You've Changed

A special xmas treat, a new Sia video! this video is too cute for words...remember high school? its always fun to look back in that dusty year book and see how much 'you've changed' or how much your style has evolved or ugh not evolved...

speaking of change...

One really great thing about feminist language is tracing its semantics through time, for instance, a good friend requested "women who run with the wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. The first thing i noticed while skimming through it ( at the womens bookstore where you should do all your xmas shopping) was how incredibly dated the language and ideologies were. According to Estes, "wolves and women share a psychic bond in their fierceness, grace and devotion to mate and community." What caught me the most was not only its rampant anthropomorphism but its use of the feminine and masculine. This text at the time was labeled 'feminist' and revolutionary for women trying to break away from patriarchy and reclaim a 'natural' fierce spirit. Although the act of reclaiming language and masculine qualities can be a very feminist and sometimes even a subversive act. however, the notion of reclaiming strength through gender specific terms can be problematic, because it perpetuates a gender binary that oppresses/ignores the social construction of gender and its various forms of deviations and performances.

One thing that i can see change for the better in the trajectory of feminist semantics is how problematic it can be to label feminine/masculine qualities as natural and innately developed, bad science and really bad psychology only perpetuates this notions of the natural feminine/masculine...so what am really trying to get? (nothing really its five a.m and i cant sleep!) is how the ordinary evolution of our languages and cultural sensitivities no longer need to depend on gender binaries. So Feminism, you don't need to compare women and wolves in order to challenge patriarchy and reclaim agency and strength, you can now overcome the gender binary to talk about performance and social construction... so i guess 'you've changed!'

ps. how cute is Sia!