Thought Exercise #4: Due 10/1/13

"Animal signs function fetishistically...they serve as powerful substitutes or "partial objects" filling in for a lost object of desire or originary wholeness that never did or can exist, save phantasmically."
--"New Life Forms and Functions of Animal Fetishism

I took this quote to mean that, at the very core of human existence and interactions, all humans exhibit animalistic qualities that are biologically ingrained as an ultimate means of finding and seducing mates for reproduction. If it is stated that animal signs function fetishistically, then I would take it that this statement is one of a sexual nature.

To clarify, all living beings are wired to reproduce. Living beings are more likely to reproduce if their sexual mates are physically attractive. Think about it--male peacocks are grow ostentatious feathers to attract peahens, male lions have distinctive manes, and human women supposedly more in touch with sensuality than men are. Physical attraction and flirtatious body language sends off fetishistic signs that stimulate sexual excitement in living beings, and satisfy sexual fantasies.

I think that's what it means to fill "in for a lost object of desire...that never did or can exist, save phantasmically." Everyone is stamped with a sexual orientation and a sex drive in order to trigger our function as vessels and machines of reproduction. We all have fantasies and fetishes, and when we find mates, we project our desires onto them. We have expectations for significant others, and project those expectations on them as well. We look for what we like and sometimes overlook flaws, even when we are blinded by infatuation. This is to conclude that love and attraction can be considered a mere illusion, a back-stabbing mechanism that tricks living beings into reproducing.

Thought Exercise #3: Due 9/24/13

"The Surrealists were fascinated by what they perceived as the dual nature of the little girl, her propensity for innocence and evil."

"The view of the female child as particularly close to the non-material world of fantasy and the imagination was central to the beliefs of the Surrealists."

"Baby Bitches From Hell: Monstrous Little Women in Film," by Barbara Creed

I couldn't help but to choose so many quotes from Creed's article. Her words left a deep impression on me. First of all, I consider myself a child at heart. One of the biggest reasons for why I feel that way is that my extensive experience with bullying, ranging from preschool all the way to high school. It really affected who I am as a person. I like to think that because I have been bullied as a child, I have learned to not conform to what society wants of me, and to have my own beliefs and stand up for them. I have retained these opinions ever since childhood, including:

• Saving my virginity for marriage
• Living a straight-edge lifestyle. I have never taken drugs, never smoked, nor have I ever been flat-out drunk. 
• To find magic in my life, to never give up on my dreams, to be my individual self even when other people don't share my views.

I would look at old photos of myself as a child. I feel overwhelmed with the fact that though she may no longer physically exist, she's inside me. She's in my skin, in my blood, in my organs, in my breath, and in my mind. I see her as an embodiment of my beliefs and values, and because of that, I have this overwhelming desire to remain pure at heart, even as I grow jaded as the years pass by.

"By virtue of her purity, she is able to make contact with the marvelous and enter the world of the surreal."

When I stay connected with my inner child, I feel that my imagination, my thoughts, my beliefs, and my motivations are all the more vivid. It's hard to describe, but I feel alive by sticking to the values I've held since childhood. It fuels me as a creative person. I love the feeling of being able to write stories, create paintings and images, and enter worlds that other people can't visit along with me. And this is all without the use of drugs! (I believe that people who say they need drugs to be creative are full of bull****, and that they're just using their "justification" as an excuse.)

"Innocence invites corruption--the more pure and irreproachable, the greater will be the child's fall from grace."

When people discover that I intend to stay a virgin until marriage, they typically respect my decision, and a few have actually confessed that they wish they could have done what I'm doing, such as saying, "I once saved myself for marriage, but the temptation was so great, I gave in. I only wish you could succeed where I failed." Their words make me all the more determined to save myself. However, I have encountered someone who told me these very words: "You know what turns me on about you? It turns me on so much that you've never been touched by a man, and that you've never held a real, living penis. And that means I could be the first one."

"...innocence and evil are interconnected; it is as if the girl's innocence opens the way for the entrance of evil, one feeding off the other in a complex relationship of interdependence."

I think that statement, the one personally told to me, will haunt me forever. It's been about 3 months since I've been told that, and I can still hear his deep voice, dripping with temptation and lust, reverberating in my head. It's as if my attempts to remain innocence has invited his evil desires to prey on me, trying to break down my resolve bit by bit. As cliched as this sounds, there is indeed a darker side of me, a Mr. Hyde inside of me, that wants to throw caution to the wind. Sometimes I wish I could split myself in two, one version to retain my innocence, and the other a carbon copy to commit whatever she wishes. But no, both versions are interconnected inside me, the only body I have in this life. I realize that I cannot exist without the evil and impulsive side of me, because it renders me into a three-dimensional person, one who can make choices. The choices I make define who I am as a person, and even though part of me is tainted and corrupt, and even though there are people who will always try to break me down and destroy my values, I hold the ultimate power to shape who I am as a person. I choose to be as innocent as I can, and I make that choice because the evil in me motivates me to do so. I have to thank evils for giving me the choice to turn my back on them and not give me in. By doing so, my choices preserve my innocence and commemorate the little girl inside me.

"Rose," by painter Mark Ryden

Thought Exercise #2: Due 9/17/13

"...the distinction between Chinese people and animals becomes blurred, sustaining and elaborating in new ways the racialization of Chinese as inferior to fully human whites in U.S. racial paradigms."
--"Chinese Chickens, Ducks, Pigs, and Humans, and the Technoscientific Discourses of Global U.S. Empire," by Gwen D'Arcangelis

Apparently, when diseases and epidemics spread within the U.S. or Western countries in general, the first suspect to have fingers pointed at are animals. However, if not animals, then the other suspect would be a population of a foreign culture, such as the Chinese. This is to suggest that humans like to label the unfamiliar as something savage and dangerous out of sheer ignorance.

On a tangent, that reminds me of the song "Savages" from Disney's Pocahontas. Here, the English settlers are singing about killing the Native Americans

These two Powhatan warriors have their face painted in preparation to fight the settlers, the Caucasian foreigners, and sing aloud, "I wonder if they even bleed!"

So, my thoughts have gone from Westerners finger-pointing animals and another culture as culprits for diseases, to the logical conclusion that it is natural for humans to slap blame on what they fear and don't understand, to the realization that Caucasians have an over-inflated superiority complex. Is this some sort of power play for them? I recall my history professor (who was a white man in his forties, just so you know) in high school informing my class that while ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians and the Chinese were flourishing, Europeans were shivering and scrounging in mud huts. Centuries later, when Europeans began exploring and conquering the "New World" (new for them, because they were the foreigners, the aliens!), not only did they kill off massive numbers of indigenous people via weapons of mass destruction, they also brought with them diseases that infected and killed off the native people.

That's right, the Europeans were the ones who infected the non-Caucasian people who were behind them in technological advances, not the other way around.

To make matters worse, the European settlers wouldn't stop killing, and proclaimed the land as theirs and saw themselves as the rightful citizens of the land and would shoot glares and pejoratives to immigrants of non-European descent, even though the Caucasians of European descent do not even originate from America. So Caucasians can discriminate others because they feel that they are superior? Because they are in power and are big bullies on the playground?

Scapegoats are always needed. Seeing that diseases such as SARS came from outside the U.S., the blame can be shoved upon infected animals and the unhygienic "traditional" practices of Chinese vermin. However, if the disease were to hypothetically originate in the U.S., no certain racial groups would be to blame because that would be politically incorrect. Instead, some B.S. story of gene mutations may be spoon-fed to the public by the media to appease the public's demands for knowing the origins of the disease.

Throwing blame is pretty much like playing the game of throwing around a hot potato.

Thought Exercise #1, Due 9/10/13, REPOST

REPOSTED FROM HERE

For the Fall 2013 semester, I have signed up for Gender Woman Studies 133AC at UC Berkeley. The title of the course is Women, Men, and Other Animals: Human Animality in American Cultures. The class focuses on the relationship between humans and animals, "with a particular focus on gender, race, ability, and sexuality as the definitional foils for human engagement with animality."

I saw this class on the Fall 2013 American Cultures class catalog before I even got the idea for my novel, but now that I'm enrolled in this class, it's perfect for my research into the novel, especially since I'm exploring human-animal and sexuality themes in my Little Red Riding Hood-inspired BDSM New Adult novel (I think I need to find a way to abbreviate that...). Since our weekly assignment consists of writing blog posts in response to what we think of an assigned piece we have read or a class discussion. I thought that, since the theme of animality and sexuality and power play aligns quite nicely with my novel (currently on chapter 9...it's kind of a crappy first draft right now), I'll just write my posts in a way that correlates with my novel.

I don't listen to that BS when people say, "Oh, virginity doesn't matter." Lies. I've witnessed responses that betray intrigue and lust. Artwork is by Nanfe

Out of the readings from last week, I was most stricken by Kate Soper's essay "Naturalized Woman and Feminized Nature." It is no surprise to read about the objectification of woman, since women can be deemed as sex objects or arm candies by horny men. But it was interesting to read about Soper's correlation of the objectification of women with man's dominance of nature. Nature procreates and reproduces in order to nurture living beings. Women are biologically designed to procreate and nurture life as well. Throughout history, perhaps the male ego drives males in all of their attempts to conquer what they set out to take, and taking it further to incite wars after wars. Explorers set out to sail and explore other continents, and kill in order to appropriate the lands they believe they are entitled to. Women are in a similar scenario. Men hunt sexually attractive women to try and "sow their seeds," as it may be termed. I would hope humanity is above this, but many men will persist in cajoling a woman, or even resort to taking her by force.

Soper mentions Wordsworth's poem "Nutting," and cites it as "one of the most powerfully voluptuous descriptions of the 'virgin scene' of nature, and one of the most disturbed accounts of the ravishment it provokes," and goes on to state that nature is "a 'virgin' terrain ripe for penetration, that the metaphor of the land as female is most insistent...it is one thing to cajole - or force - a virgin to surrender to her lover (rapist)" (142). I keep thinking about my main character in my novel, Scarlett, who is determined to remain a virgin until marriage. The professor, Jude Tanner, is intrigued by her virginity and the novel revolves around a sort of game or persistence vs. resistance for them. He wants to see how long it'll take for her no's to turn into yes, and she is determined to never give in, despite all the temptation he gives her. By no means is this story meant to be romantic at all. It's terrifying to be in pursuit and hunted down, even if it is by a handsome predator. To be thought of as an untouched terrain ripe for penetration is terrifying. It's somewhat dehumanizing to be devalued to the level of the grass and plants that spreads all across the earth, to take in a fact that I, a young woman, am something that can be taken by force if necessary. Scarlett feels the same, and she knows she is more than a virgin to be subjected to the lust of a man who wants to be the first one to penetrate and claim her. The dominance of men vs. virginity and resistance is a theme that I'm heavily exploring, and will hopefully be fleshed out further as the semester progresses.