I really, really like this book. Sure it's not traditional feminism in the slightest, but it really is doing well to turn over everything that I held to be normal and true. The introduction did so well to invite us along with the author, warning us that gaga feminism would be a wild ride and that it was not for the faint of heart. I appreciate how Halberstam is unafraid to present extremely abstract ideas, and how hir writing style is very inviting to the reader.
My favorite idea so far is the whole idea of children being able to teach adults through their innocence. Coming from the introduction, Halberstam writes that "it is more a sense that the pre-socialized, pre-disciplined, pre-restrained anarchic child comes at the world a little differently than the post-shame, post-guilt, post-recognition, disciplined adult" (xxiv). Children are blank slates, and it has until now been the duty of their parents to write things down on that slate. But why can't children add to the slates of their parents? If a child questions the idea of the nuclear family, why is it the parent's job to undermine that questioning and ingrain "traditional" values into the child's head?
Oh no, I used the word traditional, now I'm going to rant about it. I boldly think that using the argument of traditional values to defend anything is such a blatant logical fallacy. Slavery was a "traditional" American value. Not allowing women to vote was a "traditional" American value. Over time, we were able to see the error of our ways and remedy those "traditional" values, creating new traditions of inclusion in their place. So, to say that heterosexuality and heterosexual marriage are "traditional" American values, and that they deserve to dominate our culture, completely undermines our own rich history of overthrowing destructive traditions such as slavery. Who's to say that in 100 years, marriage won't be a bizarre concept of the past as slavery is today? It's difficult for anyone today to conceptualize owning a human as property. Who's to say that in 100 years, it won't be difficult for anyone to conceptualize being married? We need to let go of tradition, because no one can ever be certain which traditions will be obsolete some years down the road, and indeed which ones already are.
Moving on to the second part of my title, "redefining normal", I want to talk about the point brought up about the "end of men". It was interesting, to say the least. I caught myself pondering this bizarre world where there are only women, who reproduce using laboratories and engineer their children to only be born female. Obviously this is not where we are headed, but it still said something about the obsolescence of men. However, I need to clarify what I mean by that. I mean the obsolescence of men as they have acted for so many centuries - the obsolescence of men who ignore their female counterpart's ideas, hold them back, and lack respect for them in general. "Two genders has been the default setting for one reason only: So far it's been the only way to propagate the race" (43). With new technologies, men become less of a necessity, and therefore must reevaluate the way they treat their female counterparts so that they do not get discarded. This is definitely not to say that there are not women who disrespect their male counterparts, or that there are not men that completely respect their female counterparts. Still, as a whole, men have disrespected women for centuries, and must realize that they can no longer get away with it based on the necessity of their reproductive material.
Finally, I just loved Halberstam's interpretation of the music video for Telephone. I'm a self proclaimed Lady Gaga junkie, and I'll never be able to watch the music video again without having in mind everything that Halberstam said about it. That's a general theme of this class, being that I can no longer watch any kind of media without the "women's studies lens". I always find myself being attuned to which groups of people are represented and how, and which are completely unrepresented in the first place. Through this class, I've definitely changed from being a passive consumer of media to being a very active one, and I couldn't be happier about it.
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