Counterfeit Freedom

In Katherine Mangu-Ward’s essay, The War on Negative Liberty, she reflects on the idea of positive and negative liberty. She expresses positive liberty as the freedom to fulfill your potential, such as the freedom to be healthy in our environment. Usually this comes from the government creating laws such as smoking bans and drinking ages. She then expresses negative liberty as a freedom to express yourself, such as freedom from a dress code (Mangu-Ward 661).

I had never thought of different types of freedom before. I just thought about what freedoms we weren't receiving. The differences in freedom was a big eye opener for me. It let me see that there are different types of freedom and they’re used to protect you or express yourself.

The government creates laws to protect you. These laws would include smoking in public places curfew laws, speed limits, or wearing a seat belt. These allow the people the freedom to be happy, safe, and healthy.

You are also sometimes given the freedom to express yourself, either in the clothes that you wear, the color you dye your hair, the kind of music you listen to, your religion, or your beliefs. These are freedoms from restriction.

Freedom is a very controversial concept in today’s world, I believe, as some people don’t think we have freedom in the United States. It’s definitely something to think about. 

Different Interpretations

To me, Niedecker's poems are insightful. The one's I've read so far in class have consumed me and I've found myself wondering why she chose to write the way that she did.

The majority of her poems that I've read have been around ten lines. Looking at her poem "Watching Dancers on Skates," she conveys a multitude of feelings and meanings behind her words.

The first stanza explains how the narrator is the only one wearing boots in all of the people present. For me, this can mean multiple things--that it's the narrator expressing their differences from the others, thus proclaiming that they're different in the real world, or that the narrator is afraid to skate, or to take risks. 

Then, looking at the second stanza, the narrator focuses in on two skaters, one male and one female, where the male is holding up the women's leg. This appeals to the fear of the narrator relating to skating because the women has faith and trust in the male to not let her fall on the ice and possibly get hurt. But, it also appeals to how the narrator is different from others around her because she picked this couple for a reason--they had to have stood out to her in some way--exploiting their differences as well. 

"Watching Dancers on Skates" can have several interpretations and I believe that is one of Niedecker's best qualities as a poet--she's able to appeal to all readers in the way that they're able to see her poems in their own way. 

As Plastic as a Barbie

When I was younger, my mom would always press femininity on me. Back then, I didn’t know what was really happening, but now I do.

I never really wanted to play with my sister—all she ever wanted to do was play Barbie’s, house, or dress up. I just wanted to go to the park by my house and play tag or go in my back yard and make mud pies with my brother. Although my mom didn’t restrain me from doing just that, she still made comments that make me look back and think: Did she want a tom boy for a daughter?

She would comment on my hair and how it was always a mess. I couldn’t help it. My hair has always done what it wanted, no matter how much detangler spray she put in it. She would go out shopping and buy me dresses and skirts. I didn’t like dresses or skirts as you couldn’t run around at recess, play kickball, or tag in a dress. When wearing a dress you always had to act like a lady. She would eventually guilt me into wearing them, by talking about how happy it’d make her for me to wear them or about how much money she spent on them. She did this all throughout my childhood.

When I was around the age of eight, she called me a dyke for the first time. I didn’t know what it meant, but that memory is one of the strongest in my brain. She didn’t say it often, maybe once every other month, but each time she did, I hurt a little. When I did figure out what ‘dyke’ meant, I was around the age of twelve. I thought back to all the times she had called me that and all I could see on her face, all those times, was a look of dissatisfaction and disappointment. It was then, that I started to change.

I started to hang out with my friends more, the girl ones. I started to wear makeup and stopped wearing such baggy clothes. I let my mom buy things for me and I wore them without question. I attempted to control my hair. I stopped playing in the backyard with my brother and spent more time with my sister, who was an expert on makeup, boys, and cleavage.

I felt awkward the whole time. I thought I was in someone else’s skin. The three years that I wasn’t myself, were the worst years of my life, but my mom hadn’t called me a dyke once and that felt nice.

I was about fifteen when I got my brain back. Who cares if I’m not the stereotypical girl? Who cares if I’d rather play video games than go to a frilly dance? I know what I am and that’s all that matters.

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of high school was a summer of change. I stopped letting my mom pick out the clothes that I bought. I would tell her that I wouldn’t wear that and it’d be a waste of money. After telling her this so many times, she let up. I stopped wearing so much makeup, sticking with just wearing mascara. I started being more independent. I stopped letting her tell me what I needed to be and started to be who I actually am.

I’ve only heard her call me a dyke a couple of times since then and it still hurts like the first time. Now, instead of letting her words affect me, I play along with her words, which is why I think she doesn’t do it often.

Looking at Aaron H. Devor’s essay “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meanings of Gender,” I conformed to the gender roles of a girl—be submissive, do as you’re told, act like a girl that a man would love—for about three years. Gender roles aren’t important to me, though, and I’ll never be someone I’m not again. 

Clones

                Before reading “Against School” by John Gatto, I paid no attention to my teachers and how they behaved. I hadn’t had a reason to. Looking back, they were all molded from the same cookie cutter. There were two that I can pull from my mind, that weren’t the same as the rest. Those were the teachers that changed my life.

            Mr. Guyette wasn’t just a great math teacher, but he wanted to give his students a great education. Like Gatto, he thought that students didn’t think for themselves and instead accepted whatever the teachers threw at them, without knowing everything about it. Guyette attempted to change that in his students. He wanted our motivation to come from within, not from fear of our parents disapproving of our grades. Most people in his classes though, didn’t change—it’s hard to after having ten years of identical teachers—but some did change, including me. By having him as my teacher for two years, I think for myself and don’t accept what’s blindly thrown at me. I have an intrinsic need to know why things happen the way that they do. Knowing that it does happen isn’t enough for me.

            The second teacher who broke from the pack was Mr. Erlandson. He taught history. Most history teachers that I’ve had, only look at one side of the story—the side of the Americans—and how everything Americans did was right and civil. He didn’t. He had us look at everything going on in the situation and most of the time, the U. S. was at fault. We had been taught from little on that America is the best place out there, but after learning about some of the things that our country has done, makes me doubt a lot of things that I’m expected to believe. He taught students to doubt everything in our world and just like Gatto and Guyette, expected us not to take things blindly.

            Now, I’m aware of how messed up the American school system is. Had it not been for Mr. Guyette and Mr. Eralndson, I think I would’ve been blind forever. I never would have believed Gatto’s story and claimed him to be mad. Becoming a teacher is that much more important to me because if I can help even one student in realizing what’s written above, then I have succeeded in life. 

An Introduction of Sorts

Your mind was once a blank canvas, waiting to be drawn and written on with the words of your future.

Now, at age eighteen, my blank canvas is engulfed in a minuscule, chaotic script with the words of my thoughts, opinions, theories, and beliefs.

Like your mind, this blog was too, a blank canvas from the beginning. Before long, it will also be covered in a future of words waiting to be written. When that time comes, it will be a beautiful eruption on this page. But unlike our minds, it will always wait silently to be read.