WGS 3150 Midterm Exam: Identifying Significant Quotations and Analyzing Gender Roles - Pro, Exams of International Women's Voices

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Manu R. Kamat 11/15/ WGS: 3150 Jensen WGS 3150 Take-home Midterm Exam This is an open-book exam with serious caveats. You may use the 3 books assigned for the course and your notes and essays. You may NOT use the internet or any other animate or inanimate sources. You MUST put your SIGNATURE at the end of the exam to indicate you have complied with these rules. An exam without a signature receives a grade of ZERO as will any exam that does not comply with the rules. Your hard-copy answers must be handed in at the beginning of class on Thursday, October 15. NO EXCEPTIONS. Hint: Don't wait to print out your exam until the hour before class when you will inevitably have printer problems . Part 1: IDENTIFICATIONS, 40 points. Identify 4 of the 6 quotations below by author and year and by explaining why the passage is significant in the context of the author's main argument. Simply indicate the letter to which you are responding (no need to re-copy the quotation). a. The two are called "one person in law" for the purpose of inferring that whatever is hers is his, but the parallel inference is never drawn that whatever is his is hers. John Stuart Mill, 1870, pg. 77 This passage is significant because it coins the term “one person in law” which helps describe how women are seen in the eyes of society and the government at the time. Women are seen as part of the man, but not the other way around. It shows how a woman is only identified by her male counterpart. b. The worse damage was done to the mental health of women, who either suffered silently with self-blame or flocked to the psychiatrists looking desperately for the hidden and terrible repression that kept them from their vaginal destiny. Anne Koedt, 1970, pg 187 This passage shows how men have manipulated women into making them believe that it is their fault for problems with their personal vaginal orgasms. More than telling women it is their fault, women have come to believe it so much that there has been ample damage done to their mentality and their way of thinking when it comes to orgasms. d. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as oppposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.

Beauvoir, 147-158, 1952 This passage is a reference of how women are not viewed as individuals but rather as a piece of their male counterpart. She is not a person, she is more like a shadow that follows him. She does not have individuality. She is the Other. f. Within a culture possessed by the myth of feminine evil, the naming, describing, and theorizing about good and evil has constituted a maze/haze of deception. The journey of women becoming is breaking through this maze—springing into free space, which is an a-mazing process. Angela Y. Davis, pg 447-453, 1991 This passage refers to surrogate mothers and how women are used for their womb. It references how a woman must make a name for herself and must rise above their normally oppresses status in society. It is this journey that acts much like a “maze” that makes it difficult for women to succeed in society. Part 2: Essay #1, 30 points. Write a well-constructed, thoughtful essay on the following topic. 500 words minimum. In Female Chauvinist Pigs: The Rise of Raunch Culture , Ariel Levy writes: "What teens have to work with, then, are two wildly divergent messages. They live in a candyland of sex... every magazine stand is a gumdrop castle of breasts, every reality show is a bootylicious Tootsie Roll tree. And these are hormonal teenagers: this culture speaks to them. But at school, the line give to the majority of them about sex is just say no. They are taught that sex is wrong until you have a wedding... " (157). Imagine that you are a newly hired feminist (whether male or female) principal of a highschool where students struggle with the mixed messages Levy describes. The school board has hired you to solve the ongoing problems of pregnancy and STDs among the students. How would you go about creating a more progressive, supportive environment for your students? Be as specific as possible. If I were a newly hired feminist principal of a high school where students struggle with the mixed messages described by Levy, there would be a number of steps I would take in order to help solve, or at least slow down, the problem of unplanned pregnancy and STDs among students. As summarized by Ariel Levy, the problem that many schools have is that although there are many federally funded programs that help educate young teens, they are all being told that sex is wrong, whereas all external (non-school related) influences that are placed in print ads as well as visual and audible commercials are all promoting the act of sex. The problem is that there is no program to promote comprehensive sex education that covers both abstinence and contraception. If I were principal, I would use my influences to help create a program that is not focused on telling students that sex is bad. I would help educate the students about the options they

have in everyday life. I would help educate them on proper contraception as well as the right to choose to wait until marriage. As a principal, I would first make it a requirement that all students take this class. This is in order to ensure that all students are educated about sex. Secondly, I would take the time to try to formulate a club for students to join. This would allow them to come together to discuss how contraception or abstinence can or has helped them in their lives. This would be optional; as to give a student an environment to discuss sex after school hours. I would also put up both male and female contraception devices in the bathrooms. It is apparent that hormonal students are going to have sex. Although in an ideal world, no high school student (or adult, for that matter) would have sex before marriage, or at least without being educated about it, it is evident, by may statistics that show teen pregnancy and STDs, that students do it no matter how much they are told not to. My idea would be to educate the child about sex and how to be safe, instead of merely scaring them into thinking that sex is a horrible thing. Many teens experiment with sex because they do not understand what it is about. It would be my goal to teach them that sex has a purpose – to create life – and that we are taking that purpose for granted if we are being unsafe and irresponsible. Lastly, I would decorate the school in a way that allows the student reflect and be educated on the ideas of sex. On top of putting contraception machines and setting up programs, I would put up posters that educate the teens about safe sex. They would not be posters to scare them, but more about how to educate them. This would allow the students to know that sexual education is not just another class with a grade, but also something they should learn about seriously because it will always be a part of their lives. As children get older, they get wiser. It is our job as teachers to help place them on the right path starting at this very important and hormonal stage in their life. Although I believe I would receive much backlash and criticism, I truly believe that, if done correctly, it could make a huge difference in their lives and we, as a community, could start to see changes. Essay #2, 30 points. Choose ONE of the following topics on which to write a well- constructed, thoughtful essay. 500 words minimum. b. How do you analyze "White Oleander" in light of Chodorow's views about mother-daughter relations in white, middle-class milieus? She writes in 1978: "girls in contemporary society develop a personal identification with their mother... [unlike boys who must distinguish themselves from identifying personally with their mothers] " (FTR , 266) AND "Mothers feel ambivalent toward their daughters, and react to their daughters' ambivalence toward them. Mothers desire both to keep daughters close and to push them into adulthood [independence]. This ambivalence in turn creates more anxiety in their daughters and provokes attempts by these daughters to break away. This spiral, laden as it is with ambivilence, leaves mother and daughter convinced that any separation between them will bring disaster to both" ( The Reproduction of Mothering , Berkeley, U of California P, 1978, 135). In your view, does "White Oleander" bear out Chodorow's analysis or does the film challenge this analysis or both? Be sure to use specific scenes or relationships as depicted in the movie to back up your argument.

After viewing the reading the article by Chodorow and watching the film “White Oleander,” it is evident that the movie seemed to be very similar, in theory, to that of the reading. Although the plot in the movie was very drawn out and intriguing, it seemed to follow a very similar structure to the book. At the same time, there were certain issues addressed in the reading that were not addressed in the movie. “White Oleander” is about a relationship between a mother and her daughter. Like the reading, we can see where the mother is trying to instill her own personal set of values and beliefs to her daughter. It does not matter whether these values follow society’s moral code or not, she is trying to teach Ingrid what she knows. In addition to teaching her, she tries to show her how to deal with real-life issues. The relationship Ingrid has with her mother is just as important. She looks up to her ideals and, for a large part of her life, blindly follows her lead. No matter how wrong society says it is nor how much trouble it gets her into, Ingrid follows her mother’s ways. Throughout the first half of the movie we see her following. Mid-way through, we can see Chodorow’s theory come into action. As she is getting older, she is getting rebellious. She begins to question the things told by her mother. She begins to make her own decisions and does everything she can to go against her mother’s grain. It is this rebellion that starts the downfall of their relationship. After their mother-daughter relationship beings to downgrade, it very quickly becomes a battle between them. Ingrid is struggling to find her way in life and at the same time is trying to steer away from her mother’s direction. This lands her in trouble as we can see when she tries to rebel so much that she ends up making rash decisions just to be troublesome. This is seen in the scene where Ingrid visits her mother in jail in black makeup wearing very revealing clothing and smoking. This is the breaking point of their relationship where Ingrid seems to be sick and tired of her mother’s misguided direction. The movie does a great job of showing mother-daughter relationships but does not speak on father-son, or mother-son relationships. In this sense, it does not address the issue of parents from a masculine point of view. The only central male roles is the man who Ingrid’s mother kills or Ingrid’s lover. The issue of masculinity is only addressed through the point of view of a woman. The movie is a very empowering feminist movie. It does a good job of expressing extreme feminism along with finding one’s female identity the hard way. Although it does not address men, it is not supposed to. It clearly shows how woman can be empowering and the mistakes they make and lessons they learn on the road to finding themselves and their place in society. c. What was "the problem that has no name" as Betty Friedan articulated it in 1963? How would you define "the problem that has no name" either for your own LSU cohort of 2009 or for whatever years you were in highschool? Why does this problem have no name? How would you go about solving your cohort's problem? (Cohort = peer group, defined by age, race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.)