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Showing posts from July, 2014

Gender at the Université catholique de Louvain (as a commentary to the forthcoming visit of Judith Butler to our venerable institution)

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Louvain-la-Neuve campus, 21/11/2011 Louvain-la-Neuve campus, 12/03/2014 EDIT Louvain-la-Neuve campus, 17/09/2014

Despentes on femmes, femininity, sisterhood and disobedience

"In the heterosexual community, aptitude for seduction is a woman's ultimate quality: it is best rewarded, best acknowledged. Any other feature, like expressing yourself, being funny, having ambition, aggression, strength, spirit must be underplayed, so it doesn't get in the way of your seduction. I still have a strong distrust of femininity because it's always primarily defining you in terms of what use others can make of you. Will they be excited, reassured, healed, understood, taken care of? It always distances you from your sincere emotions. [...] To be feminine is a fake power. It is the same as drugs: a very immediate, very intense, very funny experience. But any power that is easily given and obtained should be watched over carefully. It might be a gross hallucination. [...] I respect some people's decisions to spread their wings inside the romantic or sexual seduction field, but I'd claim other fields for women as well, which wouldn't evolve