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How the man is keeping us (women) down. Patriarchy. Traditional Gender Roles. Masculine. Feminine. Things Men Don’t Do?. Being a Man in Patriarchal Culture. Most of the behaviors listed on the previous slide, behaviors forbidden to men, are probably considered womanish.
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How the man is keeping us (women) down Patriarchy
Traditional Gender Roles Masculine • Feminine
Being a Man in Patriarchal Culture • Most of the behaviors listed on the previous slide, behaviors forbidden to men, are probably considered womanish. • Inferior, beneath the dignity of manhood • Men who cry are called sissies (sound like sister?) • One of the most devastating verbal attacks on a man is to compare him to a woman • Therefore, whenever patriarchy wants to undermine a behavior it portrays it as feminine
Being a Woman in Patriarchal Culture • The patriarchal concept of femininity – which is linked to frailty, modesty, and timidity – disempowers women in the real world • According to traditional gender roles: • It is not feminine to succeed in business • It is not feminine to be extremely intelligent • It is not feminine to earn the big bucks • It is not feminine to have strong opinions • It is not feminine to have a healthy appetite (for anything) • It is not feminine to assert one’s own rights
Now to be clear, I’m not knocking Hilliary Clinton. • I would have voted for her had she gotten the democratic nomination • What we’re talking about here is how women like Mrs. Clinton are often perceived and representedbecause their behavior does not align with traditional gender roles
Don’t believe that these patriarchal ideas are deeply rooted in our society? • Let’s look at the fairytales most children are indoctrinated with.
Fairytales • To illustrate the debilitating effects of patriarchal gender roles… • Femininity is equated with submission • Our heroines… • Tolerate familial abuse (evil stepmothers, etc) • Wait patiently to be rescued by a man • View marriage as the only reward for “right” conduct • In these same stories, masculinity requires men to be wealthy rescuers… • Responsible for making women happy “ever after” • Men must be unflagging super-providers without emotional needs • (consequently, stereotypical gender roles are damaging for men as well as for women).
Porejemplo • In Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella • A beautiful sweet girl • females must be beautiful, sweet and young if they are to be worthy of romantic admiration • is rescued • For she is incapable of rescuing herself • By the dashing young man who carries her off to be married to him and live happily ever after. • Marriage to the right man is guaranteed happiness and the proper reward for all right-minded young women
In all three tales, the main female characters are stereotyped as either • “good girls” (gentle, submissive, virginal, angelic) • “bad girls” (violent, aggressive, worldly, monstrous) • Tink revels in being an “abandoned creature” • These characterizations imply that if a woman does not accept her patriarchal gender role, the only role left for her is that of monster. • In all three the evil women are also vain, petty, jealous and infuriated because they are not as beautiful as the main character • Even when women are evil and powerful, their concerns are still trivial • What kind of goal is being fairest of them all?
In two of the three stories, the young maiden is awakened from a deathlike slumber by the potent kiss of her would be lover. • This ending implies that the proper patriarchal young woman is sexually dormant until “awakened” by the man who claims her. • Patriarchal ideology is pervasive and hegemonic, it programs us without our knowledge or consent. • How many of you have really thought about what all your favorite Disney princesses were teaching you?
The Binaries • Male and Female • Masculine and Feminine • Good girls and bad girls • There are only two identities a woman can have. • If she accepts her traditional gender role and obeys patriarchal rules, she’s a good girl. • Madonna/whore, angel/bitch
The Key Concerns of Feminism • Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so. • In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is objectified and marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values, defined by what she (allegedly) lacks and that men (allegedly) have.
All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology • numerous patriarchal figures and female monsters of Greek and Roman literature and mythology • the patriarchal interpretation of the biblical Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world • This is further exaggerated by the apocryphal Lilith and The Nameless One that came in-between • Fixes the contradiction between Genesis 1:27 “male and female created he them” and the Gen 2: 22 lonely Adam rib scenario • the representation of woman as a non-rational creature by traditional Western philosophy • The stereotype that men “think” and women “feel” • the reliance on phallogocentric thinking (thinking that is male oriented in its vocabulary, rules of logic, and criteria for what is considered objective knowledge) by educational, political, legal, and business institutions. • even the development of the Western canon of great literature, including traditional fairy tales, was a product of patriarchal ideology. • Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not.
While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (masculine or feminine). • for most English-speaking feminists, the word gender refers not to our anatomy but to our behavior as socially programmed men and women. • You behave “like a woman” (for example, submissively) not because it is natural to do so but because you were taught to do so. • all the traits we associate with masculine and feminine behavior are learned, not inborn.
This contradicts the long standing humanist belief in “essences” • Identity that is unique to you, the product of some core self, unchangeable aspects or markers at the heart and center of “you” • Sex (male/female), gender (masculine/feminine), sexualty (homo/hetero), religious beliefs, nationality • Feminists challenge that gender is a part of this essential self • From other theories the rest of these essences are challenged • Queer theorists question the essence of homosexuality and two gender systems • Post-Colonialists challenge the false dichotomy of us and other • Lacan believes that the entirety of your identity is shaped by language. There’s no essential you there at all. • The essential self is replaced by the subject. Subjects are mutable constructions. • All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by promoting women’s equality. Thus, all feminist activity can be seen as a form of activism
A Succinct Feminist History Making Waves
First Wave • Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication on the Rights of Women (1792) • Right to education and participation in citizenship • Organized movement emerged in Britain in the 1850’s • Concerned with: • Education • Employment • Marriage/Custody Laws • Essentially the plight of intelligent middle-class single women. • This implies that they were not primarily concerned with the problems of working-class women (which is important to later critiques of feminist philosophy)
Second Wave • The term 'Second Wave' was coined by Marsha Lear, and refers to the increase in feminist activity which occurred in America, Britain, and Europe from the late sixties onwards. • America: • rose out of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements • Women were disillusioned with their second-class status • Britain: • working-class socialism • strike of women workers at the Ford car plant for equal pay in 1968. • 'the personal is political' • not just to extend the range of social opportunities open to women • intervention within the spheres of reproduction, sexuality and cultural representation, to change their domestic and private lives
American, English and French Feminist Critical Theories Getting beyond Patriarchy
Practice and Theory • Marxism vs. Marxist Critical Theory • Marxism is a model of history and political theory that foregrounds class • Marxist Critical Theory is a way of looking at text that foregrounds class • Psychoanalysis vs. Psychoanalytical Critical Theory • Psychoanalysis is a model of the human psyche and an approach to treating it • Psychoanalytic Critical Theory is an approach to texts using these same ideas • Feminism vs. Feminist Critical Theory…
The Many Forms and Goals of Feminist Criticism • Contemporary Feminist critics work towards… • Rediscovering the works of female writers overlooked by masculine dominated culture • Revisiting books by male authors and reviewing them from a woman's point of view to explore how they shape the attitudes that have held women back • Exploring the experience of women in post-colonial societies • Exploring women’s autobiographical writings • Exploring the Lesbian experience • Considering womanliness as masquerade • Exploring the role of film and other popular media in the construction of the feminine gender • It is also helpful to think of feminist critical theory as having three main branches
Three Critical Branches • American Feminism – Reevaluating the canon, rereading texts written by males, rediscovering texts written by females • Exploring what canonical male authors (Hemingway, Shakespeare) reveals about gender perceptions • Looking at Frankenstein as an exploration of women’s issues • Feminist Film Theory is also largely American in origin • French Feminism – Understanding the differences between masculine and feminine language • Ophelia’s language as the failure of the masculine to understand feminine modes of communication • English Feminism – Rooted in History and Politics, the practical feminism • Exploring the portrayal of Ophelia on stage over time.
American Feminist Critical Theory • Focus on textual analysis rather than abstract lingual theory • Reviewed canonical works by male authors • Revisionist re-readings • Examined portrayals of women characters • Exposing patriarchal ideologies • Gynocyntrists • Study the writing of women
Feminism and Visual Pleasure • Feminist Film Theory • Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975) • Classical Hollywood cinema is organized around a binary opposition established between male spectator (the subject) and the female spectated (the object) • Drawing on psychoanalysis, the spectator enacts gaze. • The masculine subject gazes, the female object is gazed at. • This draws in the audience • Classical film editing aligns spectators in the audience with the masculine spectator in the film • Subjective camera • Shot/reverse shot • This leads to the masculinization of spectators, spectators identify with the masculine subject position
The feminist critique of objectification • Objectification is not inherently bad • The idea that it is, is often misinterpreted or overplayed • Abusive objectification is the problem • Reducing someone to their status as an object • Otherwise, we all look, or look at other people; perceiving them with horror, indifference or pleasure.
Sex and Gender • Female and male refer to sex • Biology • plumbing • Feminine and masculine refer to gender • The constructed product of culture, rather than the inevitable product of biology and anatomy. • For some feminist theorists, even sex is a construction because we cannot understand the anatomy apart from our cultural ideas about gender • Sex is always already gender • Always already • once a certain place in time is achieved, the being of places in time earlier than that place is ‘transient’, problematic, or unthinkable. • the modern subject has “always already” learned language, it being, in a certain sense, inconceivable to consider the pre-linguistic subject • Gender identity, certainly, is performance. • Learned, practiced, acted • Judith Butler • Sex may also be performance if sex is inseparable from gender
French Feminist Critical Theory Feminist Critical Theory
A Foreword • Closed Systems • Freudian Psychoanalysis is one example of a “closed system”. • Part of what this implies is that you cannot argue against it within the strictures of its own logic. • PorEjemplo • You say: Oedipal desire is a load of hooey! I don’t want to sleep with my mother! That’s yucky! • Freud says: Ah, the degree to which you are repressing your Oedipal desire only serves to emphasize it’s strength! If you did not wish to sleep with your mother you would not be protesting so vehemently!
French Feminist Critical Theory is also a closed system. • If you disagree with it, that only works to prove the degree to which your abilities of perception are limited by phalocentric language. • The more you disagree, the righter they are
French Feminist Critical Theory • Focus on language, analyzing the way meaning is produced. • Draw on Lacan (Lacan drew on Saussure). • A child enters into the linguistic realm (Lacan’s symbolic order) just as it comes to grasp it’s separateness from it’s mother. • Once you realize it’s not all “you”, it’s a good time to start learning words for things • Like “mama” • The language learned reflects a binary logic • Active/passive, masculine/feminine, sun/moon, father/mother, head/heart, son/daughter, intelligent/sensitive, brother/sister, form/matter, phallus/vagina, reason/emotion…
Because this logic tends to group masculinity with such qualities as light, thought, and activity, French feminists consider the structure of language to be phallocentric. • It favors the phallus, or, more generally, masculinity • “masculine desire dominates speech and posits woman as an idealized fantasy-fulfillment for the incurable emotional lack caused by separation from the mother “ • Language, then, systematically forces women to choose one of two points of view: • They imagine and represent themselves as men imagine and represent them • They perform their role • Palin? • Wendy? • Or they can speak, but “speak as men”. • Hillary Clinton? • Tinkerbell? • You silly ass • A possible third option is to choose “silence”, becoming in the process “invisible and unheard” • Tiger Lily?
A (Better) Third Option? • Many French feminists believe that language only seems to give women such a narrow range of choices. • Women can develop a feminine language • L’ecriture feminine • Kristeva writes: • Feminine language is “semiotic” rather than “symbolic”. • Semiotic – For Kristeva, this is the aspect of language that involves intonation, rhythm and body language. • This is an atypical definition. Semiotics is more widely perceived as the study of symbols. • Others argue that rather than rigidly opposing and ranking elements or reality, feminine language is fluid and unifying • Chaotic, under the faulty male perspective • Ophelia • Ophelia’s language might approximate what is suggested by French Feminists • That it approximates this could factor into why we perceive it as mad
Feminine Language • Derived from the pre-oedipal period of fusion between mother and child • Maternal • A threat to culture • Perhaps better expressed “cultural homeostasis” • A medium through which women can be creative in new ways
Cixous (See Sue) • Kristeva, who associated feminine writing with the female body, was joined in her views by Cixous. • Cixous wrote, “ Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes and rhetoric's, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reserve-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very idea of pronouncing the word “silence”… Such is the strength of women that, sweeping away syntax, breaking that famous thread (just a tiny little thread, they say) which acts for men as a surrogate umbilical cord.”
