28. Transvestite

Retrieved 30th December, 2009 from http://users.lmi.net/buddha/Images/People/PrideManPinkDressBIG.jpg

Compfight couldn't serve me well enough =)

I'm surprised actually to realize that no one has mentioned anything about transvestism, as far as I could see.

Yesterday in our TLL class our teacher had a word about this issue, without comments. He only shared his observations, indicating that if a woman showed signs of transsexuality (dressed like a man and acted like a man) it wouldn't be so annoying for people. (he gave an example like "think of a girl stepping into this room saying "kalem var mı lan!?") Yet if the vice-versa happens, for instance, if a boy steps into the same room with flashy girly clothes and attitude, saying "ayol kalem var mıydaaaa" then the majority of people would mock him etc.

Our teacher finished his words about this topic saying that it is intrepeted differently according to genders, but I had already begun to think about this a bit more.

I think this example has a lof of underlying issues about the gender differences, and even about the inequality of them. Both situations are a bit weird but that's because they both are unusual. However, a masculine behaviour of a girl is sometimes liked as she's imitating the superior one - this may sound strange and hard to admit but that is the situation. It's more convincing if we take on the opposite example - a boy with girlie mirlie acts is regarded as a more serious thing, and an embarrassing one. And that is because that act is considered as going down to the level of the inferior, how come can a tough guy do this?

I personally don't recommend both, and I don't like to experience these scenes indeed. Yet there are two major things that are more important than (dis)liking - first, if something's weird, then it is so because of gender changes, not level changes. And second - whether you like it or not, you have to respect both. At least say "that's their mistake".

27. The Second Sex

I found a brilliant article in our SPS book "Civilization in the West" concerning gender. It was written in 1949 by Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), one of France's leading intellectuals. Her famous article, The Second Sex "has served as a call to arms for the feminist movement, provoking debate, controversy, and a questioning of the fundamental gender arrangements of modern society." (Kishlansky et al., 2003, p968). Here are some thought-provoking quoted passages...

"...Woman has ovaries, a uterus; these peculiarities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands." (p968)

"(Men) thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it." (p968)

Until now it may seem that she has been exaggerating the gender conflict, but...

" 'The female is a female by virtue of certain lack of qualities,' said Aristotle; 'we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.' And Saint Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an 'imperfect man,' an 'incidental' being. This is symbolized in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called 'a supernumerary bone' of Adam. " (p969)

Her criticism is not limited to "men-the-sovereign" (p969):

"...Woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other." (p969)

Whether she has reason or not, she definitely is not very well pleased with her role as the Other, is she?

Any reactions/comments?

(Kishlansky, M. & Geary, P. & O'Brien, P. (2003). Civilization in the West. USA: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.)

26. Error Correction Continued!

I'm pleased to be realizing that I completely forgot about the B part in the grammar sheet. Tüh, more trouble for Sonja =)

Wrong: Dept, mascularity, masculanity, standart, prefessor, cloths, blacklases, nomaniee, violance, eccestric, fourty-five, rituels, deterioated

Correct: Debt, masculinity, standard, professor, clothes, backlash, nominee, violence, eccentric, forty-five, rituals, deteriorated

And it's sesımi, not sıseym =))

Posted by Beri (/berry/bury)

25. Billy Elliot

The art of ballet by Photochiel made available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial- No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License

There's quite a famous movie named "Billy Elliot" that has some connections with one of our main themes, gender. It's interesting that it not only includes the differences between genders but also highlights the constructed, repressive "system" of gender roles. That is, society forces you to become a person they have "preformed". For instance in a scene, dad tells Billy what he should be doing: "All right for your Nana, for girls. No, not for lads, Billy. Lads do football... or boxing... or wrestling. Not friggin' ballet."
However, Billy refutes the pressure on him, and gradually becomes a successful ballet dancer rather than continuing the family tradition of being a tough and strong miner, arguing with his father in the process.
In the end, though, we see a happy ending, and the idea of "freely being yourself" is underlined.

It's not important to be briefly summarizing the movie but to talk about the ideas behind it. Do we have to define masculinity or being a man with your habits? Why are we supposed to be like the majority? Are our possible habits really decided before we even get to know about them? These questions can be multiplied in succession, each one with a potential to be a discussion topic. All in all, this movie, even if you like it or not, provides a great example to personal liberation.

24. The Full Monty

I had planned to blog about our presentation movie "The Full Monty" next week but a "trailer" may be a nice ad =)

In fact I literally planned a trailer by cutting one or two scenes from the movie and put it here - I'll try doing so (it may end after the presentation :( ).

The most interesting thing about the movie is that it makes you laugh but in my opinion it is not a comedy at all - the emotional and "life-conditional" aspects play far more important roles.

Anyway...

Sit back, read the subtitles below the snapshots, and enjoy both the movie and the presentation!

23. Donations

The 19th post of Sonja had more importance than any other one - I don't quite know if anything is done till now but there are no comments to begin with. Anyway, it's not that people should react "online" to the post, it's our responsibility and sensitiveness that counts, guys. Of course my blog is not as popular as Sonja's, so if anyone is reading this post, then s/he probably already read the original one, but maybe one more post helps helping.

I personally am going to donate 10 English reading books (nearly 7% of total number of books that are in Kabul Unv.) this Tuesday, and will ask for more. So, if around 14 people among us (13 more!) donates 10 books each, the number of books will double! It shouldn't be that hard. The thing is, when you make a donation, you feel much greater and even happier than when you know you have this and that book in your personal library. The opportunity has come so near us that all we need to do is to bring something (even an extra pencil!) to a place that we already go to.

Some things in life are worth taking seriously.

Just a personal suggestion - maybe an in-class announcement about this might be more helpful...

22. Pub Quiz Then

Menu by mag3737 made available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License

Everyone is writing something about the pub quiz, including Sonja, so as a proud member of the high scorer group ( =) ), I thought I could utter a few words as well, this is the reason why this post is entitled "Pub Quiz Then".

First of all I really think we need more of this with or without a prize, it was helpful. Of course it's nice to have an extra increment bonus =)

I was almost sure that we were going to be asked "who wrote the article "why reality tv is good for us" because spelling counted and Poniewozik is probably the hardest name we saw in eng101, but that never happened :(

I also realized you had to show everything you know about the asked thing. When explaining what foreshadowing meant, I was so sure we were talking about literature that I couldn't think we had to indicate it as well. It was an "informative foreshadowing" for me maybe for the final essay - I'll try to explain everything related I know bit by bit =)

In short it was an "eglenelim & ogrenelim" kind of stuff that quiz, I enjoyed it. Süleyman Hurma rocks!

Congratulations to my teammates (yes, including Emir) and to the Çarşı team =)

PS: There's a group in Flickr called Pub Quiz! This "pub quiz" activity has to be really popular abroad!

21. The Ultimate Question

20. Error Connection

17/365 Pet Peeves by mrsruggle made available under Creative Commons Attribution- No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License

By giving this assignment of error connection as a blog post, didn't Sonja store up some trouble, as now she'll feel she has to write a new post? =)

To talk about the image, I think "quick" is an adjective and "quickly" is an adverb. The cat can move in a double-quick time, or it can move quickly, or it can make quick movements. Et cetera =)

Anyway, I looked at the wrong sentences and tried to correct them...

• Firstly, it's not THE Jim Hawkins, it's Jim Hawkins.
  

• As far as I know, a person cannot be lack of self-confidence, I think it should be "he lacks self-confidence."

• The noun form of the word poor is poverty, not poorness.

• Success is a noun, not a verb. One can say "He couldn't succeed in being a man" or "he couldn't manage to be a man" alternatively.

• If you open the TV, you may be talking about its mechanics, I mean, for example if your TV gets broken down, you may open the TV to see what's wrong, know what I mean? (Sonja-style writing) So, if you want to watch TV, you turn it on.

• I don't know if I'll be able to express what I think but behave is a "one-dimensional" word. You cannot behave to someone, you can behave only on your own, or a person can behave on his/her own. Your behaviour can be "bad" sometimes, and when that happens, you behave yourself. You can treat someone badly.

• If you have a husband, it (hopefully) proves you are not a male =) It normally means that you are the wife of your husband, who's a male, and you yourself are a female, and in this case, since we are referring to Lessing or Tannen, it should be her husband. Sometimes we think of the person we're talking about when we use those words, since we know husband is male, we unfortunately tend to say his, him etc, but it then becomes French. For instance, regardless of your gender, if you're talking about your sister, you say ma sœur. ("ma" in French is the feminine version of "my" in English)
  

• People do not grow their children. They can grow a plant. Children grow up and gradually become adults, but they are raised, or they are brought up.

• You listen to somebody.

• Marie Winn can appear on a quiz show with the name "Dotto". She can also be present in a quiz show which is or was called "Dotto".

• Again as far as I know, there isn't a noun called wearing. There's an adjective called wearing that I know of, which means tiring, hard, etc. For instance working for the process essay for a long time can be wearing. I didn't clearly understand what was meant there but we can simply say "the things we wear" or stuff.

• One cannot talk about men with similar dresses. Those men can be dressing in a similar way (it is a verb here!). If you are a male, you can dress in white, for example, or you can dress your child, but hopefully you do not put on a dress! The noun dress is a clothing for women ( wimin=) ), it is elbise in Turkish, not kıyafet. Only to put more alternatives - you can talk about men with similar clothings.
  

If I made a mistake at any point, I am looking forward to learn about them! =)

19. Gender in Language

Zine Study XIV: [language] by Shawn Econo made available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License

Gender issues are not limited to social life and status. The languages we use hide a vast amount of masculine/feminine differences. Turkish and English are relatively more gender-neutral compared to French and German which have masculine and feminine articles and even nouns. I don't know whether the word blog is a male =) Anyway, I am more concerned with English (that's what I'm supposed to do!), which seem to be "uninterested" in this issue but it is not the case indeed. For instance, until a few years ago, there was a word called "spokesman". Nowadays especially with the work of feminists who claim that job isn't peculiar to men, the word has become "spokesperson". It is not the only word struggling to find its identity. Feminists are now endeavoring to change the word history (his story) to herstory, but that is exaggerating and exploiting the concept I think.
To think more generally, in older times (sometimes today as well) people used to think of "being man" as a value - that is, being a man meant being a righteous human being. This is a bit more masculine than needed, surely. Also, bear in mind that we still use the word "mankind" to talk about all human beings. So, the Mr. Mrs. Ms. Miss things that were talked about in Marked Woman were not the only possible examples to be given. It is widely used, although often without purpose.

18. Women in West Africa vol. 2

Universal Power by Desirée Delgado licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic (I wanted to stick to this image)


I left the most exciting part to latter posts! Have a look at this! I couldn't believe what I was reading... This is from the same article as the one in my 11th post.

"In many West African chiefdoms and states, women themselves could pay bride price and "marry" other women." (p. 233)

Amazing isn't it? It continues:

"A female husband builds a house for her "wife" and arranges for a male consort to get her pregnant. By taking a wife, a woman assumes the status of head of household. By paying bridewealth for several such "wives", an ambitious West African woman could become the "father" of many children, establish control over a busy compound, and become rich and powerful." (p. 233)

Now do you still think power belongs only to men?

Harris, M. & Johnson, O. (2000). Cultural Anthropology. (Location not known): Ally and Bacon.
(the anthology doesn't indicate the location)

17. Peer Evaluation

The other presentation today was great fun. The quotation Emir told us from the film "International" and his approach to it was really funny, and seriously I'm not mocking anyone or anything - I really think it was great. Also, although they could have gone a bit further about the text, I was impressed by their emphasis on black & white. I wasn't able to think that much about racism and how it is linked to the author's personality. The "black and white blurring together" was an impressive scene showing signs of demand of equality. I think if they cover a bit more they can have a very successful film presentation. Go mates! =)

16. Self evaluation

Today it was our turn to make an oral presentation. As to talk about the text, it was a bullshit in my opinion but it also enabled us to talk much. TV and family are two concepts that you can talk forever, so although we are not native speakers it wasn't a big trouble talking. I think the presentation went well in general, the awareness that the text I was talking about was something I carefully read gave me great comfort. To talk about our negatives, I felt regretful as soon as I started to read a quatation out loud, asking myself, why didn't you put that in a slide, man? One other negative point was that I lacked eye contact with the students. There are many reasons behind this, and I am sure television is not one of them. Two main reasons were my lack of experience and the lack of interest of the audience. I witness this in my other classes: some teachers tend to be looking straight at the "best listener", and that was what I mostly did: looking at Sonja. I think mentioning things that are to improve is more important than writing positives, because there's no need to praise yourself, there's more we can take out of "constructive" warnings.

15. The reason of defeat in Vietnam

BrickArms Bazooka M9 prototype (left) by Dunchaser licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic


In "Tough Guise", the scene that I found particularly striking and shocking was the part about the Vietnam War. Although Katz tries to be a little away from politics and nation problems and just dabbles in them, the part about the Vietnam War was strong enough to make its mark on me. It is said that the USA lost the Vietnam War because it had lost its status of "superpower" and "hypermasculinity". Those critics state that the nation was "softer", a fag maybe, so couldn't show the required strength and hence were defeated. I don't have the detailed knowledge about this idea of lacking hypermasculinity as a reason of loss but I just can't believe it. Even if you forget about ethics just like some do, it is painful to see these statements. Neither the American nor the Vietnamese soldiers are toys.

14. Masculinity in Turkish Culture

I bet Turkish "tough guys" are the most interesting ones, and believe me it is not really a subjective claim. Wherever you go, you can easily differentiate Turkish people. I know whoever reads these sentences will nod with agreement and with a little smile =) Masculinity is constructed differently in our culture than of Americans. Becoming a Turkish "tough guy" doesn't require unbelievable muscle strength or body building. The most important point is to be brave to death, literally. If you get into big trouble because of your extreme bravery than you are considered hero by some. Also, it is vital not to obey anyone. You should never be sorry. Apologies or teardrops are not inside masculinity borders. If you want to be a so called tough guy, you should get really angry if a person hits his shoulder to yours. By the way, these all are very far away to my personality, but my observations assure what I'm writing is true. To go further, you can witness street fights and even deaths after a conflict started with a conversation like: "Why are you looking at me?!" -"Will I ask you where I'll look at?!" and I'm serious. People can shoot others because of wrong staring. Oh my god.

13. Becoming a Man

Well oiled civil rights by Kevitivity licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Katz's Tough Guise and the short story "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" have a very important point in common. A part was about young criminals, especially high school students who grew fear and shot students just like a terrorist. All the killer boys have one major thing in common - they didn't get enough respect, in other words, they weren't treated as men. So they wanted to have that extreme power in their hands with their guns. Now nobody would dare not to have the utmost respect for them. Dave in the short story is the same person. The mule I think is a complete symbol because the author didn't want to lead the story to killing people. Interesting to see how they are similar. More interesting to see how far a boy can go to be considered as a man. And the most interesting is that they don't understand that you never become a man if you seek that respect with those methods.

12. Slam Dunk Facial

throwdown with carmelo anthony 1 by Mr. Wright licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

In "Tough Guise", there was a part about sports and masculinity. A highlight from Michael Jordan, a worldwide known legend of basketball, was chosen to support the idea that in the most popular basketball league NBA, one earns his popularity and respect by disrespecting another sportsman. In other words, if you soar to the hoop to dunk, and give so much strength to it that even the defending player loses his balance and kisses the floor then you are "the man". This is so popular in the NBA that there's a name exactly for this scene, a "facial". "In your face" they also say. The photograph is of Carmelo Anthony, who is about to "give a facial" to an Argentinian player. Katz was completely correct in his observations, I know it, as I often follow NBA. To support even more, a few days ago I watched "the best 10 dunks in November" in NBATV, and guess what? The best one was with the most humiliation. It really is great for the dunker, but what about the defender, and his self-esteem? Of course this has nothing to do with crimes or stuff, but still, it is a harmful damage to some, as if one steals the masculinity from another and adds it to himself.