Responding to Intimate Apparel for 3/4

For next week, we’re reading Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel. Although it was written in 2001, it takes place in 1905, a time much more similar to the worlds depicted in our other readings so far this semester.

One topic you might consider in your post for Tuesday is in what ways does Nottage’s play depict a similar world for women? In what ways is it different, and how do you account for those differences–that is, why is another author’s imagined world different than the imagined world in Intimate Apparel?

Another topic you might consider has to do with genre: what effect does it have on your reading that this is a play? You might think about how it affects your reading, but also how it conveys information that a narrator usually conveys. How do you know what you know differently than when you’re reading a narrated story? In what ways does that affect your interaction with the text and your understanding of it?

If there is another topic you would like to consider, please do, but remember for any post, please adhere to our blogging guidelines.

Remember, also, that later in the week we will be commenting on these posts. If you would like to ask a question or present an issue in your post for commenters to address, please do.

Indomitable

Indomitable – Adjective

  • Incapable of being subdued or overcome; in-conquerable.

Found in: “Feminist Manifesto” by Mina Loy.

“Woman for her happiness must retain her deceptive fragility of appearance, combined with indomitable will, irreducible courage, & abundant health the outcome of sound nerves…”

This means that for a woman to be happy, she must keep her most important qualities, qualities for her strength, intact.

surreptitious

surreptitious

sur¡rep¡ti¡tious

[sur-uhp-tish-uhs]

adjective

1.

obtained, done, made, etc., by stealth; secret or unauthorized; clandestine: a surreptitious glance.
2.

acting in a stealthy way.
3.

obtained by subreption; subreptitious.
Found in Mina Loys Feminist Manifesto
“The woman who has not succeeded in striking that advantageous bargin– is prohibited from any but surreptitous re-action to Life-stimuli–&entireky debarred maternity.”
This definition helps me better understand the passage becuase I now understand that Mina Loy was trying to tell the reader that you cannot act in a stealthy way. The passage now comes together with knowing the word.

Valuation

Valuation – noun

“The women who adopt themselves to a theoretical valuation of their sex as a relative impersonality are not yet feminine”

webster Merriam –

valuation – estimated or determined market value of a thing.;

valuation – judgement or appreciation of worth or character

this passage is expressing that Woman who believes what she is taught about her value is not yet in touch with herself. Women’s opinions of their worth are prejudged by others and adopted by us. Until we know our own worth we will answer to anything.

Double Standards

Manifesto  is a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives or views if the issuer ( Webster Merriam.com)

If I had to write a a Manifesto about women there would be a broad range of subjects to choose from, but the one that comes to mind first is that age old double standard.

Women have always been held to a different standard than men. For years us women have had to deal with being treated unfairly. We make less money on the job than a man who is doing the same exact job. Money however is not the only thing that women fight for in the work place. Females also fight for respect in the business world. it is assumed that a pretty face, and all the other attributes of woman are a sign of weakness. I think that would be a great argument to base my manifesto on. Though discrimination at the workplace is a great topic for a manifesto, I think my statement would focus on the broader areas of the double standard. Women are expected to appear a certain way In the public eye,and are upheld to certain behavior that society just does not expect men to uphold. For example, a woman who has slept with numerous guys is said to be “promiscuous” , and on the other hand a man who sleeps around with different women is called a “player”. Is it only genetics that make the difference or is it just as simple as the majority opinion rules.

Mina Loy mentioned in Manifesto, ” be brave and deny the outset, that pathetic, flap , trap war cry , women us the equal to man- for she is not. ” That statement is very supportive to the argument of the double standard between men and women. I think for my manifesto I would bring firth issues which support the fact that men and women are not equal.

A Room of One’s Own “Gender inequalities”

“It was disappointing not to have brought back in the evening some important statement, some authentic fact. Women are poorer than men because — this or that. Perhaps now it would be better to give up seeking for the truth, and receiving on one’s head an avalanche of opinion hot as lava, discoloured as dish-water. It would be better to draw the curtains; to shut out distractions; to light the lamp; to narrow the enquiry and to ask the historian, who records not opinions but facts, to describe under what conditions women lived, not throughout the ages, but in England, say, in the time of Elizabeth.
For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet. What were the conditions in which women lived? I asked myself; for fiction, imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.
I went, therefore, to the shelf where the histories stand and took down one of the latest, Professor Trevelyan’s History of England. Once more I looked up Women, found ‘position of’ and turned to the pages indicated. ‘Wife-beating’, I read, ‘was a recognized right of man, and was practised without shame by high as well as low. . . . Similarly,’ the historian goes on, ‘the daughter who refused to marry the gentleman of her parents’ choice was liable to be locked up, beaten and flung about the room, without any shock being inflicted on public opinion. Marriage was not an affair of personal affection, but of family avarice, particularly in the “chivalrous” upper classes. . . . Betrothal often took place while one or both of the parties was in the cradle, and marriage when they were scarcely out of the nurses’ charge.’ That was about 1470, soon after Chaucer’s time. The next reference to the position of women is some two hundred years later, in the time of the Stuarts. ‘It was still the exception for women of the upper and middle class to choose their own husbands, and when the husband had been assigned, he was lord and master, so far at least as law and custom could make him.” (beginning of chapter three)

i think the main idea in chapter three would bring gender inequalities. The narrator brings up issues about inequalities between women and men being compared. The difference of statues and poverty, which affected mainly to women’s right of freedom. Woolf investigates women in the time of Elizabeth because she was frustrated that there were no women writers and that every man who were writers consider themselves amazing and great. Woolf is surprised that women had a few rights around the time of Elizabeth. And the difference between women’s lives as showed in the history books, that women were beaten up by their husbands. But does not find any thing about middle class women. The point of the passage is the inequality about men and women and the fact of how powerless women were if they got marry to the men, the men would become the lord or the master.

Follow-up for Thursday, 2/27

As the manifesto brainstorms continue to come in, a different assignment for Thursday’s class. Rather than writing a new post, please comment on 3 posts from either this most recent assignment or the prior one (the two since we last met).

Comments should be thoughtful, substantial (aim for 100 words), and should continue the thought process that the initial poster began. If your comments are shorter, consider what else you could add to them to get either the author of the initial post further along in his or her thoughts, or what might inspire someone else to comment in response to your comment and the initial post.

A few words about commenting:

  • If no one has commented yet, you can by clicking Leave a Reply at the bottom of the post.
  • If someone has already commented, you can by clicking 1 Reply or 2 Replies etc (it will keep track of how many replies).
  • You are welcome to comment on a post that has already been commented on, so long as you add something new to the conversation.
  • You are welcome to respond to someone’s comment by clicking on Reply at the bottom of their comment. You’ll notice that your reply is indented further than if you just replied to the post.
  • Comments might ask questions, refer to specific passages, link ideas from one post to another, relate someone’s point about one text or issue to another text or issue, offer a differing (but respectful) view,  offer a related view that takes the ideas in a new depth or direction, etc.
  • “I agree” or “I disagree” or “I understand” or “Good point” or similar short, unsupported replies alone will not get credit as comments.
  • You can ALWAYS write something short in addition to the required number of comments. Don’t feel like you can never write a short reply just because these 3 comments need to be substantial.
  • You can use the Like function to let people know which posts you’re most interested in, but that doesn’t count as a comment.

I can’t wait to see how our commenting experiment goes–if it goes well, we might move to a post and comments in the week rather than two posts.

If you have any questions, please ask them as replies to this post. See you in class on Thursday and online before then!

Manifesto

If I were to write a manifesto as Loy did in ““Feminist Manifesto,” I would write about how women are seen as objects in society. When we think about women based on what society has to say about them, we think about beautiful women. They say beautiful women can get away with murder. Women are seen as objects of desire,  but women are people too. They have personalities that are overlooked because who cares, that’s not what they’re here for. A women has a goal? That’s nice. The fact is that on television, you will see half naked women in advertisements for random products. Does there have to be half naked women? No. Although, they do get these’s commercials attention.

There are obviously many gender stereotypes in the world today, so why do women still try to behave how society paints them. Some women do help out the stereotype by getting jobs where they are required to be half naked. Although other women are more serious about this. In the workplace, some women get hired for their looks. They are also seen as sexual objects instead of as coworkers. I heard a story once of a women who got fired from her job because her boss found her too attractive and did not want to have an affair with her. Its very disrespectful that he would just assume that she would be willing to have an affair with him. This was interesting to me because she was obviously not seen as an employee. She was seen as a sexual object and got fired because of it. This is a problem because women do not get to chose how they look and should not have to suffer for it.

People should be treated equally. The fact that woman are seen as objects means that they are not going to be treated like human beings. They are never going to get the respect that they deserve and this is a huge problem.

Manifesto: Double Standards, Man And Women

If I were to write a manifesto about women in our society as Loy have done, I would write about women having a different standard from man due to there gender. The double standard between male and females have been an on going issue. There seem to be no boundary to this matter and women are continuously victims of these two sets of rules. This includes matters of marriage, age, relationship and even the work field.
One example of these rules are women tend to be perceived as aggressive when attempting to occupy leadership positions whereas men exhibiting the same behavior are seen as decisive. Society as placed women in a box and have accepted man as chairman or boss. A women can’t be assertive and confident of her decisions without being called “the B word”. Another double standard females face is difference in personality characteristics  that men and women are expected to posses. Women are expected to be more emotional and sensitive. This involves being in a relationship and also the work field. For instance women are still not as dominant as men in the professional work field because women are still perceived as weak and delicate.

Another example would be if a women dates a man that is 10-20 years younger, she is automatically ostracized by society. She is thought to not be able to find someone her age, whereas a man is looked at to be a provider for such a young female. Men dating young women is becoming more and more acceptable by society but it has not been the same for women.  The most controversial double standard of them all is sexual freeness. A man  sleeping around with several women will receive praise whereas a women doing the same is ridicule for her actions.

There most be an end to this two sets of rules. Different cultures around the world would deliberately disagree with this idea because  they are so suck on what have been seen as normal for centuries. Raised in a African American home I have lived with these double standards. I can honestly say it has effected me in negative and positive ways. But I can’t say the same for other individuals of other cultures. Our society is constantly making up new rules for women everyday. This limits the abilities of women as a whole in all assets. As a women it is our job to stand up for ourselves and speak on this issue.

Parasitism

Parasitism – (Noun)

Definition: the behavior of a parasite (a person or thing that takes something from someone or something else and does not do anything to earn it or deserve it.)

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parasitism

Found in: Mina Loy, “Feminist Manifesto”

Quote: “As conditions are at present constituted—you have the choice between Parasitism, & Prostitution —-or Negation.”

What I understand now what Loy was trying to say is that in that specific time women didn’t have much of a choice. They were either having something taken away from them without choice or being denied the truth.