Blog #6 Gender Stuff

The shaping of self and forming an identity though to be authentic by the individual are in fact not. The formation process takes place with the nudging of institutions, particularly in the political arena, which designate the qualifications required to operate “normally” according to your gender. The trouble with this is the institution itself and the influence they have in the enabling of an identity that does not agree with the inner female desire. The desire according to contemporary theorists derives from the notion of “desire” as trouble applies to both male and female. However, these desires are rarely addressed from the perspective of the female whose voice is very new to society entirely. Feminism and the fight for equal rights.

The body according to history is imprinted in history. The man according to Foucault is subject to cultural inscription in both mind and body. Therefore the man is sufficiently able to assess himself as an individual. The coding and “writings on the wall” must be destructed for the chance of being able to self-identify.

The maintenance of self-identity is culturally bound on so many levels. The desire o be a part of the norm, to be the norm or to rebel against the norm are all in some way a clear derivative of the popular and accepted terms of society. The internal and external bounds of an individual and their identity are always subject to this public acceptance. The inner and outer conflict of the individual is a result of the desire to feel normal in order to function in society. Depending on the amount of conflict between you inner and outer desires determines the sanction of the subject to its differentiation from the abject. How does the subject conceal these desires from ever reaching the surface-how does the truth not slip from the cracks?

Gender identity and the inner and outer conflict of self-identity are perfectly executed in drag. The performer subverts the distinction between inner and outer psychic space in an effective way, “effectively mocks” the roles of each gender. The performance is allowing the audience to see the inner working of how the individual would like to perform while not performing on a stage for their amusement.

The performances seem to be over the top and outrageous in order to capture the attention of the audience, but are not so far off from the performance the individuals act out on a daily basis in order to function.

I often joke with my fiance, “you are great because I am great” and we often hear in media “behind every great man is a great woman.” My question is simply how are these thoughts any different from those of the courtly lover?

You see, in the middle ages courtly love was a huge deal, but the broader category romance was an even bigger deal. In these genres one would often find a man that is madly obessesed with a beautiful woman. It often begins with “when I saw her, I at once knew,” this is where the idea of love at first sight stemmed. And in this love, the men throw themselves at women. Some have argued that the men loses themselves in this love and are then at that beck and call of the woman who objectify these men.

In Zizec’s theory we get the understanding of how that statement is false. The person that is truly being objectified is the woman. The woman that is being loved because of her beauty, not for her wit, humor, or intellect. These men that “fall victim” to these women only use them as a reflection of themselves. The woman in a sense becomes the imago, that the men strive for. In courtly love we get the unattainable woman, the beautiful married woman that the man seeks. In a romance, we get a beautiful woman that everyone in the land wants. She is fair, she can thread, and she is usually humble, but rich. in the case of the romance the woman may be attained but only by a worthy man. She is then rewarded to him as a trophy, as proof of his valor, wit and skill.

Much like courtly love, a romance works in that it objectifies the woman. Making them the sought after perfection only to validate the man. Her sole purpose is to be beautiful, but her beauty is proof of his power. He is the id and she is the imago, while feeding into his narcissism.

So to answer my above question directly…

That statement is similar to the complex of courtly love characters. When I tell my partner he is great because I am. That is me projecting myself onto him, I am looking at him and seeing myself. The same applies to “behind every great man is a great woman.” Though this is sorta like the reversal where the man is the imago of which the woman projects herself.

We as people are constantly trying to categorize things, it is how we conceptualize and understand. Saussure says, “in language there are only differences without positive terms.” In this way we may only know what something is by what it is not. A bear is a bear because it is not a cat, a bear is a bear because it is not a dog, and a bear is a bear because it is not a book. We create this positive through a series of negations, but in a sense that “bear” means nothing. The word “bear” is something intangible, but for us it signifies the object and it only signifies that object because we have associated it to be so. The issue that becomes with the sign, signifier, and signified, is that these are all merely human constructs that were created so that things could be categorized and further understood. Language was created by man, bear does not call itself bear, and because of this man-made construction we have become subjected to it.

There are two options, you are either a man or woman. You, Professor Alred, are not a woman, so by default you are man. And in being man you must exert manliness, or else you will bring confusion to society. I as a female, must exert feminine behavior. You will build stuff, I will clean. You will watch sports, I will watch children. You will be a doctor and I will be a nurse. All of these thoughts are social constructs for your designated sex. It was not until recently that sex and gender became independent things. This social construct was created to understand people or put them in a box. Professor Alred, you have been put in a box and you are not allowed to move! I, along with the world, am holding you to that standard, you signed a contract.

The issue that now comes with words and its social construct is that not everyone fits into that box. Judith Butler explains in her theory how drags brings a differentiation between anatomical sex, gender identity and gender performance. Their performance may say my outer appearance is feminine but my inside essence is masculine while at the same time say my appearance outside my body may be masculine but my inner essence is feminine. And both of those true statements contradicts the other. In this sense they can not be put into a box, they can not be subjected to the normal construct of language. We can not do a process of elimination with them and so they belong to no box.

Language is not as fluid as people. Language, in a way eliminates all other possibilities so you and I are defined. This is the negative conotation of language, those of us that do not fit in the language box are then othered. That brings this question to mind: Can we make language as fluid as gender? and if so, would that confuse our understanding of the world?

Judith Halberstam examines masculinity, its confines and why men are so intimidated by their masculinity being seen in anyone else but themselves. She reflects on homosexuals, lesbians and their ability to function just as the straight, masculine man is able to, and how that poses a threat to the unsuspecting, masculine junkie of a man. Perhaps men just get a little twitchy when they see a woman able to take care of business, but Halberstam explains it as their inability to properly grasp the idea of their masculinity being one in the same with that of a woman’s. Men are supposed to be tougher and rougher than any lady around, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that a man would have a negative connotation towards a masculine female. The gender equality that has become such an argument between men and women have ‘meninists’ questioning why women don’t start doing labor themselves, holding doors for themselves or reaching high shelves for themselves… Ironically, Halberstam hits this nail right on the head.

For masculine men, their masculinity is not a social construct, but a large part of their identity. Their ability to identify as a man as a gender comes from their masculine features and actions. The manlier they are, the more man they are. Not only does it serve to solidify their understanding of what it takes to be an anatomical man, but also their actions. A man’s privilege to be ‘above’ a woman comes from the power their masculinity gives them. Masculinity is associated with power, and power is associated with being on top without any room for any others. A man’s actions are reliant on who can out man who, who can be the bigger man, who can take more pain than the other man, who has more power than the other man, etc.

Notice how I’ve done nothing but compare men to other men? Because masculine men cannot cope with being put on a level field with a woman, or worse to them, a homosexual who may be just as ‘manly’ as they are. A woman is below a masculine man, and a gay man is even lower. Both types of people are the exact opposite of ‘manly’ to a ‘manly man’. What I really loved about Halberstam’s analysis of men was her examples of movies and plots where a man must compete alongside another woman or gay man for the affection of the gorgeous leading lady. Because a ‘manly man’ doesn’t get beaten, its more wounding to get ‘beat’ by a woman or homosexual.

In 2015, it’s hard to imagine that people still live in this ‘manly man’ perception, but it is true. There are men who still feed into gender roles, and apply their expectations of individuals around them according to their gender or sexual orientation. Once again, as has been touched upon countless times within this semester, labels do a disservice. Maybe everyone just wants to be the most powerful, or maybe manly men should learn how to suck it up. Either way, everyone is entitled to what’s theirs, and to act however they want, whether it be masculine, feminine, animalistic. The social strains embedded into people’s heads should probably stopped at this point and this article was a prime example as to why. People should be threatened by others by their abilities, not because of a self denial of perhaps not being as good as getting the girl as a woman or gay man who are probably more deserving of the beautiful lady than the ‘manly man’.

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler explains “abjection”, and how it plays a crucial role in creating the subject. The process, in simple terms, follows the formula expulsion–>repulsion. Basically, the subject takes some  aspect of their identity and  removes  it, labeling  it as “not-me”. Whatever has been expelled becomes “the Other” and because of its otherness, becomes the object of the subject’s repulsion.  For Butler, this process is crucial in “constituting a binary distinction that stabilizes and consolidates the coherent subject” (2547). Through this process the subject is able to create boundaries for itself between internal and external, where their body stops and the Other begins. Butler also explains that this process is present in homophobia, racism, and sexism, which involves expulsion, exclusion, and repulsion from society when certain identities become and symbolize the Other. From abjection, we can see that the boundaries of the subject’s inner and outer world’s is truly unfixed and isn’t innate but created by the subject.

Since, abjection helps in understanding part of the creation of the subject it can also serve as a way to understand Butler’s idea of gender performance. Most importantly, it shows that the inner and outer worlds of the subject aren’t concrete, but are made. Stereotypical held thoughts about gender view the inner and outer worlds in a one to one ratio but through abjection we can see how arbitrary that is. Different people might consciously abject different things and Butler also gave examples of how this process is can be heavily socially manipulated arbitrarily benefiting a preferred ideal. Also, gender performance often follows this process’ formula. Gender performance is centered around the idea of “I’m this, not that”, abjection of certain identities you could have for another. This expulsion can lead to repulsion or can be committed out of fear of becoming the object of condemnation. I see this all the time on social media, honestly. Straight men are the worst perpetrators; they make comments about everyone. One recent example, there is a really popular gay guy on twitter. He is always posting videos and taking pictures of his outfits. Straight guys constantly ridicule him and ask questions like “what would you do if this were your son?”; they always have something offensive to say basically. One person I followed made such a keen observation and said it seems as if these straight guys are obsessed with this guy and gay men in general and how strange that was. I thought about that too, every time there is a confident effeminate gay man around, there are straight men criticizing them. It definitely made me think of Butler and her talk of abjection with regards to gender performance and how obsessive the process of gender performance is.

Also, while reading about abjection, Butler mentioned differentiation, which immediately made me think of Nietzsche and Saussure, which I guess makes sense. We name and understand all inanimate objects and animals through differentiation. So, since we know what things are from what they are not, why wouldn’t we think of ourselves as human beings in this way as well? I guess, Nietzsche’s poetry is Butler’s drag show and the worst thing for language and identity is constriction.

“Female masculinity” is such an oxymoronic term, that one needs to break it down and analyze its parts before understanding the whole. Beyond the biological connotation, “Female” indicates femininity, which on a social and cultural level typically associates with submission and passivity. By contrast, “masculinity” culturally connotes dominance and aggression. The combining of such opposites into one term is quite bold and subversive. Judith Halberstam coins this term in her essay, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Men, Women, and Masculinity.” Halberstam states how female masculinity, “disrupts contemporary cultural studies accounts of masculinity within which masculinity always boils down to the social, cultural and political effects of male embodiment and male privilege,” (2639). Halberstam is arguing here how masculinity itself should not be confined strictly to the male sex, with the exclusion of women from masculinity implicitly promoting misogyny. Female masculinity has failed to see the light of day and be celebrated in mainstream culture due to both the championing of the male heterosexual narrative and the stigma associated with women assuming masculine attributes.

In mainstream films that Halberstam defines as “heterosexual conversion fantasies”, the male protagonist is a heterosexual who pursues the love of a woman. The heterosexual’s obstacle towards obtaining his love interest in this narrative is either a lesbian or a gay man that serves as, “an ideal mate for the heterosexual woman in every aspect except sexual compatibility, and this is represented as a nonissue by casting women as domestic and asexual,” (Halberstam 264). The gay man is domesticated, polite, into shopping — everything that the heterosexual protagonist isn’t. Unlike the gay man, the heterosexual only loves the woman, and despises, “everything that goes with being a woman” (Halberstam 2640-1). When the gay man challenges the heterosexual protagonist for the affections of his love interest, he, “feels justified in articulating his rage in protracted bouts of loud homophobic reaction followed by loud sexist outbursts,” (Halberstam 2641). The heterosexual male is never condemned for such blatant homophobia and indecency, facing no sort of repercussions. The film As Good As It Gets (1997)  follows this structure, where Jack Nicholson, despite his homophobic and racist antics, manages to get his love interest (Helen Hunt) in the end over his gay “obstacle” (Greg Kinnear). Just to understand the level of asinine that Nicholson reaches in the film, here’s just one scene as example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jly4dXapR9c    Here, Kinnear’s character is speaking about his father’s refusal to accept him as a gay man, with Helen Hunt affectionately listening in the front seat next to him. At the same time, Nicholson dismisses this, claiming that only the happy stories have value, and that Kinnear, “didn’t have it bad, that you’re that pissed that so many others had it good.” Not only does Nicholson’s character have a happy ending in the film, but the film itself was celebrated by mass audiences, even receiving Oscar nominations.

While homophobic heterosexual masculinity is popular, any sort of female masculinity that permeates into mainstream culture is denounced. One notable example of this is lesbianism, which has been, “figured as undesirable by linking it in essential and unquestionable ways to female ugliness,” (Halberstam 2650). Lesbianism is linked to female masculinity because both lesbians and heterosexual men possess (somewhat) the same object of desire: the woman. Lesbians (especially those with more obvious traits of masculinity) challenge male heterosexuality in a) providing an obstacle towards obtaining women and b) placing masculinity (including its typical attributes of dominance and aggression) to a sex that is culturally relegated to submission, passivity, and domesticity. Such a juxtaposition is seen as “ugly” or “unnatural”, and thus does not see the same popularity as the heterosexual male bigot. This stigma also includes women with physical attributes that are masculine, such as hirsute females, who are slandered as “witch” or “freak” (Halberstam 2650). Thus, female masculinity is unnatural.

Halberstam has written an amazing piece of literature which has been insightful to say the least. First and foremost, she explains her primary aim of the essay which involves addressing and conveying the relationships of men, women and what she calls and to me should be a factual term “female masculinity”. This term is the essence of her written masterpiece. She says people see female masculinity in a social and political form as ugly. This makes sense because as she brought up social and political power she addressed white male heterosexuality. I myself agree with all of her points that she laid out before me. In addition, women and female masculinity were criticized and even discriminated women who acted more masculine. This is the false masculinity as oppose to male masculinity which is called authentic or real masculinity. So when she brings up the good the bad and the ugly there are meanings for all three categories which she dives into. The good represents what white male heterosexual constructed social and political power is and that only white male masculinity is good. The bad is the false masculinity as called female masculinity. What society did not recognize or bother to accept is that there are men who are feminine even if they are heterosexual and there are females that act masculine even if they are heterosexual. In other words there is no real category to place each sex as to erotic excitement or masculinity and femininity. Also all masculinity is masculinity. Men or women. And vice versa. She started giving vivid examples through different movies. What her argument is that in every triangle of two men and a women in the movies they always have the man wining the woman with the heterosexual fantasy. What she does with the triangle is interesting. She says if men can act more feminine and masculine then the lesbian woman will be attracted to them or have a chance at them being attracted to the male. This raised some eyebrows and gave me a better grasp at the reading material. Now the ugly side represents how men viewed female masculinity. They showed examples of men showing there disgust for the female because she had a mustache. There are women who have hair on their bodies, but society looks at that as disgusting. Then she asks a very important question. Men’s body represent good health and beauty while women’s represent ugliness. So this was a way of putting down females and show the narcissist mind of the male. Interesting information. Thank you for the reading professor.

Sex, gender, and sexuality are very common words used in our current society. However, we intertwine the meaning of each word and mistakenly use each one of them. In other words, we tend to think they are all the same. But, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick clarifies this in her book. Sex is a biological differentiation between individuals who have the chromosomes XX and those who have the XY chromosome and their respective genital organs (Sedgwick 2570).  So what we call sex is just “chromosomal sex.” On the other hand, gender is a socially constructed (Sedgwick 2751). It is a set of cultural beliefs that we stick to chromosomal sex. Meanwhile, sexuality has to do with identification, genital sensations, and practice that we do for pleasure and/or reproduction (Sedgwick 2752). Society has tough us that female/male gender formation over sex are opposites but this is not actually true. The only opposite relationship among these terms is between sex and sexuality.

Due to our misuse of the terms, the relationship between “sex” and “gender” is misinterpreted. There is not opposite relation between chromosomal sex and gender. To be more accurate, chromosomal sex is the raw material in which gender is constructed. As Sedgwick explains, gender elaborates a concept of contradiction between the individuals with XX chromosomes and XY chromosomes. But although they are distinctive, there are no characteristics that suggest a contradiction. The belief that male and female are opposites only exist within the confines of t gender concept and it is used to control the power socioeconomic status of individuals in society. For instance, Sedgwick says, “the purpose of that strategy has been to gain analytic and critical leverage on the female-disadvantaging social arrangements that prevail in a given time in a given society.” In other words, male and female are not opposites. It is just a belief within gender to control female’s status in society. With this said, let’s look at the only contradictive relationship stated by Sedgwick.

Sexuality is the very opposite of what we call chromosomal sex. Sedgwick states that sexuality “could occupy, instead, even more than ‘gender’ the polar of the relational….” (2472). Our species, like most species in this planet, come in two sexes. Sex allows the reproduction of the species. On the other hand, sexuality has to do with how we experiences pleasure through genital formation with whom we decided to do this with. While sex is the most predetermined, physically rooted, and innate while sexuality is the most aleatory, symbolically infused, and learned (Sedgwick 2472). In addition, there are only two sexes and it is already predetermined. Nevertheless, sexuality is a matter of choice and identity, and there are many different kinds of sexuality. Now let’s look at the relationship between gender and sexuality.

If gender does not have a reciprocal relationship with sex unlike sexuality, then what is the relationship of gender to these concepts? Gender is socially constructed to control us and prevent a direct connection between sex and sexuality. Sedgwick says “gender is definitionally built into determinations of sexuality, in a way that neither of them is intertwined with…” (Sedgwick  2473). In other words, that gender is limiting our thinking to just male/female and heterosexual/homosexual concepts of sexuality. But, it does not allow us to think about other types of sexuality.  That is why we tend to not grasp the concept of alloerotic. We can also see that gender tries to enclose different types of sexuality within its confines. For instance, we see terms such as female masculinity or make femininity in references to Judith Halberstam’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”

For my Archival Research class we just had to read about feminist historiographers using distant reading. The entire article was about incorporating and amending feminist methodologies for physical archives in digital ones and finding digital sources that would diversify and expand their research. Distant reading was one of the topics they brought up and I was excited to see it in this sort of practice. The goal of many feminist rhetoricians is to “recover” lost histories of women, that have been silenced in all sorts of ways. It focuses intensely on the individual stories of women; this is completely opposite in distant reading which Moretti calls a collective system, it’s entire purpose is to see the whole system in order to identify patterns. The authors of the article admit that on the surface distant reading goes against their values but could be useful in “exploring the circulation of the women’s text…of how women’s texts have appeared and traveled across time and space.” The researchers used a program called the Ngram Reader, which “reads” Google books for particular terms. The historiographers searched for Aspasia, the rhetorical teacher of Pericles. Information of this rhetor is quite slim and relies on the “accounts of others from Plato to Plutarch.” In searching Aspasia’s name they weren’t able to discover any new information about the real Aspasia but they did see when she had peaks of interest. For example, she had her highest peak in the 1870s, in which, the researchers  discovered, that her romantic relationship with Pericles was written about in two novels.

Despite the lack of new information, the feminist historiographers found distant reading useful in seeing how this woman was written about through history. Also, its a useful tool for other historiographers to discover how and what women wrote and spoke about, and how this information has been remembered and rewritten. However, the authors also mention that the source they used, the Google corpus, isn’t a perfect and unbiased, as they gather their texts from libraries that don’t keep large collections of women authors, so the information some feminist researchers may be looking for won’t be represented. Maybe, this is the hopefulness of distant reading. Yes, looking at a select few individual texts won’t give you an accurate view of the novels published at certain times, but we can’t say that distant reading does that exactly either. As men tried to push women out of the publishing world; they could of also pushed them out of institutions that held their work, pushing them out of the corpus used for distant reading. This is not to say Moretti thinks the program is absolute; for example, the pattern of the sudden disappearance of genres is not fully understood by him yet. I do think the article makes really good use of his method. The researchers are searching for a “pattern as a whole”, in looking for the ways these women’s words were rewritten. In combing with Moretti the feminist historiographers could even look at what genres women were pulled to throughout history, in attempts to get published or various cultural reasons. Overall, they created another possible way this data could be used for interpretation.

Lacan’s mirror stage involves the formation of the Ideal- I, which becomes the idealized version of ourselves. The mirror itself gives the baby nothing but, from it, the baby projects a fictional version of themselves on this visual image. The perfect Ideal-I isn’t the baby’s true self, which is just an uncoordinated mess. Similarly, Zizek’s Lady is fiction, the knight’s mirror. She is just another reflection for the knight to see a perfected version of himself.  She gives the knight nothing; she is a cold empty character, derived of any substance, but the knight projects this role onto her. She is just a representation of the ideal woman who will complete the knight. In day-to-day conversations, I hear people still sort of talk about this the idea of finding your soul mate that will complete you, or make your half a whole. It’s the same idea with the knight; through attracting the Lady’s perfection he will become the perfect man. The baby as well sees itself as a totality, a complete whole, in the mirror. The act of courtly love is never about her desires and wants of the knight but his desires and attempts to woo her. Even descriptions of her are empty; she’s never described in her strengths or talents but only as how she is the dream woman of the knight and how he tries to court her.

The Lady, like the Ideal-I is inaccessible. Lacan describe the relationship of the subject and its idealized version as asymptotical due to their inability of meeting together.  The Lady is often married in stories of courtly love and is even inaccessible in the way she’s approached. Zizek mentions, in order to get to the Object Lady the knight must use detours because “proceeding straight on ensures that we[ the knight] misses the target.’(pg2413).  The knight trying to get to his idealized woman would fail since she’s inherently empty and he would realize this as soon as he tries. But, according to Zizek, through these detours and grand gestures of attempting to court her he would actually create the Object Lady. I found this really similar to the subject and Ideal-I in Lacan’s mirror stage. First, Zizek describes the Object as a “distorted form”; in actuality this is the Ideal-I. It’s a distorted image of who the baby actually is. Also, when a baby first sees their reflection I would imagine they would try to touch it. Touching the mirror is the same as the knight proceeding straight toward the Lady. They miss the target, in order for the baby to make contact with this ideal self it sees it needs to take detours that ultimately don’t lead it to the ideal-I either. Zizek talks about the creation of artificial hindrances to give the illusion that the object is accessible. This was something I found quite interesting. I think, I remember Professor Allred mentioning that the Ideal-I isn’t directly accessible in our consciousness. I found this funny because when I first read about the Ideal-I, I immediately thought about the way I think. I always tend to think “If I were smarter/better at zyx, such and such situation wouldn’t happen” and I guilt myself, because I haven’t become this person! In reality, this ideal version of me is ridiculous and inaccesible, and even if I were to become “better” person, I still wouldn’t be satisfied, if the situation happened or not. This idea goes back to Zizek’s idea of artificial hindrance, using fake obstacles to make certain ideas about ourselves or our desires more manageable.

The mirror stage also reminded me of the masochism present in courtly love. Zizek says that masochism “is made to measure the victim”; the victim decides the limits within the contract they start with the master. The baby in the mirror stage parallels this, they initiate contact with this image, which ultimately serves as the face of their desire(d self). Also, the imago doesn’t create the parameters of the dynamic, which would be impossible since it doesn’t exist until this moment. The baby, like the victim, is never able to fully satisfy themselves in this situation, as Zizek says the “masochist constantly maintains a kind of reflective distance.”

These processes also exist as means of self-externalization. For Zizek, the victim externalizes their intimate desires, which become objects, bartered and limited with contracts. For Lacan, the mirror stage serves to establish a connection between the baby and its world, a connection between the Innenwelt and Umwelt.

The mirror stage and masochism are also described as theatrical. Lacan calls the mirror stage “a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation”(pg 1165). Similarly, masochism starts from a lack of something, for the knight it’s the Lady.  Also, masochism is totally about anticipation, for the knight, its all about anticipation, and never about receiving the desired Lady. For Zizek, the victim is also the stage director; they write the script they decide what the Master can do to them. In courtly love, in order to get Lady, the knight acts out the strict social formula to get the Lady.