While a master’s student at the University of Akron, I had the opportunity to both attend and present at the universities 2nd Biannual Interdisciplinary Gender Symposium in 2008. A feminist sociologist, Judith Lorber (not to be confused with Judith Butler), was the keynote speaker at this event and posed the question of whether it is possible to live in a world without gender.
Gender constructions and the need to adhere to certain forms of gender identities is so ingrained in almost all cultures that often humans may forget that such gender inequalities do or quite simply the concept of gender does, in fact, exist. Most cultures tell us that gender is a vital and necessary concept in which life cannot exist without- as if culture and gender are in an ever binding marriage. Conceptions of gender are so pervasive in society that it seems that the majority of cultures not only do not want to imagine a world without gender but could not imagine one – as if the existence of gender constitutes the “being” in the world. But is this not the case? If the concept of gender was to entirely disappear from the world how would beings in the world communicate, form relationships, or for that matter simply exist? While imagining the existence of a world without gender is, at least thus far in culture, rather inexplicable, many theorists have raised awareness about constructions of gender in all walks of society. While each theory differs analytically, taken as a whole disciplinary area of study, feminist/queer studies focus on raising awareness about and/or exposing ideologies, along with hegemonic systems, that permeate as the dominant in societies. And while our readings do not stress the current issues within gender studies per se, I would argue that feminist studies today represents an arena for theorizing and analyzing all ideological constructs in society, including issues surrounding sexism, heterosexism, racism, classism, ageism, and ableism. Wherever the “isms” of society are present, feminist studies, as a form of opposition, looks to theorize and critique such ideologies. This essay will generally adhere to a chronological order of feminist/queer theories since the start of the second wave feminist movement, except for Beauvoir who wrote before this time period. I will first begin with the binary gender theories of white, privileged women in the second wave era.
Hierarchical Feminism: White, Privileged Politics
In 1963, Betty Friedan published the Feminine Mystique and became known as one of the central leaders of the second wave feminist movement. In the section, The Problem that Has No Name, Friedan emphasizes the problem of women bound to the domestic roles of housewives and mothers. In this essay, Friedan emphasizes that culture places women under strict codes for perpetuating femininity, even for young girls. However, as she discusses these problems surrounding women’s focus as mothers and the pressure to perfect “femininity” instead of focusing on their education and careers, Friedan excludes mentioning many relevant ideological problems in relation to gender- race and class- which have caused many criticisms of the second wave feminist movement in particular. Friedan is generally speaking on behalf of middle-class, suburban housewives who have financial means, the luxury of being stay-at-home mothers, and the opportunity to become better educated if they so desire. Unfortunately, Friedan does not seem to present an argument for non-white women or women who are single, single mothers, poor, and/or uneducated. Third-wave feminism, which is sometimes also referred to as post-feminism or postmodern feminism, was formed, in part, in response to the inequalities of such privileged, white women’s viewpoints. Its central purpose is to bring awareness to non-white, women issues and to also focus on problematics of gender and economics/class. 1 A more current example of this white feminist exclusion is the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, in which women of color were originally excluded from the planning process of this event until they voiced their criticisms of this discrimination. 2
De Beauvoir Similarly, Simone De Beauvoir (1949) discusses the problem of women being objectified by men and ultimately viewed as the Other in society. Man “is the subject, he is the absolute – she is the Other” (Social Theory, p. 346). Here, De Beauvoir argues that a binary system of gender exists and the dominant (man) “sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other (woman), the inessential, the object” (Social Theory, p. 346). De Beauvoir argues that women, as a categorized other, are not viewed as a minority (race) nor have been treated as such through a historical event or a social change; rather, women have been categorized, through men’s existence, as dependent of men- the receivers of what men have granted them. De Beauvoir asserts that it is the women’s problem if she remains submissive and does not rally for social change. Providing a binary system of femininity and masculinity, Be Beauvoir believes that sex is biological and gender is culturalized; Storey adds that this suggests “that while biological sex is stable, there will always be different and competing (historically and socially variable) ‘versions’ of femininity and masculinity” (p. 160).
Women in Film: The Male Gaze
Laura Mulvey
Extending the theory of women’s objectification as Beauvoir discusses, Laura Mulvey (1975) theorizes about the female spectator in film, 
a concept she deems the male gaze. As we learned from prior 
psychoanalysis readings, this “gendered” gaze privileges the male viewpoint and presents women as objectified for men’s desire and as signifiers of the threat of castration. Feminist scholars, including Gamman and Marshment (1998) and Gledhill (2009), have disagreed 
with the “universal validity” of Mulvey’s conceptualizing the male gaze as “always male, 
or whether it is merely dominant among a range of different ways of seeing, including the female gaze” (Storey, p. 137). Instead, these scholars argue that popular culture serves as a ground in which ideological concepts are not as stabilized as some may argue; rather, such ideologies can also be both contested and disturbed. 3 Mulvey developed the theory of the male gaze in the mid 1970s right before the period of music videos slowly began emerging as a new genre in popular culture. Sut Jhally, a media/cultural critic, has conducted significant research on the male gaze in modern day music videos, specifically constructions of storytelling, femininity, and masculinity as portrayed in music videos. Agreeing with Mulvey’s view of the male gaze, Jully goes a step further to theorize of a pornographic gaze in music videos in his video, Dreamworlds 3. A previous post contains the links for each section of this video. If you do not have the time to watch all the sections (as it is over an hour long), then I encourage you to take the time to watch parts three and four, and if time allows you to, also the introduction and conclusion. I find Jully’s work to be a profound example of the male gaze at work in contemporary society. If you do not have access to listen/watch these videos, then you can read the transcript at this link:
http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/229/transcript_229.pdf
In opposition to Mulvey’s conception of the male gaze, Stacey (1994) focuses on analyzing the actual audience viewing a film and not the 
audience which the text means to construct. Three discourses appeared from Stacey’s analysis of women’s responses: escapism- women were pleasured by escaping into this ritualized and shared experience away from the troubled times of society and their feminine roles; identification, with the fantasy being depicted; and consumption- where the focus is on audiences actually make meanings from their consumption practices and not how the film industry produces the film goers (Storey, p. 139).
Elaborating on the methodology of audience analysis, Coward found that romantic fictions’ fantasies are depicted as “pre-adolescent, very nearly pre-conscious,” and ultimately presents the girl – as 
in the Oedipal drama- as finding security by marrying a man like her father, which will protect her from fear and keep her secure; and also, by marrying a man the girl will feel that she has power by acting obedient to her superior- her husband (Storey, p. 141). Using Chodorow’s (1978) work, Radaway (1987), who also analyzes romance novels, claims that romantic fictions depict fantasies of reciprocation 
in which the women are nurtured for and protected, fulfilling a maternal need for women readers. Storey notes that this notion differs from Coward’s because in this perspective regression is focused on the mother and not the father, as in Coward. Radaway also asserts that romantic fictions that depict narratives of women being nurtured present the female self as the other or in relation to others, while the male self is depicted as self-directed and independent. In these romantic reading encounters, women will identify with the heroine’ journey and this identification will determine if the romance is good or bad. During this romantic “journey,” women will escape and become other for a short period of time. According to Radaway, before returning from their “escape,” women readers must reassure themselves that both men and marriage are good aspects for women. While patriarchy is very much alive in these fictions, women must find ways of reading such patriarchal texts so that patriarchy, including male dominance/violence, no longer appears to be problematic. One key component which Stacey, Coward, and Radaway emphasize is that the ideological cultural representations of women are not static, and there is room for feminist and others alike to work in oppositional practices to contest existing representations, because “where there is power there is resistance” (Storey. p. 145-146).
Ang (1985) proposes that the television program, Dallas, 
is an exemplar of emotional realism, in which viewers selectively read “across the text from denotation to connotation, weaving our sense of self in and out of the narrative” (Storey, p. 148). In this sense, viewers who are escaping by watching these texts and moving the narrative to connotative meanings are playing with reality, in an imaginary participation in which this fictional reality is considered as pleasurable. Similar to Radaway’s analysis, Ang also finds that many women viewers experience Dallas as pleasure through the melodramatic imagination, which “offers a means of organizing reality into meaningful contrast and conflicts” (Storey, p. 149). Here, this “melodramatic imagination activates Dallas’s tragic feeling, which in turn produces the pleasure of emotional realism” (Storey, p. 149). Lastly, through the analysis of women’s magazines, Winship (1987) found that what is ultimately being sold through fictions of women’s magazines is the idea of pleasurable femininity. Winship finds this to be problematic because through these editorials and advertisements, which promote certain behaviors and products to become a “better” woman, the focus centers on the individual woman and therefore proposes an individual solution to overcome all patriarchal societal problems.
Beyond Binary Systems of Sexuality: Queer Theories
Stemming from feminist studies, queer theories looks to “attack the very ‘naturalness’ of gender and by extension, the fictions supporting compulsory heterosexuality” (Storey, p. 160). Week’s (1991) discusses Adrienne Rich’s notions of 
compulsory heterosexuality and political lesbianism. For Rich, lesbianism serves as a way for women to become “sexually and emotionally independent of men,” and beyond this, to support female existence and “bonding against male tyranny” (Social Theory, p. 560). Rich finds compulsory heterosexuality to be “the key mechanism of control of women,” and further denies women the chance of enacting a lesbian continuum (Social Theory, p. 560). Critics of Rich’s lesbian continuum find it to be problematic to claim that lesbian sexuality is natural and that female heterosexuality is socially constructed, and critics also argue that lesbian eroticism has been historically denied.
Judith Butler (1991) argues 
that that there are no necessarily commonalities among lesbians and there is no way of specifying or distinguishing gender identity(ies) in general. Butler extends the notion of compulsory heterosexuality and argues against the binary gender system of sex as biological and gender as culturalized; rather, Butler theorizes that “the category of ‘sex’ itself a gendered category, fully politically invested, naturalized but not natural” (Storey, p. 161). Butler notes that, “although compulsory heterosexuality often presumes that there is first a sex that is expressed through a gender and then through a sexuality, it may now be necessary fully to invert and displace that operation of thought” (Social Theory, p. 573). Butler’s theory extends Beauvoir’s notion that one is not born a woman, but becomes a woman, and further radicalizes this notion by theorizing that “one can if one chooses, become neither female nor male, women nor man” (Storey, p. 161).
To make her point about gender identity, Butler uses the example of drag; “to be in drag is not to copy an original and natural gender identity, it is to ‘imitate the myth of originality itself’” (Storey, p. 162). Butler uses the example of Aretha Franklin’s “A Natural Women” as example of the performance of drag – the man makes the woman feel like she is natural- as if she is imitating the origin of her gender identity. Another example of this drag concept is one which I heard driving today to work: Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature:” 4
Looking Out
Across The Night-Time
The City Winks A Sleepless Eye
Hear Her Voice
Shake My Window
Sweet Seducing Sighs
Get Me Out
Into The Night-Time
Four Walls Won’t Hold Me Tonight
If This Town
Is Just An Apple
Then Let Me Take A Bite
If They Say -
Why, Why, Tell ‘Em That Is Human Nature
Why, Why, Does He Do Me That Way
If They Say -
Why, Why, Tell ‘Em That Is Human Nature
Why, Why, Does He Do Me That Way
Reaching Out
To Touch A Stranger
Electric Eyes Are Ev’rywhere
See That Girl
She Knows I’m Watching
She Likes The Way I Stare
If They Say -
Why, Why, Tell ‘Em That Is Human Nature
Why, Why, Does He Do Me That Way
If They Say -
Why, Why, Tell ‘Em That Is Human Nature
Why, Why, Does He Do Me That Way
I Like Livin’ This Way
I Like Lovin’ This Way
Looking Out
Across The Morning
The City’s Heart Begins To Beat
Reaching Out
I Touch Her Shoulder
I’m Dreaming Of The Street
If They Say -
Why, Why, Tell ‘Em That Is Human Nature
Why, Why, Does He Do Me That Way
If They Say -
Why, Why, Tell ‘Em That Is Human Nature
Why, Why, Does He Do Me That Way
I Like Livin’ This Way
http://www.lyrics007.com/Michael%20Jackson%20Lyrics/Human%20Nature%20Lyrics.html
In these lyrics, a man is portrayed as symbolizing women as the city - as part of nature, ultimately as a part of the man’s “dreamworld” of consumption. In these lyrics, heterosexual masculinity is constructing women’s sexuality/gender (femininity) and men’s gender is being performed and imitated to reflect compulsory heterosexuality. Here, man’s heterosexuality wants to consume (bit) nature (her), wants to stalk a woman, make her speak seductively, and touch her. In this portrayal, the man “imitates” his sexuality and his definition of women’s sexuality, by proclaiming that it is natural to act (“perform”) in such a way. He is performing and imitating the heterosexual masculinity that is seen as the “original” in culture. In addition, Sedgwick (1990) paraphrasing Foucault notes “that the modern Western culture has placed what it calls sexuality in a more and more distinctively privileged relation to our most prized constructs of individual identity, truth, and knowledge, it becomes truer and truer that the language of sexuality not only intersects with but transforms the other languages and relations by which we know…” (Social Theory, p. 663).
Overall, these feminist/queer theories tell us that there are many gender inequalities that exist in all walks of society. While these theories offer ways of viewing such gender ideologies, few have tried to come up with a “solution” to actually radically alter or stop the ACT OF GENDER in culture. As I posed at the beginning of this post, can a world really function without gender? And if so, how would this effect the existence of other ideologies such as race and class in culture?
Secondly, do you find anything to be natural about biological sex and/or gender? Is there such a concept of human nature that is “natural”?
Lastly, our readings barely touch on male/masculinity studies. What do you think would be some feminist/queer approaches to critiquing masculinity in culture that have not already been touched upon?
*Buried beneath the dreamworld videos are postings for three different types of hip-hop videos. I encourage you to watch them and note film viewpoint differences between them.
Happy Belated Women’s International Day Everyone!!
Notes
[1] Storey only lists a few different forms of feminism in his gender chapter, citing Tong’s older edition on feminist theories. For more discussion of post-feminism/postmodern feminism and a more current and extended version concerning the different types/branches of feminism, see: Tong, R. (2009). Feminist Thought: A more comprehensive introduction (3Ed). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
[2] For more about women of color and feminist exclusion see:
Silliman, J et al. (2004). Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Rights. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=BTXZEaFpiD8C&lpg=PP1&dq=Undivided%20rights%3A%20women%20of%20color%20organize%20for%20reproductive%20justice&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
[3] For a more-in depth look at the directions of feminist media criticism, feminist views of the male gaze, and feminist media reception studies, see: Watkins, C. S, & Emerson, R. A. (2000).
Feminist media criticism and feminist media practices. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 571, 151-166.
http://ann.sagepub.com/content/571/1/151.full.pdf+html
[4] Unfortunately, there is not a music video for this song to accompany the lyrics and to use for relative analysis.
