Final Post

Trying to articulate what I learned in this course would take a lot of time considering the amount of material we covered. I came in with only a minimal amount of academically gained knowledge about feminism, the queer community, and queer theory. This caused some conflicts in my head. I had an idea of feminism as a primarily political collection of ideologies. Since they are perceived to be founded upon political struggle, it can be difficult to isolate the theoretical from the political, and think about feminist and queer theory without immediately attempting to link them to political reality. In my first post, I even suggested that perhaps feminists should resist abstractedly theorizing for theorizing’s sake. In other words, if it is a discussion that does not lead to a practical improvement in the lives of real people, drop it. Through readings and discussion, I learned the importance of continually questioning, and how keeping an open dialogue is what is most practically beneficial for both theoretical inquiry, and real life. Though feminist theory and the political struggle faced by women and members of the queer community are inexorably linked, using this course to primarily concentrate on discussing theory and literature allowed me to think about ideology in a more abstract way.

Gender was also a topic which we frequently discussed, and I tried to use this opportunity in developing my own theory of gender. Intersex birth in particular, brings up many questions in relation to gender, and presents a direct challenge to the perceived gender binary in our society. As a result, we have learned, society often designates one part of that binary for people born with conflicting anatomies. Identity may be the most important part in designating gender. It may be beneficial to stop thinking about gender so categorically. Instead, perhaps the gender a person identifies themselves as is the gender they are, and since identity is subject to change, perhaps gender is fluid and also subject to change.

My Creative Piece

Although it is currently a work in progress, I have solidified some ideas regarding making a creative piece that demonstrates the theory my project is based upon. Since my project is about intersex births and unintelligibility, the creative piece had to reflect this in some way. I decided to write a short story in the style of a Chandleresque private detective story. This fits, since in creating our theories we are acting as detectives, linking pieces of knowledge to form a new cohesive whole and solve the case, so to speak.

In the story, told in first person from the perspective of the private detective, a client comes to the office because someone has stolen their gender. The PI doesn’t bat an eye, and takes the case. Butler tells us that we “undo” each other, and that some people are unintelligible in our society. The client has been “undone” because someone has taken this person’s gender away from them, or worse, dictated their gender to them. The client is unintelligible because his gender has literally been taken away from him, it is impossible to articulate who he is, gender-wise.

By the end of the story, the detective will have found a gender-stealing company called Society Inc., which grinds the stolen genders up and gives them back to people damaged or changed. I might rethink this idea, or change the story to make everything more symbolic and less blatant, but that’s what I have at this point. The main point of the story is to demonstrate, in a fictional way, the theory I build that argues what changes are necessary for intersexed people to become intelligible. Please feel free to comment if you have any ideas or suggestions about this or the project a whole, I could use them.

-Ziev

Butler's Take On Intersex

As per Professor Renzi’s recommendation, I looked at chapters 3 and 4 of Undoing Gender in order to build the theory for my project. As I said in class, Butler believes that those of intersex birth are “unintelligible” in our society, and they suffer social violence because of this. At this point, my project will aim to develop a way to make intersex people intelligible in our society. I am still considering ways to go about doing this, and if I can’t develop any arguments that are convincing enough, I might instead build upon Butler’s theory regarding why these people are not intelligible.

The challenge lies in finding a solution to this problem in a general, theoretical way, and not simply list off the practical changes that would need to be made in arenas like law, media, and education. Since intersex people are not acknowledged often enough in our society from the top down, it would be a paper on policy rather than theory.

So how does Butler reach her conclusion that intersex people are unintelligible? Her theory uses a case of an intersex birth in which David Reimer found himself in the middle of an ideological battle between two conflicting doctors, John Money and Milton Diamond, which she discusses in chapter 3 (62). Money believed that gender occurred as a result of socialization and was malleable, meaning that through being raised a certain gender, an intersex person could become either a man or a woman both anatomically and mentally. Diamond believed that gender was fixed at birth depending on the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, and should be surgically corrected if the anatomy does not reflect genetics. Butler, of course, states that she neither confirms nor denies Money’s theory, social construction, or Diamond’s theory, gender essentialism (67). Instead, she believes that gender is more fluid and less fixed, and that intersexed people are robbed of their autonomy for being forced to conform to this perception (81).

It is the commonly accepted notion that gender is permanent and fixed that ultimately makes those born of indeterminate sex, existing physically and behaviorally across a range of gender identification that could be subject change with personal evolution, that results in their unintelligibility. It is the perception that they sick, ill, or simply “wrong” that results in their oppression. Butler quotes Isay’s belief that diagnosis undermines the autonomy of children and mistakes it for pathology. By pathologizing “Gender Identity Disorder” and diagnosing it, the “medical machinery” Butler mentions is enacted and intersex infants suffer a form of social violence that robs them of their ability to exist as they are, and in turn, robs them of their autonomy.

Gender in Children’s Books Harmful?

After “queerifying” various children’s books, our class came to a unanimous consensus regarding the depiction of gender within them. As nearly everyone observed, the illustrated characters within these books are given aesthetic features “typical” of either males or females. The book I queerified, Little Miss Christmas, was no exception. For example, Little Miss Christmas is given long hair, pigtails, and heeled shoes to indicate her femininity. On the other hand, most of the male characters lack any defining physical features at all. Mr. Christmas is the same shape as Little Miss Christmas, but lacks her feminine features, indicating that he is male. All of the female characters within the book had “Little Miss” preceding their names while all the male characters simply had “Mr.” preceding theirs. The book’s creators evidently decided that the female characters should be smaller, since a typical perception of gender is that women are smaller than men. This is a perception that can easily be shattered if one simply observes that in real life, people come in different sizes. The discrepancies between the way gender is depicted within children’s books and the possibility illuminated by some theorists (e.g. Butler) that suggest gender does not even really exist creates a question: If these books are conditioning children to perceive gender according to a superficially gendered discourse, should this be a concern?

In “The Rhetoric of Sex / The Discourse of Desire,” Samuel R. Delany relates sitting down to read the children’s book, Corduroy, to his young daughter. He tries to change Corduroy’s gender from male to female as he reads, but his daughter catches the error and argues that Corduroy is male due to his depiction within the book (“Because he’s got pants on!”). Despite wearing the same overalls as the bear, she understands that the character’s gender is determined due to the discourse of children’s books. He is male because he wears pants, and because most protagonists in children’s books are male. The fact that Delaney’s daughter wears pants too isn’t incongruent because she does so within a different discourse, her life. “I was wrong. Corduroy was a boy. No matter how unfair or how pernicious it was or might prove, the discourse of children’s books made him a boy” (7). Delaney suggests that the predetermined nature of some discourse creates its own truth, which is why even his young daughter understands that even though she and Corduroy both wear pants, no contradiction exists because the pants exist within different discourses.

What if not all children recognize this however? Do some expect the gender determinants within children’s books to hold true in reality? I think that this is a strong possibility, but I am not sure that it should be a concern. Even if children do begin expecting males and females in reality to look and act like their illustrated counterparts, it won’t necessarily lead to a closed-minded or confused post-childhood. I was read Corduroy as a child by my parents, and I don’t use overalls as a visual gender determinant today. Though children’s books do present a gendered world usually only minimally similar to reality, I don’t think the inaccuracy will lead to lasting harm. Delaney is correct in recognizing that a separate discourse exists within children’s books that depicts gender in superficial, stylized ways. Because these discourses are inherently separate, I think that most children will eventually realize that not all women wear dresses, and that men sometimes do. Other things such as family, friends, culture, religion, and experience will have more of a hand in determining whether that child will be closed minded about it.

Mapping Queerness At MSU

As I first looked at the map of MSU and tried to think how I could “queerify” it, I came to the conclusion that it would be best to simply look at the map and think of unique characteristics of some of the places on campus. Certain buildings were the first things that stood out. Fee Hall, on the East side of campus contains a morgue, for example. This building, as it relates to embodiment, reverses the separation between live bodies and dead ones as students often walk by doctors in scrubs wheeling corpses if they happen to have a class in the building. This was one of the strongest examples of queer buildings on campus.

Other buildings I circled were Van Hoosen and Yakeley Halls, for being all-gril dorms; the IM sports buildings, for the strange aggressive vibe within them that results from people being places made for physical exertion; the MSU surplus store was circled because it sells things that are deemed to be no longer useful, and I thought this related to queerness in that it is a store that sells “rejections.” The incinerator was circled for the same reason, it utterly destroys whatever it is that the university decides to put in it. I circled the psychology building because the façade at its entrance displays carvings relating to physics and astronomy, and I believe that this incongruence between its name and its aesthetics is queer.

Buildings were not the only queer thing on campus, of course. There is a strange, abstract sculpture called “The Funambulist” which was recently put in behind Snyder Hall. This steel, black and red sculpture does not really fit in with the aesthetics of the collegiate brick dorms around it. As we discussed in class, many of the bridges around campus display graffiti, and this subversion makes them queer. A bit North of Brody Complex on campus is a teepee with an orange traffic cone in it that someone built in the woods. There are buildings on Michigan Ave. that have been unused since I was a freshman that are marked as “future redevelopment sites.” The ways in which all these structures exist, whether it has deviated from its original purpose and exists in limbo, or sticks out like a sore thumb among the structures around it, this abnormality makes them queer.

I titled my map after I marked it up. The title I came up with was “Concentrations of Queerness at MSU.” It fit because it related to the process by which I marked up my map, looking for spots on it that contained something that was unique, or didn’t fit in some way. These spots are concentrations of queerness, they have to be concentrated because they are queer due to the majority of “normalcy” that surrounds them.

-Ziev

The Death of the Author’s Gender

I’d like to use this post to explore some of Elizabeth Grosz’s theories regarding the relationship between author, text, and reader. In particular, I’m interested in the way Grosz uses Roland Barthes’ famous theory, the “death of the author,” and uses it in a context of gender and feminist politics.

According to Grosz, “The sex of the author has…no direct bearing on the political position of the text, just as other facts about the author’s private or professional life do not explain the text” (21). I think the first response for many when analyzing a feminist text is to do just the opposite. If an author is producing a feminist text, I think that most readers will take the author’s background into consideration when forming their analysis. Grosz must point out that the opposite should be true. If a text is to stand alone, as Barthes believes it does, demographic considerations such as the sex of the author must have no bearing, and are not productive for analytical purposes.

Since feminist texts are often perceived to be inherently political, how can Grosz’ four features concerning feminist texts (the sex of the author, the content of the text, the sex of the reader, and the style of the text) be acknowledged in an apolitical context? Is it really possible that the sex of the author has “no direct bearing” on the political position of the text? We can certainly use the sex of the author to analyze a text, claiming, for example, that the author chose to make her protagonist female because the author is female. Whether this is true or not, analysis such as this inevitably leads us to analyzing the author rather than the text.

So how can we acknowledge that a being known as “the author” produced a text, and that this being has certain demographic and personal characteristics and experiences, without opening the door to an analysis of these features? The interesting concept Grosz brings up, that of the authorial “signature” within the text, allows us to acknowledge what Barthes says we should not: the background of the author, without forcing us to inform our analysis using it. “There are ways in which the sexuality and corporeality of the subject leave their traces or marks on the texts produced, just as we in turn must recognize that the processes of textual production also leave their trace or residue on the body of the writer (and readers)” (21). In other words, texts include traces of the author’s “corporeality.” The way we make the traces of this signature useful is by following Grosz when she says, “I am interested in the way ways in which the author’s corporeality, an always sexually specific corporeality—not the author’s interiority, psyche, consciousness, concepts, or ideas, intrudes into or is productive of the text” (21). We must look for the way that the author’s corporeality, their material nature, is in the text. In essence, with the signature we are trying to see how the author embodies a text, with the author’s body being within the text, rather than how their body affected the text as a separate unit.

Queerness and Sexuality In American Beauty

American Beauty can be interpreted to have many messages. On the surface layer, the message is to live life without sacrificing your desires. Among these desires is sexuality. The film deals with repressed sexual desires of both Lester and Col. Fitz. Lester has a repressed desire for his daughter’s friend, Angela. Is this an example of the effects of the incest taboo we drew a diagram for in class? In the film, we see that Lester loves his daughter, but no longer feels close to her. Perhaps Angela is the sexual manifestation of his desire to reconnect with his daughter. Col. Fitz has repressed his homosexuality. We see hints of this first as he feels uncomfortable when speaking to his gay neighbors, complaining about it to Ricky in the car. “How can they be so shameless?” Col. Fitz asks Ricky, suggesting that Fitz feels shame for his own homosexuality. It is also apparent in his vast collection of guns, a phallic object. This repressed homosexuality culminates in him beating his son, who he incorrectly believes is performing sexual acts on Lester, and then kissing Lester during what seems to be a mental breakdown in which he is confronted with his homosexual desires. No doubt, Fitz coming from an institutionalized military background: the opposite of Lester’s ideal way of life (because it is regimented and you are told what to do), resulted in a repression of his homosexuality, while Lester’s refusal to be told what to do eventually caused the end to his repression and his pursuit of Angela. Indeed, Lester tells us that he felt like he “woke up” with his attraction to Angela, where before he felt sedated.

What message could this movie be interpreted to have about queerness? One of the refrains repeated in the movie, first told to us by Angela, is that there is “nothing worse in life than being ordinary.” This tells us that what the movie’s characters all share in common is a desire to not be ordinary, but with the irony that by and large, and especially Angela and Carolyn, they are extremely ordinary. Angela, because she exhibits all the typical behaviors of a suburban teen, and Carolyn because she is a realtor who has lost her happiness. These characters have the least power in the movie. On the other hand, Lester, who makes a successful attempt to avoid being ordinary, in the form of disregarding institutionalized forms of authority, like his job or his marriage. Ricky is of course, the most unique character in the movie, who ordinary Angela deems a “psycho” but it is he in fact, who is confident, while Angela is insecure. He is queer because he gives in to his eccentricities, as with his desire to videotape as much as he can in order to remember things, rather than his sexuality. He is our ideal character in the movie, able to see beauty in the world and be happy living life his own way, something Lester imitates. This movie places value on not being ordinary, and as a result, its queerest characters are its happiest.

-Ziev

Bersani's Last Paragraph

I’m going to try to interpret the last paragraph in Bersani’s “Is the Rectum a Grave” line by line and try to establish a meaning.

“That judgment, as I have been suggesting, is grounded in the sacrosanct value of selfhood, a value that accounts for human beings’ extraordinary willingness to kill in order to protect the seriousness of their statements.”

I believe most of this paragraph has to do with the human need for a unique identity and feeling of selfhood. This identity allows us to function in society. It leads to a willingness to kill because if identity is destroyed, one can no longer function as effectively in society, and this is as good as death. Identity must be defended with violence because by attacking or invalidating an identity, the person whose identity is being violated will be inadvertently killed in any case.

“The self is a practical convenience; promoted to the status of an ethical ideal, it is a sanction for violence. If sexuality is socially dysfunctional in that it brings people together only to plunge them into a self-shattering and solipsistic jouissance that drives them apart, it could also be thought of as our primary hygienic practice of nonviolence.”

I believe that nonviolence is described as “hygienic” because as good hygiene leads to a more attractive body, nonviolence, which must take some effort, as hygiene does, leads to a more attractive society. A society that requires upkeep functions more smoothly, without the need for bloodshed. I have trouble interpreting the line about sexuality. Perhaps he means that sexuality is another channel for violent energy that allows society to function.

“Gay men’s ‘obsession’ with sex, far from being denied, should be celebrated—not because of its communal virtues, not because of its subversive potential for parodies of machismo, not because it offers a model of genuine pluralism to a society that at once celebrates and punishes pluralism, but rather because it never stops re-representing the internalized phallic male as an infinitely loved object of sacrifice.”

This description of the internalized phallic male as an infinitely loved object of sacrifice immediately makes me think of Freudian morning. By allowing a repeated sacrifice of this “phallic male”, Gay males, according to Bersani, can continuously mourn this male ideal and incorporate aspects of it into the ego. As we know, mourning is cathartic. I find it strange that Bersani talks about “Gay men’s ‘obsession’ with sex.” I assume he is talking about a perceived obsession, which is why there are quotes around the word. There is also a critique of society within this section, suggesting the hypocrisy of preaching pluralism while looking down upon examples of it, such as homosexuality.

“Male homosexuality advertises the risk of the sexual itself as the risk of self-dismissal, of losing sight of the self, and in so doing it proposes and dangerously represents jouissance as a mode of ascesis.”

Is Bersani suggesting that male homosexuality is an example of what happens when one loses sight of oneself? Is he saying that sexuality among homosexuals is an act of self-denial, as suggested by the word, “ascesis?” If so, this seems like a simplistic view of homosexuality. I would be very interested in seeing Bersani’s theories put against, or with, anthropological ones regarding homosexuality.

Embodiment in Lars and the Real Girl

Lars and the Real Girl proved to be a slow, but captivating movie. We begin with seeing Lars standing behind his door, refusing his sister-in-law’s breakfast invitation motivated by her concern for his spending so much time alone. We then find out that Lars has purchased a sex doll and in delusion believes that she is a new human girlfriend named Bianca. By the end of the film, what is made clear is that Lars used the doll in order to protect himself and project all of the issues stemming from his childhood and the death of his parents. It seems like this event created a fear of intimacy in Lars to the degree that he doesn’t allow himself to even speak to his coworker that has been making romantic advances. With the first reaction of disgust from his brother, to the gradual accepting of Lars’ intimacy with the doll towards the end of the film, it is clear that this movie has an agenda. It begs us to question why we think this is so weird, this being a man’s infatuation with a doll. I won’t be talking about this message here though; I will instead be talking about examples of embodiment within the film.

The first, and most obvious example is the doll itself. Lars gives this inanimate object an embodiment of himself and his psychological traumas, putting his fear of intimacy and sense of alienation into the doll. This also makes Bianca the physical embodiment of a typically female social role, relying upon Lars for everything so that he can feel a sense of confidence and masculine authority. Authority over her.

I’m not sure if this gives the film a positive or sinister message concerning the role of women to men. It suggests that they are there to nurture them and allow them to superior, serving them, in a way. Lars’ sister in law plays a similar role, being the person most concerned about him from the movies outset, and also coincidentally a pregnant maternal figure. Lars feels sentimental toward his mother and compares the doll to her at one point. Lars depends on women in order to feel at ease. Does this mean that Lars becomes the embodiment of masculine authority through his interaction with this doll that is the embodiment of feminine servility? He becomes angered when various members of the community take the doll to do activities without him. Eventually he is only able to overcome his traumas by distancing himself and the doll’s death. Perhaps the film is suggesting that men must be rid of their need to feel masculine superiority in order to truly be comforted in one’s self.

Misfortune and Intersex Births

Through our discussion in class, I began to think of the ways in which Rose’s life in Misfortune has parallels to what has occurred more recently when children are born with an indeterminate sex, termed as “intersex.” When this happens, the common practice among doctors has been to quickly perform surgery on the baby’s genitalia in order to make the infant visually male or female. This procedure was experimental, the long-term results of which were never observed. It’s quite easy to see how problems can arise later in life if the baby’s biological sex does not match its physical appearance.

I should clarify in regards to where I am drawing my parallels. Clearly, Rose was not born with ambiguous genitalia. She is physiologically and biologically male. The similarity between Rose and intersexed babies lies in the consequences of raising a physiologically male baby as female like Rose was raised (and vice versa), and the psychological effects that this can have later in life. Though the evidence is anecdotal, according to this article from Slate, the gender confusion that results from raising a baby as the opposite sex from what they are biologically (gender confusion: a consequence in itself) can lead to “rage at the destruction of sexual function, to conflicts in school and relationships, to depression and attempts at suicide.”

In the chapter from Understanding Human Sexuality which was passed out in class, we see a real example of this anger manifesting itself. The baby in question, Chris, was born with XY chromosomes, making her biologically male. Due to her malformed genitals however, which were halfway between the length of an average newborn’s clitoris and the length of an average newborn’s penis, the doctors decided to surgically give the baby female parts. In the text we learn that at 27 years old she felt anger at what she considered to be a mutilation of her genitals.

In Rose’s discovery of her true sex we see how her reaction could be similar to that of a person of intersexed birth who was given the wrong sex. “I wasn’t a woman, but I wasn’t yet a man…I hated myself.” She later claws at her genitals in self-loathing. In addition to this, I think it is safe to assume that Rose’s illness immediately following her self-discovery was psychosomatic. Unlike Chris, Rose’s genitals remained intact, and this obviously makes her case different.

I think that where Chris’s dilemma probably stems from both the physical harm done to her body and the resulting confusion, Rose’s stems (no pun intended) from the psychological harm done to her. Where they are alike is that as infants, neither Chris nor Rose was given a choice in the determination of their gender. The ensuing damage comes from the incorrectness of the gender they were given and the way in which this determination made both infants begin their lives with a certain disempowerment.

This makes me think about what Judith Butler says in Gender Trouble regarding the “unnaturalness” of gender. If she is correct, perhaps Chris and Rose shouldn’t feel angry for being raised as the opposite sex since, according to Butler, both determinations of gender would be incorrect. But I think I’ll save opening that can of worms for another time.

Mother Camp: Outdated

Esther Newton’s Mother Camp explores homosexuality in America. Her writing seems to be trying to bring to light a subculture that many do not understand, the homosexual subculture (today we would probably say “queer culture”), and explain it to a broader audience. I enjoyed reading Newton’s explanation of drag culture especially. As I was reading this text though I had a problem: it was first published in 1972.

I was born in 1990. Most of my knowledge regarding queer culture comes from personal experience, portrayal of homosexuality in the media, and this course. Thus, reading Mother Camp was valuable because it allowed me to catch a glimpse of what queer culture was like during a time when I was not living. While reading I found myself wondering if any aspects of the subculture described in Newton’s report have changed since the 1970’s, and to what degree.

What drew most of my attention were a couple lines on page 2. Here Newton says, “Since male-female sexual relations are the only ‘natural’ mode of sexuality, at least one of the men of a homosexual pair must, then, be ‘acting’ the woman: passive, powerless, and unmanly.” In other words, Newton observed that in same sex couples, someone is always playing the man while the other plays the woman, with the man being dominant.

I don’t think that Newton actually believes that male-female sexual relations are the only “natural” mode of sexuality due to her use of quotes, but she asserts that this assumption is part of homosexual subculture. I’m not sure how strongly this applies today. Though I have encountered same-sex couples in which one person was dominant, I don’t think it necessarily means that they are playing the part of man and woman. I think that in most relationships between people, one person is often more dominant. This doesn’t just apply to romantic relationships; it is true for friendship, family, and in business as well. What I am trying to get at is that when two or more humans are placed together, a pecking order is usually established. In the context of homosexuality, this would mean that even though one person is dominant in the relationship, this is a result of human-human sexual relations rather than male-female sexual relations. I also believe that there are male-female sexual relations in which the female is dominant, and same-sex relationships in which neither partner is dominant.

I think these assertions that Newton presents reflect the values and perceptions of the time. It’s not hard to see that trying to explain same-sex relations by using male-female relations as a reference point would be helpful to those without much knowledge of homosexuality, though it would be an incorrect method of doing so. I read Mother Camp as a glimpse into the perceptions held by 1970’s America regarding homosexuality. I’m not sure how useful the text would be in explaining queer culture today.

-Ziev

Foucault's View of Sex

What do we mean when we talk about “sex”? Are we talking about gender, genitals, intercourse? Foucault says no. According to him, though gender, genitals, and intercourse certainly relate to and have something to do with sex, these things are not exactly sex itself.

Indeed, to Foucault sex is a signifier that has a large quantity of signifieds. He says, “So we must not refer a history of sexuality agency of sex; but rather show how sex is historically subordinate to sexuality. We must not place sex on the side of reality, and sexuality on that of confused ideas and illusions; sexuality is a very real historical formation; it is what gave rise to the notion of sex” (p. 157).

Is Foucault correct? Is sex only a figment of our imagination created to help us talk about sexuality and all that it encompasses? And if so, what necessitated its creation?

In my opinion, that the human mind is largely image and memory based has caused uniquely individual signifieds to every signifier, meaning every person links a different image (signified) to the majority-accepted signifier. In the context of sex for example, hearing the word “sex” would likely cause a different image in my mind from yours. Not only this, but perhaps there are a variety of different images each of us draw upon automatically when we think of “sex.” Because of this, I think that sex is not solely a signifier of other things. Rather, it is that and also a signified itself that can fit into a variety of things and exist with them simultaneously.

I’m not sure if this is making sense or even if I interpreted Foucault’s argument completely correctly, but the main point is that I disagree with Foucault when he says the notion of “sex” is a social construct. I think that it has been a constant and has existed since the equally socially constructed notion of “sexuality.” Since we socially construct so many things, I think that it is difficult to identify the things that are not.

-Ziev

Discourse and Action

In giving us the history of sexuality, Foucault focuses on the policies that power structures during different times held regarding sexuality and how this affected and regulated sexuality itself. Part II of The History of Sexuality especially explores how the power structure affected and regulated the discourse of sex and the affect that this discourse had on sexuality.

Is it possible, though, that this power structure’s regulation of sexuality had the most acute affect on the power structure itself? We can assume that the power structure consisted of the Church and aristocracy. The Church dictated what sexual behavior was looked upon favorably, for example using it only to procreate, and not engaging in intercourse until marriage. With this cultural ideal established, and assuming that the reward of heavenly paradise was true, one would think that it is the aristocracy who adhered to this dictum most religiously and were therefore the group with the highest proportion of its members ascending to heaven rather than being punished for sexual deviation and promiscuity by the fiery embers of hell.

In this case, then, we assume that the lower classes who did not belong to this sexually pure aristocracy did not ascend into God’s hands as frequently. The lower classes were more promiscuous, and to the power structure, this is likely part of the reason as to why they were “low” in the first place. As we know through countless accounts in history and depictions in books and film of the aristocracy in the Victorian era, the sexual behavior of the aristocracy did not often adhere to the principals dictated by the church, and indeed the sexual nature of humans often won and resulted in mistresses, illegitimate children, and scandal.

Foucault must realize of course that the sexual doctrine of the Victorian era was not adhered to in any way besides discourse. I think there is an obvious difference between discourse and behavior, or discourse and action. The way I understand it, the reason Foucault devotes a whole chapter to discourse is because it was the only platform in which the sexual doctrine of the Victorian era was adhered to. Though sex outside the cultural doctrine of acceptability must have been constant, discourse is among what reflects the culture of a time and place most clearly. Of course I, like Foucault, am speaking in huge generalities about the West during a certain cultural era.

What this does in my mind is raise the question: If human sexual behavior has remained relatively constant despite differences in discourse and culture (proof: a steady exponential increase in human population for thousands of years), in what ways does analyzing this discourse reveal something about the sexuality of our own culture? I would be very interested in knowing the answer.

-Ziev

Approaching Feminism

Upon reading Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and Elizabeth Grosz’s Space, Time and Perversion, I found myself drawing upon empathy during my attempt to grapple with the texts. Though I possess an idea of what feminism “is,” namely- the empowerment of women, these readings are my first exposure to real philosophical texts written by feminist thinkers expressing advanced ideas and theories. According to their own description, as when Butler suggests that we are in a period of “postfeminism,” these texts seem to be written in the wake of the popular feminist thought of the past.

Since I am unfamiliar with all feminist thought, I decided to approach the ideas within Butler and Grosz’s books as isolated ones, and took their word for it when they referenced past ideas or those of other theorists. As a male, I come from what Butler would likely call a “phallogocentric” frame of reference. Thus, my way of attempting to understand the reading relied upon empathizing with Butler’s position and thinking about “real world evidence” for the abstract concepts she defined.

This was not made easier by the academic’s penchant for using many polysyllabic words and the insertion of several clauses into her sentences, as she does with this gem: “The prevailing assumption of the ontological integrity of the subject before the law might be understood as the contemporary trace of the state of nature hypothesis, that foundationalist fable constitutive of the juridical structures of classical liberalism” (pg. 5). What?

In regards to the ideas themselves, I enjoyed the fundamentally deconstructive nature of Butler’s discourse. Take this thought for example, “When the constructed status of gender is theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one” (pg. 10).

I agree with this idea, if I am interpreting it correctly, because there is evidence for it in the real world. We attach gender to sex: males have one set of genitals, females another (or in the case of some theorists which Butler mentions, females “lack” a set of genitals). However, “Men” who identify as female and “women” who identify as male have, in the course of establishing their identities, detached their sex from their gender, which effectively detaches the limitation placed upon them by the sex-gender dichotomy, and adopted the identity that they feel is correct.

I also found Butler’s questions regarding the politics of feminism to be interesting. She asks if achieving political unity as “women” is possible when this category of identification may not exist. She also asks whether unity is even necessary for effective political action (pg. 21). This goes back to deconstruction, as well as the structuralist anthropology which Butler references. According to Butler’s interpretation of Claude Levi-Strauss, the biological female is subsequently transformed into the subordinated cultural woman (47).

I believe that as humans, we do have a natural tendency to place each other into such categories, and I think that were we to destroy all these constructed categories, we would look at ourselves as the organic pile of tissue and bones that we actually are. I also find to be correct Butler’s disagreement with feminists and anthropologists who look to cultures of the past in order to find “proof” of a female-dominated society (which Butler identifies as the “imaginary ‘before’”) that would contradict the notion that females are intended, biologically, to be subordinate. I don’t think that this is productive for feminism’s political goals, which I generally think of as an increase in the status of women within society.

Though I am not qualified or knowledgeable enough to theorize about what feminism should be, for the sake of reflecting upon my first exposure to feminist theory, I believe that in their discourse, feminists should keep their political goals in mind and resist abstractedly theorizing for theorizing’s sake. If the pursuit of a theory does not lead to a practical improvement, it should be dropped in favor of discussions that will. I am certain, of course, that many would be inclined to disagree.

-Ziev