September 24, 2025 – Story Power

Date: September 24, 2025

Did Jessica Benjamin save the WNBA?

On September 24, 2025

Freud’s theory of denomination involves a father-son relationship, which is avoidant of women altogether. It explains how sons strive to maintain the same power-holding position that their fathers once had. Benjamin’s theory rebuts this theory in a very intricate, yet understandable way. Benjamin explains that the denomination can only happen when there is a party of doers, and a party of done-to. The done-to people in this case would be the women Freud left out of his theory. Benjamin theorized that there had been a general understanding throughout life that sons would assume the power of their fathers, and women would look for a new attachment after they outgrow the caretaking of their mothers. It was “perfect fate” that these power-seeking men would find a match in these overly compliant women. Benjamin suggests that the only way to end this cycle would be to maintain an equal status between men and women. The worst way to go about it would be to flip the narrative completely and have women in the positions of extreme power, as that would be hypocritical and a repeat of the past. To achieve this equal status, each person must be comfortable in being their own person and seeing love as an opportunity to enjoy another complete person. It must not be an act of submission and denomination, but an act of partnership and mutual respect. That is truly the main point of Benjamin’s argument about subjectivity and power.

Extention:

Gender inequity has been a long-standing issue in America for centuries. In the last few decades, significant voids in pay gaps have been filled between genders, yet sports seem to be falling behind.

The average female professional basketball player makes about $150,000, whereas the males make over $10,000,000. Currently, the WNBA is still a charity to the NBA, as it loses more money than it can gain. It is easy to blame the WNBA for its lack of interest, yet this issue reaches beyond it.

The primary income of professional sports stems from the viewers who attend the games and watch the programs. Like anything, widespread coverage is needed to promote interest in sports. Unfortunately, less than 15% of sports covered on television are women’s sports. It’s beyond difficult to correct the wrongs of gender inequality when the media downplays the importance of women’s sports.

In Jessica Benjaim’s theory of mutual recognition, she suggests that men and women must be seen as equals in a relationship to achieve the highest level of health. Additionally, she suggests that it is important for each subject to be a whole, individual self versus having dependency on a partner.

The topic of gender equality in sports can follow a very similar path to Benjamin’s theory. The switch to equality is not about flipping the narrative to a female-dominated field, but instead gaining a mutual playing field that allows men’s and women’s sports to function individually, as the WNBA is drowning as a current charity of the NBA.

Can Jessica Benjamin create gender equality in sports?

AI Is Here!

By Nicholas P

On September 24, 2025

In Course Stuff, Existentialism, TV

Artificial Intelligence has been a well known and well talked about part of Computer Science ever since Alan Turing’s 1950 paper titled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”. Since then it has been used to describe everything from a stitched together group of if statements to Transformers with hundreds of billions of neurons (it should be mentioned that while these “neurons” are modeled after biological neurons, they function more similarly to mathematical operators and logic gates). Only recently, however, have we had AI that can pass as humans in their diction and prose. Does this mean that human writing will come to an end? No, at least not with current models.

Firstly, and most significantly, AI needs human data in order to function. Not only will it require more human writing to keep up with linguistic change and current events, it is also constantly in need of more training data. Current day AI companies have not been resorting to what is effectively theft of intellectual property for the fun of it. AI models with limited data are subject to a process known as overfitting, wherein an AI model becomes familiar enough with training data that it can simply memorize how to analyze everything and get a higher score than if it learned how to solve each problem. Due to how fast AI models have to evolve, they are in constant need of new data, meaning new human writing. Couple this with other problems such as generational loss and AI is dependent on human writing.

To add on to that, AI is wrong, constantly. Current AI models aim first and foremost to make grammatically correct, coherent sentences. Anything else, such as the truth, is secondary. AI “hallucinations” are a well documented phenomenon which is incredibly difficult to fix. While AI is getting better and better and finding reliable sources and tools are being made to fix this, it is still a large problem. This all goes without mentioning temperature. Temperature, when referring to LLMs, is a parameter that effectively determines how random the AI chooses to be. AI with high temperature will generate more interesting and varied sentences than an AI with low temperature. It should go without saying that a high temperature also introduces a chance for the AI to say something wrong. Many current AI models use high temperatures as people want sentences that sound more human and even a little random which means that these errors are also likely to stay for a while.

There are of course, many other reasons that human writing is preferable to AI, most notably the energy cost. AI takes around a bottle of water to generate a 100 word prompt whereas I managed to write this 500 word post while only drinking half a water bottle. This also isn’t to say that there is nothing to worry about and soon AI will be going the way of the dinosaurs. For now, however, it is likely that human writing will still be preferable to AI writing for everyone but the writer.

Why the Researchers Made a Flawed Experiment in “Escape From SpiderHead”

By Alma D

On September 24, 2025

In Short Stories, Uncategorized

In Escape From SpiderHead the researchers would have been way more successful if they incorporated the fact that everyone expresses love differently. If they were really trying to test a drug that was for the greater good of humanity, shouldn’t they have known what drives humans to believe in love and how we use that to interact with others? Also, how could they know what brings someone to love another? How could that be inflicted on someone if everyone perceives love differently?

The design itself is flawed because there was a heavy focus on the idea that one of the drugs created a feeling of “love.” This could not be possible due to the fact love is not a physical thing that can be measured. It’s also not a feeling. Love is an experience that one could best describe as a deep consideration for another not solely physical desire. While under the influence, from Jeffs perspective, we learn that the focus is on the physical appearance of either Heather or Rachel and how it improved from the first time they met. He may have admitted to loving them but it seemed that he was finding the other person perfect through their appearances and this fake sense of “knowing” the other. That may just be Jeff’s definition of love because everyone has a different perception. But, would that idea that everyone finds love differently not throw off the whole research project? The scientists could have created the drug on their own ideals or even on ideals from philosophers like plato. Yet, despite a larger consensus of what love is, there is still a belief that everyone expresses it differently.

This would not only throw off the experiment but also what the drug is trying to accomplish. Their intention was to make people either fall in or out of love with another person but only based on physical attraction and that acknowledgment of perfection. It is flawed because I doubt people see love based on physical attraction alone. This drug could not make people fall in love with another, only make people desire another through false feelings. They may have felt like they understood one another based of their interactions while under the influence but how could that even be determined to be love?

Difficulties of Achieving Mutual Recognition

By Nathaniel L

On September 24, 2025

In Binaries, Power and Identity, Power of Stories/Storytelling

Spending time learning about Benjamin’s theory of mutual recognition led me to question my own experience in this world. The mutual recognition of individuals that surround you is essential to truly say that you accept others for who they are, as opposed to the groups they’ve been confined to.

One of the greatest examples that comes to my mind when I think about Benjamin’s theory of recognition is charity organizations. First of all, those who run the organizations do so for one of two major reasons. One is for the recognition, or two, because they’ve experienced injustice in their lifetimes and see the people who need help as deserving of said help (not because they NEED it, but because they DESERVE it). For example, I volunteered at a church to help migrants who have just entered the country. The people who ran the organization walked up to me as I entered and told me that I had to wait in the lobby as breakfast for the migrants had not yet started. To this comment, I told them that I was here to volunteer and needed to pass through.

I share this experience not to draw your empathy, but instead because it demonstrates how people are immediately filled into categories by their appearance alone. People are seen as what we interpret them as rather than what they are, and this is contrary to our goal of achieving mutual recognition, recognizing the person as oppose to their category (or social status).

I urge you to approach all social interactions as if you know nothing of the person aside from them also being a human being. The only way to live in a world that sees people as people is to recognize their humanity.

Theories on Meursault!

By Nyah T

On September 24, 2025

In Albert Camus, Stranger

Throughout my reading of The Stranger, initially, it shocked me how Meursault seemed to not be grieving his mother’s death. When at his mother’s funeral, all he could focus on was the sun and heat, and not that his mother was dead. I was confused as to why it seemed like he thought that death was such a superficial thing, which left me questioning Meursault’s morals.

The more I read, I realized that Meursault isn’t a “bad” person; he just views things differently.

I think that Meursault believes that life “just keeps going,” which is mentioned when he talked to Raymond. “Then he explained that he’d heard about Maman’s death but that it was one of those things that was bound to happen sooner or later. I thought so too (33).” If this is true, it may explain why Meursault is in such a rush to get Maman’s funeral over with (“I don’t know why we waited so long before getting under way (15).”), which is definitely unusual for someone whose mother just died.

Another little thought that I have is that when Meursault’s internal monologue goes into deep detail on “the little things,” (like when he is explaining what he sees on the street, “The sky was clear but dull above the fig trees lining the street. On the sidewalk across the way the tobacconist brought out a chair (22),…etc.) that he is just living in the moment. I think all of this explains why he seems to not be grieving his mother’s death-he is living in the moment of the present day.

What are your theories?

Rethinking Relationships

By Kate R

On September 24, 2025

In Jessica Benjamin, Mutual Recognition

Jessica Benjamin’s ideas about subjectivity and power have altered the way I think about relationships. She talks about how people are shaped not just by society but by their emotional connections with those around them, especially when it comes to things like love, recognition and control. A big part of her theory is that people often fall into unfair power roles because we want to be seen and accepted. This can cause us to repeat unhealthy patterns, even if we don’t know it at the moment. She also pushes back against older theories that make men the subjects and women the objects in relationships. Instead, she introduces the idea of intersubjectivity, a type of relationship where both people see each other as equals, with their own thoughts, feelings and needs. For Benjamin, that mutual recognition is what makes a real connection possible, it’s also how we start to break away from systems that thrive off of dominance and inequality.

Reading her thoughts has made me reflect on my own relationships, with friends, family and even in school. I noticed how easy it is to fall into roles or act a certain way to feel accepted. Sometimes it feels like the world rewards control more than kindness. Benjamin’s theory made me think differently about that. Instead of just going along with the norm, I want to build relationships where both people feel seen and respected. Her ideas also helped me understand why inequality keeps showing up in schools, workplaces, and even politics, because we are stuck in these one sided dynamics. In the future, I want to be more aware of the kind of relationships I am part of and help others think about it as well. We all play a role in how power works, even in the small things.

Subjectivity and the Outer World

By Ayanna O

On September 24, 2025

In Jessica Benjamin

The argument about subjectivity that Benjamin makes is that people tend to think only of themselves in relation to other people. Western ideologies, which prioritize subjectivity through only the lens of oneself, are the main cause of this. Specifically, she critiques this in Freud’s idea that the relationship between a mother and her children demonstrates such struggles with individuality and power. Benjamin disagrees with Freud’s idea that suggests that subjectivity (individuality) arises after a child’s close relationship is broken through a threatening figure of the father. Benjamin counters this by explaining that subjectivity can’t come from separation only, but a balance between separation and connectedness. Stressing that this connection to others can help keep relationships from issues with power struggles and submission, domination is no longer an issue because everyone recognizes each other as an equal subject. If one person lacks control, the others’\ control depletes, making it easy to not recognize the “other”. Keeping individuality and relatedness at the center allows for mutual recognition.

I think that this theory is 100% correct in the real world. Especially in this political climate, I notice that there has been a great lack of listening to each other’s experiences. This is something that plays a big role in our personal subjectivity and what we agree on socially. Subjectivity, being based on personal interpretation and experience, there is only so much that we know. But when we have those who disregard others’ stories and experiences, the only things they factor into their daily lives (voting/actions/etc) will be centered around themselves. When people live centered around themselves, everyone else that doesn’t fall into their category falls into the “other” category. And similar to what Benjamin said, if we have that “other” category that we are not willing to be educated about, it makes it easier for us to look down upon them. The action I have already taken and urge others to do is to stay educated. Whether it be from people’s experiences or news on unbiased sources such as NPR, knowledge will help us avoid creating divides.

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Story Power

Blogging the Lit Life

Date: September 24, 2025

Did Jessica Benjamin save the WNBA?

AI Is Here!

Why the Researchers Made a Flawed Experiment in “Escape From SpiderHead”

Difficulties of Achieving Mutual Recognition

Theories on Meursault!

Rethinking Relationships

Subjectivity and the Outer World

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