Lorraine has been, in her usual fashion, tearing into some of the gender issues surrounding the kos migration. I’m going to quote a bit of Lorraine’s diary here:
1. gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes;
2. gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power.
I share this perspective of locating gender within social relations of power. I share Lorraine’s concerns regarding the body. In this diary, though, I want to take a look at the issues from a different perspective, that of performativity, as offered up by Judith Butler.
While Butler herself is nearly unreadable (I’ll never make the mistake of trying to read her stuff at bed time again), the basic idea is that we bring gender into being through our actions. We perform gender, thus (re)creating it. Those performances take place within the power relations set out above; those relations shape which courses of action are available and what sanctions will befall people should they fail to “act right.”
What we’ve been seeing as an enactment of male privilege, among lots of other things. On the web, we’re reduced to speech acts more than in other settings, but we might recognize the ways that certain types of speech tend to be more common for one gender or the other (or however many we decide there are). I hesitate to attribute certain styles to either gender because: 1) I haven’t studied it; 2) I try to be hestitant in making generalizations; and 3) Everyone who says my swearing is a signifier of my “maleness,” can be pointed to Maryscott O’Connor, who may be the only person to swear more than me….I love ya for it, girl!
However, the speech acts we did see were exhibiting a male prerogative by diminishing critical female (and feminist male) voices. Worse, those voices were “put in their place” via attribution to a gendered victim mentality. Kos has been treating those voices as a “special interest,” not an integral part of the Party.
That brings us to the broader context of this conflagration. The web of power relations in which this took place is one in which those hostile to women controlling their own sexual choices, pleasure, and reproductive freedom hold the reins of institutional power. Women’s actual choices are under attack, rhetorically and institutionally. The very real threat to women’s lives was discounted.
Then it was mocked.
So, while I think Lorraine starts us on the right path by looking at the web of power relations, I think a look at this controversy as the rhetorical enactment of those power relations, particularly within the larger context, leads us to a deeper understanding of what’s been happening.
I’m already up later than usual…I hope someone reads this over night…I’ll be up in about 5 hours to check 🙂
G’night all.
Nicely done Jeff, and I like your analysis very much.
My brain is pretty frazzled right now, but I want you to know how very nice it is to have you here. Looking forward to a lot more really fine work like this diary.
Hugs
Shirl
With love, with love.
“Fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck” It truly is one of my favorite words, and anyone who uses it as well as you can’t be all bad. <peck on the cheek>
I’m very much a fan of Judith Butler’s theories of performativity, even if I do get a headache every time I try to read one of her books. (And a mild cardio workout from hefting open the fat dictionary and two dozen other reference texts so many times.)
I think you make an excellent point, MAJeff, by bringing up rhetoric-as-symbol for power relations in these ongoing gender-themed discussions/arguments at dKos–which, incidentally, is why I suspect I haven’t found myself as gobsmacked by the recent turmoil there as so many others have. I’m a Huge Theory Dork, and once I really got into gender/power analysis, I just couldn’t unring that bell. I started doing it everywhere on autopilot: workplaces, classrooms, popular culture, the grocery store, the internet. The undercurrent at dKos has always been very clear about its hierarchy. Not that I’m not pissed off about it–just not surprised.
At the end of the day I guess I see this fight, like most fights, as an opportunity for the community to inventory its principles and make another round of choices about its identity. Does it want to continue to marginalize ‘others’ (and run the risk of losing anyway, whether in terms of elections or its own identity), or will it finally realize that there’s phenomenal power in the diversity of cooperative numbers? It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
I love that! I too can be one at times, though it’s been a while since I’ve delved into Butler, the awareness of power inenquities is an impossible genie to put back in the bottle for me too… *grink* (this is my own little way of grinning and winking at the same time!)
In my online community building efforts, the most difficult but fascinating thing to navigate is the continual tension between heirarchy and a more multi-directional power-sharing. What I’ve found is that there can be no complete eradication of heirarchy, but the trick is to not let it settle into one place or person — as long as you keep the power CIRCULATING, shared, passed on, abdicated, relcaimed, etc. — the community is strengthened through every contributor having a chance to teach and learn at different times…of course, this requires a great deal of trust and mutual respect, but I find that once that starts building, and gets to a critical mass, it takes a lot to completely wreck it (you’ve gotta try real hard)! 😉
I’m rambling, but it is something I have a lot of experience with and am so happy to see others who can talk about theory without sounding like pompous asses!!
I cannot tell you how many time I got “lectured” to on dKos and though to myself “If only you had a clue who you were talking to.” I can’t even respond to that kind of “look at how much smarter I am than you” stuff…everyone has their own smarts and while theory and book-learnin’ is great fun (for me at least!), the smarts I respect the most don’t come exclusively from school.
While Butler herself is nearly unreadable (I’ll never make the mistake of trying to read her stuff at bed time again)
Not true for her most recent book, Undoing Gender. It’s dense, but it’s not unreadable in the way that, say, poorly translated Derrida is.
For instance, this is totally clear:
This isn’t to say there aren’t so opaque passages in this book, but it’s still a readable investigation of the problems of the strategic claiming of firm gender positions by queers seeking the rights of marriage, by transexuals seeking ‘gender realignment,’ and so forth.
So, if you’re a fan of Butler, get a copy and have fun!
I know that in certain circles this makes me a very bad Theory Dork, but Derrida puts me right to sleep. 🙂
As for Butler’s new work, glad to hear she’s making herself more accessible. Accessibility is unfortunately underrated in the discipline. (Which, afaic, should open a whole new can of worms regarding the reproduction of structural power relations, but I digress.) I haven’t kept up the past few years because I’ve been dealing with some rather serious health issues that have consumed the majority of my time and energy, but things have gotten a bit better lately; I look forward to making a new reading list and will be sure to put Undoing Gender on it. Thanks.
it fits with my current research (on SSM) and I’m teaching Sex and Gender this fall…I’m guessing Butler’s going to be a bit much for an intro-level class though 😉
I don’t know where this will end up in the thread, but I just wanted to thank all of you theory geeks for making me miss my seminars. Oh, and thank you for all of the theory geek jokes being bandied about.
In discussions like these, I’m usually the anchor of feminist political-economy, stubbornly insisting upon good, old-fashioned materialism. But not tonight. I’ll try to be “on-time” to the next diary!
The gender diaries here have been phenomenal. Here’s to continuing such a high level of discussion. How can we use these discussions to enact a broader agenda against social inequalities?
Well, wobblie, if I’d known you were skipping I’d have brought the bong. Ain’t nothing wrong with good old-fashioned materialist-feminist analysis, imo.
There’s the beginnings of a plan afoot to do gender diaries every Friday night for a while and see how that goes. MAJeff will be going first this week, I’ll try to follow his class act next week, and then I think Lorraine is going to take a turn–and you know she’s always high quality. Please come, hang out and be as much of a stubborn anchor as you want. 🙂
Duuuuude–
You know how much I love Butler. It’s just difficult to bring her into a conversation ‘coz of the language thing. But yes. Absolutely. I think there are a couple of things about Butler that I love. In fact, I replied to RedDan over in the second gender thing with the whole “when I mark M or F on the form, do I mark it or does it mark me?” Performativity. Which comes first? Gender or sex?
God I’m a theory dork sometimes.
But I also think about her second book, Bodies That Matter, in which she talks about those interstices (I love that word) where resistance can be situated. How we escape the binaries. How we find the space where ideology has at least temporarily not been mapped.
Okay Enough of the theory.
Speech acts. Many of us felt assaulted by the words of Markos and then were accused of being babies for it. It’s an interesting conundrum. Words, to me, are given a sort of meta-power in our culture. We even give certain collections of words, like the Bible, meta-meta power. It’s fascinating.
I wonder how much of what happened was because of the words?
God. None of this made a bit of fucking sense.
Words, to me, are given a sort of meta-power in our culture.
Speaking as an occasional theory geek:
? How could it be otherwise? It’s that whole nasty tangle between material culture and language that’s impossible to unpack, except that, well, we know when we’re being beaten over the head and when we’re only being beaten with words. Do you know who’s tried to undo this conundrum?
I LOVE this thread.
Of course, I’m a Theory Freak as well.
The self referencial nature of discussing language, using language that was formed in patriarchal bedrock, makes all conversations about power, equality and gender excercises in terms definition. Because this takes patience and a desire to understand, arguing these issues is an uphill battle which usually ends with, “You just don’t get it.”
Hey SusanW. I agree. The language thing becomes a problem if, as so many theorists have posited, ideology already weights our language so that we are not capable of expressing views outside that ideology.
Every now and then, I love to run that conundrum through my head.
Of all the things we’ve accomplished (and there are so many: remember when a wife’s income wasn’t counted when a couple applied for a mortgage ? And how it got “better” when we could take our birth control prescription to the bank to prove that we weren’t going to “get ourselves pregnant” and lose our jobs ?), maybe the most revolutionary was the introduction of Ms. Refusing to define ourselves by our marital status, and implying that we are not owned by either a father or a husband was an ingenuous use of language. Now, if we can stop changing our names if we marry…..
Go one better.
Just DON’T marry.
I’ve been with my boyfriend for 12 years. We aren’t married and are never going TO marry. We can stay together in a solid relationship without having to legally bind ourselves to one another like pieces of property.
I like that angle, but here’s why I’m going to get married (again, by the way: the first one was a joke marriage where we wore dog masks and gave the appropriate portions of the tax code for our vows; respect of marriage with straight people? You kidding me? But it’s just as hard and expensive to get a divorce in a joke marriage as it is in a non-joke marriage):
I want the legal rights that come with marriage. I don’t want my family — a pack of smooth-brained republicans — to be able to make any significant decisions about my body if I go into a coma. If the lady and I decide to get the hell out of this country, it’ll probably be because my academic job gets me a job overseas, and if we’re married, it’ll make it easier for both of us to get out, or our children, when and if we have them.
Totally strategic.
Butler talks about these sort of strategic decisions too.
Oh, Karl, I’m laughing so hard……….
Please, may I quote you ??? “My first was a joke marriage.”
Many of is did it sans dog masks, and the joke was on us. My late husband (he died almost 30 years ago) used to introduce me as his first wife, and I would refer to him as my current husband; I wish we’d thought of the “Joke Marriage”.
I have to tell my daughter about your vows; I don’t think she’s ever going there, but were she to opt into the system, the tax code vows are right up her street.
Oh, feel free! The funny thing when that marriage happened was the reaction. We did it at a ‘spoken word’ party — back when those sorts of things happened (this in 1996 I think) — and we decided to make our piece getting married. When we told everyone that what they’d witnessed was real, several people — and these are hippies and punks, you know, self-styled radicals — freaked out.
What’s bred in the bone…
Hmmm…I can see where you’re coming from.
There are legal documents that one can draw up to determine who one’s beneficiaries are and who makes life-or-death decisions for you (living wills, POA’s, etc.). Certain states are trying to throw these contracts out for non-married couples, which is so wrong that I can’t even describe its wrongness in words. I can see why you would want marriage as a protection against this.
I didn’t know you loved Butler, but I should have guessed.
I know I didn’t do her work justice, but where the hell does one start?
I just dug out my copy of Feminists Theorize the Political, the Scott-Butler anthology. Just found this sentence(s) in Butler’s essay. It’s in her usual oblique language, but as Susan points out, if language is already reflective of ideology, how does one speak without ideology–other than by writing labyrinthine sentences that you have to work to unpack? But I agree with other posters here: feminist theory can wind up shutting out of the discussion the very people who would be “empowered” by understanding it.
Anyway, a quotation from Butler:
Seems almost prescient, huh? This is what many of us have been talking about, how this war, seen through the lens of gender theory, looks very interesting indeed.
(Also, other theory dorks, she’s also referencing Kristeva here, too, isn’t she?)
Shoring up our identity by identifying ourselves as the anti-Arab. And that leads me to thinking about the “masculinity crisis” in this country that you and I have talked about before.
Damn. Feel like I’m back in grad school again.
I most enjoyed…talking ideas. It still gets me going.
That’s some dense shit from la Butler. Reminds me of another thing I’ve been recommending like a madman: Introduction to Sociology by Theodor Adorno. The title is misleading: it’s actually a series of lectures he gave in 1968 (the year before he died), dealing with the positivist attack on the Frankfurt School and critical theory. It’s an amazing read.
Unfortunately, a friend has my copy. A couple quotes, though (these are obviously as close as my memory will allow):
“Reification is the act of forgetting; criticism is little more than the act of remembering.”
His full approach is to treat society as a process. In discussing the role of sociologists, he says:
“Our task is to understand where this process is heading, and then to determine whether and where we might intervene in it.”
Brilliant, brilliant stuff.
The subject is constructed through acts of differentiation that distinguish the subject from its constitutive outside,
A person is defined by what makes them different from others.
a domain of abjected alterity conventionally associated with the feminine, but clearly not exclusively.
that definition is usually, but not always, expressed as “female”.
Precisely in this recent war [Gulf War I] we saw “the Arab” figured as the abjected other as well as a site of homophobic fantasy made clear in the abundance of bad jokes grounded in the linguistic sliding from Saddam to Sodom.
Americans tried to justify their attack on Iraq by defining them as a “feminine” group by gay-baiting their leader.
Why does she have to write like that? Makes my head hurt.
makes a lot of people’s heads hurt…Adorno, I can do as bedtime reading; Butler, never.
for the no-migrane version!
some ancient philosophy classes having to do much the same thing. Ugh, and Wittgenstein, Heidegger …
Seduction. Gave up after the ninth try at page 1.
the real test of how well someone understands a person’s work is how well they’re able to translate it for different audiences.
I always get Adorno and Althusser mixed up in my head. It was Althusser who killed his wife, right? (And it was Barthes who got hit by the bus.) I’m a trivia junkie. Anyway. Back to the topic.
That is great stuff. I love the criticism quotation.
Here’s something else I found in the anthology. This from Jane Flax, The End of Innocence:
love it….exactly right.
Yes, it is about power. There are real differences in the need for power and the use of power.
I’m unfamiliar with Judith Butler. Is she one of those authors read by the “women’s studies set?” I get the feeling I would get the same headache I used to get reading Noam Chomsky’s stuff on transformational-generative grammar.
rhetorical enactment of those power relations
I could just roll that phrase around in my head all day. There are so many ways I see/experience this playing out every day, in terms of gender relations. It’s a gross example, but one I raised in my DK pie-related diary is about the language of pornography. (It was greeted by the sound of crickets chirping.) Why are there no “women” in commercial pornography? There are only: sluts, teens, girls, whores, bitches, wives, nurses, barely-legals, etc. All the language is degrading, diminishing, or reduces women to the support roles they play in men’s lives. (Yes, I include nurses under that rubric, but that is the general perception of nurses. Just ask my brother-in-law the nurse.) Is the idea of the fully empowered woman in a sexual context just too terrifying?
I really don’t think men understand how loaded a lot of the language they use in gender-relations contexts is. What disturbs me is the refusal to be enlightened — this sense that women should have no voice in how they are addressed, described, characterized, etc. When we complain about it we are met with more dismissive language, like “women’s studies set.” I don’t how many conversations I’ve had with men and been asked “Why does that upset you?” Firstly, it should be enough that it does. Secondly, when I further explain, I’m tired of being told that I’m being silly and should get over it, basically. It leaves me feeling voiceless, powerless, and exhausted. That is certainly how I felt during the pie wars. At the end of the day, I always discover that no matter how verbally expressive and clear I am, it will not bring understanding or compassion, because it was never an issue of my not being clear — only of some men not wanting to change their thinking or their sense of power.
You are so NOT! (out of your depth, I mean!)
I get that “why does it upset you?” question all the time too and lately, have to answer it with another question “are you really interested in a response to your question or is that your way of saying: This shouldn’t bother you?”
I think a lot of it comes (and my husband and I have talked about this a lot) from the way males and females interpret multi-tasking in different ways. Just because I am expressing a reaction to the use of a word or phrase or a condescending tone, does not mean that is the ONLY thing I am comcerned about, or the ONLY issue I have to think about — hell, I might be thinking about 6 or 7 things AT THE SAME TIME. Men, according to my husband, not so much. Laser focus on the ONE thing.
I know this is generalizing, but I am speaking here to conversations that my husband and I have had — we are raising two boys, so we talk about stuff like this a lot! 😉
I might be thinking about 6 or 7 things AT THE SAME TIME. Men, according to my husband, not so much. Laser focus on the ONE thing.
That is SO true. I’m just scanning through a number of conversations with my husband that can be explained by exactly that difference in cognitive process. And man is it frustrating to try to take all those complex, inter-related thoughts and feelings and reduce them to one, simple idea so that a man can understand it. And the underlying assumption so many men have — not my husband thankfully — is that women are irrational because we tend to be non-linear.
I trained for several years with a Cherokee Mystic, who phrased it this way. “The masculine principle is goal oriented. The feminine principle is relational.” With women things are largely contextual. To use the example of the pie ad, a lot of women were upset because of where it was. It was a jarring image in the context. If it were on an erotic site, such images would be perfectly acceptable to many of those same women. This is a lot of the difference between porn and erotica, imho. Porn is largely random images. Women need story or more visual context. It’s not about how graphic the content is, but about how it is framed. But enough about sex.
It’s kind of like the difference between hard numbers and ratios. I was in a great discussion with a man the other day about how the phi ratio cannot be viewed as a series of numbers, but as a ratio, and that is why it’s powerful and why it is the heart of the generative principle. It manifests again and again in organic matter. It’s creative. It doesn’t take us from A to B but in a circular process. (I’m just thinking out loud. I don’t even expect that to make sense to anyone but me.)
This discussion is soooo interesting!
About this “focus on one thing” that it seems men do or think, maybe it could have to do with brain function. When they do scans of the brains of women and men performing or thinking the same things, the women’s brains light up all over the place, while the men’s tend to only light in specific places. Like with speech, men tend to be localized in the left just above the ear. This could be a physical representation of what you are talking about.
I can see how that could be a survival characteristic when taking care of children. The more children, the more places you mentally have to be, all at once.
I wonder how much is inherent, and how much is developed by environment. Also whether it is more common among women with children.
Of course, this is all generalized. There are probably some men that light up all over and some women that don’t.
What I almost always hear in response to any complaint about sexist language is a reflexive complaint about how the initial complainant is trying to enforce some kind of censorship. Which is one of the best indicators that this really is a power struggle, I think, because much of the time I think it translates to some version of, “Don’t try to control me through my speech.” And of course, the all too frequently also present but unsaid (and generally wholly subconscious) extension of that sentence, “…when I am trying to control others through my speech.”
It’s frustrating that so many people react defensively, either dismissing or belittling it when they clearly do not understand it. Language is critical. It’s not only one of the primary ways we communicate with one another, it’s a huge part of the way we formulate our understandings of concepts–and the cultural values therein–in the first place.
Wow. Thanks for the validation.
This is exactly what I was hammered with over and over when I objected to Democrats using the word “pussy” to demean the men of the Bush Administration.
No matter how many time I said that they could use any terms they liked, but that it was unwise to risk alienating women with that type of insult, I was accused of censoring them, of hating sex, and being the PC police. I explained repeatedly that I didn’t object to the word, but it’s being used to imply that Bush isn’t “manly” enough (?), and that being female is inferior. What I heard between the lines was “You’re not my Mommy, and you can’t tell me what to do.”
“You’re not my Mommy, and you can’t tell me what to do.”
Well, if you’re going to bring psychoanalysis into it things can get super weird. 😉
Seriously though, I don’t doubt that there’s a valid gendered power analysis there, too, but it’s probably not very productive in the grand scheme of things since imo familial relations are more individualized than theory often gives them credit for being.
But yeah, validation? Sure. I saw what you saw at dKos, and I’ve seen the exact same thing in all kinds of other environments. I tried to make the same points as you about contextual uses of words like ‘pussy’ at dKos, but no one argued with me about it, and I was almost disappointed by that. Almost. 🙂
I’m glad you got a more reasoned response.
That actually make me feel much better, IndyLib.
Just a few vicious posters on a thread, attacking over and over, can create a very bad impression, so perhaps I was having a particularly tough 2 or 3 weeks on kdos that are not typical of the male attitudes there.
I’m going to cling to YOUR better experience. It beats asking myself what the hell I’ve been doing, voting for Democrats for 40 years, if the misogynistic crap flung at me represents any significant portion of the party.
My general response goes something like this: “Yes, you have the right to say _. My question is: why do you want to?”
What I almost always hear in response to any complaint about sexist language is a reflexive complaint about how the initial complainant is trying to enforce some kind of censorship.
I know. And talk about your strawmen! It’s a very effective way to shut down debate, to say “you’re trying silence me.”
And, let’s face it, a lot of these same people would be horrified by racial slurs, and even implicit race stereotyping. But, if it’s explicit, or implicit gender-typing, it’s sacrosanct.
First off we need some really good examples of particularly demeaning sentences.
Then we use Elgin’s strategies to work out effective responses. It’s a lot of work–but by the time we get done, we’ll be the umpires and they’ll play by our rules.
CategoryVerbalSelfDefense diaries are based on the work of Suzette Haden Elgin.
Makes me wish I’d studied gender philosophy more in my philosophy courses. It may seem overly simplistic, but I think a lot of society – and a lot of the problems we’re seeing – come back to gender issues. Specifically, they come back to people (women and men both) breaking and criticizing traditional gender roles, which makes a lot of people – even otherwise progressive people – very, very scared. Gay marriage, women’s rights, even separation of church and state.
I think another thing that’s been disturbing about this is the implied slippery slope. Now gay rights and women’s rights have been redefined as “special interests”, alongside environmentalism, vote fraud activism, and war activism. What’s next? If these things are just “special interests”, then what is actually important enough to be a core value?
I’m afraid that, in the case of DK, the only core value may be “the Party.” And the idea that that attitude might become more widespread scares me. Because I already know too many Republicans/”Progressive” Conservatives who think like that – it doesn’t matter when they disagree with their politicians, because they trust The Party.
At Daily Kos, the only core value is indeed “the Party.” I think that’s been stated explicitly a number of times, that it’s a partisan Democrat blog, not a progressive one.
That perspective can go awry, however. Often I’ve realized that we’re all arguing for the same thing, but I’m one of the few doing so because I believe strongly in the issue, while others happen to agree with me principally because they see an advantage to Democrats.
I also worry about the slippery slope, and wonder whether the approach argued by Markos isn’t just a revamped form of triangulation. There’s only so many times I can knock on doors for the likes of Ken Salazar or Ben Nelson, although I keep doing it and convincing others to help me.
Back to gender issues…people in general are very threatened by anything pushing the boundaries of sex roles. I once posted that I’d fellate Jon Stewart. It was in jest, but also to push people’s buttons since some know I’m a straight male. The responses were highly illuminating. Most were hilarious (“It’s official: the Internet contains too much information” was the biggest laugh), but many were simply confused or repulsed, and of course several called me a closeted gay man. I admit I was disappointed to receive this variety of conflicted attitudes among supposedly liberal blog folk.
But I was proud to find that being called gay in “public” truly didn’t bother me. Perhaps it’s my internal milestone of tolerance, proving to myself that I don’t just talk the talk.
I know I can’t really understand the world from the point of view of someone I’m not. But making the effort to empathize is part of being a progressive.
Yeah, this bugs me too. Trust in “the party” without critical thought is not for me, and, IMNSHO, the road to hell. Imean, really, what the hell has the “party” done to earn such loyalty and blind faith?? Nada for this girl.
I think we need to take back the special interests terminology — as in, hell yeah, they’re SPECIAL, aren’t you?? 😉
I kept wondering, too, what would be left after dismissing so many “special interests”? A party forms around issues, after all . . . or perhaps, in Kos think, around one issue that he is trying to head the herd toward by dissing so many others?
Watching his and some other Kos opinion leaders’ diaries and posts, I frankly wondered if there is some manipulation toward some sort of hidden agenda — an agenda that may be beginning to be revealed by what it will not include.
So the “big tent” talk became more and more hypocritical, as the tent began to get smaller and smaller in terms of the issues left under it.
It all just became too hypocritical as well as subtly manipulative on too many levels. . . .
How are you the big tent if you throw out the majority of the people in the tent?
I really think the underlying issue is not that we lose elections because we won’t welcome anti-choicers. The issues is that some white males want the tent to look more like them because associating with all those lesser folks diminishes them somehow.
I think for some men it is like being stuck on the geek team in gymn class. All the football players are having fun laughing on the other team. They just don’t want to be stuck with the girls, gays and minorities.
They don’t want to be associated WITH them…
…but they sure want to be the ones to USE them to their own ends.
I’m only a Democrat because most the of the candidates that I identify and support happen to be Dems, not because of some party ideology.
when did THAT happen?
Well, perhaps I should have said party affiliation 😀
It seems, for some, women issues are now just a – girly girly special interest unimportant shit.
This is the kind of discussion I like to see!
To your comment about the “speech acts…exhibiting a male prerogative by diminishing critical female voices” I can say that what upset me the most about the entire fracas at dKos were the comments by the male members of the community.
Yes, I thought the ad was tasteless, my primary concern being that it demeaned the reputation of the site as a serious Democratic venue (a sentiment I’ve seen expressed by a number of others). And yes, I thought Markos’ responses to the entire issue were thoughtless, chauvinistic, arrogant and stupid. But even that didn’t really bother me that much because, frankly, I see Daily Kos as a community that has far outgrown its role as a personal blog for Markos. For me, by far the larger and more important issue was the surprising number of male posters who used the diaries about the controversy to spew hateful and demeaning language at the women on the site.
While none of the comments were all that unusual (from the perspective of having heard any number of variations of them over my lifetime as a woman occasionally forced to interact with idiotic men) they felt more venomous for the reason that they were unexpected in a venue that many of us have come to believe was an oasis from the outrageous bigotry and hate that we see and experience elsewhere online, in the media, and in our country. It was this failure of the COMMUNITY to function as an inclusive arm of the Democratic Party that made me decide to spend my time and intellectual energies elsewhere. And I would guess that many of the women here share that sentiment.
As someone who has recently experienced the utterly insidious yet powerful effects of subtle sexual harrassment in the workplace, I will be the first to champion any woman against “getting over it” or to allow anyone to dismiss the very real harm that gender-based power relations have for women (or for anyone finding him or herself on the “wrong” end of the power struggle). Part of living in the “reality-based community” is accepting that this as a very real issue.
I already posted this elsewhere – then I saw this diary and realized that it applies here even better.
My apologies for cross-posting. I am sure it is frowned upon. (I am new here, if that helps!)
_________________
Here is an excellent article about male privilege:
http://colours.mahost.org/org/maleprivilege.html
Excerpt:
In 1990, Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh wrote an essay called White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. McIntosh observes that whites in the U.S. are “taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.” To illustrate these invisible systems, McIntosh wrote a list of 26 invisible privileges whites benefit from.
As McIntosh points out, men also tend to be unaware of their own privileges as men. In the spirit of McIntosh’s essay, I thought I’d compile a list similar to McIntosh’s, focusing on the invisible privileges benefiting men.
(Here is the original document about white privilege: http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~mcisaac/emc598ge/Unpacking.html)
Quite humbling to say the least.
Eye opening, ain’t it?
Just cause we don’t see something, and it doesn’t impact our every day life (racism, sexism, homophobia – whatever) does NOT mean it doesn’t exist.
If someone tells me they have strong feelings about something – who am I to say they shouldn’t, you know?
thanks for bringing it here.
I use that article all the time. Particularly for undergraduates, it serves as a great eye-opener.
Where do you teach, Jeff?
I am a nontrad @U/Maine, BTW.
http://www.umaine.edu/wic/wst/wst.htm
Peggy came up a few years ago for a 3 week intensive diversity fellowship (but it’s tough to nudge a system)!
She’s good peeps, for sure.
Here’s some Judith Butler (no, I would not call her work ‘accessible’ to the lay public, and that’s one of my ongoing beefs with feminist academics)!
…nothing you would want to take to the beach, and I’ve never seen any feminist academics on the MSM (too concerned w/CFP).
http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm
at Tufts and BC. This past spring was Queer Communities and Social Movements, and Race and Ethnicity. This fall will be Sex and Gender in Society. Tend to focus in sexuality/race/ethnicity/gender/class/inequality issues. Got stuck teaching Research Methods last fall, and I pray I NEVER have to teach that class again–lord, was that painful
Good for you, Jeff.
Was the research methods class a tad “dry?”
<g>
Methinks that in some virtual communities, critical thinking skills become too much work (not within the realm of a mouse click-thru or two); and WST is intellectually rigorous, for sure.
However, I enjoy learning WST topics which were never taught K-12++, and am one of those perpetual “lifelong learners!”
Butler is anything but accessible–same w/Haraway…I cringe when I see right-wing Coulter-types on the MSM trashing feminism.
It’s time for feminists to come out into the mainstream media “closet,” as it were (e.g., connect the dots pertaining to the theory & the applied “real life” multitude of issues.
Due to my “experiential” nature in having lived the Second Wave>present, I tend to shudder at what I perceive as how little we have moved forward (esp. amidst all the feminist backlash in this country since the Raygun regime).
It makes me downright queasy!
Fortunately, my daughter is also a feminist (she attends Smith).
Although I strived to raise her in a somewhat egalitarian household (single divorced working class feminist Mom), it was no picnic.
I never perceived society at large (or our local communities) as single Mom friendly–it was downright hostile at times.
…and I worship the ground Margaret Sanger walked upon, as I do not know how I could’ve raised one more child solo (and remained sane–with an essence of self intact).
Whew–it’s wonderful to meet all you folks within the past twenty-four hours (via a click-thru on a nasty Kos diary “Pie” entry, of all thangs)!
Go figger….
Pax~
Holly
to “undry” methods, but it was work. I showed “Run, Lola, Run” to discuss causation/correlation…we analyzed gender performances in music videos as an approach to content analysis…but lord did I hate teaching that subject. It was just a really, really bad fit for me…even if it did end up being a decent class.
Started a reply, it grew into a diary.
As a cranky old Nietzschean, I get queasy when I try to read PoMo/Positivist stuff.
Coming from my point of view, all of these behaviors, this unwillingness to confront the built in advantages/disadvantages of a person’s place in society are a result of a deep-rooted fear of taking RESPONSIBILITY. Whether you leave your beliefs/language/actions up to your religion, your upbringing or your culture, you feel absolved from doing the hard work of developing a set of values of your own and taking responsiblity for the consequences.
When another person, seeking to exert their will over an unpleasant situation, tries to challenge those lazy foundations, most people will lash out and try to either shut them up, push them away or HURT them. To be confronted by people with other values, especially by someone who asserts values BASED ON THEIR OWN DECISIONS, calls into question a person’s entire set of values, because they often can’t explain why they believe what they believe, other than to regurgitate the rote explanations they’ve absorbed.
All of the PoMo explications of this tendency of people can be very interesting academically, but I don’t know that it helps people move forward.
Accept that you are your own god, that you make your own values, and go forth. That was the great insight of many of the Asian pantheons, as well as the Greek’s and Roman’s — their gods were more “human” and paid for their bad decisions.
</lecturing philosophy geek>
Why does pomo make you queasy? Do you think it overlooks the things you mentioned about responsibility and values? In my view those things are a major, major focus of the theoretical branch. Understanding why people do what they do is imo a key feature in trying to effect change in actions. As well, most of the pomo I’ve read makes a big fat deal about acknowledging difference and trying to work through it; seems reasonable to consider that different things might help different people move forward, no?
the point of philosophy, or social “science”, is to MAKE CLEAR. PoMo (as well as positivism in philosophy), IMHO, only make things murkier.
It can be a noble enterprise to try to break down the reasons why people do what they do. To compare what I think they’re trying to do to a hard science like physics, I guess it’s akin to breaking the universe down to fundamental particles and forces (or strings and frequencies … not going to go down THAT rabbit hole right now). Physics has been powerful b/c it uses a very direct and understandable language, mathematics. Now, that language can be daunting, but it is one that can be learned across cultures, languages, genders … it communicates clearly with anybody who knows the language.
I feel like PoMo analyzes society in a fume hood, handling the words with robot arms, through fogged glass. It dissects language with even more dense and fuzzy language, a language that depends on being part of a small academic culture. Hell, people WITHIN that community have a hard time understanding each other sometimes.
My problem isn’t with the goals, or the area studied, but rather an almost deliberate tendency to be opaque. I also think sometimes PoMo writers will start with a set of preconceived notions, and will pick apart only what sustains those initial presuppositions. I was in school in the early ’80s when it really was getting rolling, and I found them nearly impossible to debate with, because I had to accept their definitions in order to have a debate.
I agree that the language issues can be a complete pain in the ass, and I had more than one argument (believe it or not 🙂 ) with other feminists who insisted that the work they were doing in the academy, with an audience of say, 100 world-wide, was somehow “political” in such a way as to effect real change.
However, one of the rabbit holes about language is that some would argue that ideology itself constructs language, that our common language is so imbued with ideological implications that we get trapped in it. Hence, the need to try to create a new language–which wound up turning into jargon that only a few people were willing to slog through. A conundrum.
I agree that there are times when getting on the hamster wheel and chasing around the idea of language is wonderful, and other times when something just needs to get done.
But I actually like pomo precisely because it forces my mind to wrestle with my own presuppositions.
I’m ambivalent about PoMo. I think some of the stuff on language is amazing, but sometimes it descends into everything being a floating signifier…sorry, no. What it feels like to me–some of the time–is that PoMo became fashoinable, it became a way to get a career, as well to let some really bad writers who used the technical language without a clear understanding of it to move up. I’m still materialist enough to recognize that the text isn’t everything.
chess puzzles … that can be fun, but I don’t think it’s going to be effective at creating change.
To me, the most effective way to shake people out of their way of thinking is to use common language in new ways. Think Lenny Bruce. Think Nietzsche. Think Richard Feynman explaining why the space shuttle blew up. Think John Lennon’s Imagine. I think the language of PoMo professors and theoreticians has fed that horrible mischaracterization of feminists that you-know-who referred to.
For example, I write fiction. Novels. No one would call them literature. My favorite part of my own work is a vampire series. Underlying the series is a massive treatise on liberal/progressive ethics (particularly about responsibility and values), almost entirely in subtext.
And at least half the ideas in all of my books are as interesting as they are (at least, I hope they’re interesting) because of my engagement with theory–particularly pomo. Ime, most of the people who criticize pomo have no idea what they’re talking about (this is not directed at you), and they are often the same people who criticize all feminist theory, no matter how intellectualized the language.
I can see signs of some of it in things like Buffy the Vampire Fighter, Watchmen and Six Feet Under.
It’s often indirect, but pervasive in modern arts.
Okay, so it’s just an each-to-each thing, then.
I mean, I love theoretical physics but I am extremely limited because math–so clear to physicists–is murky and nonsensical to me. I appreciate that you think it’s clear to people across cultures and genders and whatnot, and to some degree I share that assessment, but it isn’t and never has been clear to me. I’ve driven a ton of math tutors batshit crazy asking them, “But why is it like that?” Most of them eventually end up yelling, “IT JUST IS! ACCEPT IT!” lol. Higher maths just don’t make sense to me, and I truly want to get it.
Most poststructuralism, however, does make sense to me, even if I sometimes struggle while learning aspects of the language. I don’t see a deliberate attempt to be opaque (except on the part of a pretentious and obnoxious minority but imo no branch of any theory is without its corner of those sorts of people), rather, I see an attempt to make one’s extraordinarily complex meaning as precise as possible–thus a tendency to fall into the same trap as any specialized discipline of the higher mind, that being terms that are complicated for the novice/casual student. When I first encountered it in college, I was thrilled and relieved because it finally gave me a language to talk about all these concepts and observations about the world that had been whirling around in my head since I was a child. I feel free to challenge definitions within the theory, as well.
Hooray for diversity. It keeps things interesting. 🙂
It’s not the same thing, really.
Some of the best physics and engineering being done now is being done in Asia, especially South Korea and China. Very different cultures than ours, with very different languages, but I sat next to a couple of Chinese students who could converse VERY well in mathematics. (I didn’t last long, buy the way … the highest levels of math defied me). That language can be translated rather easily by a good teacher or scientist into plain English (or whatever) or effective pictures, like graphs. EVERYBODY knows at least a little what e=mc² means. I can’t say the same thing about “deconstructionism” or “signifiers”.
The question is how easy is it to translate the ideas to broader and broader audiences. Physics, to stick with my example, makes that easy. Much of the modern developments in the social sciences, litcrit etc, don’t, and often become muddled through translation into fuzzy or meaningless pop cultural distortions of what they were trying to explain.
EVERYBODY knows at least a little what e=mc² means. I can’t say the same thing about “deconstructionism” or “signifiers”.
Everybody who can do math understands at least a little bit what a ‘signifier’ is, and everybody who’s ever taken apart a machine to see how it works understands at least a little bit what ‘deconstruct’ means.
Again, I’d reiterate the concept of difference. I’m not saying it’s the ‘same thing’, I’m saying I think there’s enough similarity there for an analogy to function. You don’t like pomo, I get that. But maybe there’s more to it than you can see in terms of usefulness.
and plainly it has influenced you, and MA Jeff, in good ways. I had more contact with the philosophical versions of it, and I did learn some good things from it.
However, I really think the insights that have been gained would make more impact if they’d stop concentrating so much on breaking down language, and doing so with such an impenetrable thicket of jargon.
I didn’t mean my comment as an attack on the goals, but only to question the method.
Boy, this is fun! Lets take our beers to a table in the back and get more people to join in!
as we get pickled jalapenos as well 🙂
I take postmodernity as a starting place more than postmodernism. I think that’s why I’ve found it useful–the notions are tied, from the start, to social conditions. I avoid the near-solopsistic approach some people seem to take.
Like I said above, I think there are some pomo folks (I’m not up on my reading right now, but I’ve see them on the campuses I’ve been on). They use the discursive tools, but don’t use them well. I’ve read some forgetable stuff that made me think, “They’re writing this way to obscure the fact they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
but I remember Nietzsche writing something to the effect that “the shallowest brooks make the most noise” or something like that.
I know I’m beating a dead horse (and we all know where that got Nietzsche) but I’ve been thinking about his books a lot lately after watching the recent appalling power plays along gender lines.
we all have those moments where a certain thinker is foremost in our minds, when they provide us with deeper insights into what we’re experiencing. Having not spent nearly enough time with Nietsche, I’d be thrilled if you’d share some of that thinking.
I’m a big fan of collective reflection. The founder of a study/action group I’m part of has a saying that we’ve all basically adopted: “We don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflection on experience.” As social movement scholars, we recognize that collective actors need some kind of space for collective reflection…what’s working? What’s not? Where should we be targeting our efforts? Who are we? What are our goals? How do we understand the situation?
I like that.
It’s usually made fun of, but the late night academic ‘bull session’ can really help someone develop new ways of thinking. It’s no accident that some of the great intellectual developments & writing come out of areas with vibrant social/intellectual scenes. Germany in the late 19th Century, Berkeley in the ’60s, Paris in the postwar period, the Algonquin Roundtable.
I think the structuring of academic knowledge production gets in the way of actual knowledge production. The competative aspects–get published, get credit, turn it into tenure and a book deal–are inimical to that kind of collective intellectual endeavor. That group’s Wednesday morning seminars are among my favorite things of every week.
I mostly agree, actually, that the jargon can frequently be overblown. My perspective is that the breaking down of language is a necessary phase–maybe the next phase will interest you more. 🙂 By the way, my exposure also comes via philosophy, although I did take some women’s studies courses as well.
Meanwhile, I’m so late for dinner, so I’m outta here for a while. Thanks for the exchange, though. It is fun to kick around ideas with smart people in a manner that feels more positive than hostile. I’ll probably be around again later.
have a great dinner. Thanks back atcha!
Wow! Late to this diary and comments, but I want to say: Please don’t stop, folks. You are the very ones putting the theory into plain language. Thanks.
My mind is full of all these ideas — as a “student” (call it continuing education) and as a writer. But I would like to stir some more factors into the mix.
In the discussion of gender and power re: dKos, I’d like to throw this in:
What is the added effect in an online community of (1) the perceived freedom of the Internet (cries of censorship) and (2) the anonymity of participants, adding of course to the “freedom” to make comment without taking responsibility?
That pertains to the dustup over the discussions. Now, when it comes to the power of Web site owner and his “appointees,” there is considerable agenda setting — not just topic selection, but in the discussions. This was brought to the fore for me during Armando’s visit to this site on Wednesday: attempts to limit the discussion here, where he had no “power.” (I am sorry that diary has disappeared, for research purposes, so to speak.)
I had been inclined to post occasionally at dKos, but after reading this diary, my reactions of several months are starting to gel into something quite different. Thanks, “teach-es.”
I want more, more, more. There is no way I am going to get into academic speak, so all you posters, please take your knowledge to this site in a new teaching capacity. I, for one, am hungry for the knowledge to put more meaning into “words.”
References to the more accessible reading material also would be appreciated.
Thanks again to you all.
Great insight, caneel. I was trying to work out what the hell was going on with Armando’s posts. It was so, so, I don’t know, schizophrenic.
Reconciliation / bullying, re-approachment / interrogation, help me understand / justify yourself. It felt like a disfunctional family argument.
NOW I get it. He was testing out raw power, medium power and well done. None of them worked, did they.
I too wish I could study the whole thing since you’ve pointed out the dynamics. I’ll understand myself better if I work out why I couldn’t see what was happening at the time.
Maybe I’m a little afraid of Armando, or I wanted his approval.
YUCK !
This discussion of power reminds me of a movie called “Labyrinth” that was out years ago. The main theme in the movie was that the main character (a teenage girl) had power, but kept forgetting that part.
I rather enjoyed it, and have watched it several times. Each time I get more out of it.
Some of it is instinctual, self-preservation.
Portia returns