It's already October? How did the summer get away from us and fall rush in so quickly?
My Lyon application is due a week from yesterday -- how terrifying and fascinating all at once. I've been truly reticient to discuss this, mostly because I am terrified that if one person manages to talk me out of it, I won't ever be brave enough to go.
At the same time, I can't help but see the lure of stepping out of this life and these life-things and doing something radically different.
For now, I am skimping on my DMP reading and looking forward very much to this afternoon, when I will not have to worry about classes until Tuesday. Yay, fall reading days! Unfortunately, I really will be reading for most of them, since the Late Victorian Fiction midterm is the Wednesday we get back.
I am so glad I took that class. It might be my favorite this semester.
For now, I am a little bit thinking of how to begin to pursue something that I've wanted to speak out on for a long time -- the distressingly negative and repressive attitudes of our culture toward menstruation. This discussion of course brings in issues about parenting, female puberty, sexuality and sexual development, birth control, fertility, pregnancy & childbirth, and menopause, to name a few. All of these are important parts of feminist discourse, but I want to focus on the straightforward physical phenomenon of monthly bleeding and the range of attitudes surrounding it.
Here are the things I want to change: shame, secrecy, and negativity about menstruation. Unfounded fears and stereotypes about menstruating women (including the infamous diagnosis of PMS). The disdain many (most?) women feel about their cycles, and the corresponding lack of interest in alternative menstruation options.
And most importantly, I want to see a radical shift in the way that we teach our daughters (the inheritors of third wave feminism and the succeeding generation to ourselves) about the incredibly creative power of their bodies.
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