femininity and masculinity

1
femininity and masculinity

• course review a general overview

2
is sex a natural fact?

• similarities and differences between males and
  females?
• historical critique of natural status of sex
  and two-sex model
• five sexes and intersexuality?
• e.g. Agnes (Garfinkel)
• is gender something we do?

3
gender

• 1970s - sex/gender distinction social
  construction of gender (Oakley)
• constructing masculinities (Connell)
• gender display (Goffman)
• doing gender (West Zimmerman)
• distinguish between sex, sex category and gender
• natural attitude and gender attribution
• (Kessler McKenna)
• gender as performative (Butler)

4
gendered bodies?

• somatophobia and Cartesian dualism
• is there a natural body?
• (essentialism/social constructionism)
• mens bodies
• woman as body?
• Butler some bodies matter others dont lived
  body?
• doing and disciplining bodies?
• resist e.g. female body building?
• how are bodies socially constructed materially
  (e.g. social institutions social practices) and
  symbolically (representation discourses)?

5
some problems with the sex-gender distinction?

• assume sex is biological and ahistorical?
• gender mapped onto natural and neutral
  bodies?
• does female feminine/male masculine?
• role of the body in the social construction of
  gender disrupt and /or maintain boundaries
  between femininity and masculinity?
• is there a distinction between sex and gender?
  (Butler)

6
feminist theories/perspectives(e.g. Tong
Jackson Evans)

• different feminist perspectives liberal,
  Marxist/socialist, radical and dual systems
• 1970s social science perspectives dominated
  feminist theory materialist emphasis e.g.
  inequalities in power, wealth, education and work
  (paid and unpaid)
• major concern how to explain womens
  subordination

7
shift from things to words(e.g. Barrett
Weedon Zalewski)

• early 1980s cultural/linguistic turn
• greater influence from literary and cultural
  theories and less social science
• material gt symbolic (or cultural)
• explore the importance of language, discourse and
  representation

8
mapping gender theories

• Material cultural turn Symbolic
• MODERNSIM ? POSTMODERNISM
• STRUCTURALISM ? POSTSTRUCTURALISM
• CRITICAL THEORY ? DECONSTRUCTION
• EQUALITY ? DIFFERENCE

9
how equal are women and men now?

• you gathered evidence see web - information
• considered Walbys work
• six structures of patriarchy
• shift from private to public patriarchy
• polarisation and convergence
• exclusion to segregation
• improved by womens political participation
• patriarchy affects women differently?
• feminist degendering movement (Lorber)
  question gender divisions?
• - long term process
• - applied globally?

10
gendered interests and politics

• redefined what is political personal?
• identity politics feminist standpoint
• problems identity politics?
• categories exclude
• authenticity and hierarchy of oppression?
• build coalitions?
• masculinity politics therapeutic defend
  hegemonic masculinity gay refusing to be a man?
  (Connell Messner hooks Seidler)
• when is the personal political?

11
gender and other inequalities (1)

• woman as other monopoly on otherness?
• othering of non-western women?
• debates within feminism primacy of gender over
  class?
• critique class analysis (Acker)
• e.g. marriage not job women as a class
  (Delphy)?
• not just about labour market are discourses
  important too? (Reay)
• inequalities between men too?

12
gender and other inequalities (2)

• Black feminists critical of feminism aint I a
  woman? (Truth)
• slavery/colonisation
• proper femininity white middle class ?
• not a homogenous group third world women
  (Mohanty)
• appreciating difference decolonisation
  (hooks)
• representations of black masculinity - Linford
  Christie and femininity - Hottentot Venus
• (Hall)
• Orientalism (Said)
• exotic and primitive?
• challenge both material and symbolic
  inequalities?

13
such a thing as a woman or a man?

• gender and the linguistic turn
• feminists influenced by postuctructuralism/postmod
  ernism
• language does not simply reflect but actively
  constructs reality
• claim language constructs what it means to be a
  man or a woman
• misrecognise - take as natural what is
  linguistically constructed?

14
signified

• idea of woman
• no such thing as woman
• purely linguistic construct
• varies between languages

woman
signifier
THE SIGN
15
such a thing as a woman or a man?

• semiotics (Saussure)
• arbitrary nature of the sign
• no fixed meaning relational
• postructuralists and meaning (Derrida)
• meaning is never fixed but in flux
• how become fixed power?
• deconstruction meanings constantly moving
• e.g. category of woman
• discourse (Foucault) professional groups truth
  claims categorise people panoptic effect
  produce the subject

16
gender as performative (Butler)

• representation
• woman not biological category
• sex- linguistic category
• sexuality cultural resource resist?
• doing words
• speech act theory (Austin)
• e.g. Its a girl
• everyday performances
• labelled man/woman perform according to
  norms (heterosexual matrix)

17
gender as performative

• gender is an act that brings into being what it
  names a masculine man or feminine woman
  (Salih, 200264)
• language constitutes gendered identities
• no doer or I outside language gendered
  subjects are the effects of language
• gender trouble attempts to reveal or upset
  the fictional fixity of gender e.g. Drag

18
media shape our ideas about gender?

• critically considered the notion of a male gaze
  (Mulvey) and female gaze (Gamman Marshment)
• is normality reinforced by representations of
  feminine and masculine bodies?
• if so, how?
• illusion of individual choice (Bordo)?
• discipline self/body according to the norms of
  appearance portrayed for success?
• e.g. woman passive, man active?

19
media shape our ideas about gender?

• is resistance possible? e.g. techniques of the
  self (Foucault)
• can women be represented as active and men as
  passive?
• can this binary be avoided?
• does the media present one (hegemonic) norm to
  follow?
• are people slaves to what the media represents?

20
the future of gender (and bodies)?

• feminism(s) and technology ambivalent
  relationship
• (e.g. Wajcman)?
• post-human bodies/gender cyborg metaphor
  (e.g. Haraway)
• cyberpunk (e.g. Pitts)
• queer theory (e.g. Wilchins 2004)
• changing sociologies of gender (e.g. Roseneil)