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Nov. 28th, 2012 06:20 pmI'm not going to be posting my notes about the symposium. My modem was down (which happens when the weather warms up and the air is condensed and sticky) and I lost a webday and now everything is a bit catch-up. I still want to sleep, but I'm at my computer and have now almost done my email.
I've had a couple of questions from writers about the symposium. They want what I know in five quick minutes, so they can apply specific elements to their work. The bottom line is that if you only spend five minutes learning how to question societal constructions and your own personal assumptions and then go straight to writing fiction using that questioning, the fiction is unlikely to be effective from that direction for you will have not even begun. I can give bare definitions in that five minutes. I refuse to, for all the writers wanting this actually need a lot more than five minutes (or even two hours) and I do not have time to give them all Gender Analysis for Writers 101. Not even if they all have afternoon tea together. I could do it in a semester.
I did try. I gave an hour on gender and intersectionality to my students this morning, just to see. They needed this, for they all live it and we'd discussed it in terms of their lives. It was giving a voice to stuff they knew from experience, though, and I suspect that's quite different to explaining it to someone who is intellectually curious. And now I'm thinking back to high school, where the approach was through reading Black Like Me: we didn't understand intersectionality, but we did begin to unpack privilege. I think the problem is that I'm not at a stage where I can unpack my own understanding in the way needed to explain it to the particular people asking, and if they have the experience to rest that understanding on, that experience is not showing.
Also, explaining the 101 right now makes me feel like a giraffe, and I cannot talk about the subject without emotions. This was something I noticed at the symposium: very few people are clinical about it. We were all very post-everything ie we admitted that the subjects we were discussing are not neutral and we handled it from that direction, but none of the people asking me questions now have this intellectual background and so I would have to introduce them to that, as well. This makes for a very intimidating coffee with friends. If any of these friends are reading this - I'm very sorry! The specific questions you want to put to me come at the end of a long chain of built learning.
I need to find introductory books so that I can give out a booklist and field specific questions from knowledgeable souls, the way I do for the Middle Ages. Does anyone have any favourite gender 101, intersectionality 101, race and culture 101 texts?
I've had a couple of questions from writers about the symposium. They want what I know in five quick minutes, so they can apply specific elements to their work. The bottom line is that if you only spend five minutes learning how to question societal constructions and your own personal assumptions and then go straight to writing fiction using that questioning, the fiction is unlikely to be effective from that direction for you will have not even begun. I can give bare definitions in that five minutes. I refuse to, for all the writers wanting this actually need a lot more than five minutes (or even two hours) and I do not have time to give them all Gender Analysis for Writers 101. Not even if they all have afternoon tea together. I could do it in a semester.
I did try. I gave an hour on gender and intersectionality to my students this morning, just to see. They needed this, for they all live it and we'd discussed it in terms of their lives. It was giving a voice to stuff they knew from experience, though, and I suspect that's quite different to explaining it to someone who is intellectually curious. And now I'm thinking back to high school, where the approach was through reading Black Like Me: we didn't understand intersectionality, but we did begin to unpack privilege. I think the problem is that I'm not at a stage where I can unpack my own understanding in the way needed to explain it to the particular people asking, and if they have the experience to rest that understanding on, that experience is not showing.
Also, explaining the 101 right now makes me feel like a giraffe, and I cannot talk about the subject without emotions. This was something I noticed at the symposium: very few people are clinical about it. We were all very post-everything ie we admitted that the subjects we were discussing are not neutral and we handled it from that direction, but none of the people asking me questions now have this intellectual background and so I would have to introduce them to that, as well. This makes for a very intimidating coffee with friends. If any of these friends are reading this - I'm very sorry! The specific questions you want to put to me come at the end of a long chain of built learning.
I need to find introductory books so that I can give out a booklist and field specific questions from knowledgeable souls, the way I do for the Middle Ages. Does anyone have any favourite gender 101, intersectionality 101, race and culture 101 texts?