Gender studies

Multiple gender idenity

Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study devoted to gender identity and gendered representation as central categories of analysis. This field includes women's studies (concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics), men's studies, and LGBT studies.[1] Sometimes, gender studies is offered together with study of sexuality. These disciplines study gender and sexuality in the fields of literature, language, geography, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, cinema, media studies, human development, law, and medicine.[2] It also analyzes race, ethnicity, location, nationality, and disability.[3][4]

Regarding gender, Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one".[5] This view proposes that in gender studies, the term "gender" should be used to refer to the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities, not to the state of being male or female in its entirety.[6] However, this view is not held by all gender theorists. Beauvoir's is a view that many sociologists support (see Sociology of gender), though there are many other contributors to the field of gender studies with different backgrounds and opposing views, such as psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and feminists such as Judith Butler.

Gender is pertinent to many disciplines, such as literary theory, drama studies, film theory, performance theory, contemporary art history, anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics and psychology. These disciplines sometimes differ in their approaches to how and why they study gender, however. For instance in anthropology, sociology and psychology, gender is often studied as a practice, whereas in cultural studies representations of gender are more often examined. In politics, gender can be viewed as a foundational discourse that political actors employ in order to position themselves on a variety of issues.[7] Gender studies is also a discipline in itself, incorporating methods and approaches from a wide range of disciplines.[8]

Each field came to regard "gender" as a practice, sometimes referred to as something that is performative.[9] Feminist theory of psychoanalysis, articulated mainly by Julia Kristeva[10] (the "semiotic" and "abjection") and Bracha Ettinger[11] (the feminine-prematernal-maternal matrixial Eros of borderlinking and com-passion,[12] "matrixial trans-subjectivity" and the "primal mother-phantasies"),[13] and informed both by Freud, Lacan and the object relations theory, is very influential in gender studies.

Gender can also be broken into three categories, gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex, as Sam Killermann explains in his Ted X Talk at the University of Chicago.[14] These three categories are another way of breaking down gender into the different social, biological, and cultural constructions. These constructions focus on how femininity and masculinity are fluid entities and how their meaning is able to fluctuate depending on the various constraints surrounding them.

Influences of gender studies

Gender studies and psychoanalytic theory

A number of theorists have influenced the field of gender studies significantly, specifically in terms of psychoanalytic theory. Among these are Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Bracha Ettinger, and Mark Blechner.

Gender studied under the lens of each of these theorists looks somewhat different. In a Freudian system, women are 'mutilated and must learn to accept their lack of a penis' (in Freud's terms a "deformity").[15] Lacan, however, organizes femininity and masculinity according to different unconscious structures. Both male and female subjects participate in the "phallic" organization, and the feminine side of sexuation is "supplementary" and not opposite or complementary.[16] Sexuation (sexual situation) — the development of gender-roles and role-play in childhood — breaks down concepts of gender identity as innate or biologically determined. (clarify-refutes?challenges?)[17]

Other influences include Julia Kristeva and Mark Blechner. Kristeva has significantly developed the field of semiotics. She contends that patriarchal cultures, like individuals, have to exclude the maternal and the feminine so that they can come into being.[18] Mark Blechner expanded psychoanalytic views of sex and gender.[19] He has argued that there is a "gender fetish" in western society, in which the gender of sexual partners is given enormously disproportionate attention over other factors involved in sexual attraction, such as age and social class.[20]

Bracha Ettinger transformed subjectivity in contemporary psychoanalysis since the early 1990s with the Matrixial[21] feminine-maternal and prematernal Eros[12] of borderlinking (bordureliance), borderspacing (bordurespacement) and co-emergence. The matrixial feminine difference defines a particular gaze[22] and it is a source for trans-subjectivity and transjectivity[23] in both males and females. Ettinger rethinks the human subject as informed by the archaic connectivity to the maternal and proposes the idea of a Demeter-Persephone Complexity.[24]

Cultures can have very different norms of maleness and masculinity. Blechner identifies the terror, in Western males, of penetration. Yet in many societies, being gay is defined only by being a male who lets himself be penetrated. Males who penetrate other males are considered masculine and not gay and are not the targets of prejudice.[25] In other cultures, however, receptive fellatio is the norm for early adolescence and seen as a requirement for developing normal manliness.[26]

Feminist psychoanalytic theory

Feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin, Jane Gallop, Bracha Ettinger, Shoshana Felman, Griselda Pollock,[27] Luce Irigaray and Jane Flax have developed a Feminist psychoanalysis and argued that psychoanalytic theory is vital to the feminist project and must, like other theoretical traditions, be criticized by women as well as transformed to free it from vestiges of sexism (i.e. being censored). Shulamith Firestone, in "The Dialectic of Sex" calls Freudianism the misguided feminism and discusses how Freudianism is almost completely accurate, with the exception of one crucial detail: everywhere that Freud writes "penis", the word should be replaced with "power".

Critics like Elizabeth Grosz accuse Jacques Lacan of maintaining a sexist tradition in psychoanalysis.[28] Others, such as Judith Butler, Bracha Ettinger and Jane Gallop have used Lacanian work, though in a critical way, to develop gender theory.[29][30][31]

Literary theory

Psychoanalytically oriented French feminism focused on visual and literary theory all along. Virginia Woolf's legacy as well as "Adrienne Rich's call for women's revisions of literary texts, and history as well, has galvanized a generation of feminist authors to reply with texts of their own".[32] Griselda Pollock and other feminists have articulated Myth and Poetry[33] and literature,[33][34][35] from the point of view of gender.

Post-modern influence

The emergence of post-modernism theories affected gender studies,[17] causing a movement in theories identity away from the concept of fixed or essentialist gender identity, to post-modern[36] fluid[37] or multiple identities.<ref name=""Feminist Contentions">Benhabib, S. (1995). "Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange" and Butler, J. (1995) "Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange".</ref>

See Donna Haraway, The Cyborg Manifesto, as an example of post-identity feminism.

More recently, the relation between post-modernism or post-structuralism and masculinity has been considered, whereby masculinity too can be taken as always in movement and never fixed or stable.[38]

The development of gender theory

History of gender studies

The history of gender studies looks at the different perspectives of gender. This discipline examines the ways in which historical, cultural, and social events shape the role of gender in different societies. The field of gender studies, while focusing on the differences between men and women, also looks at sexual differences and less binary definitions of gender categorization.[39]

After the revolution of the universal suffrage of the twentieth century and the women's liberation movement of the 1960 and 1970s promoted a revision from the feminists to "actively interrogate" the usual and accepted versions of the History as it was known at the time. It was the goal of many feminist scholars to question original assumptions regarding women’s and men’s attributes, to actually measure them, and to report observed differences between women and men.[40] Initially, these programs were essentially feminist, designed to recognize contributions made by women as well as by men. Soon, men began to look at masculinity the same way that women were looking at femininity, and developed an area of study called “men’s studies.” [41] It was not until the late 1980s and 1990s that scholars recognized a need for study in the field of sexuality. This was due to the increasing interest in lesbian and gay rights, and scholars found that most individuals will associate sexuality and gender together, rather than as separate entities.[41][42]

Women's studies

Main article: Women's studies

Women's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. It often includes feminist theory, women's history (e.g. a history of women's suffrage) and social history, women's fiction, women's health, feminist psychoanalysis and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences.

Men's studies

Main article: Men's studies

Men's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning men, masculism, gender, and politics. It often includes feminist theory, men's history and social history, men's fiction, men's health, feminist psychoanalysis and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences.

Gender in East Asia

See also: Women in Asia

Certain issues associated with gender in Eastern Asia and the Pacific Region are more complex and depend on location and context. For example, in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia, a heavy importance of what defines a woman comes from the workforce. In these countries, “gender related challenges tend to be related to economic empowerment, employment, and workplace issues, for example related to informal sector workers, feminization of migration flows, work place conditions, and long term social security.”[43] However, in countries who are less economically stable, such as Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Lao PDR, Cambodia, and some provinces in more remote locations, “women tend to be bare the cost of social and domestic conflicts and natural disasters.” [44]

One issue that remains consistent throughout all provinces in different stages of development is women having a weak voice when it comes to decision-making. One of the reasons for this is the “growing tend to decentralization [which] has moved decision-making down to levels at which women’s voice is often weakest and where even the women’s civil society movement, which has been a powerful advocate at national level, struggles to organize and be heard.”[45]

East Asia Pacific’s approach to help mainstream these issues of gender relies on a three-pillar method . Pillar one is partnering with middle-income countries and emerging middle-income countries to sustain and share gains in growth and prosperity. Pillar two supports the developmental underpinnings for peace, renewed growth and poverty reduction in the poorest and most fragile areas. The final pillar provides a stage for knowledge management, exchange and dissemination on gender responsive development within the region to begin. These programs have already been established, and successful in, Vietnam, Thailand, China, as well as the Philippines, and efforts are starting to be made in Lao, PGN, and Timor Leste as well. These pillars speak to the importance of showcasing gender studies. [46]

See also Gender Equality and Discrimination in Asia and the Pacific Asian Development Bank.

Judith Butler

Main article: Judith Butler

The concept of gender performativity is at the core of philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler's work, notably in Gender Trouble. In Butler’s terms the performance of gender, sex, and sexuality is about power in society.[9] She locates the construction of the "gendered, sexed, desiring subject" in "regulative discourses". A part of Butler's argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of "natural" or coherent gender and sexuality. In her account, gender and heterosexuality are constructed as natural because the opposition of the male and female sexes is perceived as natural in the social imaginary.[9]

Responses

Historian and theorist Bryan Palmer argues that gender studies' current reliance on post-structuralism – with its reification of discourse and avoidance of the structures of oppression and struggles of resistance – obscures the origins, meanings, and consequences of historical events and processes, and he seeks to counter the current gender studies with an argument for the necessity to analyze lived experience and the structures of subordination and power.[47]

Rosi Braidotti (1994) has criticized gender studies as: "the take-over of the feminist agenda by studies on masculinity, which results in transferring funding from feminist faculty positions to other kinds of positions. There have been cases...of positions advertised as 'gender studies' being given away to the 'bright boys'. Some of the competitive take-over has to do with gay studies. Of special significance in this discussion is the role of the mainstream publisher Routledge who, in our opinion, is responsible for promoting gender as a way of deradicalizing the feminist agenda, re-marketing masculinity and gay male identity instead."[48] Calvin Thomas countered that, "as Joseph Allen Boone points out, 'many of the men in the academy who are feminism's most supportive 'allies' are gay,'" and that it is "disingenuous" to ignore the ways in which mainstream publishers such as Routledge have promoted feminist theorists.[49]

Importance of gender studies

The field of gender studies explores the ways that femininity and masculinity affect an individual’s thought process. This is relevant in a variety of realms, such as social organizations and institutions, interpersonal relationships, and understandings of identity and sexuality [41] Gender studies is a discipline created originally by activists,[40] and those who study it today see it as their mission to identify, analyze, and correct social inequities both locally and globally.[41]

Other people whose work is associated with gender studies

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Gender Studies". Whitman College. Retrieved May 1, 2012.
  2. ↑ "About - Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS)". The University of Chicago. Retrieved May 1, 2012.
  3. ↑ Healey, J. F. (2003). "Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class: the Sociology of Group Conflict and Change".
  4. ↑ "Department of Gender Studies". Indiana University (IU Bloomington). Retrieved May 1, 2012.
  5. ↑ de Beauvoir, S. (1949, 1989). "The Second Sex".
  6. ↑ Garrett, S. (1992). "Gender", p. vii.
  7. ↑ Salime, Zakia. Between Feminism and Islam: Human Rights and Sharia Law in Morocco. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
  8. ↑ Essed, Philomena; Goldberg, David Theo; Kobayashi, Audrey (2009). A Companion to Gender Studies. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-8808-1. Retrieved 7 November 2011.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Butler, J. (1999). "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity", 9.
  10. ↑ Anne-Marie Smith, Julia Kristeva: Speaking the Unspeakable (Pluto Press, 1988)
  11. ↑ Griselda Pollock, "Inscriptions in the Feminine" and "Introduction" to "The With-In-Visible Screen", in: Inside the Visible edited by Catherine de Zegher. MIT Press, 1996.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Bracha L. Ettinger, "Diotima and the Matrixial Transference: Psychoanalytical Encounter-Event as Pregnancy in Beauty." In: Van der Merwe, Chris N., and Viljoen, Hein, eds. Across the Threshold. NY: Peter Lang, 2007
  13. ↑ http://www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk/mother_respect.html
  14. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRcPXtqdKjE
  15. ↑ Karen Horney (1922). "On the Genesis of the Castration Complex in Women" Psychoanalysis and Women. Ed. J.B. Miller. New York: Bruner/Mazel, 1973.
  16. ↑ Lacan, J. (1973). Encore. Paris: Seuil, 1975.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Wright, E. (2003). "Lacan and Postfeminism (Postmodern Encounters)"
  18. ↑ Kristeva, J. (1982). "Powers of Horror"
  19. ↑ Blechner, M. J. (2009) 'Sex Changes: Transformations in Society and Psychoanalysis.' New York and London: Taylor & Francis.
  20. ↑ Blechner, M. J. (1995) The shaping of psychoanalytic theory and practice by cultural and personal biases about sexuality. In T. Domenici and R. Lesser, (eds.) 'Disorienting Sexuality.' New York: Routledge, pp. 265–288.
  21. ↑ Bracha L. Ettinger, "Matrix and Metramorphosis." In: Differences. Vol. 4, nº 3: 176–208, 1992
  22. ↑ Bracha L. Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006 (articles from 1994–1999). ISBN 0-8166-3587-0
  23. ↑ Bracha L. Ettinger, "Matrixial Trans-subjectivity" in: Problematizing Global Knowledge. Theory, Culture & Society, Volume 23, Numbers 2–3, 2006. ISSN 0263-2764
  24. ↑ public lecture at EGS (2012) on YouTube
  25. ↑ Blechner, M. J. (1998) Maleness and masculinity. 'Contemporary Psychoanalysis,' 34:597–613.
  26. ↑ Herdt, G. (1981) 'Guardians of the Flute.' New York: McGraw-Hill.
  27. ↑ Griselda Pollock, Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive. Routledge. 2007.
  28. ↑ Grosz, E. (1990). "Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction", London: Routledge
  29. ↑ Butler, J. (1999). "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity".
  30. ↑ Ettinger, B. (Collected Essays from 1994–1999). "The Matrixial Borderspace", University of Minnesota Press, 2006
  31. ↑ Gallop, J. (1993). "The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysi", Cornell University Press
  32. ↑ Mica Howe & Sarah A. Aguier (eds.). He said, She Says. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001.
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Vanda Zajko & Miriam Leonard (eds.). Laughing with Medusa. Oxford University Press, 2006.
  34. ↑ Humm, Maggie, Modernist Women and Visual Cultures. Rutgers University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8135-3266-3
  35. ↑ Nina Cornietz, Dangerous Women, Deadly Words. Stanford University Press, 1999.
  36. ↑ Grebowicz, M. (2007). Gender After Lyotard. NY: SUNY Press, 2007.
  37. ↑ Zohar, Ayelet (ed.), PostGender. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.
  38. ↑ Reeser,Masculinities in Theory, 2010)
  39. ↑ "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," American Historical Review 91, No. 5 (December 1986).
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 Chafetz, Janet Saltzman. Handbook of the Sociology of Gender. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 1999. Print.
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 41.2 41.3 Douglas, Fedwa. Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007. Print.
  42. ↑ Liddington, Jill. "HISTORY, FEMINISM AND GENDER STUDIES". University of Leeds Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies: Working Paper 1 Feminist Scholarship: within/across/between/beyond the disciplines.
  43. ↑ The World Bank. "Gender in East Asia and Pacific." Social Development. The World Bank, 2013. Web. Mar. 2015. <http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/EXTEAPREGTOPSOCDEV/0,,contentMDK:20327365~menuPK:502969~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:502940,00.html
  44. ↑ The World Bank. "Gender in East Asia and Pacific." Social Development. The World Bank, 2013. Web. Mar. 2015. <http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/EXTEAPREGTOPSOCDEV/0,,contentMDK:20327365~menuPK:502969~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:502940,00.html
  45. ↑ The World Bank. "Gender in East Asia and Pacific." Social Development. The World Bank, 2013. Web. Mar. 2015. <http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/EXTEAPREGTOPSOCDEV/0,,contentMDK:20327365~menuPK:502969~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:502940,00.html>.
  46. ↑ The World Bank. "Gender in East Asia and Pacific." Social Development. The World Bank, 2013. Web. Mar. 2015. <http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/EXTEAPREGTOPSOCDEV/0,,contentMDK:20327365~menuPK:502969~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:502940,00.html
  47. ↑ Bryan Palmer, "Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History", Trent University (Peterborough, Canada)
  48. ↑ Butler, Judith (1994). "Feminism in Any Other Name", differences 6:2-3: 44-45.
  49. ↑ Thomas, Calvin, ed., "Introduction: Identification, Appropriation, Proliferation", Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. University of Illinois Press, 2000

Bibliography

External links