Paula's Taco Salad

Effing delish. It reminds me of all the summer grilling parties in Mt. P! Anyway, her "secret" was to use Doritos and to make sure not to stir everything together until immediately before eating... which is why my version is also wonderful. Plus I used the low-cal Western dressing. Yes, it's white-trash-tastic.

Javier Bardem? Yes Please!

Many found the story inspiring, many found it patronizing. I hate Julia Roberts, but I'm still waiting patiently for the film version of "Eat, Pray, Love." The release date is August 13th and people are already bitching about it... read here! Anyway, maybe I'll re-read the book this summer so I can decide whether or not it will still have the impact on me that I thought it did back in 2007. Now to find my copy... oh wait, I lent it to some illiterate hoe-bag. Oops.

Sweatshop warriors: Immigrant women workers take on the global factory By Miriam Ching Yoon Louie

Ok, not sure what I'm reading so I'll try for most of it =)





Looking at Louie's text, I found that the intricate stories of the Chinese, Korean, and Mexican immigrant women workers permeated deeply. On p. 3 Louie acknowledged that "the powerful and the priviledged often stifle these women's voices."

Other points that I latched on to (and can also serve to augment my research interests) are as follows:

- subcontracting through immigrant women workers is carried through in many industries globally and non-globalized locally-based sectors (e.g. food processing, restaurants, service, etc.)

- the global sweatshop pyramid of exploitation comes clothed in the specific gender, race, class, and national garments of its workers, subcontractors, and elit (p. 6)

- Louie (p. 11) generated 5 main themes from the women's stories:

a. the women worked in their homelands, within economies that have been increasingly integrated
into the global sweatshop

b. the women migrated to urban centers inside their rapidly industrialized countries, and to the
US, the country whose dominance has so deeply influenced the destinies of their homelands

c. the women worked in the sweathsop segments of the US labor market

d. the women chronicled the painful yet liberating process through which they changed from being
sweatshop industry workers to sweatshop warriors

e. the women helped build workers' centers that enabled them to both resist the oppressions they
face and begin to fashion new ways to work, live, think, and create

Some questions:

What is a 'sweatshop' and how can Western perspectives influence that definition?

How/why is the turn from 'workers' to 'warriors' significant?

What changes have we witnessed since the publication of this text?

Does Louie ever run the risk of romanticizing the discourses of immigrant women workers due in part because of her anecdotal writing style? Why or why not? Can this be detrimental to her argument? Expound.

Chpts. 1 & 3 Global Sex Workers

In Chpt. 1, Doezema does a good job situating the notion of "choice" that continues to underly most of our discussions of women's empowerment. Also, interestingly, I found his arguments well-established by associating them with the 1995 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing. I've done a lot of analysis of Hillary Rodham Clinton's monumental speeches over that weekend. They were very powerful at the time and still remain stellar examples of feminist rhetoric. Portions of her talks can be found here (if interested.)

Ok, sorry about the tangent... moving on. Doezema argues that the voluntary/forced dichotomy of analyzing sex workers the the wrong theoretical approach because it does not serve the human rights initiatives that sex worker activists set out to strive for. The history of prostitution internationally was helpful, talking about the move from Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW) and beyond to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (arguing that prostitution itself is a human rights violation.) The wording of the phrase prostitution as a matter of personal choice and a form of work was also addressed from the perspectives of the abolitionist, the regulationist, and anti-trafficking groups. We can read that there are several assumptions associated with the words within the phrase:

prostitute as fallen woman

prostitute is reliant on vices, abused, weak, vane, a victim, or stupid

prostitute as agent who willingly chooses her occupation was unimaginable

prostitute as a coerced innocent (children, poor, debt-bonded, and sexless (thus beyond guilt))

"the most frightening division created by the voluntary/forced dichotomy is that of sex workers into guilty/"voluntary" and innocent/"forced" prostitutes, which reinforces the belief that women who transgress sexual norms deserve to be punished" (p. 42)

In Chapt. 3, Bindman quickly investigates her unique perspective on slavery in the sex industry. Drawing upon the beliefs of Anti-Slavery International, we see that the major characteristics of slavery are violent (impunity, death, loss of freedom) and closely related to the lack of citizenship rights while also paralleling prostitution in many forms.

Bindman argues, "An employment or labor perspective, designating prostitution as sex work, can bring this work into the mainstream debate on human, women's and workers' rights" (pp. 65-66) We see that there are many connections with this framework and our own discussions regarding global feminisms. Some questions that she poses can reverberate within our talks:

Can we tell such people what they may or may not do?

Do they deserve anything less than the best possible conditions sought for other workers?

Can we tell them that we would take away their power to choose this occupation, maybe condemning them to worse conditions in another field?

Utensils Are Like Pants...

Who needs them? That's kind of what I was thinking when I mixed together some tomatoes and mozzarella yesterday. I felt like eating this whole dish... considering this was the only good thing about the day:

Trying to figure out this computer business.... off to brave the circus =(

The Whiter the Bread the Quicker You're Dead

That's what they say... and I know I need more fiber... so I made this:

Broccoli slaw salad with Thai peanut dressing. Yum.

Just thought I would share. Also, my laptop is trying to destroy my life and rob me of all my cash... so if I seem really unproductive and/or distant it's because I have not much contact with the the technological aspect of my life (which is a good portion of it) for the next few days until it gets fixed. This should make for an interesting presentation on Tuesday.

Never again will I let myself have such an epic, monumental "freak out" as I did last night. Never shedding another tear over a lifeless POS. Only robot tears from now on. Oh yeah, and I FUCKING HATE YOU DELL COMPUTER SYSTEMS!

Ok, moving forward. Going to finish my coursework on a high note... even if I have to do the brunt of it from Jerome (ironically on a Dell.)

Chpt. 11 Feminism/Postmodernism/Development

It struck me in the overview of this book that the main premise was "attempting a workable communication between Western theory and Third World practice." Hmmmmm well we'll see how that pans out with Rathgeber's writing:




The move to replace the word "women" with "gender" constituted the Women in Development (WID) approach led to the Gender and Development (GAD) approach.

An example of a policy can be found at the Australian Agency for International Development... obviously since 1997 this type of policy has undergone many changes, hence the turn toward the GAD approach. We can see this evidenced by NGOs such as the International Center for Research on Women.

Needless to say, this was a really boring read. I was hoping to gain a better perspective about the movements toward ACTION, but the chapter sort of lacked that emphasis. Anyway, here are a few pertinent concepts that I gathered:

projects undertaken from a GAD perspective will allow for more indigenous voices to be heard (p. 220)

the condition (practical gender interests) and position (strategic gender interests) of women (p. 206)

the situation of women is that of many power relations (p. 207)

gender and technology issues are the locus of many GAD opportunities (p. 216-217)

So, from a postmodern feminist perspective, why is this turn significant? Where is the "action" implicated?

Ok, gotta go. Can't wait to briefly address this Tuesday.

Oops I Forgot.... Everyone is Loco

I just stumbled back across this in my inbox... and thought I would share it now:


Subject: A dog's mind
From: tracku [email omitted to protect the "innocent"]
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010 6:53 PM
To:Jenny Anne Armentrout

So, I've finished my masters in communication studies. Defended my thesis fall semester. I'm cruising around, looking for erudite-sounding stuff to put in my statement of teaching philosophy (looking for comm studies jobs, of course), and DAMN! I really don't want to be sleep-shanked, so I am exercising considerable restraint on the plagiarism front, but...have I said this?...Damn! This has to be the single most creative (is that overstating?) title I've ever laughed over. And yes, it's a question that I see running through my dog's mind every time we go for a run.

I've never been to Bowling Green, but I once hitchhiked across (well, halfway across) the country and got a ride with a professor from Bowling Green U in a bright green Volkswagon beetle. He gave me a ride for, oh, probably two days, hundreds of miles, and a strange, fascinating elixer of conversation. Don't know his name or what he taught, but if you see a guy driving a bright green VW bug, please hug him, thank him for me, and then just walk away. It'll completely freak him out. Course, this was almost 30 years ago, so...

I am, of course, putting off this writing project, thus my pressing need to write to you right now - when I should be composing my own teaching philosophy rendition. But, seriously, after reading your title - the rest of it was pretty good, too, but that title! - how can I hope to compete? My only hope is that you're not competing with me for comm studies teaching jobs next fall...but you probably are. Oh well, I'm older and wiser, and I thought I was creativer than most, but - not to be redundant, but damn!

So, basically, I'm just writing to say I like your style, your spunk (I hate that word, but it "communicates"), your bullshittishness. If I were on the hiring committee with a choice between someone whose teaching philosophy was entitled "My Teaching Philosophy" versus "Should I eat that...?," you'd have the job and I wouldn't even have to read the rest of it! I realize that's your blog's name and not just your TP title, but you could apply it to just about anything. I'm thinking about lettering it onto my favorite t-shirt.

Wish me luck on my teaching-job search, if we're not competing for the same jobs. You'll have shinier letters in your honorific (mine is B.A.-M.A.-M.A, sounds like Banana or Obama, or maybe a combo), so we're probably going after different jobs (I just sent a cv to a junior college in Texas!), so it's safe to wish me luck.

Hope we can be long-distance correspondence-ers. :)

Seeya!
[Name omitted to protect the "innocent"]
University of Montana



So did you all read this? Seriously WTF? Next thing I know I'll be getting emails from Phil Coultrip begging for that laptop password! As long as I don't find anything more disgusting... or weird... or crazy amidst all my other messages. It's sort of like finding a pile of cat puke in the morning. Or this:

Nevertheless unsettling =(

Nothing Rhymes with February

I hate this month. I don't know if I mentioned that lately... but I'm trying to turn this frown upside down. I'm doing something a little insane to rail against the monotony. So here's my plan: I'm adhering to the Lenten tradition of giving up a part of my lifestyle (and then other things as long as it becomes a part of my routine.) No, I'm sure as hell not doing this for religious purposes, but it's always a good mechanism for roping myself into some illusion of "diligence" and a way to challenge myself. For the next 40 days I'm going to get in the zone of not ingesting any food after 7p.

That's it. I know, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but it is for me.

Already gave up cigarettes (and by the beginning of May I won't be able to smoke in MI at all.)

Hardly drink anymore.

Only eat.

So, I'll wrangle that in again for a while. NO SUSTENANCE AFTER 7P.

Ok, lot's of work to do. Just finished the presentation for the DESIRE Diversity workshop at Otterbein on Tues:

Desire Scholars Workshop Presentation

View more presentations from guest649d6d.

On to more writing. Maybe I'll pinch out a stupid little "work of art" for my Stats class too. But I hate it. And I plan to watch this in a few minutes to try and defrag (don't ask):

I miss everyone a lot, but I'm going to murder this month and then be home by March 3rd. Ciao xo

"April in the D" 2010 Theme Song Contest

Every spring when the prime sports season kicks off in Detroit, FOX Sports hosts a song contest for the village idiots to offer their pathetic musical stylings for various promotional commercials. Seriously foolish attempts... even shittier than last year's Good Luck Joes song. Here are my picks (prepare to laugh your ass off):

Americans Are Assholes

I didn't just figure this out, but I thought I'd remind everyone. It's important that we dwell on this fact.

Scrumptious

This orgasmic panini was blessed by 8lb 6oz baby Jesus (hence the heavenly aura in the background.) It made for the best brunch ever. Mozzarella. Tomato. Peppercorn turkey. Spinach. Black Olive tapenade. Mayo. Sourdough.

Haven't smoked in 8 days. That is all.