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Assignment 4

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Assignment 4
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01 xxwhy.m4a (945 kb)
times viewed: 63
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this audio file is a spoken word peice by Athens Boys Choir. I feel like this is closest to a "Not Jenny" that describes me.

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download: original m4a audio



• Jenny Hering’s heels always make her legs look perfect.
• In 1985 Jennifer Marie Hering was born into a family that lived on that block your family drives by extra slow and wishes that someday, maybe…
• Jenny once had a dream she was watching a girl become a boy. She thought of the person in the dream, she called it It. She was mad; Jenny usually dreams of fashion and muscular men that don’t speak so much as they listen.
• Jenny drinks the finest wines.
• Jenny Hering has proudly, never farted. Not once.
• This dream was stuck in Jenny’s head for a great amount of time. Why couldn’t It just be happy as a woman? I mean look at Jenny, she’s a woman.
• Jenny’s hair was long and brown ever since she could remember; and when her natural highlights faded in the winter she had them dyed back in.
• Her hairdresser was a flamboyant gay man. Jenny loved talking about boys with him. She told him about It. He thinks It is weird; “Why can’t It just be a dyke?”
• Jenny went to high school with It. When she was 16 she kissed a girl; she liked it. A lot. Only the gay hairdresser knows. He’ll be the only one to know. Ever.
• Jenny plans to marry her current boyfriend, Jonathan.
• Jenny often thought of It. Why couldn’t It stay a girl? It as a girl was fun to kiss in high school.
• Math was not Jenny’s strong point. It did Jenny’s math homework.
• Jenny has eight credit cards. Two are for her shoes.
• It had no right to do that to Jenny. Does It think it’s a real guy or something?
• Jenny played soccer with the other neighborhood kids. When she was eight, Jenny’s mom told her that grass stains were not lady like. Jenny stopped playing soccer.
• Jenny’s diary entry from February 18th, 2003 read, “I’m in love with Justin Timberlake. Mrs. Jenny Timberlake. Jenny and Justin. Oh. My. God.”
• Jenny has a cashmere sweater in every color J. Crew provides.
• JMH adorned all of Jenny’s underwear and socks until the age of sixteen.
• Wondering what It looked like as a guy, she remembered her dream. It is attractive as a guy. It would … wait, Jenny would never date an It. It
davinsokup (Davin) 05401, January 07
can’t be a man or a woman. Jenny doesn’t know how to treat It.
• Once in third grade, It heard Jenny fart. It didn’t mention it. It never told.
• Jenny ate a low fat breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday. The diet was something her mother started for her when Jenny started middle school. Jenny still follows the same diet. Jenny wonders what real food tastes like.
• In first grade, Jenny didn’t question why It was the green power ranger at recess. Jenny knew she was always the pink power ranger. Green and pink were boyfriend and girlfriend on the TV show. In first grade, It would smile at Jenny when Jenny asked It to always be the green ranger.
• Jenny took ballet when she turned nine.
• It made Jenny think about the possibility of something more than “man or woman”. Jenny would rather not, and dislikes It for this.
• Jenny has been best friends with two other Jennys since fourth grade. All three Jenny’s favorite hobby is to discuss the other Not Jennys and their Not Jenny wardrobes.
• On December 19th, 2007 Jenny and It went out to lunch. Jenny and It laughed and talked the whole four hours before being asked to leave.
• During elementary school, Jenny rode horses and grew her hair out.
• Pink has always been Jenny’s favorite color. She would never tell anyone that it was actually green.
• A diary entry from Jenny on December 19th, 2007 read, “It and I ate lunch today. It looks like a guy. It sounds like a guy. It smiles at me like a guy and I smile back at It like a girl, but It will never be a guy. It will always just be an it.”
• Jenny heard from another Jenny who heard from It that It heard Jenny fart in third grade.
davinsokup (Davin) 05401, January 07
Not gonna lie,
I’m Jenny.
And yeah, I get by,
But,
That gender bending shit you do,
No, it's not for me, so much that
It’ll never be for you,
Either.
Yeah… well… ok,
You were always the guy blah blah,
It was fine during recess each day,
But …
That was recess,
And you’re just trying to
Change, transgress
Into,
Something you want but’ll never be,
You grew up doing “girly” things,
Actually wait, that was just me,
Huh.
I guess you always were a guy,
From that time you wouldn’t join ballet
With me, said you’d… rather die,
Well…
Fuck it, see there’s this binary,
You need to be one or the other and,
That’s easy enough for me,
So…
Grow up, be what you are,
Jenny’s really fuckin easy if
You get used to slimfast bars,
And,
Wanting only to fit,
To please, everyone around you but,
You’re something, I don’t seem to get,
So I'll just call you It.
davinsokup (Davin) 05401, January 07
I thought about the dream assignment we had, and what it would have been like for someone else to witness my dream. I felt as though I had covered each character enough in the prior assignment so I thought about who I could add to get another perspective. I decided on one of my friends that I grew up with and placed her in a Jenny role… She seems to fit there naturally in the first place, so it wasn’t that hard. I wanted to address the view point of someone who doesn’t understand transgender identity, but mostly doesn’t wish to understand either.

I included, in the 30 line section, bullets about how Jenny was pushed into conforming to a gender stereotype and wanted everyone else to follow as well. Most of my bullets were actually about this, but I included a few other things just to add to her character. I tried to show that Jenny makes unconscious choices to conform to what people think of as a “woman” because it’s comfortable for her and everyone else. I really enjoyed this assignment; and tried to resemble Hemon while writing the initial 30 lines, while incorporating Rebele’s Jenny character in those sentences as well as in the poem. I hope you enjoyed reading it!
davinsokup (Davin) 05401, January 07
I absolutely loved the combination of the Jenny pieces and aspects of your own life! I agree with you that many people have trouble regard those that do not fit into neat and tidy gender categories as almost subhuman in comparison to them. I also have to ask you how good of friends you were with Jenny, considering the fact that she was so unsupportive of alternate gender identities. Also, do you think that there are some people that are inherently “destined” to be Jennies. Is it circumstance, or are there really some people that naturally want to and are able to fit the stereotype of a Jenny?
darbyb, January 07
I thought your Not Jenny piece was really expressive and well written. It's almost as if Jenny wants to like "It" but has too much trouble when it comes to crossing the boundaries of the societal norms in terms of gender and identity. I think Darby brings up a good question, I wonder what it is that pushed this "Jenny" to want to conform so much? In my eyes, I would have followed the way i truly felt, as in, proclaiming my favorite color to be green or trying to find out more about the experience that my friend was going through.

Is it because we feel like we will be criticized if we side with other behavior or is it because we can't even begin to grasp the experience as a whole that we sometimes reject others being?
laurlaur1566 (Lauren) New York, January 08

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