The Light Dawns

[faustus]

Yesterday a student cautiously asked me if we were going to be looking at any unsuitable material in the lecture. Since it was partly on slash, it was perhaps a reasonable fear. Certificate 15, I'd say.

Afterwards he asked me if I'd read The Making of Lt. Ripley since I'd been teaching feminism with Joanne. I'm not entirely sure, but the subtext felt as if he'd assumed she'd introduced me to feminism. About bloody time we met... Let's see, been doing sessions on it since 1992 or 1993, with my favourite being those to female Open University students who didn't see the need for it. What with working and studying and being mothers.

(Mind you, what I've been reading this week about third wave feminism looks awfully like old fashioned sexism. Being objectified is empowering. Or something.)

Actually I've not read the book, but I've met the authors who delivered a paper on how all sfnal space ships are penises (rockets, zeppelins, cigars) or vaginas (saucers, spheres, teapots). Whilst pondering that perceptions of something being aerodynamic might have something to do with it, I asked whether the TARDIS was a vagina or a penis.

They haven't got back to me.

Let's see, it's always boasted that it's bigger on the inside...

Comments

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

Lol, the TARDIS is obviously hermaphrodite!

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Obviously. The next question being, and that means...?

Alas they had to get back to me on the first question.

[kayxh.livejournal.com]

what I've been reading this week about third wave feminism looks awfully like old fashioned sexism. Being objectified is empowering. Or something.

No it's not. And read Ariel Levi's Female Chauvinist Pigs which will tell you why it's not (just in case you can't work it out for yourself.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Maybe it hasn't been described in a way that I get it. The sentence that brought me up short is "[feminism which] views the sexualised female body as a site of empowerment - allows her to function as ‘eye-candy’ neatly side-stepping any allegation that this is objectification." I think I get the first part - it's a long way from chauvinist views of woman as passive body entirely lacking in desire - but it's the last bit that causes me to scratch my head. I've never been convinced that, say, Buffy's empowerment outweighs the objectification.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I have never forgotten your comment about James's Peach and the skyscraper.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Clearly, however ...

But I can imagine. Pretty phallic, skyscrapers.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

As I remember, the speaker was arguing that the peach landing on the skyscraper was being raped. You pointed out that it is, of course, the other way around.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I clearly have a memory like a... like... one of those metal things with holes in it.

I can't even remember being in a situation where I would have to observe that. So to speak.

But I probably owe credit to Russ writing about capturing the penis being one way of legitimating pornography.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

It was in (would you believe it) the essay that won the IAFA grad student award that year. There was one hell of a row on the board about it: the paper fell apart as soon as the questions started, and when it was revealed as the winner at the banquet a ripple of shock ran around those members of the audience who had been there.