Overall the essay, “Who Needs Feminism When You Have Femininity?” by Folake Famuyiwa had a clear structure, it was coherent and well organized. I liked the hook she chose to include because it was a good transition from her abstract and also a solid start to her introduction paragraph. The essay provided a compelling analysis and description of their chosen community’s cultural norms of behavior. She had a strong social-scientific interpretation of the subreddit group titled  ‘RedPillWomen’a group of women who believe in many traditionalist conservative views. The author showed an ethnographic perspective by adopting multiple different points of view in your writing, she walks us through feminist ideology and history. She paints a description by pointing out biases: “RedPillWomen’s sidebar lacks any scientific backing behind why their concepts and strategies are full proof.” She also makes sure to include her voice by giving us her insight on the ways the redpillwomen communicate and fail to defend their beliefs. I would give it an A.

The specific patterns or trends that the author notes about the members of incel or “involuntary celibacy” are the reasons for joining the group, how the members share an age range, and the language in their ‘culture’. The group turned into an online community because its members had the same trend in facing rejection in their lives from women. Incel pertains to millennial males that range from the ages of 16-30. The article explains the pattern of difficulties with communicating to the opposite sex, and a member’s fear of rejection. In the group, they vent about their battles with bullying and low self-esteem. These introverted and awkward men found comfort in this support group with people facing the same isolation and loneliness. These patterns inform the insider experience of this community by exposing the language and pathos that the members use. Abe, for example, calls women “emotional tampons” to express his frustration from being dumped. They also have a pattern of acting unfriendly and defensive towards outsiders: “1,267 Braincels users found that about 90 percent of forum participants were under the age of 30. The users are almost all men — women are banned on sight.” A member named Miguel “was drawn to the community because he felt they were the only people who understood his experience,” this shows that despite being a virtual medium, the member’s mutual loneliness and misery indeed craves some type of validation from another member. Overall, the author analyzes how the community began as an innocent way for men to vent about their misfortune in love into an absolute misogynist and hateful group.

My reasons for choosing the online community of Bernie Sanders supporters because it is very relevant considering that we are only 7 months away from our next presidential election. I am not into politics that much, at least not like how I used to be before Trump was elected. I know people who love and adore Bernie. He has 4.8 million followers on Instagram and with a health crisis going on I wonder if his promise for free universal healthcare is enticing people. I’m very skeptical of all politicians but Bernie seems like a stand-up guy, I most likely will vote for him. I come from a single-parent working-class home and this may affect what Bernie policies I agree and disagree with. Having the privilege of being an American citizen ICE does not affect me personally however the inhumane treatment of immigrants and undocumented peoples indeed bother me. The subjective positions I have from growing up in public housing I feel like minimum wage should increase, and health care should be not only a right but free. My grandmother relies on government assistance such as social security and government health insurance such as Medicare and Medicaid. I am not aware of all the changes or promises Bernie has made in his campaign nor have I kept up with any debates or the primaries but he seems like he genuinely cares about poor and middle-class families. Sanders wants to move America’s energy system away from fossil fuels to combat global warming which is important to me because as a college student I have learned both in and out of school how serious this issue is for humanity.

The online community Wu is trying to portray are people diagnosed or self-diagnosed with factitious disorder. The text begins Wu describing how she felt while faking appendicitis symptoms: she “let his gentle words wash over my body, curled on a narrow gurney” and she is “left aching for more at the same time that I’m flooded with shame and fear.” (P143) The disorder is defined as someone who pretends to be sick and an extreme version of the disorder is called Munchausen syndrome, people fake illness and also self inflict harm for the act. She creates a verbal portrait of this community through imagery and by describing the posts on the thread. She explains the anxieties people with FD have about getting caught and she shares her fear. She mentions how people confess to their therapists and some people on the forum know someone with the disorder. She uses different online sources such as the Cleveland clinic foundation website, Dr.Feldman’s website, and Munchausen library. She cites statistics from professionals in the field such as Dr.Feldmen and uses his prognosis. She triangulates what she reads in the forum, her personal research, and her own subjective experience dealing with FD. She explains how open the Q&A environment on the forum is and how it is utilized by people who have loved ones that have “hard to detect conditions.” She also describes Dr.Feldman’s redundancy in promoting his book. The footnotes Wu provides give an organized list of her sources but also give background context on the factitious disorder.

Bethanie Corona

3/11/20

Post #3

Walking into the McDonald’s on 125th and Saint Nicholas the smell of fries and apple pie ran into my nostrils causing my mouth to water. I had been craving a cheeseburger and fries and I hadn’t had McDonald’s in a while. Once I walked in and saw the line I was perplexed because I was super hungry after class and I didn’t want to walk to the one nearest to my building in Brooklyn when I was already in one. The McDonald’s was packed with young middle schoolers and high school kids, families, strollers and some elderly with their canes and coffee. As I waited in the kiosk line, a young mom in front of me waiting to order was yelling at her kids to be mindful and not horse around. The mom gave them that look and they instantly stopped play fighting and began to chat about the toys displayed in the window on the wall, they planned about which one they hoped to get in their happy meals. After I ordered I realized how much the line was backed up clearly, the workers are just finishing up from a rush hour and I waited almost 30 minutes for my order. The person handling the brown bags with the orders next to the cashier was flustered and had to keep double-checking with customers if they had gotten their drinks and sauces. I sat down on a bench like a table as I waited and almost wobbled off because the seat was broken, luckily an older gentleman, with a salt and pepper beard who was sitting across from me was reading the newspaper, so I don’t think he noticed which saved some embarrassment. I got up and stood near the counter to wait for my order as I watched people walk in. Two young sisters around 14 years of age, were waiting and when they got their food they instantly sprinted out the door to get out of the suffocating space. I observed an older lady holding up the kiosk line because she couldn’t figure out how to use the new technology; people tried to help her but she inevitably gave up and went to the cashier to order. A mid-aged woman with a large personality and long bright fingernails began to complain about an odor and the line. Then she tells the struggling old lady that “she should of went to the cashier from the jump for all the time she spent in the kiosk.” Right after I finally got my food, I sat and ate.

The author, Jessica Presser, uses background information to introduce quotes her interviewee, Rosie, mentions: “According to Rosie, her parents were Cambodian refugees who came to America hoping for a better life and “got caught up with the, you know, material crap, and the nice cars, and the nightlife,’ she said.” Also, the author tries to be comical but I sort of found it a little condensing, blunt nonetheless. The author writes “according to Rosie” because her family did not respond to interview requests, and because Rosie is an admitted liar with multiple pending felony charges. Still, she is occasionally prone to offering up indisputable truths. “American culture is a little fucked up,” she mused. “You know?”)” The author does a good job showing this vividly through her words and using popular sex symbols in the media to describe the physic and looks of the strippers. She compares Samantha, the leader, to Jessica Rabbit, her lips as “Angelina Jolie puffy”; her hair is “Cleopatra black” that hid “tattoos of a cascade of stars running down her neck.” The author writes an intense description of the strip club environment, hierarchy, customers, clients, and police. Another part that’s condescending is when they all get caught, she writes, “Even without their hair and makeup, they were a sight to behold, four exotic birds chirping in a cage.” This line creates imagery. The language used clearly shows that overall people tend to succumb to greed and capitalism and materialism and crime and bad habits. The preview to the essay claims the strippers fro scores are hustlers that have a “modern Robin Hood story: the strippers who stole from (mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting men and gave to, well, themselves.” The descriptions of the testimonies from the cops help set the scene. The details provided by the author to describe how the strippers would actively lure and drug men were vivid.

James Baldwin’s essay highlights the injustices and discrimination in the late ’60s that are still very much present in today’s environment in 2020. Police brutality has not magically been erased, in fact reading this essay has given me a deeper understanding as to why people have certain attitudes toward the police. Baldwin compares the common up-town New York block as an “occupied territory” in order to compare racist policing to America’s trend of occupying foreign land in the name of colonization and imperialism. The fear and silencing of people of color fuel these unjust power structures of white America. Baldwin recognizes that in order for people to comprehend change, people need to know what in the system has to change; so he uses descriptive language to explain the Negro experience: “the government which can force me to pay my taxes and force me to fight in its defense anywhere in the world does not have the authority to say that it cannot protect my right to vote or my right to earn a living or my right to live anywhere I choose.” Baldwin presents two stories, one about the Harlem Six and another about another senseless common arrest of innocent citizens of color near a fruit stand in Harlem. These two stories are interchangeably the broken record of stories that define melanin as “criminal.” Baldwin incentivizes his audience to consider future generations and their treatment in society. His solution for a stable and safe environment for communities of color all over the states to put pressure on legislators and the government to make it a priority to protect everyone equally. He writes, “The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect.” I found this statement very powerful and blunt. As a fieldworker, Baldwin uses similar strategies that I would consider using in order to penetrate the insider perspective through interviews of police, politicians, and citizens.

My questions as a fieldworker to further uncover the culture the article describes would be:

1. How is the treatment of blacks in society addressed in education and the school environment?
2. What’s the difference between a “good” nigger and a “bad” one in the eyes of the law? Is there even a difference? What about in the eyes of a black American?
3. What are the socioeconomic factors at the workplace elevating black families or failing them?