2C (not two cents)

13th October 2009

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what would Neo do?

i’m introducing my students to critical lenses of race and gender this week.

there’s a funny story about how i was showing a slide consolidation of the consumer markets they’d associated themselves with (it was a homework assignment). many of my students tagged themselves as gamers, but one mentioned that gaming is marketed directly to males through the way it leverages female sexuality. in my slide presentation, i included game images alongside an image of the Frag Dolls, Ubisoft’s competitive, title-winning team. my class thought they were some kind of “dance crew” to promote gaming. you know, like the Phoenix Suns Dancers. i’m not saying that i can’t see the confusion. mostly. i do think it’s funny, that Halo and Call of Duty apparently merit cheerleaders.

somehow the universe always arranges itself so that while i’m immersed in an idea for one class, project or paper, all of the other things i’m doing are also, coincidentally, trying to keep my head below the surface in the same pool of thought. while i’m talking to my students about sexuality in advertising, i’m rehashing Butler in pedagogy and defending conflict within a feminist dialectic in comp. i’ve somehow managed to round all the bases of contemporary feminism over the weekend.

last night, i was with my Monday night girls. they’re different from the Tuesday night girls in that the Monday night girls are about craft and relationship and the Tuesday night girls are about alcohol and performance. yes, i also see the irony.

last night, we were talking about the power of passive-aggressive speech patterns. i won’t use them when i’m working which has some of my students, who expect the maternal model of the high school teacher, finding me “intimidating” and “scary.” but i haven’t explained it to them. no more than i’ll explain that my default is always coalition building over competition but assuming that i’m not ambitious nor sure of my competence is faulty reductionism. it’s not that i don’t understand the masculine hierarchy, i simply reject being defined by it.

S points out that as long as she’s known me, i avoid these confrontations. she’s right. almost always, if you say or do something to me, unless we’re in my own home, that trips my alarms, i’ll simply let it go. if you’re hurting someone else, i’l likely get involved. but if it’s me, i think you’re either a well-meaning soul who forgot yourself for a second, and you’re just as trapped in Butler’s heterosexual matrix of power as the rest of us, in which case, why would i hold you responsible for that? or you’re another one of those people who leverages your position to silence others. in that case, you’re not worth my energy. S thinks as a champion, i’m a bit disappointing.

maybe.