Reading Response 23

Summary
In her article "VIEWPOINT The Laugh of the Medusa," Helene Cixous argues that women should 'write themselves,' or in other words use their voice in their writing instead of using a male or non-gendered voice.  Writing allows women to discover who they really are, but (like everything else that is important) it has been primarily reserved for men.  Cixous expresses many other views in her article, such as how writing allows you to let go of the past and that men have made women hate women, but this seems to be her main argument.

Synthesis
This article primarily relates to the articles by Flynn and Alexander.  Flynn and Cixous both write about how it is different for men and women to compose.  Cixous has a much more negative attitude towards men and blames them for the fact that women are less confidant in their writing while Flynn focuses on the differences in their composition styles.  Cixous and Alexander both write about gender and sexuality.  While Cixous challenged the classical conception of bisexuality Alexander wrote about what it is like to compose as a transgender person.

Review
I did not like this article at all.  It was extremely confusing for me and I did not understand parts of it.  It is outdated, it was written in 1976 when gender roles were very different.  I do not know what it was like to be  a woman then compared to today so I will not judge Cixous too terribly but she seems to really hate men.  In  paragraph 12 she even wrote "Men have committed the greatest crime against women.  Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs"(ROW 248).

QD
1.  This piece did make me uncomfortable, but not as much as it may have if I had understood it perfectly.  Cixous seems to really hate men and to stereotype them as all being evil.  I know that that can't actually be true; she must be exaggerating in order to prove her point.  I think that she intended to make the reader uncomfortable because she purposefully wrote a very strong article.

2.  Cixous wants females to write using their own voice, to put themselves into their writing.  She is suggesting that writing can help you discover your own identity.