ManPants: the project that ate my life

So I finished my project about spending a day dressed as a man. Holy Cheese it took me over 10 hours to finish editing the video and I did a pretty shoddy job of it and then wrote one of the worst papers I've ever written. It was one of those wow-this-doesn't-make-a-lot-of-sense-but-I-don't-have-time papers. Awesome.

Here's hoping that 20% of my grade didn't just vanish into nothing.

To be honest the project became half for my soc class and half for this class looking at gender and how it's constructed and how it relates to me. It was incredibly important to me to take it seriously and give it everything I could.

Interestingly my parents and my sister literally laughed at me and my efforts and refused to recognize that this was personally emotionally significant for me. As a result I'm still mad at them and they're confused and annoyed. This should be fun.

In case you're wondering I'm very aware that I didn't manage to pass and I look really bizarre in the photo.

I decided to prepare it in the form of a video diary because I can get my thoughts out much faster that way. I was annoyed that youtube made me split it into two parts because of the length. It essentially comes out to 17 minutes of gender based navel gazing but whatever.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you "ManPants: A Day as a Dude"!!

Blog Response 3: blogging bipolar for the females

I believe most people have their own brand of crazy and mine happens to be Bipolar II with a mix of other lovely things including Ovarian Cysts and Fibromyalgia. Why am I telling you all of my medical problems? Because sometimes the best cure is a really good blog.

After looking around at various male oriented bipolar blogs I decided to see what technorati could find about blogs that included the words "women" and "bipolar" the results? Not much. At this point I turned to Feministing and discovered the joyous wonders of The Trouble with Spikol, a blog by Liz Spikol about her struggles with life, mental illness, bipolar disorder, and mops. Feministing featured one of her YouTube videos in a post about "Mad Pride" several months ago.

I love what Spikol has to say about life and bipolar disorder because it is what I live every day and being bipolar is sometimes a very, very lonely existance. The advantage to having resources like this on the internet is that they allow me stay within the comfortzone of my corner of the couch while allowing me to reach out to the world. Not only does Spikol blog about her own life she also talks about medications, treatment options, and the realities of ECT or electro shock therapy as it's better known.

I particularly appreciated her post on her recent move to a new apartment talking about how she was coping with the massive change: "Dealing With Life? Yes and No". Does it say anything particularly profound? Not really, it's just nice to not feel alone in struggles like this. I also think it's a huge help to have a resource that keeps tabs on the new information that emerges about the effects many of the psych meds used to tread bipolar disorder have such as her post informing people of a new required label for certain meds including Lexapro, Cymbalta, Prozac, Celexa, Paxil, and others.

I've come across blogs about many things such as PTSD and Post-Partum Depression but this was the first really good blog about being a female with bipolar disorder or really any mental illness that I've found yet. It's brilliant.

Reading Response II: why I love "teh intarwebz" and Rachel Maddow

A few weeks ago I was trolling technorati for information on how PCOS influences the likelihood of self-identification as some form of transgender when I stumbled upon the S&F Online. I was excited to discover it but only book marked it as I was working on a project for my sociology class and was trying to stay focused. When I clicked on the link for our reading and saw what came up I literally laughed out loud. Never think you're the first person to discover something on the internet.

One specific article I enjoyed reading was "Blogging Was Just the Beginning: Women's Voices are Louder Online" which I found fascinating. One of the most interesting things I noticed when reading this article was how very specifically dated it was. Without knowing when this was published I can tell you it had to have been written sometime after Feburary of 2007 and sometime before August of 2008. How do I know? Feburary of 2007 is when the Edward's campaign bloggers were fired and August of 2008 is when Rachel Maddow became the first openly gay, female, primetime cable news host.

I'm a dorktastic Maddow fan and would like to believe she has had a huge impact on the media just by being out there. There's a primetime cable news host who is openly gay and plainly butch. That's slightly huge for the average babydyke watching at home. I am aware that one cable news host does not a paradigm shift make and despite being a butch lesbian Rachel has many attributes that more than qualify her for the job.

Rachel is not just a woman with a journalism degree; she is a Rhodes Scholar who recieved her Doctorate of Philosophy in political science from Oxford. She is literally Dr. Maddow. She also has a long history of working in politics, HIV/AIDS activism, and prison reform. That's an impressive if not excessive resume for someone hosting a cable news show.

One interesting thing I did notice is that Nolan never mentioned Katie Couric who took over as the anchor of CBS Evening News in 2006. I would think that the inclusion of Couric in this article would be something of a big deal. Not only is she the first solo female anchor of the weekday news but she is also the highest paid news anchor and faced tough criticism when she was awarded the position. It just seemed odd that Couric wasn't included.


Looking at women in journalism and the blending of journalism and the blogosphere was interesting for me as I'm intensely passionate about the blogosphere. I feel many bloggers like Mayhill Fowler, whom I mentioned in an earlier post, are legitimate journalists breaking big stories. I still think there's a lot of room for improvement and women like Arianna Huffington and Rachel Maddow and Katie Couric are starting to change the game bit by bit. I'm really excited to see what happens next with women in the blogosphere.

Fun Fact: Rachel Maddow beat juggernaut Larry King in the ratings and has topped Countdown with Keith Olbermann as the highest rated show on MSNBC on several occasions.

Is it wrong that I think "rationale" is a boring word?

I don't for a moment blame people who use it; I understand that there aren't really any other options as far as nouns encompassing an explanation of controlling principles of opinion, belief, practice, or phenomena but I always feel slightly cheated when I see it, like someone needed a word for this and just said "I know! I'll just take 'rational' and put an 'e' on it! Brilliant! No one will ever know." We have a big language can't someone come up with a better word?

I will put my qualms with the word "rationale" aside to now explain, well, the rationale of my blog.

I suppose I can't claim that this blog will be strictly topical as I know myself and my inability to focus on anything that is not directly in front of me or shiny. I will say that my blog won't be limited to women's rights because I find it to be cissexist to argue for the equal rights of one particular gender without including those people who are alternative, trans, or non gendered. Equality should apply across the board.

As a "woman" who feels more gender queer than femme my blog will most likely focus on what it's like to be in a female body unsure of what it means to be a woman or a man and where I fall in respect to the dominant gender dichotomy. There is also the question of how the feminist movement feels about transgender individuals at the movement.

There are big questions I want to ask like:
Do women's rights include individuals who are MTF?
What about FTM?
What about individuals identifying as Gender Queer?
Is it feminist for a woman to actively seek to be submissve to a male a-la "Secretary"?

As a woman with multiple health problems I would also like to look at the way women's health is handled including the way treatment of PCOS is handled in relation to gender and feminism, the way mental health issues are handled, Doctor/Patient relationship dynamics, and other aspects of healthcare in relation to gender and feminism.

I also desperately want to look at women in politics (or lack thereof) and how some of them, like Senator Claire McCaskill of Missourri are using technology to reach their constituencies more readily.

Fun fact: Out of the 99 people serving in the US Senate (Minnesota is still being indecisive) only 17 are women. Think about that for a second 17 of 99 and the 100th will be male.

Fun fact part II: In the more than 200 years The United States of America, and subsequently the Senate has existed we have had a total of 38 women serve as Senators. One of them served for only 24hours.

Those two facts are stunning in the jaw-dropping-WTF?! sense.

Anything you think I might want to consider adding?
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