Download Sex, Gender & Representation. Lecture One

Sex, Gender &
Representation.
Lecture One
Sexual Violence in Literature and The
Arts.
Why are we interested in
Representation?
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Debates around representation are central
to feminist theory .
For an analysis of the experiences of those
who are represented.
For an analysis of power relations.
For an analysis of ascribed and elected
identities.
For an examination of the ways that some
representations of women are said to
cause, or legitimise, sexual violence.
Second-wave Feminism and the
Representation debate.
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Power.
Discourse.
Image.
Text.
‘Talk’.
Ideological.
 Image of ‘ideal’ woman.
 Perpetuates gender
difference.
 Perpetuates inequality.
 Permeates
consciousness.
 Has material affects.
Kate Millet. Sexual Politics. (1971)
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One of the first examples of serious feminist
literary criticism.
Millet looks at representations of Women in
the novel.
Men and women are socialised into basic
patriarchal values & certain kind of 'sexual
politics' through particular kinds of
representation.
Women inferiorised in patriarchal discourse.
‘Good’ Girls & ‘Bad’ Girls.
 ‘Good Girls’ - Wife, mother. Subservient,
Compliant. Docile. Domesticated. Virtuous.
Sexy and Attractive. Available (to partner).
 ‘Bad girls’- Single, independent, Belligerent.
Unruly. Outspoken/ aggressive. Sluttish.
Immoral. Overtly Sexual Available (to
anyone).
‘Good’ Girls & ‘Bad’ Girls.
 These are binary opposites, where are the women
that fall in-between these two polar extremes?
 Feminist research shows that patriarchal discourse is
saturated with these concepts.
 See Sue Lees research on girls and Schooling, and
her research on the impact of these stereotypes on
the perceptions of police and judges involved in Rape
trials.
 Common attitude is that some women are ‘asking for
it’.
Meaning and Representation.
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Do representations of women objectify
them?
Does this objectification cause violence?
According to many feminists, Yes!
Women are reduced to a collection of parts.
Certain kinds of representation are a form of
violence in themselves.
Andrea Dworkin on Norman Mailer.
Ambivalence and Representation.
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Subtle shifts in signification and
interpretation.
Representation is fluid.
Time, space and place affect meaning.
Boundaries between ‘good’ & ‘bad’ are often
arbitrary.
Different rules for men and women.
Penalties for transgression.
The Policing of Women’s Sexuality
and behaviour.
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Womens sexuality and behaviour is policed through
representation and discourse.
Sue Lees (1989). ‘Slags’ & ‘Drags’. Both have
negative connotations so women can’t ‘win’.
There are often severe penalties for minor
infractions of ‘rules’ around sexuality and
behaviour.
Rules are shifting, social meanings are not fixed,
different contexts require different behaviour.
Women must learn a subtle and complex systems
of rules and conventions.
The moral virtue of women is continually under
scrutiny.
Other issues in the representation
debate.
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Do we internalise these images?
Are we passive or active consumers of ‘texts’?
Ambiguity of ‘texts’.One meaning or many?
Texts are ‘polysemic’ they have many meanings.
Relationship between author and reader?
Intended and received meanings.
Intertextuality.
Questions around effects (Pornography debate).
What about self-representation?
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Resistance- the feminist movement.
Limited due to dominant ideology of
patriarchy.
Lees (1997) ‘Women have no language to
draw on to discuss their sexuality.
Fine (1988) ‘The missing discourse of
desire’.
Is this equally true across space and time?
Objectification
When we talk about
‘objectifying’ we are
normally referring to the
habit of looking at other
people as though they
were things.
Sexual objectification.
 The fetishistic act of regarding a person as an object
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for erotic purposes.
Sexual fetishism, first described by Sigmund Freud.
Where the object of affection is a specific inanimate
object or a part of a person's body.
Fetishism, the general concept of an object having
supernatural powers. (Durkheim and MaussPrimitive Classifications: Marx-Commodity fetishism:
Deleuze and Guattari- ‘Miraculated objects)
Feminists interested in non-consensual sexual
objectification of women.
Objectifying Women
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Do men objectify women?
Women as a collection of breasts, bottom, hair, legs, feet, etc.
Emphasis on youth, beauty, perfection.
Woman, as perfect object, may trade her self-object for those objects
that she desires.
Sanctions for those who refuse to be objectified.
Women’s bodies are objectified in common ways.
In advertising, art, literature and digital media.
Womens ‘being’ associated with her body parts.
Feminist argument- Women reduced to a collection of fragmented
parts.
Men are observers or voyeurs of female embodiment.
Women often depicted with no heads, faces or with mouths closed.
Mouths open for sexual provocation.
Subtle siginifications behind these images.
Objectifying Men
 Is there an increasing objectification of men?
 Women objectifying men- discarding individuality in
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favour of factors such as social position, income, and
physical appearance.
Machismo and sensitivity.
Media representations of male bodies- chest, thighs,
biceps.
Men objectify other men.
Homo-erotic representation? The perfect male
physique.
Modern ads draw on male body to sell products.
Subjects and Objects
 Subject-object problem arises out of the metaphysics
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of Hegel.
Hegel's metaphysics distinguishes between subjects
(observers) and objects (what is observed).
Subjects- active, internal, social participants, gifted
with cognition and will.
Objects- passive, external, acted upon.
The concept of the subject implies agency, action and
authorship.
Paradox- being a ‘subject’ can also imply subjection,
weakness and being dominated
The Objectification of the world
around us.
 Objectification is an important part of how we
relate to the world.
 we objectify the whole universe and
everything in it in order to understand and
control it
 Self as separate from the universe.
Women and self-objectification.
 Do women objectify themselves and each
other?
 Feminists would claim that this is because of
the dominant patriarchal discourse that
compels women to view themselves in these
terms.
 This suggests that power relations are
confined to male/ female oppositions.
Sexuality and objectification.
 Sexuality ‘just one more area’ where processes and
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practices of objectification take place.
Alan Goldman- sexual acts inevitably involve the
manipulation of one’s partner for ones own pleasure.
Sex involves using an ‘other’ for ones own personal
satisfaction.
Sex is an intrinsically selfish act.
We all objectify each other when it comes to sex.
Does objectification solves the
problem of selfishness in sex.
 Goldman says yes.
 If we all allow ourselves to become sexual
objects for the purposes of our partner’s
pleasure then this reduces the selfishness of
our own individual sexual nature.
Some Questions to reflect on.
 Is the pornographic, objectifying representation of the
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opposite sex really any different from what happens
between the sheets?
Is the objectification of men acceptable in order to
redress power imbalances?
What happens when we objectify each other during
consensual sex?
Does objectification denigrate women and lead to
sexual violence?
Do women represent their own, and other women’s
sexuality in non- objectifying ways?
Will alternative forms of representation really change
the status of women in society?
Sexual Behaviour. Consent, Choice
and Coercion.
 Questions around sexual activity, of a violent or
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pseudo-violent nature, between consenting adults.
Do Sadistic or masochistic sexual practices cause
rape or other forms of sexual violence? (Evidence
suggests not).
Are these forms of sexual activity are more
objectifying and degrading to women than men.
Are these forms of asexual behaviour are morally
acceptable?
Should society be policing individual’s sexual conduct
anyway?
Moral Agency.
 Moral Agents are:
 Those actors who are expected to meet the
demands of morality. Not all agents are moral
agents. Children and animals although
capable of performing actions cannot
automatically be considered as moral agents.
To be a moral agent one must be capable of
conforming to some of the demands of
morality.
 Blackwell Companion to Philosophy.
Moral Agency
 This raises an important question.
 Can we expect someone who is mentally ill to
take responsibility for their own actions?
 The area of human sexuality is fraught with
moral debates, indeed the legal machinery
itself depends on moral judgements.
Epistemological relativism
 The idea that all of our judgements about
‘truth’ and ‘morality’ are situated, that is
situated in our own cultural history and our
own specific value systems.
 We cannot force our ideas about truth and
morality on other cultures or individuals.
 Knowledge’s and belief systems are local, not
universal.
 Trying to universalise rules around social
behaviour is a form of oppression.
What are the implications of this for
questions around sexual violence?
 How can we make any judgements about
human action and behaviour if all local
knowledges should be equally privileged?
 What is to stop a group engaged in the
abuse of children claiming rights to continue
their practices on the basis of a relativist
argument?
 Example genital mutilation in some cultures.
Marquis De Sade 1740-1814
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The novel The 120 Days of Sodom,
(1785) catalogs a wide variety of
horrific sexual perversions
performed on a group of enslaved
teenagers Manuscript lost during
the storming of the Bastille not
published until 1904.
The novel Philosophy in the
Bedroom (1795) culminates in the
rape and mutilation of the female
characters mother.
In The Sadeian Woman: And the
Ideology of Pornography (1979),
Angela Carter provides a feminist
reading of Sade, seeing him as a
"moral pornographer" who creates
spaces for women. By contrast,
Andrea Dworkin saw Sade as the
exemplary woman-hating
pornographer, supporting her theory
that pornography inevitably leads to
violence against women.
Leopold Von Sacher Masoch (18361895)
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This novel tells of a man,
Serverin von Kusiemski, so
infatuated with a woman, Wanda
von Dunajew, that he requests to
be treated as her slave, and
encourages her to treat him in
progressively more degrading
ways.
The relationship arrives at a
crisis point when Wanda herself
meets a man to whom she would
like to submit.
At the end of the book, Severin,
humiliated by Wanda's new lover,
ceases to desire to submit,
stating that men should dominate
women until the time when
women are equal to men in
education and rights
This ending can be viewed as
both misogynist and feminist.
Sadism, masochism, contract,
consent, choice and coercion.
 Terms and Concepts.
 Sadism- The deriving of sexual gratification or the tendency to
derive sexual gratification from inflicting pain or emotional abuse
on others.
 Masochism- the deriving of sexual gratification, or the tendency
to derive sexual gratification, from being physically or
emotionally abused humiliated or mistreated, either by another
or by oneself. It can also be defined as a willingness or
tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences.
 Gilles Deleuze (2004). It is highly unusual to find one individual
who is into both Sadism and Masochism.
 ‘ Comparing the work of Sade with Masoch, one is struck by the
impossibility of any encounter between a Sadist and a
masochist. Their milieus, their rituals are entirely different; there
is nothing complementary about their demands’. (Deleuze 2004:
126).
S&M
 Sado-masochism’ is the combination of sadism and masochism.
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The deriving of pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from
inflicting or submitting to physical or emotional abuse.
Sandra Lee Bartky- the ‘Eroticization of relations of domination
and submission’.
Feminist critiques of SM.
SM is a form of sexual violence it can also cause sexual
violence.
Many feminists suggest that patriarchal sexual relations require
women to be submissive and weak and that SM practices are
an extension of this with male power becoming erotically
charged.
SM an expression of a women hating culture (Bartky 1997: 48).
Some liberal perspectives Feminist
and Lesbian SM.
 Sexual liberalists and some Feminist and Lesbian
SM’ers disagree.
 But SM aficionados point out that much of the
violence is theatre.
 SM between two consenting partners is liberatorygender play; trust; pure form of sex; uses whole
body; defended on the grounds of sexual freedom.
 Feminist condemnation of SM is sexually repressive
and that to stigmatise those who enjoy SM is to play
into the hands of the political right.
Issues of consent and Contract in
SM practices.
 To engage in SM, one must engage in a
contractual relationship.
 Sacher –Masoch (Who gives his name to
masochism) required female partners to sign
a contract with precise clauses (Deleuze
2004).
 To enter into a contract is to agree to it’s
conditions.
 Issues of trust are paramount.
Choice and Coercion.
 SM is a matter of personal choice and individual freedom.
 Should the state legislate against private sexual preferences
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and practices?
Paternalistic state has legislated against homosexuality and
anal sex.
Norms and values change over time.
Is individual freedom an appropriate basis for sexual morality?
The harm principle ‘John Stuart Mill’.
The example of sadism and self-control.
Should all of our rights be curbed because of a few individuals?
How do we protect those who are unable to choose?
Might individuals be coerced into participating in these practices
due to wider discourses around sexuality and marital duty?
Non-consensual sex between partners.
Marital Rape.