01 Feb 2005. 10 Oct2008<http://www.womenshealth.gov/faq/ female-genital-cutting.cfm>. World Health Organization. Female Genital Mutilation. May 2008. 10 Oct 2008 <http://www.wto.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en>. World Medical Association. The World Medical Association Statement on Female Genital Mutilation. May 2005. 10 Oct 2008 <http://www.wma.net/e/ policy/c10.htm>.
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Open Mic
Creeper
Child Bride
I spy on you from my window In the late night/early morning With the binoculars I found at the neighbor’s garage sale As you walk into your kitchen with your turquoise robe And feed cold cuts to the cat along with Words I cannot hear I will admit, you have great legs But your features could use some rearranging For it always looks as though you’ve recently returned from Your best friend’s funeral And now, even your cat Is only using you for food This is entirely intolerable Though I can’t be the one to tell you For it is socially unacceptable for me to admit that I’ve seen you Less than fully dressed As we’ve only ever exchanged a few words across The fence while in our respective gardens
there's ash on the mantle little red run and send fresh water fresh day run and send little red
Future Revolutionary, Age 8 She closes her eyes and breathes it in, the fresh air you can only find in the altitudes at the very top of the jungle gym. Her root beer barrel eyes open and her gaze pierces through her thick, prescription lenses, towards the sky. The air in her lungs puffs up her chest much like the clouds reflecting off of her glasses. Her Kool-Aid stained lips, chapped and peeling, bloom into a smile; The kind of smile you try to resist and makes the muscles in your cheeks ache and the muscle in your chest feel at ease.
Erin Cotter
soon well be unable to stay below you little red home and bread all you said run and send till the end soon we’ll be unable to see saw her doze land on her nose little red bumped her head run and send little minds to produce more spines soon we’ll be unable to be. Jacob M.
Michelle Matthews
Photograph by Marina Wright
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University at Buffalo Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender
Open Mic
Photo By Danny Pittelli
The Back Stairwell
I found you yesterday You were lying by the back stairwell Right where I’d left you So, I did what anyone else would do And got out a jar (I even poked some holes in the lid) Then I put you up on the top shelf Between the honey, and the molasses (you do know no one likes molasses, right??) Then I left you But I couldn’t leave you alone for long (I never was good at that) So tell me now How do you like the dark? Does it scare you? Oh, don’t be afraid (it’ll be our little secret) But what about the silence? Did it kill you? That’s the thing about laying broken on the back stairwell No one goes there until everything’s already been said And by the time I found you You were already dead Erin Cotter
Mother/Soldier Her thinning hair, dyed auburn (though the gray still peeks through), droops over her face and offsets her smoke-stained complexion. Her narrow, tight lips, seem hardly capable of letting loose a word. The exhaustion is visible in her prominent crow’s feet, tired from the years of war she had been drafted for in her own home. Her battle wounds are deep from the swears that stab like dull daggers and the put-downs that smoke like the tip of a shotgun barrel. She can only speak in a fragile, wispy voice, typical of a woman too defeated to even bother waving her white flag.
Michelle Matthews
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Open Mic
You Couldn’t Look Her In The Eyes Because Her Nose Was Held Up Too High I once knew a girl, though not very well. All I remember clearly is her long legs and how she would wrap them in the best argyle stockings money could buy. She must have been blessed with bones better than my own, because she sat up so straight and crossed those columns that held up her tiny frame so neatly and lady-like. Whilst chatting amongst her dear, best friends, she rested her chin on her frail hands thoughtfully, as if her fist were a throne and her Bonnie Bell slathered visage was royalty. They seemed oh-so-close and had oh-so-many jokes, and I didn’t understand any of them. I didn’t see why the fair-haired puppies lapped up all the shit she fed them.
Michelle Matthews
Diglossia
Booted, clean shaven, The soldier walks, Dust clouding at his feet, Coating his weary face.
Bearded, tattooed, Blackwater jeeps. Dust plumes from mud flaps, A growl of gravel.
His M4 is slung, quiet, His M9 does not bark. His Arabic improves As he jokes with the boy.
His M4 snarls, angry. His M9 coils in its holster. His Arabic is lost, And he jokes of the boy.
Laughing in Kurdish is hard, For the soldier, but useful.
Laughing at misery is hard, For the mercenary, but useful.
B.D.Flory
Imagine a Well Imagine A Well... Enter Room, Right (Exit music and not a sound) Imagine first: A Well. Imagine yourself as far away from corners and expiration and movement as you know it. Imagine yourself in the darkest place in your stomach; just straight from the saddest gord. Imagine silence, if it’s possible. A dry, reptile pound of a silence- tight and head knocking that hurts to breathe or sleep. Nothing, if it’s possible. Nothing sexy or new about it. No longing or breakthrough or guilt. Silence that exists purely for the lack of a better invention. I saw my body gigantic and sloppy, in and out, in and out. I saw you nervous and pillowy and kissing her because I was not there, and I am making you breakfast and sleeping too much and my thighs are going soft. I thought hard about what I would say if I was tall and dark- a steep conquest once again. Once, when we chatted and drank and tried magnificently at secrets. We impressed- and yes, we dressed for the night and day mindfully. I ate sparingly, groomed fearfully and fooled you confidently in the early morning. And in the great wide Well, I realized we were nothing but a great wide apology. (Everything like a tunnel but tread; everything like a story but survival; everything like numbers but product.)
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Open Mic
Tree Chime Alabaster morning tones see me fresh, see me wrinkled bone burdened but crawling from arms far from trinities and torture preach your practice son: advance as you invest counsel your inner culture son: we can resolve, we can sustain Gasoline on your toast son: Plutonium under your nails “we’re all connected” “we’re all connected” but the clothes we sow bleed but the homes we grow poison but the hearts we handle harm “we’re all connected” bone burdened and far from resolve
S.K.
There’s Something About Narcissus It wasn’t in his thick, black mop that he pondered over for hours in front of the mirror, only to purposefully walk away with it messier than before. It wasn’t in his wide, olive-colored nose which he would carefully assure was blemish free and trimmed proper. It wasn’t to be found in his childlike smile, stuffed with straight, flawless, pearly whites that he oh-so-meticulously flossed and polished. It was somewhere in his chameleon eyes and the way they would shift from the brightest of blues to the most envious of greens depending on how badly he wanted me to feel like a fuck up. Michelle Matthews
Rosebush I grabbed her yesterday to hold her firmto hold her safe! she had dream symptoms that steered her astraythat buried her beneath rose bushes! When they found her eyes [damp with soil and sawdust] they found nothingthey foundtheyAnd my shoulders ached from grabbing stay close, stay safe, stay put! [stay prisoner, stay liked, stay victim] When they found me they found her tonguescreams that no one heard. when they found us they found her soulblossoming girl child that came unfurled. Rachael P.
Print by Holly Wright
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“Sharp Times” The Crucible and the Gendering of American Crisis by B.D.Flory
The Crucible, by Arthur Miller’s own admission, cannot be considered “history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian” (Miller 2053). Even so, careful study of the play grants valuable insight not only into the historical events depicted– the Salem witch trials– but also the political climate in which Miller wrote his most frequently produced play (Martin 2052). Further, I submit that The Crucible offers a lens through which one can examine facets of the American psyche present throughout the nation’s history, through to the present crisis of the “War on Terror.” Despite hopeful argument to the contrary, the American national character is not fundamentally more moral or rational than in its earliest days. Miller, by drawing parallels between the Salem witch trials and the Communist witch hunt that surrounded him, ably demonstrates this. Further, Miller demonstrates implicit awareness of the various social and cultural structures and circumstances that provoke and perpetuate the “sharp time[s]” mentioned by Danforth, times in which he claims evil and good are clearly delineated, but that The Crucible inscribes as problematic (Miller 2100). In this sense, if The Crucible cannot be considered an academic history, it is at least a text that can be deployed in the study of the cultural history of America. In The Terror Dream, Susan Faludi argues that “In the post 9/11 reenactment of the fifties Western, women figured largely as vulnerable maidens” (5). This inscription (as well as the attendant inscription of the “Superman...Cowboy of Yesterday...and masculine hero” (Faludi 46-88)) often flew in the face of evidence to the contrary, even when such evidence included particular women’s own first-hand accounts. Jessica Lynch is a prominent example of this, as her own testimony regarding her capture and subsequent rescue in Iraq contrasts wildly with the version of events portrayed in the popular media and largely accepted by the American public. According to media accounts, she was not only abused by the Republican Guard, but was also a “victim of anal sexual assault” (qtd. in Faludi 190). Her own testimony, on the other hand, describes being treated for injuries sustained in her capture while held in a civilian-controlled hospital, where she was afforded a disproportionate share of scant medical resources. Civilian hospital staff even attempted to return Lynch to American hands, but were forced to retreat when fired upon at an American checkpoint. Concerning the “rescue” itself, the American military’s account of the rescue evokes a dramatic commando raid, while other accounts (Jessica’s own, as well as the medical personnel staffing the hospital in question) describe an overblown Hollywood fantasy rescue that was not only exaggerated, but unnecessary. Indeed, the commandos assigned to the rescue were even issued night vision video cameras, for which they eagerly performed (Faludi 175-95). The truth of Jessica Lynch’s situation invokes the “original shame” of the American masculine psyche (Faludi 199). Continuing conflict between Native Americans and white settlers frequently resulted in the capture of white girls and women by Natives. In several cases, the kidnapped woman often came to prefer life with her adopted Native American family. These women protested
vigorously when eventually returned to white society, and in many cases attempted to escape and return to their adopted Native American families. Exactly as is the case with Jessica Lynch, however, narratives were constructed around these events to portray the “rescuer” as masculine and heroic and the “rescued” as vulnerable and abused (Faludi 199-216). These dynamics are clearly expressed in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible as early as the first few lines. Parris, a masculine authority figure (who has “fought three long years to bend these stiff-necked people to me” (Miller 2058)), banishes Tituba (an African American slave) from his vulnerable daughter Betty’s presence (Miller 2056). The first two lines of the play consist of Tituba “claiming” Betty by asking “My Betty be hearty soon?” and Parris subsequently banishing her from the room, and symbolically, the home (Miller 2056). When Tituba reappears later, her version of events, in which she is friend and confederate to Betty and Abigail, is “rewritten” by Abigail, Hale, and Parris in order to portray Tituba as the instigator of Abigail and Betty’s practice of witchcraft (Miller 2074-6). This directly contradicts Betty’s earlier testimony, in which Betty claims that Abigail is to blame (Miller 2062). Eventually, even Tituba herself adopts this revision of history; she begins by denying, but later follows the suggestion of leading questions from Parris and Hale, and finally generates a narrative consistent with their version of the story (Miller 2077). By the time Tituba reappears once more, now in a prison cell (Miller 2113-4), the girls have been not only absolved of guilt through this re-presented narrative, but have each metamorphosed into the idealized “virginal child-woman” described by Faludi, their identifying features “helplessness and the feminine need for protection” (265). Though powerful in their ability to influence the trial proceedings, Abigail and her cohorts portray themselves as subject to the witchery of those they accuse, and they thereby enable (and require) masculine actors– particularly Danforth and Parris– to step in as protectors by trying and hanging those the girls accused. As Faludi suggests, “without [their] vulnerability, the structure collapse[s]” (265). The power and necessity of this feminine vulnerability is invoked in The Crucible when Proctor accuses Abigail of promiscuity: “How do you call Heaven! Whore! Whore!” (2108) in an attempt to destroy her influence. Abigail, in a moment of dual meaning, responds when questioned on the matter by Danforth, “If I must answer that, I will leave and I will not come back again” (2108). This is true in two senses: both as a threat delivered by Abigail, and in the sense that if she answers truthfully that she has engaged in sexual relations with Proctor, her power will be destroyed. Danforth, faced with the prospect of undoing the illusion of the “virginal child-woman,” and thereby undoing his own status as masculine protector, “cannot speak” (2108). Tituba is jailed and presumably hanged (2113-4), explicitly for enlisting the girls in witchcraft, but implicitly for threatening their sexual purity: their rituals include not only elements of the former, but also the latter in the form of perceived nudity (2058). Likewise, Proctor is hanged ostensibly for his part in the witchery
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in Salem, but it is telling that he is actually arrested immediately after confronting Abigail with their shared sexual history (210813). It is less the practice of witchcraft that seems to be at issue, but the evocation of feminine sexuality. These themes, the purity of the virgin and sexual threat from the often racially denoted other (particularly framed against a nationalist context) recur again and again in American literature and film. In movies from Birth of a Nation (Griffith 1915), to The Searchers (Ford 1956), and 300 (Snyder 2006), as well as in novels such as The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper), “political drama is allegorized as a sexual drama and embodied in the threatened rape [by the outsider]. [The masculine hero] appears as [part of] a chivalric white brotherhood, an image of the nation reborn, riding to the rescue of white womanhood (Koshy 51).”* In The Crucible, Parris and Danforth assume their role as rescuers, and for their performance to be successful, they must defend their narrative of Abigail under sexual threat from Tituba and Proctor, and at the same time punish the independent Martha Corey (who is inscribed as such by her reading habits) (Miller 2089). In the Jessica Lynch story, it is the commandos who are cast in the roles of rescuer, while independent female soldiers (such as Lori Piestewa, who Lynch identifies as her protector during her capture, and who died of injuries sustained in the incident) are ignored (Faludi 184-5). During the “Red Scare” of the 1950’s, it is the FBI and associated government agencies that protect the domesticated female (virgins and mothers) from communist influences, but also punish sexually and politically independent women (Rogin 5-6, 24-25). If sexual threat from the outsider is racially denoted, how can we account for Proctor’s entanglement and punishment? He is neither the racially marked, nor an independent female. Here, we can look to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone and its discussion of social capital for a partial answer. Social capital, in short, consists of the benefits accrued from living in a society with rich social networks. Putnam goes on to define two main types, bonding and bridging social capital. “Bonding social capital, by creating strong in-group loyalty, may also create strong out-group antagonism” (Putnam 23). This contrasts with bridging social capital, which is generated across social divisions, and is “outward looking and encompasses people across diverse social cleavages” (Putnam 22). It is clear that The Crucible’s Salem is a town rich in bonding social capital, yet Proctor is not only physically distanced thanks to his remote farmstead (“Proctor: I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach...” (Miller 2067)), but socially distanced as well: “I have hardly stepped off my farm this sevenmonth” (Miller 2064). News of the trials is delivered to him not by local acquaintances, but by a stranger to Salem, Hale (Miller 2085-6), and Proctor’s word has little value when compared to Abigail’s, who is rich in bonding social capital with her compatriots (Miller 2108-9). This opposition reflects Putnam’s argument that “bonding social capital is most easily created in opposition to something or someone else” (360-1). Further, while Putnam discusses the effects of physical distance on social capital in terms of sprawl caused by the rise of automobile culture and “white flight” in the 1950’s the effects can nonetheless be seen in Proctors’ circumstances. “...Sprawl appears to have been a significant contributor to civic disengagement...for at least three reasons” (Putnam 214), two of which can be applied to Proctor. First, sprawl takes time. At five miles from the community center of Salem, traveling by foot or by cart, Proctor must spend roughly an hour “commuting” into town.
Photograph by Marina Wright
This leaves “less time for friends and neighbors, for meetings, for community projects, and so on” (Putnam 214). Second, and arguably more importantly, Salem is not “well-defined and bounded” (qtd. in Putnam 214). As a farming community, Salem’s family plots are of sufficient size and isolation that the boundaries of the community itself were uncertain. According to Miller himself: “[Parris’] house stood in the ‘town’– but we today would hardly call it a village. The meeting house was nearby, and from this point outward– toward the bay or inland– there were a few smallwindowed, dark houses struggling against the raw Massachusetts winter...To the European world the whole province was a barbaric frontier” (Miller 2054). This concern with distances is likely not coincidental, as Miller wrote The Crucible in a social milieu moving more and more toward suburbanization (Putanm 208). While the suburbs of the 1950’s promoted bonding social capital to great degree, the suburbs themselves were largely segregated from one another along lines of class, race, and even lifestyle (e.g. families with children and families without) (Putnam 209). If bonding social capital has the tendency to create out-group antagonism, we must examine the effects of such identification on social actors. According to Philip Zimbardo, “the ‘terror of being left outside’... can cripple resistance and negate personal autono-
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my” (259). Indeed, research cited by Zimbardo indicates that when one yields to a group’s judgment (whether erroneous or maliciously false) the brain works to bridge the cognitive gap between the group’s declared perception and the individual’s own. The reverse is not true: when an individual goes against the group’s collective wisdom, the brain’s emotional centers activate. “Autonomy comes at a psychic cost” (Zimbardo 265). This tendency of the brain to bridge such cognitive gaps suggests that group consensus can actually affect how we perceive important aspects of the external world. This casts Mary Warren’s return to Abigail’s fold in a different light; when “Mary, as though infected, opens her mouth to scream [with the girls]” (Miller 2112), she may genuinely see that which the girls claim to see, thanks largely to the phenomenon described above. This creates a compelling dilemma for any in-group: an outsider promotes bonding social capital among the in-group, but at the same time the in-group does not exert influence over the perceptions of the outsider. This suggests a motivation other than justice for the preoccupation among “insiders” to wring confessions from outsiders (communists/terrorists/witches). Such confessions not only validate the initial cleavage of the out-group, but ideologically recuperate the outsider: by confessing, the outsider accepts the consensus of the in-group that he is an outsider and different. Such recuperation, however, rarely generates closure. Instead, the act of confession requires an identification of one’s cohorts as an act of contrition. Consider the preoccupation of McCarthy with the naming of communists and fellow travelers during House Unamerican Activities Committee hearings (a demand that Miller himself refused) (Martin 2052); Danforth’s interrogation of Proctor over the identities of those Proctor had seen with the Devil (Miller 2123); and the efforts– legal and otherwise– of the American intelligence community to generate “actionable intelligence” through interrogation of suspected terrorists. The process of recuperation of the outsider, by necessity, produces additional members of the out-group. The American crisis, then, is not unique to the “sharp times” described by Danforth. More correctly, one can argue that America is a sharp place, where the original shame discussed by Susan Faludi provokes the inscription of women as vulnerable girls, in order to provide heroic and masculine men objects of their protection. Since there can be neither vulnerability nor protection without threat, an out-group too is necessary. Miller’s depiction of the manufacturing of one such out-group (witches), the “red scare” and its communists, and our present preoccupation with terrorists are not exceptional states, but the norm. Whether this cleavage is along religious, political, or ideological lines, it is a division that is fundamental to the American character. The mutually constituting triangular construct of American masculine, feminine, and
outsider must be identified and disentangled in order to undo any one element of its ideological strength. Without the repudiation of the entire construct, no one constitutive part can be undone.
Notes * Koshy’s article examines Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) and some of its contemporaries. Though she does not engage with the other films mentioned herein, her identification of the phenomenon shapes a reading of those films that coincides with her reading of Birth of a Nation. Likewise, her specific reading of the Ku Klux Klan in Birth of a Nation is paraphrased here, and deployed to refer more generally to “the masculine hero References 300. Dir. Zack Snyder. Perf. Gerard Butler and Lena Headey. Warner Brothers, 2006. Birth of a Nation. Dir. D.W. Griffith. Perf. Lillian Gish, Henry B. Walthall, and George Siegmann. Epoch, 1915. Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans. 1826. New York: Penguin, 1980. Faludi, Susan. The Terror Dream. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2007. Koshy, Susan. “American Nationhood as Eugenic Romance.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 12.1 (2001): 50-78. Martin, Robert. “Arthur Miller b.1915.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 2051-2. Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 2053-126. Putnam, Rober. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Rogin, Michael. “Kiss Me Deadly: Communism, Motherhood, and Cold War Movies.” Representations. 6.1 (1984): 1-36.
Prints By Holly Wright
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University at Buffalo Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender
The Mythic History of Women Research and Photographs by Marina Wright
Robert Coover’s Stepmother quite impressively packs dozens of the traditional Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales into a short, 90page story. The title itself is a take on the idea of the Wicked Stepmother, a popular antogonist in many fairy tales. But characters and stories like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and Rapunzel all make appearances. Cameo performances by even the lesser-known tales ignored by Walt Disney, like Snow White and Rose Red, the Frog Prince, and Furrypelts also appear in the text. Even more impressive is his handling of gender roles within the fairy tale. In concentrating so many different tales into one, Coover not only highlights the standardization of gendered behavior within a society but also complicates and questions the idea that gender roles could realistically be reversed, flipped, manipulated, or changed in some revolutionary way (at least in the fairy tale). He points out the elisions between reality and imaginary(and fiction), between illusion and the “real,” questioning the reality both of his own narrator’s story and the nature of the fairy tale as a myth rather than a mythic history or fictionalized account of the real. He presents Stepmother much like a personal or national history of Woman. The mythical elements are present but Coover himself questions reality or unreality in such a way that the book is not so much a fairy tale but a dissertation of gender relations in the differing gendered agencies between male histories and female stories. In questioning reality and complicating the concept of the real and imagined within such a highly gendered context, Coover also complicates the concept of female or male gender relations and expectations, and the agency granted to respective genders. The title character calls herself a witch, a possessor of magical (and therefore imagined or unreal) powers, but she is also a practical being who looks only to survival, stating that “in general it’s more useful to be thought a witch than to be one” (2). This again calls attention to the agency of illusion over reality. In truth, she may have a few rusty tricks and toys, but if she is thought to have more, she has much more mobility within the story. Even more interestingly, Stepmother lives in what are called “Reaper’s woods,” where “just who or what anything or anyone here is— animals, trees, flowers, people…is always open to question, so infested with enchanted beings is the forest” (8). The forest “has no owner and its denizens were here long before he came to it, but he has but his stamp on it and opened it to public view, and in the popular fancy, the forest is his by default” (8). This presents the archetypal gender relationship between man and woman right in the setting of the story. The Reaper, a male character linguistically linked to action and aggression as well as through gender expectations, acts upon the forest by viewing it with the male eye and owning it, an action traditionally enacted upon the female body. What is more, the forest itself is an enchanted forest, thus linking enchantment and fantasy to woman and factual ownership to man. But more is implied by this elision of reality and imagination. The nature of the story itself, this particular story and all stories, is called into question— if nothing can be “truthful” or “real” then the difference between fiction and reality, and thus between a history and a fairy tale is the difference in the agency granted to one over the other. It is possible then that the fairy tale, in its own way, is just as “true” as any personal or national history taught in
schoolrooms. Certainly the fairy tale is much more memorable. Coover seems to observe that the fairy tale lends itself to patriarchal behavior regardless of what feminist spin or contemporaneous plot has been added, simply because of the paradox of its essential being. The fairy tale is at once fantastical and foreign and blessedly familiar. It is a bedtime story and not a schoolbook; it is a fairy tale not a history. And yet, the fairy tale itself is read as instruction, regardless of the lack of official authority granted to it by the state. Its very structure calls for the standardization of female/ male behavior in which the male is the aggressor and the female submits or accepts. I would argue that no matter the revisionist plot of the contemporary fairy tale, be it a Sadeian interpretation of the sexual undertones rampant in original tales to gender role inversion, the nature of the fairy tale is to be divisive. The man in the tale has one set of strict behavioral expectations while the woman has different ones. Even in trying to “rework” or “revise” a fairy tale, an author is limited in what exactly happens in the tale. Because the fairy tale has such a strict, methodical structure, no amount of gender bending will rid the fairy tale of its instructional nature to teach or instruct the woman to behave in a specific, rule-bound way that is most often opposite, complimentary, or submissive to the behavior of the man in the fairy tale. Even modern “feminist” versions of the various fairy tales grant authority to western, patriarchal gender roles by accepting the original construct or flipping it so that the reader has two things in her mind: the original, “supposed to be” version in which the women act in acceptable manners as well as the new flipped version in which gendered norms grant authority to what was “supposed to be” the acceptable behavior of the women by so obviously reversing it. Lisa Propst in her article “Bloody Chambers and the Labyrinths of Desire: Sexual Violence in Marina Warner’s Fairy Tales and Myths” explores the concept of the woman as a willing submissive. In it, a woman can enjoy her domination or react to it in ways that mirror artistic freedom. She uses her abuse as a way to creatively act and react; a raped woman can, instead of being traumatized completely, ‘seize pleasure.’ This is perhaps the most radical retelling of the fairy tale in that women have some form of autonomy over their own sexual desires if not over their bodies. But the idea itself still maintains the man as the aggressor and the woman as acceptor (though here, instead of passive acceptance she becomes creative and active).
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Coover does neither of these things. By steeping Stepmother so full of various tales and maintaining the gender tropes within them, Coover satirizes the construct of the fairy tale as a manifestation and promotion of acceptable gendered behavior within a society. The original fairy tale, with its supposed “happily ever after” and its strict gender norms standardizes behavior acceptable to a patriarchal society where man acts and woman accepts (rather than reacts, as reaction implies an agency which is all but nonexistent in traditional fairy tales). This kind of literary structure presents the question as to the purpose of these fairy tales and their gender relations. Is it to teach children how to act? Teach young girls to be wary? Entertainment before bed time? A.S. Byatt presents this question in her introduction to The Annotated Brothers Grimm, reflecting on the universal human need for bedtime stories about princes and princesses, thieves and creatures. “It is very odd—when you come to think of it—that human beings in all sorts of societies, ancient and modern, have needed these untrue stories. It is much odder than the need for religious stories (myths) or semihistorical stories (legends) or history, national or personal….What are fairy stories for?” Byatt then presents a solution taken from Freud — that perhaps fairy tales are a kind of wish-fulfillment. This does not at first seem far-fetched, considering the abundance of fairy tales that end with the phrase “happy ever after.” But if one looks at the tales themselves, the happenstances within them and the desires of the women in the tales, one has to beg the question: whose wishes are being fulfilled? I would argue that perhaps, if one were to look at the fairy tale as an exercise in wish-fulfillment, it must be the man’s wish that is being fulfilled, if anyone’s. This is apparent in several different works including Stepmother. Coover’s characters of Old Soldier and little Furball are the perfect examples of Coover’s mockery of this wish fulfillment. Little Furball has been banished by her father after he uses her sexually, and she spends her days masturbating in ashes, pining for her father and for his sexual acts upon her once again. This is an obvious stab at the Brothers Grimm Tale Furrypelts, in which a beautiful young maiden is desired by her father sexually, and she runs away in order to prevent her father from marrying her. In the end, not only does her father force her to marry him, but the story itself ends with the phrase “and they lived happily until the day they died” (Tatar 300) ! It seems laughable that a young woman who spent the better portion of her youth covered in dirt as a disguise from her father is suddenly happy about the marriage by the end of the tale. A further look at the idea of wish-fulfillment as the underlying purpose of the fairy tale is in Linda J. Lee’s article “Guilty Pleasures.” Lee attempts to counter feminist arguments of the Romance novel as a promotion of the patriarchal constructs of happiness equaling marriage and therefore “trash” and “smut.” She further proposes that the romance novel is itself an inversion of the fairy
tale in which the conflict between a man and woman become the central point of the romance novel, ending with a conclusion that satisfies the female reader’s wishes within the context of a society governed by the male wish. In other words, the romance novel is actually a revised fairy tale in which both genders’ desires are met. Coover himself presents the idea of the fairy tale as wish fulfillment as laughable both in the afore-mentioned Furball which I discussed, as well as his treatment of the character Old Soldier, who seems to be the archetypal male. Old Soldier has been rich, poor, a king, a pauper, and everything and everywhere in the world in between. And he seems to treat women the same way no matter what. Stepmother describes him as “a rough old whore-monger who lives on the bawdy sodden side of life and who assumes women love their miserable lot and would have no other way— a man, in other words” (21). In presenting this complex notion that the archetypal man is not necessarily mean-spirited on purpose but just ignorant and unwilling to be knowledgeable of a woman’s desires, Coover effectively lays to rest the idea that a fairy tale could be wish-fulfillment and simultaneously presents the idea that the fairy tale is a history of gender norms and behavior, of man’s treatment of woman, and of woman’s participation within society. The fairy tale is not fact a mythic story but a mythic history. I would argue that while the question Byatt presents to readers of The Annotated Grimms Fairy Tales remains legitimate, Byatt herself is forgetting the “history” of the history: all histories are not necessarily true. Moreover, most histories are not necessarily “the truth.” They are, in fact, little more than fairy tales themselves— the mythic history of Rome is a great example of this paradox. The actual “real” history of Rome is unknown, but various epics and oral tradition later written down call upon a huge mixing of what would contemporaneously be called “real” and “imaginary”. Gods and “real people,” brothers and armies, kings and warriors, spirits and magic all weave together to create the “history” of Rome. What is more, “history” is written by the conquerors. The official history of a country or state has been censored, cut, edited, and manipulated in order to maintain the power relations of the present (whenever that present may fall within the time-space continuum). “History” then, has been granted authority by the ruler and army supporting its production. A collection of histories is a collection of stories that have been granted agency through military and political power. Fairy Tales, conversely, are a collection of stories told to children, traditionally by women, though the Brothers Grimm add an interesting complexity by collecting women’s narratives and publishing them and writing them with a decided male perspective. As such, the Fairy Tale, with all of its violence and sex and blood and politics, is considered mythical not necessarily because of its fanatastical approach to personal or national history but because of its lack of acknowledged agency. The Fairy Tale itself has plenty of agency related to both the domestic and political sphere— it reinforces patriarchal politics, promotes specific gendered behavior and maintains sexual norms
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or frightens people (usually women) from deviating from those norms. But because the fairy tale is told within the domestic sphere, to children at night instead of at school or in classrooms, the agency the tale itself has is radically different from “history.” The power of the Fairy Tale works on the unconscious. It works on women to make them expect chivalrous knights and work to maintain beauty, stay off the path in the woods and not talk to strangers, while boys work to maintain the masculine ideal of man as aggressor and protector. The fairy tale then has psychological agency that “history” does not. Stepmother presents itself much like a personal history, or a national history of women. The tropes of the traditional fairy tale are present and concentrated to an extent that satirizes the idea of the Fairy Tale as a wish fulfillment and instead presents the fairy tale as an historical account of gender roles and behavior. I have presented already the character of Old Soldier as the Archetypical male, but there are plenty of other characters to contend with, among them is the title character herself. Stepmother is in fact not necessarily a stepmother. She represents all women who have been treated unkindly by the kingdom and by fate as her daughters. She does not denote any difference in status. Likewise, she tells the reader that she has been wrongly accused of favoring biological daughters, and that she favors all women who are too stubborn to be accepted by standardized society. If Old Soldier is the archetypal man, then Stepmother is the woman, though Coover plays around with this idea further by adding a second archetypal woman— the Ogress/Holy Mother. I would argue that Coover does this to demonstrate the ridiculous expectations of the female gender that are so prevalent in the fairy tale. Stepmother herself is a foil to the Ogress: Stepmother is a witch, she does not follow patriarchy very well, and she does not believe in sin. She’ll have sex with anyone she wants, but she is only mother to a few, further distanced by the title of stepmother, her agency taken away in that denotation. Then there is the Ogress, who apparently whispers the sins of the dead to them as they die painfully, who follows the patriarchal society and is governed by the male deities. Within this split however is another dichotomy: that of Holy Mother/Ogress. Everyone else calls her Holy Mother, while Stepmother calls her Ogress. This presents an interesting commentary on the phenomena of a pure, holy mother. The Holy Mother is mother to all, but apparently has never had sex. Stepmother will have sex with whomever, but her agency as mother is usurped. Coover here seems to be hurling little acid darts at the concept of Christianity in general, but also at society’s acceptance of such an obvious tool for the maintenance of patriarchy. Further tropes played out in Stepmother are the concepts of the female as passive and accepting and of the male as active and aggressive. Coover demonstrates the male gaze of society in several ways; one is his treatment of the enchanted forest and its owner. Another is more obvious, and it is in the very first couple of pages. Stepmother is in the process of rescuing one of her daughters, who is “naked, spread-eagled and shackled to the floor”(5). This image of the female body open and submissive to the male gaze is paralleled in the description of the enchanted forest itself as open to public view but regarded as the Reaper’s property. Further, Coover comments on the plight of the female, objectified body in Stepmother’s various rants as well as the thoughts conveyed at one point by Old Soldier. Stepmother herself questions how exactly her daughter ended up so terribly abused, and
then concludes “Or else she was impolite. Rudeness here will get a girl in trouble quicker than anything” (4). This commentary on problematic expectations placed upon the female gender is further underlined by Coover’s treatment of the submissive and quietly manipulative woman versus the active and aggressive woman. Old Soldier, during one of his infrequent moments of narrative, describes the differing treatment of the women in the kingdom, comparing Stepmother and her daughter and Furball. “She’s a rebellious little vixen, if little is the word, and that gets up the Reaper’s nose. She wants a self of her own, will not shut up, play the submissive mute. Not smart. Patient Schemers like Little Furball have shrewder ways; makes them warped and bitter but they last longer with more of their parts in tact” (35). In Coover’s narrative it is clear that the fairy tale inevitably condemns women to be one of two things: silent, passive, and abused, or active, evil, and hunted. This idea is not all that foreign outside of the Fairy Tale and in fact, if one leaves out fantastical elements like enchantments and royalty and magic, Coover’s story would actually become a kind of satirical narrative of the treatment of women throughout history. The idea that women seem to be condemned as objects of the male view, as receptors of action rather than actors themselves, is more apparent in other areas as well. “I can’t go around like this, only the condemned go naked, they’ll spot me right away”(5). And yet the daughter, only a couple more pages later, strips off her clothes once again in the hopes of enticing a chivalrous prince to save her. In effect, the daughter condemns herself. In the Grimm’s tales, one can see women as open to a public male view in Snow White. The evil stepmother in Snow White is constantly referring to a male gaze as her source of validation; she asks the mirror who is the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, instead of defining beauty on her own terms. The enchanted forest, the wicked Stepmother, the condemned daughter and the manipulative Furball in Coover’s Stepmother are all condemned as objects of the male gaze, condemned by their own sexuality. The minute they are naked is the minute they are reduced to their ability to perform sexual acts, and the men in Coover’s tale seem to act on this premise, that men go about looking for women, for sex, while women must accept such treatment. As such, Stepmother can be read as a reworking of the traditional Fairy Tale in an historical context. Stepmother is not merely a conglomerate of all of gender tropes, folk tales and bed time stories but a fantastical account of the gender relations between men and women. It is, in one sense, a mythic history of female sexuality and its treatment within a patriarchal context. References Byatt, A.S. “Introduction.” The Annotated Brothers Grimm. Ed& Trans. by Maria Tatar. New York: Norton, 2004. Coover, Robert. Stepmother. San Francisco, McSweeneys, 2004. Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. The Annotated Brothers Grimm. Ed & Trans. By Maria Tatar. New York: Norton, 2004. Jorgensen, Jeana. “Innocent Initiations: Female Agency in Eroticized Fairy Tales.” Marvels & Tales 22.1 (2008) 27-37. Lee, Linda J. “Guilty Pleasures: Reading Romance Novels as Reworked Fairy Tales.” Marvels & Tales 22.1 (2008) 52-66. Propst, Lisa G. “Bloody Chambers and Labyrinths of Desire: Sexual Violence in Marina Warner’s Fairy Tales and Myths.” Marvels &Tales 22.1 (2008): 125-142. Robinson, Orrin W. “Does Sex Breed Gender? Pronominal Reference in the Grimm’s Fairy Tales.” Marvels & Tales 22.1 (2007) 107-121. The Annotated Brothers Grimm. Ed& Trans. by Maria Tatar. New York: Norton, 2004.
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April is Violence Prevention Month
Events sponsored by Wellness Education Services, Men’s Group, SBI Health Education These hands don’t hurt: Pledge against violence April 8th 10:00am-2:00pm Student Union Lobby Vagina Monologues V-Day Campaign: A Global Movement to End Violence Against Women and Girls April 15th & 16th Doors open at 7:00, Show begins at 7:30 Woldman Theater, 112 Norton Hall Men’s Group Film Screening and Discussion April 17th 12:00pm, food provided 210 Student Union Walk a Mile in Her Shoes The International Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault & Gender Violence April 22nd 11:00am-2:00pm Student Union Flag Room Chocolate Vagina Sale Help support the Vagina Monologues $1-Vagina Pops, $3-Large Vaginas For sale at Wellness Education Services and at the Vagina Monologues Show Feminist Photo Project “What does feminism mean to me?” Changing installation outside of 114 Student Union Month of April Letter of Protest Campaign Come sign a letter of protest against pro-rape products and merchandise sold on amazon.com Table outside of 114 Student Union
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University at Buffalo Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender
Spring Cleaning Never Felt So Good...
UB Feminists are cleaning up some serious messes- starting with gender inequality and the sexual hierarchy
Come join us at our next meeting, April 7th at 5:30 PM in 207 UB Commons. Food, Drinks, and Fabulous Conversation.
Interested? Got Questions? E-mail us at mewright@buffalo.edu