Comments on: Not the Best Student

By: Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » Midsummer Roundtable, Part III

Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » Midsummer Roundtable, Part III — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:58:01 +0000

[...] of gender … Avery, you raised some gender issues in your first post. What are your thoughts on them [...]

By: Infinite Summer » Blog Archive » Post of the Pop-Tart Brown Sugar Cinnamon Toaster Pastry

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:22:09 +0000

[...] who read my post last week (”Not the best student“) will not be shocked to learn that I suffered heavily from the Sunday evening feeling. I do [...]

By: Mallory

Mallory — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:56:42 +0000

Ha! that was the one I showed to my friend because it certainly is one of the most amusing concepts.

By: Olja

Olja — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:47:28 +0000

Add “- point of view -” as well, now that is crucial.

(Sorry about the distraction.)

By: Olja

Olja — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:43:56 +0000

Thank you, Avery and Kendall Joy, for bringing up these important considerations and confronting the question.

I was wondering about the same thing, regarding gender, and also other identity – minority – representation – identification – distance – level_of_detail_and_involvement/depth etc. related issues.

Of course, I have much to read and ponder on the topic yet, but have taken note of your thoughts and I’m finding them very useful to make sense of things.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:56:05 +0000

Yeah, I thought Conservapedia was a joke at first, in the vein of Uncyclopedia or Encyclopedia Dramatica. It appears to be actually legitimate, which makes it infinitely funnier.

And Avery, I’m glad you posted about endnote 24. This is total speculation, but I have a feeling that particular section is one of the most important in the novel (both thematically and in giving clues as to what will transpire in later chapters).

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:26:00 +0000

Conservapedia is real? It took me awhile before I figured out that website wasn’t a joke. I mean, besides the name (and Liberalpedia would be equally bad) it lists Segway as a New Liberal word?

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:19:27 +0000

That footnote seems almost entirely meaningless at first, but I found myself referring to it later on in my first read through, and looking back again it raises some interesting questions about p.27-31 among others.
I admit I hadn’t really been paying attention to gender throughout the book, but the Steeply sections are rather interesting in how they take up a different role from the rest of the book (I’d say more but I don’t want to reveal anything)

By: avery

avery — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:20:24 +0000

I’d feel weirder about Marathe/Steeply if he was actually trans, as opposed to just wearing a disguise. Certainly there are perhaps pychosexual reasons Steeply may be getting enjoyment out of the humiliation, but I think that if someone as smart as DFW chooses to use male pronouns for Steeply, he’s probably male.

The gender theme is popping up more and more, though, and I’m not sure I’m entirely thrilled with it overall so far. There is a tendency in media to punish any kind of genderplay, and I think that’s evidenced her by the passage describing Millicent Kent’s father’s experiments with cross-dressing.

The note that it “always had to be a relative’s female clothes” clearly points out that he suffers from an autogynephillic fetish rather than any kind of gender dysphoria, but it’s still always unsettling to see any kind of negative portrayal of gender-experimentation in a popular work.

I wish I’d put an endnote in my post acknowledging the fact that Conservapedians looking for evidence of the gay agenda would certainly be able to make the argument for it here. I’m not trying to shove my trans-status in anyone’s face, not least because that would be unhygienic.

By: Reed

Reed — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:09:58 +0000

The topic of gender is such a sort of cliche jump-off point for discussion in any piece of literature, but here I think we may be on to something. I hadn’t particularly paid much attention to that topic in IJ so far until now, and when I think about it, it’s a pretty recurrent idea.