Hello! This eportfolio includes:
Project 1, 2, 3 or 4
One sample of an initial post from the weekly discussions
One sample of your response to another student from the weekly discussions
A self-assessment that discusses your learning over the course of the semester.
Project 4:
GET THE FUCK OFF ME: When Women Fight Back
He ended our marriage with gallon jugs of water thrown at my head. They smashed into the mirror behind me, sending glass everywhere. I ducked and ran, grabbing my dog by his scruff, dragging him behind me. Out the door and down the porch steps we ran, to the car coming down the driveway: a friend who I had secretly called when I could feel the tension rising. She was just in time. The water gallons were exploding on the driveway behind me. He was hurling them from the porch, bellowing and purple-faced. My friend, a miniscule woman of 4’11’’ and 98 lbs soaking wet, screeched to a halt, whipped open her car door, and threw herself across the hood with a Glock cocked in her grip, and screamed “STOP!”. I am telling this story because a woman fought back. I am here because she said NO to a man.
When I was reading Dead Girls by Alice Bolin, I kept thinking to myself “God, girl. How did you write this entire collection of essays and never once mention a woman who fought back? Where are the Alive Girls? (The girls she does mention being alive are all really Dead Girls in a weird, trapped, emotionless coma of their own, and barely count.) Bolin reminisces about the times when she put herself in situations where becoming a Dead Girl was possibility, and she makes it sound so Los Angeles. It bothered me to no end that she almost romanticized it. “Being so newly alone, I ended up doing strange things. I went to karaoke at a random bar and, before I sang, announced that I was new in town and had no friends. I was quickly adopted by a set of sweet, hip townies a few years younger than I was. At the same bar on another night I met the man I started sleeping with. He was thirty-three, a former cop who had been wounded on the force, got fired, sued the city, and used his settlement to go back to college.” She writes as though these situations made her the unique writer that she was, but all I can feel is distain for someone who came away with nothing more than essays that do nothing for helping women not be dead.
I was rather repulsed by the naivety and carelessness that she wrote from, and so I went looking for other sources of inspiration. I will fully admit that I accumulate no pleasure from Dead Girl stories, and find Bolin’s theory that we are fascinated with them to stop at me. She says: “Our cultural obsession with murder stories and the criminal justice system is a prime example of the impulse to narrativize a reality that is basically unexplainable.” I vehemently reject that narrative, and we absolutely do know the explanation: Men kill Women. So, how do we fix it? I refuse to be a Dead Girl.
My angel friend who rescued me all those years ago was a former police officer. She only retired because she had been run over with a car by a man resisting arrest. She will spend the rest of her life on pain medication because of multiple spine fractures. What saved her life, and mine was self-defense training. She knew how to make her energy bigger than the attackers. (Yes, the gun helped, but it wasn’t the only factor.) Teaching women to be fierce and fight back makes all the difference in the world.
A Utah woman, Robyn Warner, has a self-defense class she offers for women, after she survived an attack on a trail. A self-defense technique she remembered from when she was 12 yrs old saved her life. Running away wasn’t working. She went for the breeder and the breather, kneeing him in the groin and stabbing him in the eyes and down the throat with her fingers. She’s alive to tell her story, and teach others how to fight back. You can take her course online, among many others.
Women are typically thought of as peace-keepers, nurturers. We are expected to choose non-violent solutions. But 1 in 3 of us have been subjected to physical or sexual harm in our lifetime. That’s 736 million women. This number does not include sexual harassment events. Globally, 81,000 women were killed in 2020. Less than 40% of women seek help. Less than 10% seek help from the police. The world is not looking out for us. We have to do it ourselves. I think often of the movie Bugs Life. The grasshoppers were bullies, forcing the ants to gather food for them, threatening to kill them, abusing them. It took one ant telling the rest of them that they outnumbered the grasshoppers to cause them to rise up in force and overthrow their overlords. When do we stop being scared ants? When do we fight back?
In 2006 in Uttar Pradesh, India, a woman named Sampat Pal Devi saw a man beating his wife. She begged him to stop, but he turned and beat her, too. She came back the next day with five women wielding bamboo canes and they gave the man a solid beating. Word spread rapidly, and women began begging Sampat Pal Devi to teach them or help them fight back. She formed the Gulabi Gang, a pink sari-wearing all women’s sisterhood who fight back against oppression, and they teach free self-defense courses. From this simple act of defiance, they have expanded their goals to include socioeconomic, cultural, and political equality for all women “through confidence and personal protection from abuse”.
To me, this shows the cascade effect of positive events that happen when a woman fights back. For myself, I had this happen too. My ex-husband chose not to take even a single step towards me in that moment. He willingly signed divorce paperwork, and I haven’t heard from him in over 15 years. I went on to heal from my experiences, as well as vowing to learn to defend myself, too. I changed my entire outlook on how to be a woman.
As I finished reading Dead Girls, I found myself a bit angry. I felt her lack of care for the women who actually were Dead Girls. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t deserve to use that title for her collection of essays. Those women deserved more. They needed bamboo canes and warrior friends with big guns and someone to teach them to fight back. We can teach our sons to avoid sexually violent pornography, know that NO means NO, be advocates for women, etc. We can hope beyond hope that our lessons don’t fall on deaf ears, and we can pray that Good Men come out of our efforts. But in the meantime, we should teach our daughters about the tender spots on the male anatomy. We should show them how to square our shoulders, open our mouths wide and scream from our guts, and fight back. We can give them a fighting chance in this world.
I didn’t like Dead Girls, but I’m not sad about it. Milquetoast essays just show me how to be brave, and in the words of Ernest Hemingway (which I have hanging over my desk as a constant reminder): “Write hard and clear about what hurts.” From her words came mine, and that’s ok. I hope that all I do in this little paper is remind other women that we are fierce, so goddamn fierce, and we are worthy of our aliveness. We don’t have to be Dead Girls. We can be Brave Girls. We can be Fighting Girls. We can be Alive Girls.
Works Cited:
“About Gulabi Gang.” Edited by GULABI GANG - Women Empowerment India, Gulabi Gang :: History, https://gulabigang.in/history.php.
Bolin, Alice. Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving American Culture. William Morrow, 2018.
“Facts and Figures: Ending Violence against Women.” UN Women – Headquarters, https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures#notes.
Swan, Suzanne C, et al. “A Review of Research on Women's Use of Violence with Male Intimate Partners.” Violence and Victims, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2008, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2968709/.
Warner, Robyn. “SAFE.” Robyn -Safe Course, https://www.safebyrobyn.com/SAFECourse.
Initial Posts Weekly Discussion:
From the screencast, what did you learn about first wave feminism that was new to you?
I love that Mary Wollstonecraft said that men would suffer the same “flaws” if they were as caged and trapped as women. That both hilarious and powerful. It reminded me of talking to my brother recently, as he is filling the role of “stay at home” dad while his wife works, and he is struggling greatly, saying that he feels trapped and suppressed.
What else do you know about first wave feminism that you can share with the class and/or what questions do you have about first wave feminism that I or someone in the class can answer for you?
Some first wave feminists were heroes, but not saints. Elizabeth Cady Stanton introduced a resolution that stated that Judaism was contrary to the laws of God as revealed by Christ. That’s blatantly anti-Semitic. When we learn about feminists, we are given their accomplishments, but rarely do we hear about their shortcomings. This is important, because knowing that our heroes are NOT saints shows us history is not built on the backs of saints, but flawed humans.
From the screencast, what did you learn about critical analysis of literature that was new to you?
I liked learning more about New Historicism. I have always considered history to be more of a construct, and struggled with the idea that it’s “truth”. History is written by the victor, so to view it while taking into account the views of marginalized people makes sense to me.
What else do you know about analyzing literature that you can share with the class and/or what questions do you have about analyzing literature that I or someone in the class can answer for you?
I’m still learning a lot about analyzing literature, so I’m mostly curious about how someone goes about deciding what kind of critic they are, or does it vary per type of work?
For ONE of the five stories you chose this week, discuss the theme(s). What theme(s) do you see in this story? What did the story leave you thinking about? What connections did you make between this story and real world events and/or issues? (Make sure to reference the title of the story and also specific details from the story.)
I read The Old Nurse’s Story, which was a ghost story. It reminded me of The Secret Garden, due to the big creepy house with too many empty rooms, far out in the moors with nobody around for miles. I especially loved how Hester was so determined to keep Rosamond safe that she clung to her with a death grip. It reminded me of how I would personally hang onto my own children, and it felt relatable in that aspect. The story itself reminded me of other classic ghost stories, in their ways of using haunting music to being the suspicions of things not being quite right.
For a different ONE of the five stories you chose this week, discuss the conflict in the story. What is the primary conflict? Is it character vs character, character vs self, character vs society, character vs nature, or character vs the supernatural? How does the conflict resolve? How does the conflict help readers relate to the characters? How does the conflict relate to one or more themes of the story? (Make sure to reference the title of the story and also specific details from the story.)
In The Moonstone Mass, there were multiple layers of conflict. The narrator was character vs society in that he felt pressure to make his fortune to marry his fiancé, and he also character vs character, in that his uncle didn’t believe him and he lost everything. The majority of the story was character vs nature, though, as he battles the elements to survive his expedition. The conflict is left unresolved, in that he does not prove his travels, he does not gain any wealth, and even Eleanor chooses not to discuss his story. I didn’t particularly care for this story, as I felt that the writer tells us that we won’t be bored with the details of the Esquimaux, and then we are bored with paragraph long sentences of descriptions of the horrors of the icy wastelands. I didn’t relate to the story because it was so words that the actual events felt buried under the descriptions. The conflict of nature relates to his conflict to make his fortune, as he hopes to be wealthy enough to have children. Nature and children will have their own say in the matter of things, as this story shows.
For a yet different ONE of the five stories you chose this week, discuss the frame of reference of one of the characters. That is, what is his/her perspective? Where is s/he coming from? What is his/her relationship to the other characters, to the setting, to the events of the story? What conditions and circumstances have shaped him/her to be who s/he is? What is his/her understanding of the world (what happens in the story) and where did that understanding come from? What important understandings/perspectives might this character be missing—what might be outside his/her frame of reference? (Make sure to reference the title of the story and also specific details from the story.)
In Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse, the main character is Forsyth, as assistant to a Egyptology professor exploring the Great Pyramid. He is engaged to Evelyn, who is listening to his tale of finding curious seeds in the arms of a mummy. He is telling her his story, and then further in the tale, he is observing the effects of the flower on his fiancé. The story tells less about him than anyone, as he is describing the events surrounding being lost in the pyramid, as well as experiencing the fallout of the deadly flower. His understanding of the magnitude of the plot doesn’t come till the last moments when he is too late to save Evelyn. This fact sits just outside the frame of reference, but we can view the anxiety building by the decline of Evelyn and the lack of knowledge in the flower. The descriptive qualities of the writer leaves us uneasy as readers, which makes for an excellent horror story.
For a yet different ONE of the five stories you chose this week, discuss the setting (both time and place) of the story. Be detailed and specific and use at least one quote from the story. In your description be sure to include information that gets at the type of place it is. How does the setting establish the mood (feeling) of the story? (Make sure to reference the title of the story and also specific details from the story.)
In What Was the Matter?, the narrator give us this clue: “I could not have been more than seven or eight years old, whe it happened, but it might have been yesterday.” This helps us see that this is a child’s memory, recalled by an adult. The beginning of the story is the narrator recalling the tale of her Aunt going missing, and then moves us forward through the strange events surrounding the illness of Sel, as well as the events of her newfound “sight”. All of this takes place in the family home, which seems t be a stately home that degrades over the years. This mood is also expressed in the decline of her mother, and the darkness creeping into the story with the odd events which culminate in the discovery of her aunt. In the beginning of the story, we see the things that would frighten a child, and as she grows, we see the events that would rattle the mind of an adult. The snake eyes of Sel, the massive appearance changes in her aunt, and the mysterious finding of lost things all lend itself to the supernatural qualities of this story.
For a yet different ONE of the five stories you chose this week, discuss the symbols and/or metaphors. What symbols and/or metaphors do you see at work in the story? How do those symbols/metaphors add meaning to the story? (Make sure to reference the title of the story and also specific details from the story.)
I chose to look at Nut Bush Farm. I felt that the story was filled symbols. The man seen at a crossroads at midnight. A bundle of money taken out. A young girl disappeared. A slighted wife. A disgruntled landowner. After all of these floated through the story, I found the ending to be rather anti-climactic. It was a simple as a money-hungry neighbor who murdered for cash.
What is your overall response to the stories you read this week? What stood out to you the most? Do you have any questions that I or someone in the class can answer for you?
I really liked all the stories. This really opened up my world to a whole genre that was previously undiscovered. I can’t wait to keep exploring this book, I think it’s fantastic, and I’m glad I bought a copy so that I can add it to my library.