Alas, it ends.

I joined the class late and was terrified that, since I had only recently begun (read: not completed) Introduction to Feminist Theory that I was going to be far behind the intellectual level of my classmates. I will admit that the class holds many minds which one may feel intimidated by, but the intimate nature of the class made me feel welcomed regardless. I also found that I was not alone in my duel enrollment.

The first affect that this class had on me was a profound awareness of how I present me body (or how my body is presented). If I wear stripes am I naming myself a deviant of sorts? Is it wrong to wear a “harem” pant? Most of all, the course gave me the tools to begin critiquing daily occurrences in my life on a deeper level. Am I being monitored? When am I being monitored? How is my body perceived by others? While the class certainly brought up more questions than answers, I believe that to be the sign of a worthwhile course. My favorite parts of the course were when we discussed disability, performing the body, organ transplantation, and freak discourse.

The section on disability made me take a look at how I interact with specific people with disabilities. A few years ago I had a small crush on a girl who had a deformed hand. I was too nervous to tell her how interesting her thoughts were…etc. because I was paranoid that she would be paranoid that I was staring at her hand…So instead of getting to know her like the perfectly wonderful human being she was, I ignored her so that I wouldn’t be perceived as being offensive…thereby being offensive. So frequently society imagines disabled people as not having a voice—simply being in need of protection or guidance to what is normal. We are afraid of personalities which can talk back to us—which can challenge our traditional views that we have become so comfortable living in.

Which bring us (out of order, but on topic nonetheless) to freak discourse. It was incredibly fascinating to see how abnormal bodies have been displayed as spectacle. What interested me most here was a return to the idea of looking for the “tell.” As I went through the book of historical medical photographs from the Mutter museum, I felt that instead of looking for the gender tell (where can I find proof that this body is male while appearing womanly or female while appearing manly…etc) I was asked to look (frequently not very hard) for the disease tell. What makes this body strange or queer? What is wrong with this body? What ails this body? Has a doctor fixed it? Is it fixable? Do we now have the technology it would take to cure this abnormal body and allow it to live normally?

This class has also made me acutely aware of how much power and trust society gives to the hospital and medical doctors in general. Critiquing the UPMC website was particularly interesting for me because my dad has worked there my entire life and I have always conflated the two. I perhaps gave the system even more power and trust as in some way it represented him. Through critiquing I was both pleasantly surprised and utterly horrified at how easy it was to pick apart the donor body-based rhetoric used on the website.

Finally, performing the body needs to be mentioned. It was not my favorite unit, but it contains my favorite cultural production. The piece, Untitled, choreographed and danced by Bill T. Jones was spectacular. I still get chills thinking about it.

It has been a wonderful course and has made me incredibly excited to further my studies.