Feminist prose is confusing; so I'm going to ramble about it to you in the hopes that it'll start making sense to me.
I'm a woman - to me, that is pure logic. [See: Kaydee]
I'm looking into gender and 'gender boundaries' right now for my dissertation. It's supposed to help me show that the androgyny of Vampires helps to dissolve (or even just disillusion) the gender boundaries that our society constructs around us.
Things that I already kinda know/understand:
Écriture féminine is a form of writing distinguished by Hélén Cixous as women's writing 'of and from the body'. It is supposed to connect deeply with the unconscious, and have a movement to it that mimics the unconscious. Water and other 'female' images are supposed to be used, and if the structure is hindered from this it is normally shown as the outside force. Many early works written in this style are littered with other peoples thoughts - normally men (normally husbands). The female is often portrayed as instinctive, mutable, emotional and unconscious - in juxtaposition to the male logical, direct certainty.
Binary Gender opposition is basically where we define Men as 1 and women as 0. We are total opposites according to this - the one being phallic and the zero being vulvic (or yonic, if you want a couple cool words for the female "phallus"... yes, I had to look it up) we women fall under the nice little heading of 0. This means that men become the 'it' while we women become the 'Other'. That which is defined via absence/opposition. The in-y to their out-y. The lack of dangle to their angled dangled dongle... I dunno where I'm going with this, I think I got lost in a tangle of angles and bangles and dangles and... there I go again!
So yeah, basically - binary gender opposition is what sets men up as the be all and end all. They are the definition - the definers. We become only the defined - the lack-there-of...
Which is why Feminist writing is so reactionary against male writing, and standardisation.
Which leads me onto Phallogocentrism. I love this word. It's a combination of logo-centrism and phallo-centrism.
I quote (from my own essay... cause I'm cool like that...)
" ‘“phallogocentric” tradition,’ (a merging of logocentrism, the focus of power being on words, and phallocentrism, the focus of power being the phallus, to create phallogocentrism) The Awakening, Francesco Pontuale (1996) "
(though I would now argue that the focus of power concerned by phallocentrism is more on the phallus bearer in 9 cases out of ... well, 9 really... but.. we'll be conventional and say out of 10)
So, we basically have men being the definers, the controllers of language, the ones who own everything and displace women through their general differences and 'Otherness'. This means that it's practically impossible for women to become their own definers.
Think of it this way - not only are you already defined (from birth) in a particular way; you also have no tools beyond the masculine language that's enforced on you consistently with which to define yourself. It's like being the colour blue, and only have red crayons to show what that means. Can you do it?
There's been talk of a new 'feminine' language, though I can't remember where on earth I read about it - and I'll be damned if I'm going to read through every tiny thing again just to find some vague mention of something that probably never materialised.
Guys are probably thinking - well, it's not as if it matters anyway. In what way is the language 'masculine' anyway? It's not gendered!
Well, actually - it is. Especially English. Instead of adopting the gendering of objects like in languages like French, we simply reuse the masculine words to describe women.
Think about it. What words have we got to describe a girl? Woman, female... the only one that isn't masculine orientated - that isn't a deviation from the masculine, is 'girl' - which is applied to the young, or those we wish to condescend. As a child we don't have much sexual gender differential, so there is no real gender to convey.
Hence, our own language defines us as 'Not-man' - or 'Not-male'. We are defined by what we are not rather than what we are.
(w/o - man... without man... f/e - male... ?? I dunno - random thought/aside...)
Maybe I just relate to pallogocentrism so much because I'm a word person. I love words. I love understanding them, and where they come from, and why they evolve... Etymology is really important to me; and I can't explain why.
So, where does that leave me in relation to Gender Boundaries and Androgyny??
I have no idea cause I've not really covered Gender Boundaries yet, have I? Whoops...
Well, I'm going to leave it for now, and return to this later.
For now...
Blessed Be xx
I'm a woman - to me, that is pure logic. [See: Kaydee]
I'm looking into gender and 'gender boundaries' right now for my dissertation. It's supposed to help me show that the androgyny of Vampires helps to dissolve (or even just disillusion) the gender boundaries that our society constructs around us.
Things that I already kinda know/understand:
Écriture féminine is a form of writing distinguished by Hélén Cixous as women's writing 'of and from the body'. It is supposed to connect deeply with the unconscious, and have a movement to it that mimics the unconscious. Water and other 'female' images are supposed to be used, and if the structure is hindered from this it is normally shown as the outside force. Many early works written in this style are littered with other peoples thoughts - normally men (normally husbands). The female is often portrayed as instinctive, mutable, emotional and unconscious - in juxtaposition to the male logical, direct certainty.
Binary Gender opposition is basically where we define Men as 1 and women as 0. We are total opposites according to this - the one being phallic and the zero being vulvic (or yonic, if you want a couple cool words for the female "phallus"... yes, I had to look it up) we women fall under the nice little heading of 0. This means that men become the 'it' while we women become the 'Other'. That which is defined via absence/opposition. The in-y to their out-y. The lack of dangle to their angled dangled dongle... I dunno where I'm going with this, I think I got lost in a tangle of angles and bangles and dangles and... there I go again!
So yeah, basically - binary gender opposition is what sets men up as the be all and end all. They are the definition - the definers. We become only the defined - the lack-there-of...
Which is why Feminist writing is so reactionary against male writing, and standardisation.
Which leads me onto Phallogocentrism. I love this word. It's a combination of logo-centrism and phallo-centrism.
I quote (from my own essay... cause I'm cool like that...)
" ‘“phallogocentric” tradition,’ (a merging of logocentrism, the focus of power being on words, and phallocentrism, the focus of power being the phallus, to create phallogocentrism) The Awakening, Francesco Pontuale (1996) "
(though I would now argue that the focus of power concerned by phallocentrism is more on the phallus bearer in 9 cases out of ... well, 9 really... but.. we'll be conventional and say out of 10)
So, we basically have men being the definers, the controllers of language, the ones who own everything and displace women through their general differences and 'Otherness'. This means that it's practically impossible for women to become their own definers.
Think of it this way - not only are you already defined (from birth) in a particular way; you also have no tools beyond the masculine language that's enforced on you consistently with which to define yourself. It's like being the colour blue, and only have red crayons to show what that means. Can you do it?
There's been talk of a new 'feminine' language, though I can't remember where on earth I read about it - and I'll be damned if I'm going to read through every tiny thing again just to find some vague mention of something that probably never materialised.
Guys are probably thinking - well, it's not as if it matters anyway. In what way is the language 'masculine' anyway? It's not gendered!
Well, actually - it is. Especially English. Instead of adopting the gendering of objects like in languages like French, we simply reuse the masculine words to describe women.
Think about it. What words have we got to describe a girl? Woman, female... the only one that isn't masculine orientated - that isn't a deviation from the masculine, is 'girl' - which is applied to the young, or those we wish to condescend. As a child we don't have much sexual gender differential, so there is no real gender to convey.
Hence, our own language defines us as 'Not-man' - or 'Not-male'. We are defined by what we are not rather than what we are.
Now, I know that I sound like I'm being petty or pedantic... but can you imagine how crap it is to be defined by what you aren't?
It's like something my mum said to me once. We were talking about perceptions and disability. She was in a wheelchair a fair while, and people have weird assumptions about you if you're in a wheelchair. Did you know over half the population believe that if a person is in a wheelchair they're mentally (not (just) physically) disabled? Well, as silly as that seems - at least to me - they do. People would talk to who ever was pushing my mum instead of her - as if she wasn't even there. She said "People see you and instantly think about what you can't do. You don't judge anyone else that way. You see a plumber, you think 'that person can fix pipe problems'; you see a doctor, you think 'that person can make people better'; you see a carpenter, you think 'that person can make stuff with wood'... you think about what they can do. It's just not fair to be instantly judged as 'incapable'."
It's like something my mum said to me once. We were talking about perceptions and disability. She was in a wheelchair a fair while, and people have weird assumptions about you if you're in a wheelchair. Did you know over half the population believe that if a person is in a wheelchair they're mentally (not (just) physically) disabled? Well, as silly as that seems - at least to me - they do. People would talk to who ever was pushing my mum instead of her - as if she wasn't even there. She said "People see you and instantly think about what you can't do. You don't judge anyone else that way. You see a plumber, you think 'that person can fix pipe problems'; you see a doctor, you think 'that person can make people better'; you see a carpenter, you think 'that person can make stuff with wood'... you think about what they can do. It's just not fair to be instantly judged as 'incapable'."
That's what being a woman feels like at times. Like you're instantly seen as less in some indefinable way.
(w/o - man... without man... f/e - male... ?? I dunno - random thought/aside...)
Maybe I just relate to pallogocentrism so much because I'm a word person. I love words. I love understanding them, and where they come from, and why they evolve... Etymology is really important to me; and I can't explain why.
So, where does that leave me in relation to Gender Boundaries and Androgyny??
I have no idea cause I've not really covered Gender Boundaries yet, have I? Whoops...
Well, I'm going to leave it for now, and return to this later.
For now...
Blessed Be xx
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