Download Women`s Studies: Jan 29, 2008

Women’s Studies:
Participating in Imagery Construction: How female artist can portray positive and
empowering imagery of women? Marcy Percy’s novel and Julia Alvarez’s novel, Frida
Kahlo, Maureen Gorris: How does their creativity (re)define symbolic meanings
associated with gender?
One of the challenges of creative arts is the construction on imagery in which we can see
reality expresses through art. Women artists have an important role in orienting women to
their own identities by creating imagery that deconstructs the idea that women should be
subordinate members of a relationship (wife of so and so, mother or so and so, secretary
of so and so, nurse of dr. so and so) or reduced to a part of their body (uterus, breasts,
legs, hips). Women should be represented as whole beings. (Rosario Ferré and her idea of
a whole female identity; one identity that is not divided by the guilt associated with
leaving the private space and daring to conquer the public).
Does nature have anything to do at all with being a woman? In other words, do women
have nature? Does it come natural to a woman to care, to like children, to nourish? Are
there social roles prescribed by nature?
A simple answer: Nature DOES NOT prescribe anything. Or, can men be tender, caring,
nourishing?
The idea of natural dispositions or tendencies is as old as the constructions of gender and
much intertwined with it.
Traditional theories (philosophical and psychological in particular) have traditionally
prescribe notions and definitions of women based on men’s perceptions of reality.
Women, as we have studied, have had very little saying in the constructions of
knowledge in the various disciplines especially philosophy and the social sciences.
We, as humans, use theory to understand the world and our evolution, as mentioned in
the previous lectures, knowledge (as well as categories or symbols) help us to create
meaning and order.
Within that theoretical construction (Western notions) definitions of the nature of women
have been faulted even in the same language they use to define women, since they imply
hidden sexism. These definitions of women have been based on an ignorant way in which
some part of humanity (men) sees other part of humanity (women).
Simmone de Beauvoir was a French philosopher who wrote way before there was a
women’s liberation movement. In her book The Second Sex she explains the
implications of defining woman as the “other.” That is, men are agents in the world and
have created the discourses of power and knowledge excluding the experience of women
because as agents they create conscious, they make history and they rule. They are agents
thus also SUBJECTS and everything else is subject to be dominated and subordinated
upon men. Everything else includes not only nature but women. This construction
facilitates the binary opposition of subject/object or subject and “the other.” Men look up
on women as other than themselves. Men act and think/Women exist. Men are active/
Women passive, Men reason/ Women feel, Men are conscious, Women are emotional.
However, du Beauvoir suggests that women are still sufficiently conscious to recognize
man’s humanity and achievement. Women are then conscious “other” thus able to affirm
him in his manhood in a way nature cannot (The compulsory tendency to be woman).
In this way man is able to reassure himself and his humanity.
What are the implications of this reaffirmation given to men by women?
Now, to understand himself as a human being man needs “the subject” needs other
human beings rather the women and nature. Each man wants to be a sovereign subject
over other men as well, this create an interminable conflict.
Women’s response is neither a hostile silence (like nature’s silence) nor opposition. This
encourages his desire to be master. Thus women are defined only in their relation to men
(Concrete example: Spain during Franco).
This view of women as the “other” has created in Western societies endless faulty
theories and false assertions, and has left very little room for men and women to
questions these assumptions.
Du Beauvoir says that the more women understand themselves and interpret experience
in their own terms, the less likely they are to accept these misconceptions (especially the
ideas of women and women’s nature, since differences are culturally constructed NOT
natural).
Here is important to consider the following idea: Traditionally definitions about
women’s nature are based on deficiency models created to deal with differences. Indeed,
there are biological differences between male and female animals. It is a fact, but these
differences are more due to dimorphism or biological differentiations among species. The
problem starts when these differentiations are turned into horizontal hierarchies that place
a value of what it is considered to be “superior” over what it is” inferior.” (Male over
female, larger over smaller, white over dark, etc.,) Instead of creating a vertical
observation of differences that views these differences as just differences not as traits that
implied superiority or inferiority. These construction of knowledge are faulty, the lack
true understanding of biological (human) configuration.
Thus the categorization of women as inferior has no logic or scientific truth in it.
Yet, this view of women’s nature is an old aspect of human discourses. It presumably
started with Aristotle, in the fourth century B.C. This Greek philosopher considered
woman to be a defective man. He thought that women had less vital heat than men, thus
they had to menstruate to compensate or to deal with this deficiency. “By male … ” he
said, “… we mean that who has the power to generate in another, while by female, we
mean that who can generate in itself. That is why they [the Greeks] see the nature of the
Earth is female and name it “mother” while the heaven and the sun are as generator or
“father.” He assumes that we could understand a thing by understanding what that thing
does. The first action of women were to give birth thus he thought that because women
can give birth they should be confined to the role of mothers, nurturers, and homemakers.
“A woman’s virtue can be found only in serving men.” (Aristotle 1949: 71 6a).
Can men be nurturing, caring, kind, and tender? Men have also being restricted to these
false constructions. Margaret Mead’s studies in New Guinea show how some non
Western societies consider men fragile, irrational, and emotional while women are
aggressive, rational. How do we explain this?
Aristotle’s work was rediscovered in Medieval Europe by Christian philosophers and
theologians (St. Thomas of Aquinas has based his doctrine on Aristotle’s ideas). In the
same way St. Augustine based his theology on Plato’s yet St. Augustine was far more
equalitarian and his perception of women more truth to fact). But more importantly, his
Aristotle’s influenced is considerable in Freud’s theories, who thought of females as
anatomically defective because they lack penises and this also resulted in their
psychological envy towards men. Freud’s theories on women have been some of the most
influential in the construction of definitions of women in modern times, in the persistent
and incessant belief that women are by nature inferior to men.
The binary opposition between male and female is persuasive discourse that Western
philosophers since Aristotle have assigned to subordinate roles (WHO CONSTRUCTS
GENDER?)
In classical theories women’s nature was not discussed it was silenced. This suggests
either a denial or an involuntary inclusion of women, and it is relevant because it suggests
that political theories such as utilitarianism or Kantian morality or even Hobbes’ notions
of democracy imply that the ideas apply to women without need for revision. That is,
women are either equal to men or they are not important to even be considered in
discussions.
Enlightment (17th and 18th centuries) philosophers rejected many of the theories from
Aristotle to their modern times (basically political and economic theories). It is here
where liberalism started to arise and its core was the notions of freedom and equality.
These notions were transferred to economics and political views of democracy. And yes,
the issue of women was for the most part not discussed except by some thinkers, but what
liberalism did was to open the compass for inclusion of the “other” and created spaces
that did not exist before. One of those spaces were the seeds of what evolved later in the
1960’s the movement of social, economic and political equality of men and women in
search of change of ALL those previous constructions of power (gender included) that
only lead to human injustice (Feminism). .
Liberalism and Feminism:
Feminism resists categorizations especially categorizations based on the “father’s laws
and labels.” Liberalism is the school of political thought from which feminism evolved.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women and John Stuart Mill’s
“Subjection of Women” were important works that marked somewhat a beginning
towards a feminist ideology. These liberals believed that all human are rational and able
to exercise their convictions. That a just society is that which allows individuals to be
autonomous and to fulfill themselves. Feminism was also seeded in the nineteenth
century women’s suffrage movement. Also relevant the role of Harriet Taylor Mill.
Wollstonecfraft wrote in a time when the economic and social position of European
women was in decline (1759-1799). Before the 18th century the home was for the most
part an economic unit and women, though relegated to the private space (domestic space)
had some important role in the economy. But the forces of industrial capitalism began to
draw the labor out of the private home and into the public place. Men moved out and
women stayed home taking care of everyone. Wollstonecraft’s work is an analysis and
critique to bourgeois women married to wealthy men, women who chose to stay home
and sacrifice their freedom to gain some economic status and prestige. They became
ornaments and objects of men. She also criticized the idea that women were by nature
inferior to men, although she did not used terms as socially constructed gender categories
and what have you, she did critique the subordination of women; she condemns Jean
Jacques Rousseau’s idea of dimorphism (his distortion of this concept) that implied that
emotional woman were the perfect complement of rational man. See Rousseau’s Emile.
One important work of modern political thought still influential in contemporary politics.
What Wollstonecraft wanted for women was personhood, “woman is not … “she stated,
“the toy of man, his rattle.” Women were not emotional only uneducated (had been
excluded from this privilege).
Taylor and Stuart Mill (“The Subjection of Women”) wrote extensively on divorce and
marriage. She was a strong influence in his writings and his editor.
These people believed that for women to be equal to men they needed to be able to vote
in order to have the power to express themselves politically and also to have the
opportunity to change things. It should not surprise us that the nineteenth century
women’s rights movements including women’s suffragist, is intimately tied to the
abolitionist movement.
Though liberal foundations were the stone of many political changes due to the ideas of
freedom and equality. Can women or any “other” live freely if they are oppressed in the
private space? It is interesting to remember that women were given the right to vote in
England in 1918, in the U.S. in 1920 in Switzerland in 1971.
Biological differences are irrelevant to the question of women’s rights.
Alternative Contemporary Feminist Views: It would be a tragedy if labels persuaded
individuals to believe that liberal feminism is a variation of John Stuart Mill’s ideas,
Marxist-socialists feminism and improvement of Marx’s and Engel’s theories,
psychoanalytic feminism an addendum and deconstruction of Freud’s speculations,
existential feminism an extension Jean Paul Sartre’s ideas, postmodern feminism a
revision of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida’s deconstructions. Feminist thought is old
enough to have its own history, though these ideologies have contributed to its evolution.
A common desire among these views: An intellectual and political commitment to
women.
Ethics of Care
Androgyny: Seems to exalt differences and tries, a bit too hard, too reconcile those
differences. Julia Kristeva’s view on androgynous being who reconciles the feminine and
the masculine. That is, this subject is an agent but it does not see the feminine and the
masculine within as antagonistic variations. If we celebrate differences we may fall into
the error of idealizing woman’s unique experience and contributions to culture and thus
making her too “especial” too “essential.” Her femaleness becomes too close to the
arguments of “women’s nature”
Essentialism: there is an innate human nature and essence based on biological
construction. Traditionally, woman was thought to be different from men therefore her
essence was also different, thus her nature is the opposite of man’s. The critique is that
this concept of the “nature of women” is also, like gender, culturally and socially
constructed thus is subject to (re)definition over time. Women can celebrate their
difference without falling into essentialism.