Assignment #9: Feminism

Feminism! A surefire way to empower me / piss me off.

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Tyson begins her chapter on Feminism by claiming herself as a "recovering patriarchal woman... socially programmed not to see the ways in which women are oppressed by traditional gender roles... recovering because I learned to recognize and resist that programming" and furthermore "very aware of the ways in which patriarchal gender roles are destructive for men as well as women" (86-87).

As I read a variety of materials on this topic, I can't help but feel bad/sad/mad about the ways in which I can so clearly see and experience the oppression of patriarchal ideology in my own life. In 2010! It's funny to be raised believing that you are a "feminist" because... um... girls rock, I guess. Real feminist theory isn't that complex, but it does demand an utter earthquake in terms of how you understand your world - I can see why most people are comfortable keeping their misconceptions. No wonder my former impressions of the field seem either simplified or villanized.

Of course, the central premise of feminism rests on the stance that females have historically been, and continue to be, oppressed economically, politically, socially, and psychologically. Men are likewise prisoners of this ideology, which imposes binary thinking onto the reality of a multifaceted world, constructing false social boundaries between male and female (and everything in between). Both men and women are oppressed, in the end; however, women generally suffer the more severe material and psychological effects. The power of this ideology is evidenced in the immediate stigma routinely attached to those who question this inequitable power dynamic - by the media, by institutions, by workplaces, by social groups... I rather think that anyone who made it through an American middle school can attest to the (nearly literal) do-or-die mentality that children absorb and re-enact on the playground, punishing all those who fail to fall immediately into gender norms. I recall the little girl in my 7th grade class who was tormented for months because of her too-short haircut in our small town; conversely, I can't recall any boys with long hair. Kids turn quickly into adults without ever being challenged as to why they cling so tightly to these conventions. Which gives us yet another reason why critical theory should be a required class for every university student, if not every high school student, in a respectable educational system.

But I digress; otehr premises of Feminism, as outlined by Tyson, include:
- female are objectived and defined only by their differences from male norms and values
- Western civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal / phallogocentric ideology, imposing and demanding male vocabulary, logic, norms and values; thus validating only masculine modes of determining "objective knowledge"
- Biology determines sex, but culture determines gender, which means multiple conceptual frameworks exist - there is no universal definition of what a Woman (or man!) is.
- Gender issues, whether we recognize it or not, play a critical role in the production and experience of literature (and everything else, really)
- Feminism is ultimatley political in that by identifying sites of subjugation and inequality, it seeks to undermine and replace the oppressive patriarchal system with equality.

Huzzah!

There are two main trains of thought which I'll briefly point out:

FRENCH FEMINISM
1. Materialist feminism - patriarchal conditions and institutions control te mateiral and economic conditions by which society oppresses women. Notable scholars include Simone de Beauvoir, Christine Delphy, and Colette Guillaumin. I'd really like to get a copy of "The Second Sex" soon, as Beauvoir's comments on the social contract of marriage are particularly amazing.
2. Psychoanalytic feminism: an analysis focused more on the individual psyche, with a goal of investingating the patriarchal ideology's influence over female experience and creativity. Cisoux and Iverigary focus specifically on language as the "ground zero" of patriarchal subjugation, extending Lacan's arguments about the (arbitrary) social construction and assignation of meaning to language.

Unsurprisingly, I am fascinated by this branch. Lacan speaks of the Symbolic Order and our entry into it, as well as women's position on the border or margins of what constitutes the center - or, the Phallus and its concurrent priorities of linear logic, presence, and control. The possibilities of the border include the possibilities of resistance, play, creativity, and disruption - a space which allows for evasion and escape from the concrete and into the abyss, the imagination, the body, emotion. Clearly, this is amazing, but clearly too extremely dangerous for those whose identitites and livelihoods depend on the maintenance of the center.

Cixous followed that up by pointing out the impossibility of accurately representing the feminine, because it can be defined only within masculine terms - which typically present female as the "other," something which "lacks" in comparison to the masculine. She asks whether the woman can truly write or speak at all, implying that our very language is an imposed system which fails to capture the feminine, which denies its natural state. I particularly enjoyed learning that Cisoux equates "writing with masturbation, something that for women is supposed to be secret, shameful, or silly, something not quite grown up, something that will be renounced in order to achieve full adulthood, just as clitoral stimulation has to be renounced in favor of vaginal reproductive passive adult sexuality" (Klages 99).

[My personal aside] IT'S SO TRUE!!! As a female writer I've experienced an unnameable frustration with the occasional failure of words to capture what I need to say - a feeling which, upon reflection, is more often tied to form than words, and the bothersome (assumed) weight that I must conform to conventions in order to "be understood." This, mind you, after years of getting the message loud and clear that writing was a silly, selfish, and embarrassing past time that would lead me nowhere. Now, did the purveyors of these messages convey them expressly, nefariously, in order to "keep me down"? Of course not. I believe that the men and women who most loudly spout oppressive nonsense are typically the most psychologically opppressed people out there - terrified by any challenge which, if not quashed, would unravel their worldview. What's sticky is the realization is that people can do this out of love! Take parents, for example - my mom and dad surely don't realize that their discouragement of my dreams was, consequently, a denial of my talents, passions, professional dispositions - in other words, an effective rejection of the self. I'm sure, rather, that they were raised in rural American of the 1940's and 1950's, and do not question the following patriarchal ideological premises which dominated the ultra-conservative time and culture into which they were born:
-a man shows no emotion, and financial security is the ultiamte measure of his success,
- a woman's only chance for security and happiness is within marriage,
- creative pursuits are at best hobbies, certainly not lifestyles
And so on. Given that these are untested absolutes for them both, I can at least recognize that their social programming would guide them to believe that marriage was my best bet, in terms of meeting my future economic and psychological needs. Why would they encourage me to pursue a career, let alone a dangerously liberal occupation within the arts and education?

Anyway. Cixous and Irigaray are often complelled to discuss the concept of ecriture feminine, a language that itself is set free from patriarchal ideologies. I also like that Cixous considered poetry an appropriate potential vehicle for this site of resistance and transformation, and agree with the idea that the novel is, really, an "ally" of the boys-in-charge. Sorry, Jane Austen. Both of these French philosophers very much tie the female body into the equation, as they claim that both men and women are "alienated" from their bodies as a consequence of entering civilization, or what Lacan calls the Symbolic Order.

ANGLO-AMERICAN FEMINISM: has apparently been more focused on the nuts and bolts of figureing out how and why women have been excluded, discouraged, prevented and neglected from the literary canon. Early AAFs unknowningly adopted a humanist stance, assuming that the author was an original creator - the French school, in contrast, "asks how gender shaped the structure of language itself AND an individual's access to that structure" (Klages 95).

So. Feminist literary theory examines how women's roles have changed, how their experiences differ from men's, and how the binary oppositions favored by Western culture appear within literature in ways which concsiously or un-consciously further the domination of females. Fascinating stuff.