Michael Holleron

Pogue
Gender Comm
12/2/2014
The World is in Our Hands: An American Tragedy Review
In the second part of the short story The World is in Our Hands: An American
Tragedy, the story follows the main character of Autumn throughout her first couple
years without Aiden. In this time she sees the darkness within the world, and
succumbs to it at the end. Her attachment to this world showed tow points, one
where the gender binary was present in her interactions and where it was not
present. There were three areas in which the interactions with her world were
produced on either side of the gender binary line, the first scene, was where
Autumn interacted with a fiddle player from a band she met at a music festival. The
second is when she encounters the man named Roger and takes him home with her.
The third is where she is assaulted in the alleyway. The first interaction deals with
her agency, as the Foss book would cover (pg. 16). The second interaction deals
with a man who is very confident in himself, this can been seen within penile and
phallic interactions in Bordo (Bordo, 84-85) and in the normal realm of gender
binary adulthood, where the character dwells within the gender binary through
preparation (Foss, 106). The third interaction, while a look at the rape culture in this
world, fits well within the section on rape in the Foss book (Foss, 224) and in the
idea that a penis has a mind of its own (Bordo, 20). These three areas explored in
the second part of The World is in Our Hands: An American Tragedy follow the
struggle within the gender order that is experienced in the female mind. The three

interactions are like small one- act plays, each creating a different experience within
the binary for Autumn to interpret.
Shortly after they all leave California, Autumn takes the total reign of the
story. The rest of the characters (who she married into one whole family) take a
backseat to her experience. While they are there, they are referred to only as the
family, which kind of takes their importance to Autumn out of the story, it is not
that they arent important to her, but the loss of Aiden (a central theme in all of her
interactions), takes its toll on her relationships as a whole. She is unable to return
to the normal interactions with them when she thinks of Aiden, they all know this,
which makes their overall absence from dialogue okay. The story focuses on her
interactions outside of the normal, where the gender binary is forced to take effect.
In her first noted interaction after they all moved to Oregon, Autumn starts to
feel more and more the loss of Aiden. The first year after his death flew by, and in
the second year we see her interacting outside of her close circle. The first scene
where this really takes effect is shortly after the wedding at the music festival, as
she is hanging out with the band that married them, she meets the fiddle player of
the band and begins talking with him. She remembers Aiden and is stricken with
sadness. At this point the fiddle player knows something is wrong and asks her to
talk to him about it. They isolate themselves, which puts the power in his hands,
and could lead to sexual interaction, but he stops the ideas of that by saying he just
wants her to tell him whats troubling her. This gives Autumn agency, discussed in
the Foss book as the capacity to act or make a difference (Foss, 16), when she
notices this ability, she opens up and tells the man her story. When given the
capacity to use her agency for her own agenda, she tells Aidens story to the first
person that didnt know him. This gave her relief emotionally, for one of the first

times in which she could note. It helped Autumn to be able to remove one part of
Aidens death from her conscious. This interaction broke the traditional hegemonic
roles, by having a male who was not interested in sexual contact but was in it for
the healing. This surprised Autumn, and took her out of the pain and back the joy
into the moment.
The second interaction focused on in her version of the events told was when
she went to Chicago. In this part of the story, she met up with some friends and
went out into the bar scene, a normal meeting place within the modern hookup
culture. She notices the man in a movie like situation, he was eyeing her from down
the bar, and as the feeling of being intoxicated rose, she returned the favor. This
lead to her leaving her friends to take a risk with this guy. The style of this
interaction fits within hegemonic structure and patterns of cathexis, in terms of how
the interaction starts and the scene is set up. Where it looks at is the preparation
factor of writing in the gender binary (Foss, 106), or more accurately in the
storytelling process. Preparation has set up this black and white binary to be still
dominant in this newer changing world. It is the theory that we prepare our youth to
interact at this level when they become adults, and dont show them the other sides
of the dice. In this scene Autumn makes the decision and notifies the reader that
she has made the decision to interact with this unknown man. They return to her
hotel room and the next thing happens. In this moment she sees the penile,
instinctual, side of this man. His instincts worked well though, and reminded her of
the way Aiden had worked to make sure she was an active satisfied partner of their
sex life. Roger worked with skill and knowledge, but the part of him that starts to
head towards a grey area in the binary is where he decides to be giving. This is

what reminded her of her love for Aiden, and allowed her to for the first time since
he had passed to be fully satisfied in a sexual encounter.
The third scene, and ultimately the cause of Autumns downfall deals with the
overly aggressive male personality in the modern day hookup culture. The
inspiration to this came from a close friend who recently became single. She told
me about her most recent experience at the bar where multiple men that night tried
to fondle her or force their lips on her mouth or neck. As she became more
intoxicated, like the Serengeti of Africa. The predators moved in. These men felt
they could use her intoxication to break physical barriers, because she may have
been inhibited. This in no way plays to the blame game, in which one would say that
because she chose to go out and because she became intoxicated this is okay. The
inspiration came to me because it wasnt okay, and never should be. It creates a
predatory landscape and purveys the rape culture. The Foss book discuss rape as
often used to try and control the gender performance of the person being raped.
In the third scene, Autumn meets a man who is just that, overly aggressive. So
overly aggressive that he made her uncomfortable just being in the bar. She had
toyed with him and flirted a little, but became turned off as he tried to force himself
on her. This right here alone plays to the rape culture in terms of him trying to force
himself into a situation where she gratifies him sexually. After the scene falls apart,
she exits the bar and is met outside with the most horrific experience that a woman
can ever have. Bordo notes (Bordo, 20) but basically writes off the penis basically
having a mind of its own theory, but it fit the scene very well as a descriptor. Had
this man not been aggressive to get himself gratification, it may have come easier.
He completely turned off his mind and pursued only one goal. Sexual satisfaction
through penile interaction. This created a must have it mentality for the male

character, and he used the traditional write offs of the rape culture in the
hegemonic structure to achieve his agenda. In many states, it is illegal to have sex
with an intoxicated woman because her consent is not sober and could not be from
her own mind. This is only rarely taught to youth in the Foss idea of preparation.
Other inspiration for his actions came from the fact that in my high school sexual
education courses, this was never mentioned. I learned of this when I attended and
anti-rape seminar on campus my sophomore year of college. When he forces
himself on her completely, it becomes almost sickening to read, but describes the
situation with the horror that it deserves. This scene had such an effect on Autumn,
that it eventually led to the end of her life. She was lost to the binary, it had used
her and removed her feeling of wholeness.
The World is in Our Hands: An American Tragedy, was initially written to
discuss the apathetic culture surrounding the most current young adult generation.
It was inspired by the movements of both social and sexual nature in the 1960s.
This arc of the story focuses on the world a woman must interact with in todays
society, from the man who will try nothing and just listen, to the well learned in the
sexual realm but with no real redeeming relational qualities, to the overly
aggressive scene created in the extremely prevalent hook up culture that has
been created to write off what could easily be called sexual assault and rape. While
women are enjoying more sexual freedom, they are also subject to a much greater
effect in terms of where the patriarchy has established itself to react to burgeoning
sexual expression and freedom within the female side of the gender binary. The
focus was on trying to crack the binary, not destroy it. As long as there are penises
and vaginas in this world, there will be a gender binary, the task is just finding ways
to effectively travel through it.