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Originally Posted by brianwspencer
So true. If people read some of the things I wrote in college, they'd think I was crazy, and that was only two years ago this month that I graduated.
Funny you bring it up, because I was just clearing out my "my documents" folder on my computer and came across a paper I wrote as my final thesis in one of my English classes during my senior year.
The premise is shocking. I took a quote from a book of academic essays called "Reading Rape," from Mieke Bal who said rape cannot be visualized not only because ‘decent’ culture would not tolerate such representations of the ‘act’ but because rape makes the victim invisible. It does that literally first—the perpetrator ‘covers’ her—and then figuratively—the rape destroys her self-image, her subjectivity, which is temporarily narcotized, defi-nitely changed and often destroyed.
I then took The Piano Teacher and argued that rape made the lady in the novel a person for the very first time. That it in fact, created her individuality and made her visible, instead of removing it and rendering her invisible.
How well would that go over with feminists were I to run for office? So, certainly college writings don't reflect the way I really see the act of rape, it was a critical position I took and defended in front of a bunch of angry feminist Portlanders  |
I think there are many examples of where one may take an academic, philosophical position that goes against their general viewpoint of a subject. I would agree with your take there...I feel that things that happen to us don't determine who we are, rather how we react to same determines who we are! I agree that women have historically been rendered invisible by male-dominated societies but that's different from saying that a woman's essence is determined by the behavior of others. Labels are often confusing to some...I am a feminist yet I'm anti-abortion, that's a hard-sell to most feminists, especially when I agrue that all feminists should be anti-abortion!