Category Archives: Mina Loy

Follow-up for Thursday, 2/27

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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

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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

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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.

manifesto

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If I had to write a manifesto as Mina Loy did I would write about how woman are taking over in the corporate world.

For decades the head position of most major big buisnesses were run by men. It has only been seen in recent years that woman are gaining positions of power in large companies. Woman have not had big roles in leading major businesses because the standard for a woman is to be a stay at home mother. It is normal for a woman to stay home and take care of the “woman tasks” as the man goes out to work and make all the money for his family. A “woman task” is anything domestic that has a reputation of being a woman’s job, for example cleaning the house is a woman’s job that fits the stereotype.

I would write my manifesto to encourage more woman to get out there in the working field. In 2014 we have come a long way from the woman staying at home with the children, but I still believe we have a long way to come. We need to make a larger movement to make a point that woman are here in the corporate world, were here to stay, and we are here to lead the company.

A woman and a man think different and I believe a lot of male run businesses could use a female input that they may not even know about. I would write this manifesto to stress the fact that woman can’t sit back, we have to take charge and strive for what we want. The normal gender roles for male and female have begun to be broken and we have to continue with this pattern.

 

Thinking Manifesto for 2/25

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One of the texts we read for this week was a manifesto. There are many examples of manifestos, whether from an organization, a business, or a movement, artistic, political, or otherwise. In general, they are short pieces of writing that make a powerful argument about their topic. Mina Loy, in her “Feminist Manifesto,” argues a few key points about women in society, including one that women’s value is linked to her virginity, and that her place in society cannot change until that society changes how it values (or commodifies) that virginity, including a a bold solution to this problem.

In Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, rather than making her points in a short manifesto, she writes throughout the six chapters different ways to conceive of women and fiction, and in the course of doing so, also makes bold arguments expressing feminist views.

If you were going to write a manifesto about women in our society as Loy does, or take on Woolf’s topic of women and fiction, what issue might you write about? Write a post in which you brainstorm about that focus and how you could write about it in a bold way. You might think about some of the issues the characters we’ve encountered so far have had to face, as a way to begin to think about issues your manifesto would address. Be sure to aim for at least 300 words. Use the category Manifesto and also Homework Responses.

Level without prejudice

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” And if you honestly desire to find your level without prejudice be brave and deny at the outset that pathetic clap trap war cry women is equal of man for she is not.”

The term manifesto means a public declaration of policy and aims. In the article by Mina Loy she focuses on many publications surrounding the female population. One of her focus is when she states ” And if you honestly desire to find your level without prejudice be brave and deny at the outset that pathetic clap trap war cry women is the equal of man for she is not.” This statement can be interrupted as women are superior to men. Women have always been looked upon as inferior man, this statement is advocation that women are similar to man but they are placing themselves at the top. This statement can also be interrupted as women cannot be compared to men in a similar way that would be able to set the two sexes as equal or better than each other. In other for women to experience fairness without prejudice that must expect the fact that they are not equal to man.

Mina Loy, Feminist Manifesto ; Response

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Last paragraph in “ Feminist Manifesto”
by Mina Loy “The desire for comfortable protection instead of an intelligent
curiosity & courage in meeting & resisting the pressure of life sex or
so called love must be reduced to its initial element, honour, grief,
sentimentality, pride and & consequently jealousy must be detached from it.Woman
for her happiness must retain her deceptive fragility of appearance, combined
with indomitable will, irreducible courage, & abundant health the outcome
of sound nerves—Another great illusion is that woman must use all her introspective andclear-sightedness & unbiased bravery to destroy—for the sake of her self
respect is the impurity of sex the realization in defiance of superstition that
there is nothing impure in sex—except in the mental attitude to it—will constitute
an incalculable & wider social regeneration than it is possible for our
generation to imagine.”

Throughout this story my ultimate idea of what she is trying to say is that men
and women are not equal. If both sexes start to be what each other “really”
wants to be and not what society expect them to perform then maybe the equality
between them will come closer.  It states “Leave off looking to
men to find out what you are not —–seek within yourselves to find out what you
are”, in my opinion I think that she is trying to say that many women become
the person their husband or “the men of the household” want them to be. They
never really figure out they real identity within. If we start to live without stereotype
such as : women are for being at home and taking care of the kids and men are supposed to work and support his family , make all the rules people will start to realize
that both sex can actually be able to do either if that’s the person they
really are. One of the lines that really caught my attention while reading has
to be “To obtain results you must make sacrifices & the first and greatest
sacrifice you have to make is of your”virtue”, clearly this line is trying to
say that any women have a hard time in realizing that they are actually more
then what society expect them to be which for example is, a for sex, a house wife,
emotional and a person that dwell a lot in love. The author is trying to say is
that the purpose is not to have the same right men do and be equal to them, but
to look deeper within themselves to gain their individual worth not caring the status
men are in. A women should take full responsibly in their lives make it their
business to be educated and be respected.

The Feminist Movement

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“For the harmony of race, each individual should be the expression of an easy & ample interpenetration of the male & female temperaments—free of stress

Woman must become more responsible for the child than man—-
Woman must destroy in themselves, the desire to be loved—.”

From the work of Mina Loys “Feminist Manifesto” I believe that she feels that in order for a woman to get or achieve a power role they must first be desexualize themselves like in her quote “Woman must destroy in themselves, the desire to be loved.” I surmise that Loy is claiming that women have been especially susceptible to love, whereas men are susceptible to sex, with men achieving the power role in the relationship. She also says that “Woman is the equal of man for she is not” which I feel she means that men and women are not equally treated and do not have the same rights, that men are more superior. Overall from the entire passage I think that Loy believes men and women should be free to choose what roles they want to play without consideration to stereotypes and assumptions, but that certainly wasn’t the case back then because no one was treated equally.

Assignment for Tuesday, 2/18

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We have several readings for this long week: selections from Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, as well as “Professions for Women,” also by Woolf, plus Mina Loy’s “Feminist Manifesto” and Gertrude Stein’s “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene.” I distributed copies of all of these readings in class on Thursday. If you want a copy and weren’t able to come, please let me know. You can try stopping by my office, N520–I’ve left copies in a folder on the corner of my desk. I recommend that you do, since I noted which parts of A Room of One’s Own we’ll focus on.

Rather than dividing the readings by day, I encourage you to read them in whatever order you choose. I’m curious to hear about what is difficult for you, what intrigues you, what inspires you, what you disagree with.

For your posts, choose a passage from one reading that you think contains the (or one) main idea from that reading. Include the entire passage (tip: you can copy and paste it from the online texts linked from our Readings page), give an indication of where in the text it comes from by noting what the paragraph begins (the first few words or sentence), and the title and author of the reading. Then include your understanding of the passage, pointing to particular words or phrases that you read to develop your understanding. Try to go slowly through particular words or images. What is the main point of the passage, and how does it connect to the overall reading? What do you have to say to support or refute it?

Use the category Homework Responses (not Homework Assignments, which should be reserved for the actual instructions), and the category of the author’s name. Choose the tag for the title of the specific text you wrote about. If you’re writing about A Room of One’s Own, choose that title and the tag that reflects the chapter you wrote about, Chapter 1 or Chapter 3, as well as any tags that indicate the theme or topic you chose to write about–you might need to add that tag, rather than choosing from among the already-used tags.

If you have questions, please ask them in reply to this post. This group of readings is challenging, so I hope that we can work together to understand and discuss each text. These readings are also some of the boldest of the semester and will help shape the framework of our course. That means that we’ll refer back to them throughout the semester, so it’s really important that we discuss them carefully and understand them thoroughly.