Subject: Re: gender: mommy's alright, daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird...
From: J. Chi Hyun Park (janepark@mail.utexas.edu)
Date: Thu Nov 04 1999 - 16:34:40 CST
hey susan and anne,
sorry. i'm working on a paper and getting frustrated with debates that seem
old to me but of course are not old for everyone else who doesn't live some
freaked out existence in theory lalaland.
laura mulvey coined the term 'male gaze' sometime in the 70s with her
seminal essay which said basically that the camera adopts the gaze of the
man, and that there's no place for the active woman viewer. because woman is
the object of the male gaze. that's its role. object/female; subject/male.
incidentally, this just follows from tons of previous enlightenment
rationalist rhetoric shit that equates male with mind and female with body.
so anyway, a bunch of feminists (mostly psychoanalytic theory folks, like
doane and others whose names i can't remember) started punching holes in
mulvey's theory, claiming that women do have or can make positions/spaces
for themselves in the film narrative. via methods like masquerade, where you
'perform' the male role all the while conscious of the fact that you are
female-- a kind of transvestism. or adopting the role of the object (say,
ultra femme)--another kind of performative act, because again, you are
conscious that it is an act. [hint: read the stuff by butler i gave you, it
gives you a kind of in to performance as a potential revolutionary act...you
don't necessarily have to buy it, but it's one of those paradigm shifting
essays]
meanwhile, when and before mulvey gave us her essay, the french feminists
across the pond had already started asking questions like, can women speak
as women when they are trapped in a phallocentric (read: male perspective)
language? usually the answer was no, so the project became how to create a
new language from within the old. a pretty impossible project--but you get
some neat examples of their effort when you look at stuff by luce irigaray
or helene cixous...
i don't know the status of the 'female gaze' right now in the academy. i
think we're (i mean all of you guys as well as those who've managed to get
through this cesspool we call grad school) in the process of trying to
figure out what this is, if it exists, how to talk about it, etc. so get to
it, have fun have a good weekend.
i gotta go and watch more tv.
j
----- Original Message -----
From: Please type your name here <mailbox-name@mail.utexas.edu>
To: gender 331K <gender@actlab.us>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 1999 3:05 PM
Subject: gender: mommy's alright, daddy's alright, they just seem a little
weird...
> Damn, I'm glad we're talking online again!!!!!
>
> But I haven't received any responses from my goofy survey:
>
> http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~sverhoef/gendtech.htm
>
> It's just a dumb little goofy thing--fluffy and light, not intellectually
> taxing, and I'd really appreciate anybody/everybody's feedback.....
> (please :-)
> ______________________________________________________
>
> Now on to the meaty debates . . .
>
> supaflu design studio wrote:
>
> > what would you consider to be "the male mind" susan? you put the red
flag,
> > can you go on? is it male experience, the experience of maleness, the
> > social history of maleness or is it something genetical and
biological...
>
> My general response to your questions would be: yes.
> But those questions, I feel, are at the crux of our investigations as to
how
> negotiable / intransigent gendered identity is.
> And I'm afraid my background in these academically structured debates is
not
> sufficient to grant me familiarity with the position Jane references...
>
> and Jane wrote:
>
> > i'm a little tired of feminists arguing that
> > women adopt the male gaze or male mind to gain subjectivity in a world
that
> > objectifies them. i mean, like, duh.
> >
>
> It's not "like, duh," to me. Is that like the criticisms I remember
hearing
> about women who "act like men" and embrace a "male" value system to get
ahead
> in their endeavors? I'm not exactly sure how women would adopt the male
gaze
> or mind. And how successful would their strategies be?
>
> What's male? What's female? Well, for one thing, they're culturally
defined
> / constructed categories into which we're constantly placed.
>
> My question is to what extent could a female adopt a male subjectivity?
or
> vice versa. I think that the experiences--both biological and
social--shape
> male and female subjectivity. And when you put on the other's mindset,
and
> say, "I'm gonna concentrate on perceiving things as a ________," you're
> limited to the extent that as you do that, the folks, institutions, etc.
that
> you interact with will generally still treat you as a member of the group
you
> have heretofore been recognized as, so your intentions are foiled by
> stubbornly persistent reception practices and conventions.
> The new technology aspect of this 331K course would invite us to examine
> gender crossing on the net, where your physical body is not apparent. But
my
> initial musings were prompted by the production of commercial TV, where
more
> regressive paradigms tend to dominate.
>
> Susan
>
>
>
>
>
>
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