In Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” she first talks about how the idea that the mind and the body are in fact inseparable, which is the foundation of her argument and I find incredibly interesting. I’m also not sure I entirely agree with the idea that the mind and body are inseparable because if you were able to upload your head into a computer, then you would be able to disconnect your mind from your body. It would have been intriguing if Judith explored this idea, since it questioning how important having ones own body is, and weather or not having a body is paramount to being human. That if the self within us, is put in a different body then are we the same person that we were when we had our original body. However, Judith believes that we are bound to our bodies and that the idea of gender which we have formed through these bodies has only been a social construction in which we choose to act out.  She even talks about how “Foucault writes, ‘Nothing in man-not even his body-is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or for understanding other man'”. (pg. 2543) and mentions how she agrees with Foucault’s point that this idea of man and woman can’t be used as a foundation for who we are, since they are defined through history. Meaning that these ideas of gender were constructed in our past, and we have always taken them as fact simply because it had always been that way. However, Judith takes it a step even further, when talking about Kristeva and her idea of how we identify ourselves through the abjections of others, so that we can borders between what it means to be a man or a woman. Judith goes on to point out that these abjections are in the end useless, since men have feminine aspects, and women have masculine aspects to themselves. She goes on to state how we are only playing the roles of gender, since the idea of gender in of itself is a paradox. This paradox of gender is no better portrayed then towards the end of the piece when Judith talks about when “Newton writes: Drag says “my outside” appearance is feminine, but my essence ‘inside’ is masculine” At the same time it symbolizes the opposite inversion; “my appearance ‘outside’ is masculine but my essence ‘inside’ is feminine.” (pg.2549). It shows how we can advantage of the idea that gender is a role we play, much like Nietzsche’s point of how authors and poets use the idea of our language being completely arbitrary as the building blocks of writing, in turn breathing new life into how we view our own world.

The Moynihan report focused on the births in the black communities, and their “unfortunate” effect in helping perpetuate cycles of poverty. This story is partially true due to the fact that racist white people in that time and centuries before that consistently ruined the black family dynamic. What’s so disturbing about the report though is that they blamed the condition of the negro families and then and seemingly perpetually “in crisis’” on the gender-inverting role of black women. Spillers rejected the report and labeled it as racist and sexist. She was an African American woman writing on the cause to defend African Americans from a white-dominated culture with features like positive action, the white fight to the suburbs, low quality of education, gangs and slum life supposedly. Her other readings were very intriguing. On her essay about the Moynihan report she mainly talked about the stereotypes and the negative perceptions that were put on the black community.

Ray Nipper 

Hortense J. Spiller  “Mama’s baby Papa’s maybe” 

From the beginning Spiller goes into alot of the demeaning nicknames often tossed at African-American women. She brings up terms like “Peaches” or “Brown sugar”.  She refers to herself as being a marked woman. She writes alot about the Moynihan report and the lambasting it essentially gave to the black community.  The report according to Spiller makes the claim that the black community pretty much has no fathers at all. Moynihan makes the assertion that blacks essentially cannot fit into the vision that america has for it’s families. As if space was ever made for them to begin with. 

     She feels that the report not only dehumanizes blacks but it almost has this dissolution of gender in black families. She argues that according to this report that ethnicity is a driving force of the issues facing the black community. As if there issues were inherent. Moynihan argues that there is a sort of pathology that stifles the progress of African-Americans. 

     Spiller believes this report allows individuals like moynihan to in a way apply a sort of mythology to blacks. She goes on to mention barthes with his writings on  the signifier. She believes moynihan is essentially projecting his ideals and abstractions onto african americans. She feels that the bodies of black youth are pretty much turned into tools. They are forced into becoming political tools. The body then becomes more of a thing than a human. 

     I believe spiller makes some good points. Her essay points out the dehumanization of the moynihan report and US history at large. She argues that the bodies of blacks become “Captive” in a way. I don’t believe she is robbing them of autonomy however. I feel it’s similar to Fanon’s essay.  There does seem to be this sort of conflict of self-image vs public perception. Where one has to wrestle with how they are treated with how much they perceive their own self-worth. And when these two things aren’t consistent is can lead to a ton of internal issues. 

     She writes alot about slavery towards the end. Which gives me the idea that she’s addressing the african-american experience as a whole. She argues that blacks experience  a sort of “Collective humiliation” due to how they are often given insulting nicknames in society. Also due to the way in which their behaviors or supposed failings are instantly perceived as pathologies.