Sunday, March 4, 2012

Blogs/research

I will be posting links to blogs and tumblrs that I think will be useful to my project. These blogs will represent individuals using fashion to express gender and sexuality or using images and text to outline a specific point of view regarding fashion and gender/sexuality performance. I will also be posting critical reviews and thoughts about these blogs.

I will also be using this blog to include critical responses and reviews of scholarly works regarding this subject. I will be working with Butler's theory of the performativity of gender first and then including other works as I go along.

Standpoint

In my feminist method and theory class, we have talked about the importance of the researcher acknowledging their own position and standpoint in conducting their research. In order to place center myself in my research and use strong reflexivity to counter claims that researchers can be objective, I want to describe my interest in this project. My stake, if you will. I am identify as a queer femme. I am cis gender. I am fat. I am very interested in fashion, body positivity, and using clothes to express your gender. This project comes from my own interest in queer fashion and empowerment. The blog that I will discuss are all blogs that I read regularly. I consider myself part of the queer and gay subcultures in my physical location and in virtual communities. I want people to be able to use fashion and ideas about performance to express their ideas about gender and sexuality without fear of violence or repression. I want my research to be useful to people studying this topic for both academic and personal reasons.