Brody PHIL 285 Blog

Using the conferralist framework to understand social properties among people in society is an ongoing theme that I am starting to understand through different texts in this course. Specifically in this weeks reading of  Categories we Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race and other Social Categories by Asta. I am coming to understand the role of society in placing these properties on everyone whether it be sex, gender, popularity, beauty, and more. We live in a world where we are constantly seeking the attention and approval of those around us because they are the ones who ultimately shape the perception of who we are. It isn't an ideal situation and one that really flies under the radar, but by looking at the root causes we can come to further understand these social properties.  Asta believes that we are put into social categories institutionally through examples of student, citizen, legally married and so on. But we can also find ourselves thrown into categori...

For this discussion post I don't have a certain prompt concerning the work of Judith Butler in Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. For myself, this was one of the tougher reads so far. What I believe Judith Baker to be explaining is that gender isn't something that one is born with, but is an identity that later comes upon us throughout the actions we take in life. So, what I would like to focus on is digging deeper into understanding these acts that she describes and how they could possibly lead to a gender construction for someone. I would also love to understand her to a greater degree. Judith Baker states in her writing, "If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time, and not a seemingly seamless identity, then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaki...

Collins writes: "Just as the traditional family ideals provide a rich site for understanding intersectional inequalities, reclaiming notions of family that reject hierarchical thinking may provide an intriguing and important cite of resistance." In light of the arguments that Collins makes about gender and race in the context of what she calls the "logic of the traditional family ideal", what could resistance of this sort look like? How effective do you think that sort of resistance would be, as compared to the efforts of other strategies political movements use in attempt to bring about change? The article of It's All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation really opened my eyes to this concept of intersectionality. One thing worth noting is that this article was published in the summer of 1998 which is a considerable time ago and needs to be taken into consideration when talking about the topic. As I was reading this article I couldn't hel...

  What do you think, are moral decisions merely rational decisions, as Wollstonecraft thought, or do they have sensual or emotional aspects too?   All in all, reading this chapter was very interesting to me. Especially hearing Mary Wollstonecraft's thoughts as a female philosopher in the eighteenth century. I'm not too aware of the fundamental differences in education several hundred years ago between men and women, but some of the insights she makes are magnificent. She argues, "the best education, for man or woman, should have the aim of cooperating... with the supreme Being. It must strengthen the body and form the heart. Virtuous beings are virtuous because of their capacity for reason." Never would I have thought about education in this light; to "cooperate with the supreme Being." Wollstonecraft believed that the way women have been educated draws them out of this rational realm as oppose to men by "false refinement". These writers on women...

  Are some mental illnesses natural, as opposed to socially constructed? How might we discern “real” mental illnesses from ways of being that are wrongly pathologized in order to reinforce social norms? I do believe that there are mental illnesses that are just natural. We're all different humans so I'd like to believe that our brains are made up of unique chemical compositions. I'm pretty far from an expert in this subject but it is something I'm always looking to learn more in. While I believe that certain mental illnesses are natural, the events that transpire throughout our life can definitely cause a socially constructed mental illnesses. Most of us are fighting a war with ourselves in some shape or another and it seems as if no matter how hard you fight, this war may never come to an end. Possibly, the natural mental illnesses we have can be altered or worsened through a person's life through what they experience. I have no clue as to what the difference betwe...

  Is it possible to meet or interact with someone without performing a gender attribution? Have you ever done so? (page 26) To fully understand the question at hand, I need to fully dive into what a gender attribution is. Dea writes, "Gender attribution is the term that Kessler and McKenna use for the decision we make about a person's gender when we first see that person. They argue that we are constantly attributing genders to people. We do so without really trying, and are often unaware that we are even doing it"(19). This means that we are attributing genders  subconsciously all of the time. If this is true then am I determining genders when I first see people? It's very tough to understand my own subconscious yet alone control my subconscious thoughts. However, Dea makes the point that we only become aware of the gender attribution process when we encounter difficulty in making the attribution. I will admit that sometimes I fall victim to this. But why do I need t...