Reading Response to Atwood
Margaret Atwood has a way of creating futuristic universes in which society is fairly technologically advanced but gender norms and roles are backward. The non-egalitarian treatment of women in The Year of the Flood reminds me of the mistreatment of women in Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, albeit a little less strict. In both books, men are more powerful than women, and it’s socially acceptable for men to mistreat women. Toby highlights her father’s faithfulness to and love for her mother by his dedication to caring for her in a society in which men divorced their wives, something “a lot of men did when something too debilitating and expensive struck their wives” (Atwood, 2009, 27). Men like Blanco, Toby’s boss at SecretBurgers, and Mordis, Ren’s boss at Scales and Tales, are both men who are in a charge of a workforce of women and both are in positions that involve objectifying and sexualizing their female employees; except sexual harassment and coerced sex are not a part of the SecretBurgers manager’s job description, Blanco just brings a little something extra to the table.
Side note: I was just a little repulsed at how women were equated to products. Mordis described the appeal of sleazy clubs because it “separated our brand from the run-of-the-mill product the guy could get at home, with the face cream and the white cotton panties” (Atwood, 7). So the “cleanest dirty girls in town” of Scales and Tails were the exciting and “better product”, while wives and women who wore white cotton panties were the pedestrian and inferior “product” (Atwood, 7). Pigs.
Although Toby mentioned the Gardeners’ opposition to words, I wasn’t struck by the irony of the technologically advanced, but illiterate society until 60 pages in. Writing and the printing press are two of the earliest forms of technology, and they allowed for the widespread education and learning that led to other technological advances. If not for writing and the accessibility of books after the printing press, scientists and thinkers would have had a hard time learning the foundations of their fields, which allowed them to build on top of that knowledge to make new discoveries and advances. Amanda (Toby’s friend) slowly re-acquired her ability to express herself with written language by starting with one letter and slowly adding more to create words. The world of The Year of the Flood has knowledge of gene slicing and has created rakunks and green rabbits, but people didn’t have written language. Incroyable.
Reading Response (The Year of the Flood)
Maybe I was being overzealous, but while reading Margaret Atwood’s “The Year of the Flood” I couldn’t help but draw conclusions between Atwood’s Toby and Suzanne Collins’ Katniss. Both women find themselves in a situation that isolates them and in which they must draw strength and endurance to survive in the dystopian world they inhabit. Both women have been self-sufficient because of absent parents and both know how to wield weapons because of their fathers. The existence of gender roles in both worlds are questionable at best, but both women do not concede to our modern world’s traditional role of a woman.
From a macro point of view, both Toby and Katniss find themselves in catastrophes that they are told are honorable. Toby is told by the Gardeners that survival of the waterless flood is an honor and responsibility given by God to replenish the Earth with his animals and plants. Katniss is told by the Capitol that it is an honor to fight and represent her district in the games. However, it is clear that neither situation seems favorable or pleasant. Atwood’s description of Painball is also similar to the structure of the Hunger Games because it is a place of condemnation: a place where people go to die. Painball features a fight to the death in a forest, which is screened publicly for all to watch just like the Hunger Games. Come out alive of either and the victors are numbingly changed and respected. (Although in Painball, one is respected and feared while in the Hunger Games, one is respected and celebrated).
It’s a spontaneous parallel, but I’ll continue to keep it in mind while reading devouring “The Year of the Flood”.
Reading Response 10/24
I had a really good time reading the first few chapters of Year of the Flood. I thought it was really interesting to note the balance between the futuristic and archaic aspects of the Gardeners society, a balance that’s very similar to our modern day world. When the Waterless Flood hits Atwood structures the book so that we are subconsciously comparing Ren and Tobys journeys, how they got to the Garden and what they’re doing after the flood. Both characters express their gratitude of surviving, how Toby feels like she survived for a reason and is searching for her purpose while Ren is enjoying her job at Scales and Tails. Toby was essentially rescued by the Gardeners from struggling on the streets, donating her eggs to strangers, and being raped by her boss every day at a sleazy fast food joint. Although she didn’t agree with their beliefs, she was protected and enjoyed the serenity of her life teaching holistic medicine. all this Toby was living an ordinary life. She was enrolled in college, she has a boyfriend, and a family that was comfortable and loved her, but her experiences turned her cold and hard, so that she was constantly questioning why she even survived and what her bigger purpose is. even though she didn’t agree with their beliefs, she was protected and enjoyed the serenity of her life teaching holistic medicine.
Ren on the other hand was taken from a “good” life by her mothers doing, not because she was driven by the need to survive. Ren longed for her life before joining the Gardeners and coveted the trendy clothing, the flashy jewelry, the eccentric objects that they the “pleebrats” had lifted. She longed to be part of that world, so naturally Ren would find comfort in Scales and Tails, the gentleman’s club. Ren speaks about feeling lucky to be there, to be cared for, to find family–something she was constantly looking for, since leaving her father. Ren never questioned why she was there or what she was doing, she was content with her place…her connection the outside world was through Amanda, just like it has always been ever since she was on the rooftop and Amanda was living in the streets.
It’s a very frightening thought to question what your purpose is, to feel like you were placed on this earth for a reason, spared your life for a reason, a reason that you don’t know. It’s also frightening to know that it might take a natural disaster, a near-death experience, a not so colorful future to realize that what you’re doing right now isn’t what you’re meant to be doing… that you’ve got your whole life backwards. I think Atwood does an incredible job of using this dark, kind of weird, futuristic world to teach us lessons that can be applied to our society, to our everyday lives.
Googling Women
Inspired by Cynthia’s forum post on a new UN public service campaign, I decided to try it myself. Here’s what I got. Add yours!
Reading Response 10/24
For me, part of the appeal of reading dystopian fiction such as The Year of the Flood is grasping the minute details of the new and futuristic, but not really far off, world. The systems, structures, hierarchies, and even products found in these dystopian worlds all contain references to present-day “real life” world and ingrained in these usually extreme (or arguably not really) versions seems to be a warning. One aspect of the dystopian world in The Year of the Flood that intrigued me was the concept of identity especially in the context of the work of Butler, Haraway, and Halberstam we read so far. After her mother dying and her father committing suicide, Toby was straddled with the numerous debts from her mother’s medical treatments as well as having to explain her father’s death via an illegal weapon. Toby opted for covering up her father’s death/ disappearance and orchestrating her own disappearance. She was able to “burn” her identity, which is not farfetched especially if you watch way too much police procedural television shows like me (at some point, witness protection will always be bought up…). However, she was not able to “buy a new one – not even a cheap one,” which is implied entails at least a “DNA infusion,” “skin-colour change,” and etc. (Atwood, 2009, p.30).
The concept that identity can be erased and that physical procedures and products can be bought to create a new one is intriguing. In light of Haraway and Halberstam and even in our present-day world, this concept is not really radical. Literal bodily modification like plastic surgery is becoming a norm in our world. While we arguably claim that DNA and fingerprints to be the physical essence of our individual identity, what is to say that these characteristics are not also inherently unstable and can be modified. The fact that in Atwood’s dystopian world that these seemingly physical essences of individual identity can be changed for a price brings up the issue of the instability of identity (especially gender) as well the technology involved in fashioning it is bought up in pieces by Haraway and Halberstam. These products and procedures also bring up the question of whether or not if there is an essential identity (usually sans technology) can be found. Phrases like “technology of sex” and “technology of gender” have been bought up in our class, but it is possible that “technology of identity,” which is quite literal in Atwood’s dystopia, is an overarching theme to be explored.
At the same time, the concept of identity in Atwood’s world seems to be tied to knowledge, especially systematically collected knowledge. The purpose of these products and procedures to physically change one’s identity is done in the context of the CorpSeCorp’s system of controlling the population. Not far fetched from the paper trail and increasingly virtual trail in tracking people in our world, it is implied that the CorpSeCorp would have knowledge of an individual’s DNA, fingerprints, life histories, and etc., which is then utilized for control. This is implied in what is considered the greatest sin according to God’s Gardeners, which is slanted as against CorpSeCorp and its accompanying principles, is the sin of desiring too much knowledge. Likewise, a reoccurring principle the gardeners teach is to “Beware of words. Be careful what you write. Leave no trails.” (Atwood, 2009, p. 6). The notion that identity is tied with trackable and collectable (written) knowledge is implied. This idea is then played with in Amanda’s art pieces of appearing and disappearing words…
Reading Response: Atwood
Atwood’s The Year of the Flood is a dystopia, so it is always interesting to see what authors do with gender and gender roles in these novels. In this futuristic world, it seems that gender relations have only gotten worse from the present day.
Toby’s experiences working at SecretBurger are horrible and worse off than what goes on currently. Though there is certainly sexual harassment in the workplace, it is possible to report it to the police or file a lawsuit and know that something can be done. She has absolutely no choice, and no one cares if she lives or dies. I wonder if this is because she is a female, making it a gender issue, or if it’s because she is not part of a Compound, and therefore not important.
It was also interesting to note the amount of casual sexist insults that are used by the boys Shackie and Croze, who also persistently bother Amanda, saying she “owes” them sex. Sex seems to be something Amanda knows how to trade.
There is clearly a lot of prostitution going on, although it seems as if the girls are treated better than one can imagine they are being treated today. They wear the body suits to protect them from disease, and aren’t supposed to be harmed.
This world that Atwood portrays, although futuristic, seems to be a dangerous place for women, more so than men. Perhaps a lot of it is supposed to serve as social commentary on the conditions of women now. The sexism is more blatant, the violence more prevalent, and the prostitution more accessible, but it all seems eerily familiar.
Reading Response: Atwood
As someone with minimal experience with Science Fiction or Fantasy literature, delving into Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood has been really invigorating for me. Familiarizing myself with the foreign vernacular, behaviors and belief systems of The Gardeners keeps me on my feet; as I read I’m continuously adding to a mental Venn diagram comparing their society with ours. And yet, despite the challenge of keeping track of all these distinctions, the strangeness of their world has an exciting and liberating effect on me as a reader; I like that it provides such an easy escape from reality.
Still, I’m conflicted by the appeal of The Gardener’s lifestyle and what I consider their detestable belief systems. In other words, the anarchist farmer in me would love to squat an abandoned building decked out with a rooftop garden, beehives, mushroom dens, etc., living simply and harmoniously with my environment. And yet, I don’t think I’d tolerate the social atmosphere of The Gardener community for more than a few days. My skepticism towards organized religion surely plays a part, but I’m critical for deeper reasons as well: the drastic power imbalance and social stratification of members, for one, and the fact that this hierarchy is corroborated by their insistence on “avoiding the original sin of desiring too much knowledge” (102). In other words, faith and acceptance are encouraged over epistemological endeavors.
Another alarming aspect of Gardener lifestyle is their upholding of superficial gender binaries. Even though we have only encountered female narrators so far in the novel, it is clear that men are the subjects of their community and women the objects. Indeed, this characteristic highlights some of the more frustrating similarities between our cultures, which for fantasy’s sake, I would have hoped had been overcome in theirs. I’m grateful, at least, that Toby, one of the primary narrators, shares my skepticism and resistance to their indoctrinating ways, as is revealed by her response to the following interaction with fellow Gardener Nuala:
“You’ll want to grow your hair,” said Nuala. “Get rid of that scalped look. We Gardener women all wear our hair long.” When Toby asked why, she was given to understand that the aesthetic preference was God’s. This kind of smiling, bossy sanctimoniousness was a little too pervasive for Toby . . . (46)
Indeed, Gardener values are rife with contradiction. For example, while they manipulated Toby’s fear from her sexual enslavement from Blanco to get her to join their cult in the first place, once a member, their addressing of sexual harassment shifted toward utter laxity. When Toby approaches Pilar, with whom she has a relatively close bond, about Mugi sexually assaulting her, Pilar’s response is coded and non-committal: “We never make a fuss about such things . . . There’s no harm in Mugi really. He’s tried that on more than one of us – even me, some years ago . . . The ancient Australopithecus can come out in all of us. You must forgive him in your heart” (104). Because Pilar’s response is seriously problematic in a wide variety of ways, I will focus simply on its reflection of The Gardener’s hypocritical tendencies. They show zero tolerance for meat-eating, for instance, despite such behavior being present in our Australopithecines ancestors, but non-consensual sexual acts warrant, in their opinion, not just acceptance, but forgiveness.
Reading Response (10/3)
Although at times I felt Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” was a bit far-reaching, her main point that we are all cyborgs was an unconventional twist on how we interact with machinery and technology. I have to agree that since we are so dependent on technology that we’ve become half-organic, half-machine in the way that we cannot function as a society without either half. The half-machine part of us is our constant connectedness to our electricity, the Internet, mass media, etc. Even the technologically basic pen is something we interact with that suddenly makes us a cyborg.
Haraway looks onto the near future (or maybe even the present) of how today’s machine’s are disturbingly lively compared to us, who are disturbingly inert. The common belief is that machine could never overtake man, but our social anxiety on the subject says otherwise. Just the number of movies about machine takeover speak to our fear that one day our own Frankenstein’s monsters will seek vengeance upon us. One of my favorite movies, “The Matrix”, is built on the premise that in a post-apocalyptic world, machines have taken over the world and are breeding humans for energy. But, if man builds machine, how is it possible for them to ever become self-sufficient and sentient? Well, from an arguably paranoid perspective, as machine is replacing man’s work and efforts we are increasingly relying on their performance and not our own. Instead of fearing the day the machine takes over, we should fear the day that machine no longer works. As we continue to exacerbate the imbalance between nature and technology, it becomes more obvious how we pit them against one another.
Judith Halberstam’s “Automating Gender” raises a similar issue concerning cybernetics. Her take on Apple’s logo of the bitten into apple as the digitalization of knowledge as sin, the bite becoming the byte, was enlightening. In this way, both Haraway and Halberstam claim that the cyborg is gendered female yet she represents intelligence, reason, and innovation. The way gender and technology is linked seems to be by fear of the “other”. In the patriarchy, woman and technology are bastardizations of men, inferior and irrational yet controllable to a certain extent. Both writers further this binary between human and machine, between male and female, yet interweaving infinitely. Just like computers and machines imitate behavior, gender is also constructed on a learned behavior that we come to imitate.
Brograms and #Femfuture Reading Response
I think Hicks brings up a very good point that we shouldn’t take lightly the perception of others simply because we think that they aren’t the majority or that these brogrammer’s output isn’t significant. Stereotyping is exactly what has caused this gender difference and people’ s perception need to be changed, not left alone. It’s sad that even today we are surrounded by these stereotypes and how engineering and computer science jobs are mostly comprised of men. Hicks is right though, jobs and activities have been feminine and masculine code and it would seem out of the norm for others to see one stepping into the territory of another. Only a couple years ago, male nurses would have been a very weird thing to people but now it’s totally normal. I think these perceptions can be changed with time.
In class today we talked about online activism and I feel these articles we read are a good example of how even if they aren’t out there protesting they are spreading feminism in another way. Teaching others about what’s going on and spreading awareness is important because the people you are spreading these issues to might be able to go out there and protest and do something about it physically even if you yourself can’t. For example Hicks talks about the hashtags on twitter surrounding women’s advancement in STEM fields. It may not seem significant that they are hashtagging thesse terms but someone out there might wonder why something like #changetheratio is trending and might decide to look up the issue.
I think Dzodan brings up a good point that even within feminism there is this separation between what people hope to gain due to their upbringing and the environment around them. Women from one country are experiencing totally different inequalities compared to women from another country. There may be overlapping concerns that are central but there are still a lot of issues that are ignored to the area being more isolated. For example the United States is a lot more vocal and the concerns of women from the United States are probably heard a lot more compared to a small developing country. It shows how we have to take the bigger picture of feminism and break it down so that we can address different issues. I think online feminism may be key for communication between women in different countries to share their different concerns.
Halberstam/Haraway Reading Response
I find both Haraway’s and Halberstam’s view on cyborgs and the way technology has affected women very interesting. Haraway’s reading is filled with metaphors and comparisons. I think it helped that I read Halberstam’s reading Haraway’s since she simplifies and explains parts of Haraway’s work in her own work. I really like how Halberstam’s reading connected both the readings together for me.
One of points I found interesting was when Haraway says, “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.” This goddess refers to this idealistic image given to women, how they should behave, ideal way to look, gender roles etc. And this cyborg is the outcome of what technology has done to feminism. In our readings, I would say they would both agree the female cyborg is somewhat robotic yet human at the same time. When I thought about whether or not I would want to be a goddess or cyborg, I honestly didn’t know what to pick. Would I want to be oppressed into a role and image or would I want to be living a life that may not necessarily seem like a quality life where I would just focus on work. I ultimately picked the cyborg since I would probably already be considered one by Haraway with my dependence on technology.
It’s also interesting to see how cultural feminists see the automated gender as male science. The female cyborg is seen by some a symbol of male technological aggression against woman. I’ve never actually seen it that way and it’s quite interesting to see it from their lenses. People always say we live in a world created by men. These female cyborgs in a sense are being shaped by the development of technology which is essentially a male dominated field. I could see how people could see how these female cyborgs are being created by men essentially but I honestly think seeing technology as an aggression against women is entering paranoia.
I was also intrigued by Halberstam’s opening with the concerns of technology. The first concern of how computer may be taught to stimulate thought is already happening, but I’m not sure if it’s really much of a concern really. Robots will never be able to tears and simply emote like a human being would. There’s always the risk of a robot being too emotional and malfunctioning. The second concern being robots replacing human in the workplace. It simply doesn’t make sense for me that robots would eventually replace humans in the workplace. How would society even function? What do people do all day? How do people get money if they’re not working? All I can think about is unemployment skyrocketing and the government being totally against this idea.
