For Your Reading Pleasure
07 Mar 2011 4 Comments
I can’t post this on my regular blog but wanted to share . . .
It has NOTHING to do with Tiger Mother
This is an article that my tunnel-visioned, feminist professor had us read as we studied Frankenstein . . .
The author suggests that fiction is written for male pleasure because the plot structure resembles the male sexual experience (you know the little mountain drawing–rising action, climax, falling action). I’ll just share the 1st paragraph.
“I would like to begin with the proposition that female orgasm is unnecessary. I am not, of course, saying that it is unnecessary to any particular woman that she experience orgasm or, for that matter, to any particular man that his female partner do so; rather, I mean that women’s orgasm and, by extension, women’s pleasure can be extraneous to that culmination of heterosexual desire which is copulation. Women’s pleasure can take place outside, or independent of, the male sexual economy whose pulsations determine the dominant culture, its repressions, its taboos, and its narratives, as well as the ‘human sciences’ developed to explain them. Considering the last decade’s preoccupation with sexual difference and the pleasure of the text, it is surprising that theories concerned with the relation between narrative and pleasure have largely neglected to raise the issue of the difference between women’s and men’s reading pleasure.”
Something I Worry About
07 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Tiger Mother
Eliana recently posted something related to this on her regular blog.
On page 21-22 Chua talks about the generational slide into worthlessness. ”Because of the hard work of their parents and grandparents, this generation will be born into the great comforts of the upper middle class. . . . They will have wealthy friends who get paid for B-pluses. . . . Finally and most problematically, they will feel that they have individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and therefore be much more likely to disobey their parents and ignore career advice. In short, all factors point to this generation being headed straight for decline.”
When I was young, I HAD to have a job or I didn’t get school clothes and mechanical pencils and make-up. I got the cheap-o jeans and cheap-o, wooden pencils. I worked my way through college because my parents couldn’t pay for it. I had to share with my brothers. I slept in the same bed with every single one of them because that’s all there was–at one point Kellen, Troy, and I shared a full bed because there were 5 kids, 2 parents, and 3 bedrooms. My first car was a 1989 -station wagon but since I was the only one of my friends with a car, I was cool. I got one-on-0ne time with my mom when I turned 25. And yes, I did walk to school uphill both ways in snow up to my waist. But all of these things made me tough and thankful and they gave me perspective.
Isaac will have more than I did. He already has more in his college fund than I had when I was 18. I’m worried that it will be too hard to make him do chores, have a job, go without because he’ll know that it’s artificially created suffering inflicted on him by his parents. Like right now he’s sitting on my lap, playing with my hands because it’s too boring to sit on the floor and play with his toys. The other day I thought, “I need to have six more kids RIGHT NOW so that I don’t ruin this one.” That way scarcity will be real and we’ll all just have to learn to deal with it–but hopefully we’ll all be happy and have great perspective in the end.
I Am Tiger Mother!
07 Mar 2011 1 Comment
in Tiger Mother
I’m not much of a tiger mother–just ask my spoiled rotten baby who just has to look at me with his pathetic little starving eyes and he gets fed. He just has to coo and he gets picked up. Roll over? Who needs to do that when your mother will do it for you.
BUT
The other day we had a moment that would have made Amy Chua and Eliana proud. I was cleaning the kitchen and he was sitting in his high chair testing out his vocal skills. Suddenly the tone of his screams changed to angry, shrill little bursts. He’d shriek then look at me. When I didn’t react or come play with him, he’d shriek again. About two of those rotten little noises and I’d had it. ”Oh no you don’t!” I said. Then I grabbed him out of his chair and curled him into the you-will-go-to-sleep-if-it-kills-one-of-us position. Then he got really really mad but I wasn’t going to be bested by a rotten child. Finally he whimpered and gave in to sleep. How else do you discipline a 4 1/2 month old? The next day he tried his rottenness again. I just gave him one look and he calmed down. It was awesome.
