❝Since gender is an effect of culturally coded markers of behavior and style that are only presumed to be the natural attributes of one sex rather than the other, then passing as feminine pertains to males and females equally, as does passing as masculine. To put this differently, a cross-dressed male is to a feminine female not as copy is to original, but rather as copy is to copy. And, ultimately, the original is revealed to be “nothing than a parody of the idea of the natural and the original” (Butler 1990:31). In this connection … “original gender” is a matter of a stock character, such as the Good Wife, Wise Mother, or the trademark style of a particular actor: composite forms or pastiches, which can only ever be approximated.
— Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan
Drugs class notes
War on Drugs
- A form of moral panic framing drugs as the cause of a bad phenomenon
- Nixon declared the War on Drugs in a desperate attempt to hold onto power; arose out of the tumult of domestic unrest of the 60’s, era of hyper-conformity via capitalism and consumerism
- Drugs became the scapegoat for all social unrest
Etymological connection between word for drug and scapegoat
- Pharmakos (scapegoat) vs. pharmakon (drug)
- In literary theory, the presence of a scapegoat presupposes the presence of a tyranny (or tyrannical impulse)
- i.e. Nazi Germany: Hitler (tyrant) and Jewish people (scapegoat)
❝A growing number of economists have become convinced that a comprehensive child care system is not only a worthwhile investment, but also an essential one. James Heckman, the Nobel-winning economist, has calculated that, in the best early childhood programs, every dollar that society invests yields between $7 and $12 in benefits. When children grow up to become productive members of the workforce, they feed more money into the economy and pay more taxes. They also cost the state less—for trips to the E.R., special education, incarceration, unemployment benefits, and other expenses that have been linked to inadequate nurturing in the earliest years of life.
…
The lack of quality, affordable day care is arguably the most significant barrier to full equality for women in the workplace. It makes it more likely that children born in poverty will remain there. That’s why other developed countries made child care a collective responsibility long ago.
❝Last-minute cinco de mayo!
— A, on tonight’s festivities
❝I look like a camel.
— A, upon applying mascara for the first time
❝For cross-dressing to truly frustrate binary thinking, the element of serious parody (as opposed to comedy) must also be mobilized, whereby the appearance of conformity becomes a challenge to conformity: in performing credibly as a woman, a male implicitly reveals gender itself as a type of artifice and performance and not a natural, uniform, original fact of female or male bodies.
— Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan
