Feminist Theory Final

Warner

-"The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life" is a book by Michael Warner that discusses the role of same-sex marriage as a goal for gay rights activists -Warner argues that the right to marry is an inadequate and ultimately undesirable goal for gay rights activism -As well as addressing marriage, he considers other areas in which public discourse stigmatizes certain sexual behaviors, including through sensationalist coverage of sex scandals, public zoning initiatives that marginalize the sex industry, and the attempted use of shame to manage sexually transmitted disease -argues that same-sex marriage should not be the sole goal for gay rights activism; that gay activists should work toward equal benefits for domestic partners and unconventional families -When national LGBT activists insist on the overriding importance of marriage, the book argues, it stigmatizes queer people who choose other types of relationships, while ignoring a broad range of legal benefits that could help the entire community, not just legally married couples. -Warner contends that the institutional sanctioning of certain types of relationship always comes at the expense of others, which are constituted by contrast as abnormal, inferior, and shameful -He argues that any queer rights movement would do better to abandon the pursuit of normality in favor of campaigning for the recognition of broader varieties of sexual expression as dignified

Chase

-Chase herself believes that surgery should only be done on patients who are able to make an informed choice; that children should be assigned a gender at birth, but parents should be ready to permit gender transition as the child grows; and that parents should be open with their children about their condition

Shih

-How do the border crossings of these two women expose and confront the Western centric regime of power and representation where difference is variously value coded in terms of time, space, ethnicity, and subjectivity --> Time= the backward/past --> Space=under developed and remote geographical areas --> Ethnicity=the racialized/ethnicized -All of these factors are saturated with subjective values, not neutral objective terms, they are value encoded terms -She wants to think about how do the border crossings of the two women she talks about expose and confront a western centric regime of power and representation of difference There are two problems that she analyzes in the essay 1) The non West's mimeticism of the west consolidates western universalism and passively participates in the colonial and neocolonial circulation of knowledge -Universalizing western postcolonialism 2) The affective technologies of nativism and cultural nationalism produce another set of legitimizing conterdiscourses that often reproduce and replicate the very dynamics that are being opposed The 3rd critique: Chinese, or the Limits of Chineseness -"Nation-bound US multiculturalism has always ethnicized minority peoples as embodiments of ethnic cultures where ethnicity is displayed and commodified as the site of difference. With globalization, we increasingly see national cultures in geographical locations outside the U.S. being readily transformed into ethnic cultures" (113) -Problem with US multiculturalism in the domestic sphere is that it assumes that US born white people share an innate culture; non US born non white people born in the US share an ethnic heritage -Isn't tied to any history or socioeconomic background -Ethnicity replaces history -A cultural heritage replaces actual experiences of other political social economic places -Specificity of difference is drained away and culture or ethnicity replaces understandings of national and geographic history and difference -With globalization this becomes increasingly translatable to the global realm where other countries are seen not as placed within particular concrete orders but instead groups of cultures -Limits of multiculturalism and limits of ethnicization and why they are particularly dangerous in political terms -When Chineseness is reduced to ethnicity the infinitely complex institutional, political, ethnic, class, and gender determinations of Chineseness within China appear by one stroke of the magic ant to be homogenized -Chinese ethnicity is conflicted with Chineseness -All difference get reduced to one's ethnic heritage -Shih's solution: pose an Ethics of transnational encounter beyond affect and recognition -Ethics may be defined as that relationality beyond affect and recognition -Wider analysis of gender positions -Argue for a wider analysis of gender positiosn to think about gender including men not just women -Attention to original historical, geographical, political, economic context -Attention to other factors not just allowing ethnicity to stand in for all of those things -Multidimensional analysis of simultaneity of loss and gain for all ideologoies from multiple and contradictory perspectives -Min and Li with regards to Chinese women would be seen as 2 among many perspectives as opposed to competing truths about what Chinese women feel

Foucault

-In his book, Foucault explored what he called the "repressive hypothesis". -It revolved largely around the concept of power, rejecting Marxist theories of power and rejecting psychoanalysis -Foucault explained that his work was less about analyzing power as a phenomenon than about trying to characterize the different ways in which contemporary society has expressed the use of power to "objectivize subjects." --> These have taken three broad forms: -1) one involving scientific authority to classify and 'order' knowledge about human populations. -2) A second, and related form, has been to categorize and 'normalize' human subjects (by identifying madness, illness, physical features, and so on). -3) The third relates to the manner in which the impulse to fashion sexual identities and train one's own body to engage in routines and practices ends up reproducing certain patterns within a given society. -Though American feminists have built on Foucault's critiques of the historical construction of gender roles and sexuality, some feminists have accused him of androcentrism, adopting exclusively male perspectives on subjectivity and ethics. -Foucault's resistance to identity politics and the rejection of sexual object choice as fixed foundation for sexual behavior, stands at odds with some formulations of queer or gay identity.

Rastegar

-Key question: "Why does the suffering of some become cause for international outrage and protest, while the suffering of others is ignored? Why do some victims become objects of sympathy and remembrance, while others remain unknown?" -Thesis: "The focus on the emotional and affective responses of Western LGBTQ activists demonstrates that the power and durability of the predominant interpretation of the executions emerged from how the latter resonated with their liberal secular imagination. Responses to these executions also present an opportunity to interrogate how a liberal secular imagination, circulating in a highly affective media milieu, has contributed to the racialization of Muslims/Arabs."

MacKinnon

-MacKinnon's work largely focuses on the difference between quality of social and economic conditions for women in both the private and public spheres of life. -MacKinnon believes that society fails to recognize the existing hierarchies present within it that have subordinated women in particular for such a long time that they have been perceived as natural. -"Men's forms of dominance over women have been accomplished socially as well as economically, prior to the operation of law, without express state acts, often in intimate contexts, as everyday life" -MacKinnon writes about the interrelations between theory and practice, recognizing that women's experiences have, for the most part, been ignored in both arenas. -Furthermore, she uses Marxism to critique certain points in feminist theory and uses feminism to criticize Marxist theory. -She sees hypocrisy in much of Marx's theory due to his failure to mention women's oppression in relation to class oppression. -MacKinnon notes Marx's criticism of theory that treated class division as a spontaneous event that occurred naturally. -Marx saw class as an unnatural status quo resulting from the ownership of the means of production while at the same time thinking of women's responsibility for child-rearing as a "natural" sex role. -She understands epistemology as theories of knowing and politics as theories of power. -She explains, "Having power means, among other things, that when someone says, 'this is how it is', it is taken as being that way. . . . Powerlessness means that when you say 'this is how it is,' it is not taken as being that way. This makes articulating silence, perceiving the presence of absence, believing those who have been socially stripped of credibility, critically contextualizing what passes for simple fact, necessary to the epistemology of a politics of the powerless." MacKinnon's ideas may be divided into three central—although overlapping and ongoing—areas of focus: (1) sexual harassment (2) pornography (3) international work 1) Sexual Harassment: In her book, MacKinnon argued that sexual harassment is sex discrimination because the act reinforces the social inequality of women to men. -She distinguishes between two types of sexual harassment: --1) "quid pro quo": meaning sexual harassment "in which sexual compliance is exchanged, or proposed to be exchanged, for an employment opportunity" --2) the type of harassment that "arises when sexual harassment is a persistent condition of work" 2) Pornography: MacKinnon, along with late feminist activist Andrea Dworkin, has been active in attempting to change legal postures towards pornography by framing it as a form of sex discrimination and, more recently, a form of human trafficking -She (and Dworkin) define pornography as follows: "We define pornography as the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and words that also includes --(i) women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things, or commodities; or --(ii) women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy humiliation or pain; or --(iii) women are presented as sexual objects experiencing sexual pleasure in rape, incest or other sexual assault; or --(iv) women are presented as sexual objects tied up, cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt; or --(v) women are presented in postures or positions of sexual submission, servility, or display; or --(vi) women's body parts—including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, or buttocks—are exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; or --(vii) women are presented being penetrated by objects or animals; or --(viii) women are presented in scenarios of degradation, humiliation, injury, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual." -MacKinnon writes, "Pornography, in the feminist view, is a form of forced sex, a practice of sexual politics, and institution of gender inequality." -MacKinnon chooses a few points to focus on specifically, depicting the sexual exploitation of women as a means of showing their inferiority by displaying them as sexual objects, things or commodities, which dehumanizes them. -She argues that any display of women enjoying humiliation or pain should be a violation of the law. -She writes, "Pornography contributes causally to attitudes and behaviors of violence and discrimination which define the treatment and status of half the population." -"Pornography, in the feminist view is a form of forced sex, a practice of sexual politics, an institution of gender inequality" 3) International Work: we don't focus on this in our class

Sedgwick

-Sedgwick's writing is supposed to make the reader more alert to the "potential queer nuances" of literature, encouraging the reader to displace their heterosexual identifications in favor of searching out "queer idioms." -"Epistemology of the Closet" (1990): Sedgwick argues that "virtually any aspect of modern Western culture, must be, not merely incomplete, but damaged in its central substance to the degree that it does not incorporate a critical analysis of modern homo/heterosexual definition." -According to Sedgwick, homo/heterosexual definition has become so tediously argued over because of a lasting incoherence "between seeing homo/heterosexual definition on the one hand as an issue of active importance primarily for a small, distinct, relatively fixed homosexual minority ... [and] seeing it on the other hand as an issue of continuing, determinative importance in the lives of people across the spectrum of sexualities."

Mohanty

-She became known for her essay "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses", in which she states: "The relationship between 'Woman'—a cultural and ideological composite other constructed through diverse representational discourses (scientific, literary, juridical, linguistic, cinematic, etc.)—and 'women'—real, material subjects of their collective histories—is one of the central questions the practice of feminist scholarship seeks to address." -In this essay, Mohanty critiques the political project of Western feminism and its discursive construction of the category of the "Third World woman" as a homogenous entity. -Mohanty states that Western feminisms have tended to gloss over the differences between Southern women, but that the experience of oppression is incredibly diverse, and contingent upon geography, history, and culture. -Her paper was a seminal work, highlighting the difficulties faced by feminists from the Third World in being heard within the broader feminist movement, and it led to a "redefining of power relationships" between feminists within the First and Third worlds. -In 2003, Mohanty released her book "Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity". -In this work, she argues for a bridging of theory and praxis, and the personal and the political. -Major themes addressed include the politics of difference, transnational solidarity building, and anticapitalist struggle against neoliberal globalization. -Mohanty "reiterates her belief in the possibility, indeed necessity, of building common political projects between Third World and Western feminisms"

Garland-Thompson

-considered the 1st major scholarly study of literary and cultural representations of disability -she asks: what function does the disabled figure play in literature? -casts representation as both beneficial and burdensome -wants to reconfigure disability not as pathology but ethnicity -"theorizing disability": "...applying feminist theory to disability analysis infuses it with feminism's insistence on the relationship between the meanings attributed to bodies by cultural representations" (20-21) --> both movements focus on the body, category groups --> feminism enhances our understanding of disability movement Feminist studies and Disability studies (or "Feminist Disability Studies") overlaps: -emphasis on the body -interrogation of social categories -critique of systematic power relations -assessment of deviations from the norm

Crenshaw

-defined intersectionality: the study of intersections between forms or systems of oppression, domination or discrimination. --> An example is black feminism, which argues that the experience of being a black woman cannot be understood in terms of being black, and of being a woman, considered independently, but must include the interactions, which frequently reinforce each other -prominent figure in critical race theory

Bell Hooks

-divergentist view of feminism because she believes every political issue will marginalize some and benefit others -"by supporting black male suffrage and denouncing women's rights, men are showing their sexism" -black movement simply wanted more inclusion in society, rather than a change of society which is what women's suffrage wanted -"endurance is not to be confused with transformation" --> when white women see black women's struggle and say "they are so 'strong'," they are saying that it is better for them to endure the suffrage than to change it --> endurance becomes another word for acceptance of poor treatment/discrimination -if white women were to acknowledge black women as an existing entity/a thing, then the analogy between gender as forms of oppression would be unnecessary -the word woman usually means white women and the term blacks usually means black men --> reveals a sexist-ract attitude toward black women within the civil rights moments -"silence of the oppressed": flipside of the endurance talk --> women are told to be quiet to be ladylike and blacks are told to be quiet to be objective -Her writing has focused on the interconnectivity of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she describes as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination -Noting a lack of diverse voices in popular feminist theory, bell hooks published this work in 1984. In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, she explains that those voices have been marginalized. "To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body." --> Hooks argued in her work that if feminism seeks to make women equal to men, then it is impossible due to the fact Western society does not view all men equal. --> She claimed, "Women in lower class and poor groups, particularly those who are non-white, would not have defined women's liberation as women gaining social equality with men since they are continually reminded in their everyday lives that all women do not share a common social status." --She used the work as a platform to offer a new, more inclusive feminist theory. --> Her theory encouraged the long-standing idea of sisterhood but advocated for women to acknowledge their differences while still accepting each other. -Bell hooks challenged feminists to consider gender's relation to race, class, and sex, a concept coined as intersectionality. -Hooks covers the importance of male involvement in the equality movement, that in order to make change men must do their part. -Hooks also calls for a restructuring of the cultural framework of power, one that does not find oppression of others necessary. -Additionally, she shows great appreciation for the movement away from feminist thought as led by bourgeois white women, and towards a multidimensional gathering of both genders to fight for the raising up of women. -Another part of restructuring the movement comes from education; bell hooks points out that there is an anti-intellectual stigma among the masses: --> Poor people don't want to hear from intellectuals because they are different and have different ideas. --> As bell hooks points out though, this stigma against intellectuals leads to poor people who have risen up to become graduates of post secondary education, to be shunned because they are no longer like the rest of the masses. --> In order for us to achieve equality, people must be able to learn from those who have been able to smash these stereotypes. --> This separation leads to further inequality and in order for the feminist movement to succeed, they must be able to bridge the education gap and relate to those in the lower end of the economic sphere.

Spivak

-interested in critiquing what representation (self-representation) means -->according to Spivak, no, the subaltern cannot speak -she's interested in who is left out of the discussion regarding what is knowledge, science, moral -subaltern is inside the circuit of epistemic violence and also outside because they have no clue it's happening --> thus they cannot speak -no work is apolitical -subaltern has no happy ending -western intellectual -given the international division of labor, how can the Western realize the subaltern? -"white men are saving brown women from brown men" vs. "the women actually wanted to die" --> represents the subaltern because they are assuming what the women desire, saying that she cannot speak --> these statements are political and impose Western culture --> in neither statement do the women speak for themselves --> geopolitical, social construction of what is desired -In "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Spivak discusses the lack of an account of the Sati practice (refers to a funeral ritual within some Asian communities in which a recently widowed woman commits suicide by fire, typically on the husband's funeral pyre), leading her to reflect on whether the subaltern can even speak. -Spivak recounts how Sati appears in colonial archives. -Spivak demonstrates that the Western academy has obscured subaltern experiences by assuming the transparency of its scholarship. -Spivak writes about the process, the focus on the Eurocentric Subject as they disavow the problem of representation; and by invoking the Subject of Europe, these intellectuals constitute the subaltern Other of Europe as anonymous and mute.

Wittig

-main point: biology does not define a woman - even if it is that male violence is "biologically inevitable" -radical lesbians: lesbians felt excluded from the gay-liberation movement which seemed to be all male; also fought to destroy the heterosexual norm for a woman --> "you can't build a strong movement if your sisters are out there ****ing with the oppressor" --> questioning male-female relationships -"lesbians are not women": she explains that "what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man" -The word "feminist" actually reinforces the idea of "women" as a different group/ species -Wittig's essays call into question some of the basic premises of contemporary feminist theory. -Wittig was one of the first feminist theorists to interrogate heterosexuality as not just sexuality, but as a political regime. -Defining herself as a radical lesbian, she and other lesbians during the early 1980s in France and Quebec reached a consensus that "radical lesbianism" posits heterosexuality as a political regime that must be overthrown. -Wittig criticized contemporary feminism for not questioning this heterosexual political regime and believed that contemporary feminism proposed to rearrange rather than eliminate the system. -While a critique of heterosexuality as a "political institution" had been laid by certain lesbian separatists in the United States, American lesbian separatism did not posit heterosexuality as a regime to be overthrown. --> Rather, the aim was to develop within an essentialist framework new lesbian values within lesbian communities. -Wittig was a theorist of material feminism. -She believed that it is the historical task of feminists to define oppression in materialist terms. -It is necessary to make clear that women are a class, and to recognize the category of "woman" as well as the category of "man" as political and economic categories. -->Wittig acknowledges that these two social classes exist because of the social relationship between men and women. --> However, women as a class will disappear when man as a class disappears. --> Just as there are no slaves without masters, there are no women without men. -The category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual. -The category of "man" and "woman" exists only in a heterosexual system, and to destroy the heterosexual system will end the categories of men and women.

Sigmund Freud

-psychoanalysis: "description of the mechanisms by which the sexes are divided and deformed, of how bisexual, androgynous infants are transformed into boys and girls" --> "one can read Freud's essays on femininity as descriptions of how a group is prepared psychologically, at a tender age, to live with its oppression" -Freud is being very experimental with trying out explanations to female sexuality/theory/feminism -Q: Why are women more prone to neurosis/hysteria than men? (why are most of my patients women?/have more emotional problems) -->A: "Normal" adult female sexuality requires more difficult and self-sacrificial repression or original libidinal position (it is harder to become a woman than a man) -Freud believed all children are masculine, and that women must give up this masculinity to become feminine -Freud believed that civilization results in psychic costs -3 components of "how women are made": 1) oedipus complex: in love with mom; trades this love in order to not lose his penis (castration by the father) so that he can become a man for other women --> the male oedipus complex is resolved by the castration complex and leads to the creation of super-ego and thus becoming "civilized" in society 2) castration: girls fall in love with mom too and must give up all women, and realizes her position as without a penis (castration) and assumes a passive role in life 3) penis envy: the girl doesn't get power like the boy does, instead she has to be passive for the rest of her life -penis=symbol for power

Butler

-representation of women is circular: the very concept of women and subordination is synonymous -temporal fiction: femininity comes first and legal and political structure are a reflection of that nature --> ex: gender is one of the things first printed on a birth certificate, but gender comes with cultural signification whereas height/weight do not --> THUS, naming someone a boy or girl is MAKING them a boy or girl -original vs. copy: "gay is to straight not as copy is to original, but, rather, as copy is to copy." --> what it means: we know what it means to "act out" gender roles in a relationship. the heterosexual couple is not the "original" because it is not natural, it is copying an already-formed model. so when a "butch-femme" couple takes on gender roles (or a "drag-man" couple), they are not copying an original, they are copying a copy --> gender is continually being copied/multiplied: there is no "original" idea of a man or a woman --> drag queens: if a man dresses up just as much as a woman does to achieve the same look, it shows much much femininity is imitated as opposed to natural -Butler is most well known for her books "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"", which challenge notions of gender and develop her theory of gender performativity -The crux of Butler's argument in Gender Trouble is that the coherence of the categories of sex, gender, and sexuality—the natural-seeming coherence, for example, of masculine gender and heterosexual desire in male bodies—is culturally constructed through the repetition of stylized acts in time -These stylized bodily acts, in their repetition, establish the appearance of an essential, ontological "core" gender -Regulative discourse includes within it disciplinary techniques which, by coercing subjects to perform specific stylized actions, maintain the appearance in those subjects of the "core" gender, sex and sexuality the discourse itself produces -Thus, by showing both terms "gender" and "sex" as socially and culturally constructed, Butler offers a critique of both terms, even as they have been used by feminists --> Butler argued that feminism made a mistake in trying to make "women" a discrete, ahistorical group with common characteristics. --> Butler said this approach reinforces the binary view of gender relations because it allows for two distinct categories: men and women. -Butler aims to break the supposed links between sex and gender so that gender and desire can be "flexible, free floating and not caused by other stable factors". -The idea of identity as free and flexible and gender as a performance, not an essence, is one of the foundations of Queer theory

Ahmed

-she wants to move away from the assumption that happiness is "the goal" (for both feminism and for life) -general project of her book: "I am interested in how happiness is associated with some life choices and not others, how happiness is imagined as being what follows being a certain kind of being." --> 1st being = "means" --> 2nd being = "becoming", attempting to become --> 3rd being = "a person" --> repetition of the word being is central to her argument: the word being as performative 3 figures that she focuses on (they overlap): 1) Happy Housewife -she doesn't care about whether or not these individual women are happy, she's interested in how this image creates job separation between genders -classic feminist response would be that the answer is for a woman to leave the house and work --> Ahmed critiques this because although it seems to be aimed at all women, it is really just aimed at white women, and left to make minority women do the domestic labor -the woman who embraces the "happy housewife" and is happy to do the domestic labor: her job is not only the domestic labor, it's also to be happy while doing it 2) Feminist Killjoy 3) Angry Black Woman -Ahmed's The Promise of Happiness (2010) "takes on the long-standing philosophical affinity for happiness in exposing ways in which the concept of happiness functions to justify oppression and to recast social norms and human goods." -"Ahmed is not concerned with what happiness 'is' but with the kinds of cultural, phenomenological, and political work it does. She historicizes the concept, attending to the 'happiness turn' at work in popular culture and in science, arguing that 'by finding happiness in certain places, [the science of happiness] generates those places as being good, as being what should be promoted as goods' —or as 'happiness objects,' which orient us or compel us to turn toward them to generate "accumulative positive affective value as social good'." -Ahmed argues for the space to be unhappy as a sign of political will and freedom, given that happiness is conditional to proper subjectivity and citizenship within heteronormative and multicultural societies -The book includes the essay "Feminist Killjoys," in which Ahmed critiques the role of happiness in women's culture and the depiction of feminists as unhappy, bitter, or "killjoys" because they disrupt our ability to enjoy the things that make us happy. -According to Ahmed, feminism is largely constructed around the fantasies of the happy housewife, which as she quotes is "a fantasy figure that erases the signs of labor under the sign of happiness." --> This figure operates under the assumption that working for the family makes women happy and that happiness motivates the work they do. --> This figure also conceals the domestic labor done by women of color and working class women whose work done outside of the home is not a matter of choice. -From here, Ahmed moves through an analysis of how happiness is used to justify unequal divisions in labor and education as an orientation device to a particular type of social values to an argument about how happiness is used as a sort of boundary on gender roles. -From there, Ahmed explicates several different philosophies of happiness, including conditionality, sociality, communities of feeling, and fellow-feeling. -Ahmed argues that the happy housewife's "happiness" is not really about happiness but that happiness is used as an instrument as hegemony.

Rubin

-thinking about women as a commodity exchanged in these highly regulated systems -Summary: the organization of sex (kinship) rests on incest taboo, obligatory heterosexuality, and asymmetric division between the sexes --> gender: socially imposed division of sexes --> obligatory heterosexuality: based on belief in absolute gender difference and economic necessity -->constraint of female sexuality: to ensure passivity and obedience -Conclusion of Rubin: "I personally feel that the feminist movement must dream of even more than the elimination of the oppression of women. It must dream of the elimination of sex roles." -shift in her thought from gender to sexuality --> argues against sexual essentialism (the idea that sex is a natural force that exists prior to social life and shapes institutions)

Hazel Carby

-thinks about how racial, economic, and sexual identities get in the way of feminist universal collectivity and solidarity -felt that black women should be more included in the women's rights movement -capitalism and colonialism ruined female solidarity -white women can write a book called "feminism" and have it be about white womens suffrage, but black women can't call their book about black women's suffrage and call it "feminism" --> due to racial hierarchy -argues for radical structural revolution rather than liberal extension of opportunities -"of white feminists we must ask: what do you mean "we"?" -SUMMARY: --> Carby argues that white women are oppressors of black women --> thinking in terms of societal structure rather than individual status/opinion/action --> the privileges that white women enjoy that they don't even realize they enjoy -Dr. Carby is considered a pioneer in black feminism and is also known as one of the world's leading scholars on race, gender, and African American issues -Identified as a Marxist feminist, her work primarily deals with detecting and probing discrepancies between the symbolic constructions of the black experience and the actual lives of African Americans

Hong

-thinks about temporality and affect like Shih, but looks more at capitalism (or neo-capitalism) -Hong's main argument is that capitalism depends on physical bodies themselves to produce

Bersani

-this essay was written during the AIDS crisis --> asks why has the AIDS crisis released a huge social morality against gay men? -claims "there is a big secret about sex: most people don't like it" -->he's not claiming that people don't like to have sex, he's claiming that people don't like the idea of it, and they don't like that they can't control it --> the assumption in society is that our sexual desires/urges are related to our moral being and controlling these urges are related to power and control over the self --> ex: when politicians have seex scandals it is the WORST thing to happen because it shows a loss of self control, thus a loss of morals -comparison between homosexuality and prostitution --> Bersani was interested in how feminist theory can help understand gay discrimination (especially in AIDS) --> the thing that gay men and prostitutes have in common: they are seen as targets, dangerous for society, because they spread diseases --> gay men are "choosing" their destruction when they give up their masculinity by being able to be penetrated --> moral taboo of "passive" anal sex stems from a loss of social power --> "to be penetrated is to abdicate power" --> people see gay men as victimizers rather than victims, and don't want to help them because they are not "innocently contracting the disease" like the "general public" does

Wendy Brown

3 main questions she asks: 1) what happens when the revolutionary aims of feminism are required to work within a nonrevolutionary (liberal constitutional) framework? 2) what if one has revolutionary goals to change society itself, and yet is working as a lawyer or legal scholar, constrained to think within the actual limits or potential limits of the law, the courts and legislation? 3) do rights have any value for feminists who wish to undo the constraints and equal power relations that the formation of individual subjects constituted by the law sets into action? -She has established new paradigms in critical legal studies and feminist theory; she is widely taught in courses in political theory, anthropology, sociology, geography, public policy, feminist theory, education, cultural and critical theory. -In particular, she has produced a body of work that draws upon: --> Marx's critique of capitalism --> Nietzsche's usefulness for thinking about power and the ruses of morality --> Max Weber and the modern organization of power --> Freudian psychoanalysis and its implications for political identification --> the early Frankfurt School --> Michel Foucault's work on governmentality, sovereignty, and neo-liberalism --> and other contemporary continental philosophers to diagnose modern and contemporary formations of political power, and to discern the threats to democracy entailed by such formations -She has offered a trenchant critique of the discourse of "tolerance", showing how it is differentially used to augment forms of official intolerance. -Brown returns time and again in her work to the question of democracy, posing the question within the present state of things of how to make a world together, emphasizing that sharing power for the purposes of making a common world must remain an ideal, however far from realization it remains at this time.

Halberstam

3 topics she covers: 1) Gender 2) Sexuality 3) Embodiment -Halberstam's writing focuses on the topic of tomboys and female masculinity and has published a book titled after the concept of female masculinity. -"Female Masculinity" famously discusses a common by-product of gender binarism, termed "the bathroom problem," outlining the dangerous and awkward dilemma of a perceived gender deviant's justification of presence in a gender-policed zone, such as a public bathroom, and the identity implications of "passing" therein -In Female Masculinity (1998), Halberstam seeks to identify what constitutes masculinity in society and within the individual. -The text first suggests that masculinity is a construction that promotes particular brands of male-ness while at the same time subordinating "alternative masculinities." -The project specifically focuses on the ways female masculinity has been traditionally ignored in academia and society at large. -To illustrate a cultural mechanism of subordinating alternative masculinities, Halberstam brings up James Bond and Goldeneye as an example, noting that gender performance in this film is far from what is traditional: M is the character who "most convincingly performs masculinity," Bond can only perform masculinity through his suave clothing and gadgets, and Q can be read "as a perfect model of the interpenetration of queer and dominant regimes." -This interpretation of these characters challenges long-held ideas about what qualities create masculinity. -Halberstam also brings up the example of the tomboy, a clear case of a youthful girl exerting masculine qualities—and raises the complication that within a youthful figure, the idea of masculinity expressed within a female body is less threatening, and only becomes threatening when those masculine tendencies are still apparent as the child progresses in age. -Halberstam then focuses on "the bathroom problem.": Halberstam argues that the problem of only having two separate bathrooms for different genders, with no place for people who do not clearly fit into either category to use, is a problem. -The assertion is further made that our bathroom system is not adequate for the different genders found in society. -The problem of policing that occurs around the bathrooms is also a focal point for examination of the bathroom problem; not only is this a policing on the legal level, but also on the social level. -The social aspect of policing, according to Halberstam, makes it even more difficult for people who do not clearly and visibly fall into one category or another to use public restrooms without encountering some sort of violent or uncomfortable situation.

Angry black woman

Ahmed -"The angry black woman can be described as a killjoy; she may even kill feminist joy, for example, by pointing out forms of racism within feminist politics." -"You can be affectively alien because you are affected in the wrong way by the right things. Or you can be affectively alien because you affect others in the wrong way: your proximity gets in the way of other people's enjoyment of the rights things, functioning as an unwanted reminder of histories that are disturbing, that disturb an atmosphere." -Bell hooks: "A group of white feminist activists who do not know one another may be present at a meeting to discuss feminist theory. They may feel they are bonded on the basis of shared womanhood, but the atmosphere will noticeably change when a woman of color enters the room. The white women will become tense, no longer relaxed, no longer celebratory." -"The body of color is attributed as the cause of becoming tense, which is also the loss of a shared atmosphere." -"As a feminist of color you do not even have to say anything to cause tension." -"To speak of anger as a woman of color is to confirm your position as the cause of tension; your anger is what threatens the social bond." -"Your anger is red as unattributed; as if you are against X because you are angry rather than being angry because you are against X." --> SEEN AS ANGRY ALL THE TIME

Feminist killjoys

Ahmed -definition of the word "convention": a point of gathering, assembly, or meeting up. -Feminist Killjoy: one who, " 'spoils' the happiness of others; she is a spoilsport because she refuses to convene, assemble, or to meet up over happiness" (65). -feminists are often seen as ruining happiness when they voice their oppositional views at a time when it is conventional to laugh or be happy -in order to fit in, you must laugh, and laugh at the right time -"feminists don't find anything funny, they're grumpy" -Feminist Killjoy is seen as causing an argument or disturbing the peace

Happiness duty

Ahmed -happiness as a disciplinary technique premised on a normative notion of social good -promoting our own happiness helps to increase other people's happiness -"unhappy" meanings: 1) "causing misfortune or trouble"; ominous 2) having or causing bad luck 3) "miserable in lot and circumstances" -so, a happy person is lucky in 2 senses: 1) finding themselves in lucky situations 2) spreads happiness and luck as a "lucky person" -feminist killjoy: not only unhappy with oneself but also unlucky and ominous

Conditional happiness/happiness as "shared object"

Ahmed Conditional happiness: happiness is directive - happiness becomes what is given by being given as a shared orientation to what is good Happiness as a shared object: for those who are positioned as coming after, happiness means following someone else's goods" -if one person's happiness is made conditional on another person's happiness, such that the other person's happiness comes first, then the other person's happiness becomes a shared object --> ex: if your mom says "I just want you to be happy", your happiness is now a shared object, and if your and your mom's ideas of happiness are not the same, one must give up their idea of happiness

Heteronormativity

Bersani, Hong -belief that people fall into distinct and complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life -It asserts that heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation or only norm, and states that sexual and marital relations are most (or only) fitting between people of opposite sexes -it would include gay marriage because it abandons the queer movement -fitting into the heteronormative regime/life style (monogamous, married, etc) ?????????????add more from notes?????????????????

Liberal Constitutional Regimes

Brown -a view of the state or government as something that 1) guarantees all persons equal rights, 2) sees the best response to any violation of those rights in purely legal terms -assumes that all inequalities or injustices can be fixed through some sort of legal procedure -...as opposed to: seeing legal reform as not enough to make changes, it is a cultural, structural, and ideological issue -all sovereign individuals are equally granted freedom to act within the constraints of the law. the law is subject to change and revision, allowing for progress toward greater freedom

Paradox of rights

Brown -pursuit of rights reinforce identity -the way the legal system is set up forces people to pick one side or another and not converge identities -main claims: 1) rights can reify existing oppressive identities when limited in language to certain groups 2) rights when broadly defined, as universal rights, may be available unequally when they inscribe non-universal differences -we cannot not want rights but at the same time rights don't change the system and accepting these rights compromises revolutionary feminism to work in a liberal constitutional framework

Intelligible genders

Butler -(those that we can see and conceptualize) are those which in some sense institute and maintain relations of coherence and continuity among sex, gender, sexual practice, and desire --> if you have 2 X chromosomes, a vagina, a womb, have sex with strictly men and WANT to have sex with men then you are the most "intelligible woman" --> but she argues that these are never aligned, which she calls "gender trouble" " "Intelligible" genders [of those that we can see and conceptualize] are those in which some sense institute and maintain relations of coherence and continuity among sex, gender, sexual practice, and desire" (17)

Performativity

Butler Although these three are performed simultaneously, their 3 definitions are nuanced: 1) Active: gender as an activity --> performance as activity --> we ACT OUT genders - we DO gender or ACT gender (ex. dressing as a woman) --> gender is not a natural product of the body, but something that we act out based on what society determines a "man" or "woman" should do 2) Theatrical: impersonating a character --> critical aspect of theatrical performance is the presence of witnesses to the performance (audience) as well as their reaction or response to the performance 3) Constitutive: speech-acts that change or create conditions, relations, events --> ex: "I now pronounce you man and wife", actually makes something happen by speaking --> ex: naming a child, leaving a will --> all examples of not just saying soothing, but creating/making something by saying it -Butler sees gender not as a noun but actually as a verb: "Gender proves to be performative - that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing" (25). -These three aspects of gender performativity are interrelated and can occur simultaneously -In addition, anyone can perform any kind of gender; the performance of gender is not related to the genitals of a subject. That is to say, gender stereotypes of what is considered "masculine" or "feminine" does not necessarily pertain to certain genitalia. --> For example, a man can have a penis but not be considered "masculine" --> It is in this sense that Butler argues that gender is completely determined by performativity.

Identity politics

CRC -political work based on individual identity -personal is political and individual identity is always formed collectively and politically -termed in the book "Combahee River Collective Statement": written by a group of black feminists who came together in the 70s --> because their politics were so central to their identity as black women

Convergentist vs. Divergentist

CRC and Hooks (Carby?) -convergentist: 1) theories of oppression must converge because all are linked 2) conflicts between different identities/loyalties are part of ideology that sustains inequality -->Combahee River Collective Statement has a convergent view because "accusations that Black feminism divides the Black struggle are powerful deterrents to the growth of an autonomous Black women's movement" --> Example: experience of black women is convergentist because it is interlocking: they are told to be quiet both for the sake of being ladylike and to make them less objectionable in the eyes of white people -divergentist: 1) theories of oppression must be diverse/autonomous to account for the specificity of each form of oppression 2) there may be irresolvable conflicts between different identities/loyalties; any single theory will privilege some and marginalize others --> Bell Hooks

Sexual Reassignment Surgery

Chase -"Pediatric genital surgeries literalize what might otherwise be considered a theoretical operation: the attempted production of normatively sexed bodies and gendered subjects through constitutive acts of violence." (81) --> genital reassignment surgery creates and makes real what is male and what is female --> intersex and its "corrective" surgeries are extreme cases in which we see how extreme and violent gender is

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM)

Chase -FGM: to restrict sexual desire; considered barbaric to Westerners, but changing someones genitals in the Western world is seen as "science" --> "Many first-world anti-FGM activists seemingly consider Africans to have 'harmful cultural or traditional practices', while we in the modern world have something better..." (205) --> she sees the importance and realness to science, but argues that culture shapes science --> their genital cutting is barbaric ritual, but ours is scientific -she compares removing clitorises in third world countries to sexual reassignment surgery (which she calls intersex genital mutilation) in Western countries -she believes that intersex genital mutilation breaks down the difference between "barbaric" third world practices and "rational/liberal" Western practices -she isn't arguing that clitoridectomy (removing clitoris) is good anywhere, she's arguing its not any different than what happens in sexual reassignment surgery to intersexuals -"First world feminist discourse locates clitorectomy not only 'elsewhere', in Africa, but also 'elsewhere' in time." (206) --> we used to practice it in America, but we've "moved on"

Optimal Gender of Rearing Model (OGR)

Chase -based on two key premises/assumptions: 1) assumes that children are born psychologically neutral at birth 2) assumes that children born with intersex (in terms of anatomy, hormones, chromosomes, or all) must have their bodies altered to fit one gender or another -it's a model that assumes that intersex is a medical problem that needs to be treated -in contrast with Intersex Society of North America

Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)

Chase -counters the OGR -long term and more fundamental goal is to change the way intersex infants are treated 1) there should be no surgery without medical reasons --> so unless there's something about the intersex that makes it a real danger to the child (unable to urinate, etc), there should be no surgery 2) rather than "fixing the infant", the parents should be given conceptual tools to give their children emotional support 3) children should still be raised culturally as either boys or girls while keeping their genitalia they were born with --> because making 3 or 40 gender categories would still mean that someone would be left out and not fit in 4) erotic sensation should be considered just as important of a consideration as sexual reproduction -"ISNA has deliberately cultivated a network of noninterested advocates who command a measure of social legitimacy and can speak in contexts where uninterpreted intersex voices will not be heard." (201) --> uninterpreted intersex voice: an intersex person who speaks. they will not be understand and must have a non-intersex person interpret for them --> "non-intersex people know what is best for intersex people" -the problem is not gender assignment, but surgical and hormonal reinforcement of the gender

Violent normalization

Chase -normalization is itself violent, people who don't fit on either side are legally, socially, or politically punished -"We as a culture have relinquished to medicine the authority to police the boundaries of male and female, leaving intersexuals to recover the best they can, alone and silent, from violent normalization." (193) -intersex and its "corrective" surgeries are extreme cases in which we see how extreme and violent gender is

Intersex

Chase -person born with both male and female sex characteristics or who is not born with a distinct sex, is "in between" sexes -it can be hormonal, anatomical, chromosomal -unlike transsexual who has to go through psychological intervention in order to be given medical clearance to go through the sex change, the intersex is usually operated on without his/her consent in order to achieve a single gender -intersex and its "corrective" surgeries are extreme cases in which we see how extreme and violent gender is -intersex political identification: intersex activism is challenging the idea that medical science holds the absolute truth to gender --> why do these surgeries need to happen RIGHT away --> medical establishment believed (up until early 2000s) that it would cause psychological damage to grow up without "normative" genitalia --> but intersex people felt that these surgeries were an intense violation of their bodes --> personal is political (consciousness raising): result from political regulation can be changed, intersex politics challenges this political system -gender and sex are BOTH cultured, not just sex: sex as a natural idea was actually invented by medicine --> what counts as "normal gender" changes over time

Political Intersectionality

Crenshaw -Definition: "How both feminist and antiracist politics have, paradoxically, often helped to marginalize the issue of violence against women of color" -What happens to black women's experiences when we focus on issues within a framework of feminism or antiracism? -Often in political activism, black women have been overlooked or negatively affected by approaches of left wing activism -Central Park rape case

Representational Intersectionality

Crenshaw -Definition: "The cultural construction of women of color" -"The most critical aspect of these problems may revolve less around the political agendas of separate race-and-gender-sensitive groups, and more around the social and cultural devaluation of women of color. The stories our culture tells about the experience of women of color present another challenge—and a further opportunity—to apply and evaluate the usefulness......" -The 2 Live Crew Obscenity Trial -Central Park Rape Case - "...the organized identity groups in which we find ourselves are in fact coalitions, or at least potential coalitions waiting to be formed" -Race as men and women of color -Race as straight and gay people of color

Structural Intersectionality

Crenshaw -Definition: "The ways in which the location of women of color at the intersection of race and gender makes our actual experience of domestic violence, rape, and remedial reform qualitatively different than that of white women" - "Many women who seek protection are unemployed, and a good number of them are poor. Shelters serving these women cannot afford to address only the violence inflicted by the batterer; they must also confront the other multilayered and routinized forms of domination that often converge in these women's lives, hindering their ability to create alternatives to the abusive relationships that brought them to shelters in the first place" -Marriage fraud provisions of immigrant/nationality act: 1990 amendment includes a provision allowing a waiver for hardship caused by domestic violence -"Intersectional subordination need not be intentionally produced; in fact, it is frequently the consequence of the imposition of one burden that interacts with preexisting vulnerabilities to create yet another dimension of disempowerment. In the case of the marriage fraud provisions of the immigration and nationality act, the imposition of a policy specifically designed to burden one class—immigrant spouses seeking permanent resident status—exacerbated the disempowerment of those already subordinated by other structures of domination" -"The enactment of the domestic violence waiver of the marriage fraud provisions similarly illustrates how modest attempts to respond to certain problems can be ineffective when the intersectional location of women of color is not considered in fashioning the remedy. Cultural identity and class affect the likelihood that a battered spouse could take advantage of the waiver. Although the waiver is formally available to all women, the terms of the waiver make it inaccessible to some" -Who has the criteria necessary to demonstrate that you are a victim of assault?

Central Park rape case

Crenshaw -Representational intersectionality: bc focus on white woman's rape case rather than black woman's rape puts white woman into a higher standard or more purity -law itself is often one-sided -part of Crenshaw's interest is the ways in which its very difficult for black women to represent themselves in the court in legal rape cases -shes interested in the ways in which the paradigm of a black male perpetrator on a white female victim leaves out the black female cases -On April 19, 1989, a white woman jogging in Central Park is attacked, beaten, and raped by a group of black youth -That same week, 28 other first degree rapes or attempted rapes occur in NYC, none of which attract media attention --> Why did this rape attract attention? -"Historically, the dominant conceptualization of rape [has been] as quintessentially Black offender/ white victim" -Antiracists work to confront and dispel the construction of black masculinity as a threat to white womanhood -Feminists work to attack the good women/bad woman dichotomy that devalues the testimony of sexually autonomous women -"The primary beneficiaries of policies supported by feminists and others concerned about rape tend to be white women; the primary beneficiaries of the Black community's concern over racism and rape, Black men" -"Blacks have long been portrayed as more sexual, more earthly, more gratification-oriented. These sexualized images of race intersect with norms of women's sexuality, norms that are used to distinguish good women from bad, the madonnas from the whores. Thus Black women are essentially prepackaged as bad women within cultural narratives about good women who can be raped and bad women who cannot" -Gendered sexual system (constructs rules appropriate for good/bad women) and a race code (images defining allegedly essential nature of black women) -Effect that these discourses can have on black women -Feminists used the central park rape case to draw attention to violence against women, consequences for black men—contributing to stereotypes of black men by only focusing on this case

Intersectionality

Crenshaw -how different aspects of identity interact with one another --> main focus is race and gender, but she's also interested in other aspects such as sexuality -Individual experience involves multiple overlapping forms of oppression—different forms of oppression can be mutually reinforcing or even mutually constitutive -"...the intersection of racism and sexism factors into black women's lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately" -Closer to CRC perspective, picking up from bell hooks argument -"An intersectional analysis offers both an intellectual and political response" --> move from just theory to practice—social, legal, political activism -Intersectionality can be used as theory or guided political practice -Structural -Political -Representational

2 Live Crew Obscenity trial

Crenshaw -prosecution of a rap crew for obscenity in the 90s -stirred up a lot of debates about racial and gendered oppression -two sides: both were lead by men and erased the intersexual experience of black experience --> one side: the sexually explicit, absolutely misogynistic lyrics encouraged misogyny and rape and therefore must be prosecuted as obscenity --> other side: the attack on the crew stemmed from a racist and ignorant position on black music --> both sides were missing something, neither side put sex and race together, they only focused on one -First time a music group was put on trial for obscenity -2 Main positions 1) George Willin (Newsweek): a misogynistic attack 2) Henry Louis Gates Jr.: an elaboration of distinctively African American forms of cultural expression -"This article has presented intersectionality as a way of framing the various interactions of race and gender in the context of violence against women of color. Yet intersectionality might be more broadly useful as a way of mediating the tension between assertions of multiple identity and the ongoing necessity of group politics" -"Vulgar constructionism thus distorts the possibilities for meaningful identity politics by conflating at least two separate but closely linked manifestations of power..." -possible final exam q on the topic: we could compare Spivak's "white men saving brown women" to this trial ---> in both cases, black women are left completely absent. inability to see black women as both "black" and "women", people don't see how these two identities intersect

Karl Marx

Discusses how the worker does not know he is being oppressed because he is stuck in the "tunnel vision" of where he is. Does not account for the work that women are doing in the home. How do we take into account laboring bodies not necessarily producing monetary capital? -uses capitalism to economically define gender -surplus value -commodity fetishization -Marxism insists objectivity whereas feminism insists subjectivity -Marxism is a man's lens -people/workers are stuck with believing that their work is fair only because they haven't seen outside of their narrow tunnel of vision -as you work, you are being worked upon and turned into a specific person in society

Repressive Hypothesis

Foucault -power as repressive, prohibitive, unilateral, and unidirectional -sees power as a circle rather than a top-down structure -unless you're in a "normal" relationship, you will be sexually repressed -power is repressive and prohibitive of any sexuality outside the realm heterosexual, monogamous, or otherwise "normal" sexualities -3 doubts concerning the repressive hypothesis: 1) is sexual repression truly an established historical fact? 2) do the workings of power, and in particular those mechanisms that are brought into play in societies such as ours, really belong primarily to the category of repression? 3) did the critical discourse that addresses itself to repression come to act as a roadblock to a power mechanism that had operated unchallenged up to that point, or is it not in fact part of the same historical network as the thing it denounces (and doubtless misrepresents) by calling it "repression"? -Foucault rejects the repressive hypothesis

Anatamopolitics vs. Biopolitics

Foucault Bio-power (how modern governments control populations): 1) anatamopolitics: individual body; medical, scientific, behavioral optimization of human body (bodily best sex) --> centered on the body as a machine: its disciplining, the optimization of its capabilities...the parallel increases of its usefulness and its docility, [and] its integration into systems of efficient and economic control" 2) biopolitics: body as part of populations; population study and control, developmental norms, institutional organizations --> the practice of modern nation states and their regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations" --> refers to practices of public health, regulation of heredity, and risk regulation, among many other regulatory mechanisms often linked less directly with literal physical health --> biopower is a technology of power for managing people as a large group; the distinctive quality of this political technology is that it allows for the control of entire populations (biopower is closely related to a term he uses much less frequently, but which subsequent thinkers have taken up independently, biopolitics) Bersani and Hong also talks about biopolitics

Medical vs. Social model of disability

Garland-Thompson Medical model: 1) understands disability as a biological deficit 2) what the Garland-Thompson calls "essentialism" 3) ideology of cure -The individual is impaired -The individual is the problem -Fix this through medical intervention Social model: 1) emphasizes "social oppression, cultural discourse, and environmental barriers" (214) 2) distinguishes "disability" from "impairment" 3) what Garland-Thompson calls "constructionism" -someone isn't disable until... ex: the blind person is asked to read -Disability is not bodily insufficiency, but instead arises from the interaction of physical differences with an environment -Individual is placed with society -Not blaming individual, blaming barriers that prohibit different forms of access -Emphasizing that the person is being disabled by the environment -Disabled: something that is done to someone

Disability studies

Garland-Thompson What is disability? -dictionary definition: A physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or activities; the fact or state of having such a condition --> physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, or developmental --> this meaning though, is slippery -- what about glasses and hearing aids? Disability studies: -origin: Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS)—Paul Hunt's 1971 editorial in The Guardian --> The field examines social, cultural, political, and economic factors that shape disability --> DS works to de-stigmatize disability through the interrogation of medical practices --> Fundamentally, the field asks: what does it mean to be human? How can taking account of disability ask us to rethink Disability is: 1) A system for interpreting bodily difference 2) A relationship between bodies and their social environments 3) A set of practices that produce able bodies people and disabled people

Standpoint theory

Garland-Thompson -The idea that seemingly objective terms (man, woman) actually come from a specific geo-political context -things like racial, sexual, and bodily norms seem to be objective but are not -Emphasizes the position from which we experience the world -from a medical standpoint: disability seems to be something to be fixed, so it is in the problem of the individual -from the standpoint of disability theory: disability is not objective, but is created by society --> assumes that these disabilities are not from an individual but are imposed onto the individual by society --> ex: a blind person isn't disabled until someone asked them to read -recognizes the complexity of physical existence -calls attention to the interrelation between individual experience and culture -identity is particular and complex -disability ≠ bodily impairment, gender ≠ bodily sex

Ordinary vs. Extraordinary bodies

Garland-Thompson -ordinary: able bodies -extraordinary: disabled bodies --> in Western history, these bodies were considered "extraordinary" and were on display as "fascinating", but now it is considered bad taste to look at disabled bodies as a form of entertainment

Stigma

Garland-Thompson 3 sources that Garland-Thompson draws on for stigma: 1) Goffman 2) Douglas "Purity and Danger" 3) Foucalt "Discipline and Punish" 1) Goffman: sociological study of stigma - highlights 3 characteristics from which stigma is constructed -1) physical disability -2) individual behaviors (addiction, lack of education, sexual habits) -3) race, religion, ethnicity, or gender -sees stigmatization "as an interactive social process" and "a form of social comparison" that deems certain human traits deviant and certain traits normal -Sees stigmatization as an interactive social process and a form of social comparison that deems certain human traits deviant -Understands disability as defined by social relations (the fraught interaction between the subject and an object) -Stigmatization privileges what's considered normal or natural -Given than the normal subject is illusory, the minority is much more the majority -understands disability as defined/the definition 2) Douglas: anthropological study that assesses cultural responses to difference -"Dirt is matter out of place": Garland-Thompson aligns dirt with disability -suggesting that culture is based on order and that dirt is a metaphor for what doesn't fit/is out of place 3) Foucalt: emphasis on historical change -he suggests that "classification and stigmatization... are nevertheless complicated by history" (139) -beginning in feudal society, all bodies were accepted: disabled bodies might have been just another distinction among individuals like eye or skin color -Shift from individual to collective -Idea of the norm comes to regulate human bodies

Purity vs. Dirt

Garland-Thompson DOUGLAS -dirt: "matter out of place" --> not only are the disabled "put of place", but disability is also somewhat like dirt that it is a contaminant of purity --> dirt can touch anyone, thus nothing is really pure --> just as purity and dirt are so interconnected, so are ability and disability --> someone can easily go from being pure to being dirty, just as someone can easily go from being able to being disabled -this theory draws our fragility to the "able" state, and at one point we will ALL be disabled (if we live long enough) -Disability, like dirt, which threatens to contaminate, get people sick, it is dangerous -Social value systems engage in rigid boundary maintenance and expunge those with minds and bodies who are considered "impure, unbeautiful, or unfit" -Dirt becomes a metaphor for all that must be rejectd from carefully constructed social scenes

Female masculinity

Halberstam -How a masculine woman is understood as a lesbian, butch, soft butch, stone butch, transsexual -The existence of masculine women urges us to reconsider our most basic assumptions about the functions, forms, and representations of masculinity and forces us to ask why the bond between men and masculinity has remained relatively secure despite the continuous assaults made by feminists gays lesbians and gender-queers on the naturalness of gender -What attaches masculinity to male bodies? How does presence of female masculinity in various forms challenge or strengthen association between maleness and masculinity ????????????????????????????????????????????????

Border Wars

Halberstam -Process by which erotic minorities form communities and the forces that seek to inhibit them lead to struggles over the nature and boundaries of sexual zones -Border wars between transgender butches and ftms presume that masculinity is a limited resources available to only a few in ever decreasing quantities --> there are so many people or lesbians trying to being masculine today that it affects our definition/comprehension of what it means to be masculine and creates disputes on this topic 3 transgender identities Halberstam is interested in. She sees wars between the border/property of each: 1) Lesbian 2) Butch 3) Female to male transsexual identity -Where is the line between being: a. Man/woman b. Masculine/feminine c. Feminine/butch How we understand embodied gender -The recent visibility of female to male transsexuals (FTMs) has immensely complicated the discussions around transsexuality because gender transition from female to male allows biological women to access male privilege within their reassigned genders -If you transition from becoming biologically identifiable as a woman as opposed to a butch lesbian (transition to actually being embodied as a man) you come to possess many of the privileges and accesses to power and authority that men uniquely possess in contemporary western society -How can you distinguish an authentic innate desire to be a different gender from the cultural prerogative and privileges that men have? ????????????????????????????????????????????????

Traditional vs. Neoliberal capitalism

Hong Traditional capitalism: capitalism as production -divides heterogeneous surplus labor (women, minorities, and non-normative sexualities) vs. homogeneous citizenry (white, male, middle class) Neoliberal capitalism: based on speculation, not material product (service, communication, and finance) -post WWII shift from white supremacy to liberal race paradigm based on abstract equality, market individualism, and inclusive civic nationalism --> everyone can aspire to have a car, ownership, etc -this is because "In the wake of the liberation movements of the mid-20th century, we have seen a new form of power." --> people who don't own things are seen as CHOOSING this life: subjectification became organized as a choice -neoliberal capitalism actually requires the "production of surplus populations as nonlaboring subjects, that is, the populations

Necropolitics

Hong -"politics of death": who has the right to live -certain choices or lifestyles are associated with life and certain ones are associated with death --> ex: if you're not choosing the "normal" life (kids, monogamy, house, etc) then you are "dead to us" or a "dead population" -it's not people who are actually dead, it's people are socially dead: who are cut out of our idea of who is in society and who makes "real people" --> ex: African American prison population are people who are alive but are dead --> "Black lives matter" is an exact example of a movement against necropolitics -"the proliferation of existential surplus means that contemporary capitalism rewrites our relationship to death at a basic and fundamental level." Lauren Berlant uses the term "slow death" -for some populations, death inhabits life itself (rather than one moment alive and another dead) -to be in prison is to be separated from life in the most traditional sense -"Without attending to the varieties of constraint and unconsciousness that condition ordinary activity, we persist in an attachment to a fantasy that in the truly lived life emotions are always heightened... or incapacity." --> the refusal to choose what is socially considered "good for you" is to show that you are incapable of acting as a sovereign subject

Possessive individualism

Hong -Subjectivity internalized, individualized formation articulated through sense of moral development and resolution to the social order -material property ownership as sign of ownership of self/subjectivity -possessive individualism assumes sovereign subject -the ability to possess physical items is a sign of a sovereign subject -ownership of things = ownership of self -BUT, this possessive individual is not universally available -liberal race paradigm: would seem to be a good thing and open to all cultures, but it subjectifies poor race groups --> the choice to own a house, have a stable job, and have a family turns into what is considered possessive individualism, and those who do not choose this are subjectified and discriminated against

Existentially surplus populations

Hong -populations that don't actually produce any capitalistic product or perform any sort of labor, but still contribute to the economy -main example is the African American prison population --> "African-American prison populations function within the prison-industrial complex not as labor but as raw material." (92) --> these prisoners are not labor and are not products, they're the RAW MATERIALS for it's existence and it's expansion as a BUSINESS: a prison needs prisoners in order to justify itself as a business; must keep reproducing prisoners --> this population is being created and then being described as having a choice for this --> "the racialized poor are rendered vulnerable so as to produce them as a form of surplus labor, but they are also abjected as backward" -people with nonnormative sexualities --> people who chose not to have children because they aren't reproducing --> women (who aren't necessarily producers of capitalism), minorities

Rubin "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex"

In this essay, Rubin discussed the trafficking of women, which she believes results from the "sex/gender system," a phrase she originated, meaning "the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied." -She takes as a starting point writers who have previously discussed gender and sexual relations as an economic institution (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) which serves a conventional social function (Claude Lévi-Strauss) and is reproduced in the psychology of children (Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan). -She asserts that these writers fail to adequately explain women's subjugation; therefore, Rubin offers a reinterpretation of their ideas. -Rubin addresses Marxist thought by identifying women's role within a capitalist society. --> She argues that the reproduction of labor power depends upon women's housework to transform commodities into sustenance for the worker. --> A capitalistic system cannot generate surplus without women, yet society does not grant women access to the resulting capital. -Rubin argues that historical patterns of female oppression have constructed this role for women in capitalist societies. -She attempts to analyze these historical patterns by considering the sex/gender system. -According to Rubin, "Gender is a socially imposed division of the sexes." --> She cites the exchange of women within patriarchal societies as perpetuating the pattern of female oppression, referencing Marcel Mauss' Essay on the Gift and using his idea of the "gift" to establish the notion that gender is created within this exchange of women by men in a kinship system. --> Women are born biologically female, but only become gendered when the distinction between male giver and female gift is made within this exchange. --> For men, giving the gift of a daughter or a sister to another man for the purpose of matrimony allows for the formation of kinship ties between two men and the transfer of "sexual access, genealogical statuses, lineage names and ancestors, rights and people" to occur. -When using a Marxist analysis of capitalism within this sex/gender system, the exclusion of women from the system of exchange establishes men as sellers and women as their commodities fit for exchange. -She ultimately hopes for an "androgynous and genderless" society in which sexual difference has no socially constructed and hierarchical meaning.

Rich

In this essay, she asks "how and why women's choice of women as passionate comrades, life partners, co-workers, lovers, community, has been crushed, invalidated, forced into hiding" -Writes about Compulsory heterosexuality - idea that heterosexuality is a social norm and anything that deviates from it is deviant -heterosexual privilege in society -"heterosexuality, like motherhood, needs to be recognized and studied as a political institution - even, or especially, by those individuals who feel they are, in their experience, the precursors of a new social relation between the sexes" -personal experience cannot be extracted from a larger social structure -not all women are forced into relations -even the most egalitarian relationships (between a man and woman), it still exists within a bigger structure in which heterosexuality is the norm/reigns -areas of critique: pornography, rape, heterosexual romance -she isn't condemning individuals, she's insisting that individual choices are constrained by societal norms -Rich argues that heterosexuality is a violent political institution making way for the "male right of physical, economical, and emotional access" to women. -She urges women to direct their energies towards other women rather than men, and portrays lesbianism as an extension of feminism. -Rich challenges the notion of women's dependence on men as social and economic supports, as well as for adult sexuality and psychological completion. -She calls for what she describes as a greater understanding of lesbian experience, and believes that once such an understanding is obtained, these boundaries will be widened and women will be able to experience the "erotic" in female terms. -Rich claims that women may not have a preference toward heterosexuality, but may find it imposed, managed, organized, propagandized, and maintained by society. --> She holds that women receive messages every day that promote heteronormativity in the form of myths and norms perpetuated by society. -Rich argues that part of the lesbian experience is an act of resistance: specifically, a rejection of the patriarchy and the male right to women. -Rich writes that lesbians have been denied a continuity of their personal and political history, and that when included in history, they have been simply the female versions of male homosexuals, with no distinctiveness. --> At certain points in history, homosexual men and lesbians have shared a social existence, and acknowledged a common fight against society; but Rich writes that to treat the lesbian experience as a version of male homosexuality is to discard it, denying the female experience and the realities it brings, falsifying lesbian history. -Rich proposes that all women should separate themselves from men and engage in some form of lesbian relationship, whether it leads to a mere lesbian expression at one time or another or an identified lesbian sexuality. --> Only then, will it be possible for a woman to truly decide if heterosexuality is the right thing for her.

"Women's upliftment movement"

Kapur -Goals of the movement: social and economic reforms based on women's distinctive roles, values, or goals in society -feminists are critical because it reinforces a gender binary and gender roles -What Kapur thinks: it protects a very specific definition of an Indian woman (with a religious context) rather than taking a more secular standpoint

Autonomous women's movement

Kapur -claims to represent all women regardless of class, cast, religion -she looks to explore the possibilities the limitations of the autonomous women's movement as a broad-based, emancipatory movement and discuss how feminists across the political spectrum have frequently sought recourse to law as one means of securing women's freedoms and emancipation -law has not been the exclusive focus of these movements, including the autonomous women's movement, but because it has been an authoritative discourse, her essay centers on legal engagements and their impact ????????????????????????????????????????????????

Age of Consent Bill (1891)

Kapur -done by the British, seen as an outside intervention to Indian culture -the bill raised the age of marriage consent for girls from 10 to 12 -seen from feminists as great, from nationalists as a military imposition -idea of "white men having power over brown men" raises issues of race and politics

Secularism

Kapur -focuses on Indian feminist history: 2 dimensions to early Indian feminism 1) essentialist construction of ideal Indian womanhood distinct from Western womanhood (women as victims) 2) discourse of gender equality marked by faith in state institutions and rule of law (women as citizens) --> finding the balance between feminism and national identity leads to conflict -ex: age of consent bill -striving for Western feminist ideals in India creates problems for Indian nationalists because Indian culture and values are so traditional and non-revolutionary -Indian women are seen as having particular "Indian women characteristics", different from Western women --> ex: rape understood in terms of shape and dishonor rather than right to sexual content and pleasure -focuses on the problems religion pose on women: questions of religious and sexual identity 1) religion as a problem for feminism: a. religion assumed to support patriarchy, so feminism requires secularization b. secularization used by Hindu right to demand assimilation of Muslims, justify violence 2) sexuality/sexual rights a. public representation and expression of sexuality (films, clubs, etc) b. sex workers' legal rights and cultural status -religions give women a certain role -she critiques the idea that the patriarchy is linked to secularism -the very idea of a liberal who is protected by the law and has rights, is itself exclusive

Louis Althusser

MacKinnon -"Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" -ideological interpellation -ideology -"We know that a 'pure' science only exists on condition that it continually frees itself from ideology which occupies it, haunts it, or lies in wait for it" When this attempt is successful, society is seen "from the point of view of class exploitation" -believes there is nothing outside of ideology and though there may be a truth we do not have access to it -Shaped by cultural, social, political, desire, experiences and interest

Consciousness raising

MacKinnon -central to feminist theory or feminist method -challenges traditional notions of authority and objectivity and questions existing power structures, of our own experience, and of theory itself -Through consciousness raising, women grasp the collective reality of women's condition from within the perspective of that experience, not from outside it. . . . Its claim to women's perspective is its claim to truth -reveals that "sexuality is that social process which creates, organizes, expresses, and directs desire, creating the social beings we know as women and men, as their relations create society" -Consciousness raising means recognizing that women's experience of discrimination, violence, and sexism are objective conditions resulting from specific social, political, and economic structures. It is the central method of feminism because it shows that radical change in the structure of these public spheres, not just inclusion of more women within existing structures, is necessary to end women's subordination.

Liberal vs. Radical feminism

MacKinnon -liberal: sense that more people should be included in the "system"/society; seeks to increase rights and freedoms for more people within the existing societal, economic, and/or political structure -radical: sense that the "system" is wrong/bad and needs to change before more people are included in it; seeks to overthrow the societal, economic, and/or political structure as a whole

Ideology

MacKinnon, Louis Althusser -ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence --> "thought that is socially determined without being conscious of its determination" --> ideology interpolates individuals as subjects --> there is nothing outside ideology --> it is enforced, reproduced, and always involves submission -ideological interpellation: the reproduction of labor power requires the reproduction of submission to the rules of established order --> in a capitalistic society, workers must agree to work/to the rules of order in which society is run; they can't be marched to work with a gun to their head, instead they must agree to the rules and terms and the "ones with the guns" must see this as the best way to run society as well --> not only being hailed and called at, but also responding --> ex: if the teacher asks the girls to raise their hands, and you raise your hand, you are being interpolated as a girl --> being put into a category that is made and not actually real

White Privilege

McIntosh (Carby?) -white privilege is made of 2 components: 1) unearned advantage --> you can think and talk about race without having to be racially identified 2) conferred dominance --> a structural role within the dominant culture that allows you to be the spokesperson for the culture and allows you to decide what and who counts --> ex: I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group --> ex: I can easily buy posters, post-cards, etc. featuring people of my race -white privilege relies on a sort of invisibility -"I was taught that racism was only individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems" -"whites are taught to think of their lives as a morally neutral, normative, and average, also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow "them" to be more like "us""

Ethnocentric universality

Mohanty -"women" referring to white, western women -Refers to the "white" and "western" woman; implicit distinction between woman as woman and other women who don't fit that definition - average third world woman is constructed as very homogenous -implies need or help from western women -average 3rd world woman (uneducated, ignorant, poor, family-oriented, victimized) creates the average first world woman (modern, educated, having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions) -west will always be "ahead" of the 3rd world, and trying to help them make them more like "us" --> perpetuates the hierarchy of society, even when they are trying to "dissolve" it -western women need 3rd world women to construct an ideal feminism

Postcolonial theory

Mohanty -analysis of discursive, conceptual, historical, economic, geopolitical, ideological sources, legacies, effects of Western colonial and imperial occupation and rule -viewing these eastern or other cultural, economic, and historical situations that these women are in and determining how to come up with strategic coalitions based on the positions and situations that these women are in RATHER than simply declaring them backward -investigates how colonialism has affected women -Mohanty says that western feminist discourse creates the idea of the "3rd world woman" and how the Western feminists want to change the 3rd world women to become more like them Spivak -defined the term subaltern: "subaltern is not just a classy word for "oppressed", for The Other, for somebody who's not getting a piece of the pie... In postcolonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern—a space of difference. Now, who would say that's just the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It's not subaltern.... Many people want to claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university campus; they don't need the word 'subaltern'... They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They're within the hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern." -Spivak also introduced the terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to describe the social functions of postcolonialism: --> The term essentialism denotes the perceptual dangers inherent to reviving subaltern voices in ways that might (over) simplify the cultural identity of heterogeneous social groups, and, thereby, create stereotyped representations of the different identities of the people who compose a given social group --> The term strategic essentialism denotes a temporary, essential group-identity used in the praxis of discourse among peoples. --> The important distinction, between the terms, is that strategic essentialism does not ignore the diversity of identities (cultural and ethnic) in a social group, but that, in its practical function, strategic essentialism temporarily minimizes inter-group diversity to pragmatically support the essential group-identity. -Spivak developed and applied Foucault's term epistemic violence to describe the destruction of non-Western ways of perceiving the world, and the resultant dominance of the Western ways of perceiving the world --> Conceptually, epistemic violence specifically relates to women, whereby the "Subaltern [woman] must always be caught in translation, never [allowed to be] truly expressing herself", because the colonial power's destruction of her culture pushed to the social margins her non-Western ways of perceiving, understanding, and knowing the world

Kapur

Problem: "Feminism's dream, to make discrimination on the basis of sexual and gender difference a thing of the past, has not been realized, partly as a result of feminists' unwillingness to surrender certain ideas about sex and gender." -more specifically: "Critiques of the exclusionary and conservative potential of rights and the liberal project on which they are based have blunted the tools of transformation and left progressive movements, including feminism, rudderless and without a political vision." Main focus of analysis: Indian legal engagements and their impact 1) Feminism in India (revolutionary vs. nationalist goals) 2) Problem of modernity, religion, and secularization in India 3) Offer proposal for how to recover a politics of transformation and restore feminism as an intellectually and politically viable force Proposal/thesis: philosophical rethinking can open up 2 possibilities for feminists 1) "First, it offers the possibility of thinking about freedom and liberation in a way that is not confined to or exclusively aligned with the liberal tradition, especially in the guise of a demand for more rights and more law." 2) "Second, such rethinking enables Indian feminists to provide a powerful challenge to the Hindu Right's shallow claims to be the exclusive exponents of "authentic Indian culture," without themselves falling into a culturally nationalist or nativist position."

Marhoni and Asgari

Rastegar -Western reporting in response to 2005 hangings of two boys in Iran --> Western view: "2 gay boys hung" --> Iranian view: "2 boys hung after raping another 13 year old boy"

Politics of sympathy

Rastegar -based on pity and cultural superiority of the West -European bourgeois sympathy for the suffering of the colonized Other has historically gone hand in hand with a feeling of superiority as a sympathizer, an agent of change, and a purveyor of civilization, thereby producing "the very inequalities it decries and seeks to bridge." --> critiquing structure of pity/sympathy: when you feel pity, you're also recognizing the difference between you and Other -reblogging feels like action, but it's an easy REaction rather than deep political debate - "This discourse has mobilized Western LGBTQ rights to produce a stronger distinction between a presumably tolerant, modern, and secularized West and a presumably intolerant, antimodern, and religious (Islamic) East, which underscores and feeds the emotional repertoire of anti- Muslim/Arab racism in the United States and Western Europe." -she thinks about 3 specific emotions and what these emotions bring to politics: 1) Love -feelings of identification with the "gay" — and therefore presumably innocent — victims seen as expressing their individuality against religious conventions -"by pairing the claims that the youths were in love and that they were innocent, these statements imply that they could not both be in love with each other and participate in a rape of another boy." --> sympathy is held for victims who we identify with, and identification depends on the victims' innocence (because we see ourselves as innocent), which is established by describing the teens as in love 2) Fear -feelings of sympathetic terror for what the youths experienced at the hands of religion, resonating with many other fears articulated in both Western LGBTQ experience and the war on terror -"Despite this explicit disassociation between the Western and Iranian con-texts, there is also an implicit resonance articulated in a fear of homophobic violence as crossing many borders." --> LGBTQ people identifying with these boys leads to fear... "that could've been me" -the fear encapsulated in the photographs was also generalized and amplified to be a fear experienced by all Americans, or Westerners, of what is deemed an Islamic threat 3) Disgust -feelings of revulsion at violence that could be seen as religious in source and therefore wholly distinct from Western secular forms of violence -While love is often expressed as a form of identification, a feeling that "that could have been me," expressions of disgust produce a strong differentiation and feeling of the superiority of the (Western) sympathizer -Fear in turn bridges these two emotions, at times serving to intensify the identification with the victims, while at other times amplifying disgust at what is deemed a wholly foreign and horrifying violence, although one that also threatens "us" in the "civilized West." -Therefore, through these three emotional responses, identification and differentiation with the sympathetic victim were produced in a manner that reinforced an essential civilizational difference that undergirds anti- Muslim/Arab racism. -these photos generalized Islam and the EAST, leading to fear of what they do "over there", thus increasing cultural distinctions and fear, leading to a "war on terror" which is a war fighting what we are afraid of

Compulsory heterosexuality

Rich -idea that heterosexuality is a social norm and anything that deviates from it is deviant -hetereosexuality is a political institution rather than a natural or inevitable choice. -Heteroseuxality is politically rewarded. -personal experience cannot be extracted from a larger social structure -not all women are forced into relations -even the most egalitarian relationships (between a man and woman), it still exists within a bigger structure in which heterosexuality is the norm/reigns -denies sexuality, commands or forces labor, controls produce, control children, confine them physically, use them as object in male transactions, cramp creativeness, withhold from them large areas of society's knowledge and cultural attainments -women are taught to think of themselves in particular ways by normalization of heterosexuality and correspondent definitions of femininity and need to continually regulate what it means to be a woman

Rose

Rose believes that one never truly reaches a gender identity, and that identity is resisted at the very heart of psychic life

Levi-Strauss

Rubin -Invested in thinking about kinship and material shaping of women as products of clearly defined social structures -Strauss is an anthropologist -theories of kinship: incest taboo, obligatory heterosexuality, and asymmetric division of the sexes -gift exchange -society "takes up females as raw materials and fashions domesticated women as products" (p. 158)

Friedrich Engels

Rubin -The way we see the world is determined by our position within it. -He does not address domestic labor (labor within the home does not factor into general labor). -twofold character of production/reproduction of life: 1) production of means of existence (paid/public as well as unpaid/domestic labor) 2) production of human beings themselves (procreation/kinship) -society doesn't include domestic labor as part of labor -engels does not compare WHY women are subordinated

Jacques Lacan

Rubin -Wrote about the incest taboo and says that masculinity is a fiction constructed by a law that prohibits incest and then forces an "infinite displacement" of heterosexualizing desire. -"psychoanalysis is the study of the traces left in the psyches of individuals as a result of their conscription into systems of kinship" -"the unconscious is structured like a language" (it is not a mass flowing thing that we try to suppress, it is a structured system) --> just as in language we have many substitutions for words/different ways to say things, the unconscious has different ways and does not have a singular structure -in the lacanian theory of psychoanalysis, it is the kin terms that indicate a structure of relationships which will determine the role of any individual or object within the Oedipal drama -makes a distinction between the penis and the "phallus", between organ and information --> the phallus is a set of meanings conferred upon the penis -thus, the difference between a man and woman is the difference in the phallus and thus the difference in power or dominance, give and giver

Sex-gender system

Rubin -the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied -sex is compared to food: everyone needs to eat, but what is considered "normal food" differs greatly between cultures -she prefers to use this term rather than patriarchy because it indicates that oppression is not inevitable, but is the product of the specific social relations which organize it -sex and gender are separate and they are a product of your environment -men and women are not born, they are MADE by societies structures

Sex wars

Rubin (and a little Butler) -The rift between feminists who believed that women could claim sexual pleasures in a patriarchal society, and women who believed that embracing radical sexualities constituted violence against women and submission to patriarchal ideals -debates in the late 70s over anti-sex/anti-porn vs. pro-sex/pro-porn: what is sexy and what is sexist? --> pro-sex argued that the fear of sex itself endangered women and limited their sexual choice, leading to sexual oppression -The feminist sex wars, also known as the lesbian sex wars, or simply the sex wars or porn wars, are debates amongst feminists regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity

Minoritizing vs. Universalizing view

Sedgwick -they both look at the internal contradictions of understanding homo/heterosexual definition, both heterosexist and antihomophobic -minoritizing view: assumes gays and lesbians are a distinct minority --> Because they are a minority, any study that has to do with the minority is only interesting to the minority group -universalizing view: the studies about this group are universal issues important to everyone - Sedgwick argues that while there is a political purpose to the minoritizing view (strategic coalitions, political actions etc.); for her, conceptually a minoritizing view has driven the epistemology of the closet so that studying great literature implicitly means studying heterosexual literature

Assimilation/Multiculturalism/Domestic Perspective vs. Disidentification/Cross-cultural conflict/Inter-/transnational Perspective

Shih Assimilation/Multiculturalism/Domestic Perspective (Anchee Min's values) -Min's story of living in china and immigrating to the US was a story of assimilation into an innately superior culture after the oppressions in China -she moves to China for promise of better life and assimilated into the culture Disidentification/Cross-cultural conflict/Inter-/transnational Perspective (Li's values) -Li talks about a professor in China who goes to a conference at Harvard and is confronted with ignorant questions of her own feminism. -She now insists on a disidentification of western cultural and value because she sees feminism as solely western -Shih hopes to find a third way beyond seeing them as absolutely binary alternatives -To gesture to Min that Chinese women want to come to America and have their lives improved, or gesture to Li and say that Chinese women want to reject the ideals you are still boiling down to a single view and homogenizing the group "Chinese women" --> She terms this process ethnicization -It has to do with ethnicization and the fact that each of these narratives have the potential to reduce all of Chinese women's experience into one belief ????????????????????????????????????????????????

Ethnicization

Shih -"When Chinese women can be represented by one representative, the West needs only to listen to her summaries and conclusions. Ethnicization is that unspoken procedure that buttresses the West's willful reductionism and ignorism." (112) -Westerners capitalism affects their thought-process and cannot be applied to China or other non-capitalist countries Ethnicizaiton is that unspoken procedure that buttresses the west's willful reductionism and ignorance of non western and ethnicized others at home and abroad -Taking Li or Min as the real Chinese woman that can speak for the whole population is to ethnicize all women and assume one person could possibly summarize and speak for them all at once -We are also witnessing, I think, the inability of postcolonial theory, which arose from capitalist postcolonies and hypercapitalist metropoles, to deal adequately with the post(socialist) condition - It can't account for the experience of women in a post socialist society -Since colonialism is organized around assumptions of capitalism, it's assumptions are already tied up with a capitalist world view that simply does not apply to China in terms of its political, economic, social order -She's not only critiquing a universalizing western view but the implication of some postcolonial theory within the universalizing western view since it can't account for socialist and post socialist conditions in china and Russia

Value-coding of time

Shih -a notion that time is valued as long as it follows the Western linear-progessive model --> as time goes on, things get more liberal, progressive, rational, and better -seen as problematic because it not only sees progress in Western, but also sees the West as the paradigm of modernity and progress while it sees the East as always a little behind -modernist ideology which deems history in linear terms as moving from the primitive to the developed, confers similarity on the other as the past of the self -What western nations have achieved ideologically, politically, socially, is seen as the pinnacle of progress with non western peoples and nations having to catch up -Geographical and cultural difference is mapped on to cultural difference --> Asymmetrical Cosmopolitanism Ex: Chinese history of women's rights 1) liberal feminism (1920s) 2) revolutionary feminism (1930s) 3) socialist, state-sponspored feminism (1949-980s) 4) refeminization (mid-1980s on) -in Chinese history of women's rights and feminist movements, Chinese women actually achieved legal equal rights as men in the 50s (which is what US women were just starting to fight for) -"refeminization" occurred as communism was starting to be banned, and capitalism was slowly replaced it -because Chinese women had been assimilated with men for so long, and had been considered "equals" for so long, they felt that it was necessary to reestablished their feminism/"regender women" --> this was seen as a step backwards to Westerners, who are trying to achieve equality with men 2 Myths about Chinese Women 1) Chinese women's liberation in the 1950s: "Western women did not realize that we entered society in the condition of a very low productivity standard, and because of the heavy burden of labor, including social and domestic labor, Chinese women had not really achieved real liberation. You said we were liberated, and we said we were exhausted." (99) --> You said we were liberated by being able to work as much as men for the same pay, they said they were exhausted --> "You said, we said" represents Westerner's assimilation of Chinese women --> Women were legally defined as workers and given all of the same rights before the law as men were --> Chinese women were assimilated into category of men --> Because of low productivity standard and heavy burden of labor Chinese women were given the right to work as hard, for as little money, and as awful conditions as men 2) Chinese women's "double oppression": double oppression by tradition/the traditional family and by undemocratic politics and an underdeveloped economy --> In the 1980's when China reentered global markets, Chinese women adopted new tension to what it means to be a woman as opposed to a girl --> From the western perspective this wasn't seen as progress, but backsliding—the antithesis of progress --> Return to tradition and the traditional family as one form of oppression -"In these two diametrically opposed myths, there is an unquestioned, contradictory assignation of temporal value to Chinese women, first as "forerunners," thus ahead of Western women, and then as backward sisters living in an "underdeveloped" country under "double oppression."" (99) --> Depends on taking western timeline as an objective truth as opposed to merely one perspective on what time and progress mean --> "The obsessive critique of temporalizing the Other, Fabian's "chronopolitics" always already posits Chinese women as the perennial Object of study and does not presume the necessity of equal and genuine dialogue and exchange" (103)

Asymmetrical Cosmopolitanism

Shih -if the Western person went to Asia they would be more "worldly" or cosmopolitan -if an Asian came to the US they wouldn't necessarily be more worldly -languages: a western person only needs english + a european language to be cosmopolitan, but an Asian person who is fluent in both Mandarin and their local dialect is NOT cosmopolitan but is actually "stuck" -cosmopolitan mapping: the West is at the center -being cosmopolitan and being perceived as cosmopolitan is a privilege -"Non-Western intellectuals need to be knowledgeable about Western cultures and speak one of the metropolitan languages to be considered 'cosmopolitan', while Western intellectuals can be cosmopolitan without speaking any non-metropolitan language." (95) -I can be considered cosmopolitan if I travel around Europe and learn a European language as well as English -Can a Chinese person be considered cosmopolitan if he/she has simply traveled around Asia? No. -Assumes eastern cultures are not different from each other -If all Eastern cultures are more or less the same we don't need to know them, we don't need to know the difference between them...it's close enough

Affect

Shih (Rustegar and arguably Ahmed also) -a response or articulation of emotion -physiological, psychological, or behavioral manifestation of emotion; responses to or effects/consequences of feelings -emotion is something you can feel inside, but affect is the manifestation or appearance of emotion that others can see, it is external and has social implications -affect does social work -affect is legible rather than private or interior --> New Yorker cartoon showed the "affect of the feminist": don't have a sense of humor, always angry Affective responses: -Min's response to her assimilation into American culture: --> Assimilation and culturalism in Min's narrative are associated with happiness, relief, freedom --> Things that would seem to be neutral affects, but are actually shaped by social and cultural meanings -By contrast if you think about Li's insistence on disidentification or nativism (rejection of everything western)—how would you characterize her affect? How does she feel about Western feminism --> "when" or the value coding of time

Global vs. Universal perspective on gender

Sinha Universal: essentialism, idea that there is one set gender binary, male or female that applies to everyone -Sinha critiques this and wants to bring a global perspective on gender to feminism Global: we want to build a global idea of feminism where we are keeping different meanings of gender -"a truly global perspective on gender - rather than merely the extension of an [earlier/older] conception of gender to different parts of the globe - must give theoretical weight to the particular contexts in which it is articulated. It offers, in lieu of an already known understanding of gender, a radically open conception that derives meaning from the work it does in particular contexts." --> different meanings of gender dependent on different contexts and locations -"we must dare to risk the disassociation of gender from its one-dimensional modern European association with binary sexual difference." 1) Example 1: gender is so hopelessly compromised by its particular European constitutions as to have no relevance for understanding social relations in precolonial Africa -core to African identity is seniority and social class, NOT gender. gender is a distinction like eye color but not an identity 2) Example 2: "beardless male" belonged to a different logic of gender in which the point of reference for masculinity was not femininity but an adult male masculinity -how does the "beardless male" represent masculinity without thinking of gender? --> age: a boy is more different from a grown man than he is different from a girl 3) Example 3: Bengali language domestic manuals -"the genre serves precisely in the fashioning of a new masculine gender identity constructed in opposition to family elders" -Bengali manuals were written by men (English manuals were written by women), these were written for a male audience who were trying to redefine their masculinity from the context of age to the context of the couple 4) Example 4: MSM (men who have sex with men) -"MSM was designed to capture the multiplicity of frameworks for sexual behavior that did not fit within the standard framework of sexual orientation or gender identity" -all of these are examples of the larger argument: "the larger point, however, is not merely the predictable one of contrasting theoretical abstractions with the immediacy of practice. It is, rather, about deriving the theoretical abstractions and the conceptual categories - in this case, the concept of gender - from the empirical material itself." --> she wants to draw out general/theoretical concepts from particular/empirical cases, whereas feminists do the opposite --> feminists keep folding gender back into male vs. female

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)

Spade -the "bible" for psychiatrists (mental health professionals) -it dictates gender, gives guidelines

Gender Identity Disorder (GID)

Spade -when you don't fit into the gender you were assigned at birth -"mutilating gender" basically just the idea that this gender dysphoria is considered a mental disorder and it creates gender norms because people all have to tell the same story in order to get cleared by psychologists to get sex reassignment surgeries

Paradigm of gender legibility

Spade and Halberstam -assumes that people's genders should be easily recognizable -gender legibility: how easily people can read you as the gender you're projecting -paradigm: even if you're sex is a woman, you still have to perform the gender as a woman -ex of figures who do not fit into gender legibility: butch lesbians because they project more of a masculine appearance; FTMs (who are told to be a certain type of "male") -For FTMs, a preppy clean cut look (think GAP) is often suggested as the best aesthetic for passing -Again, this establishes the requirement of being even more normal than normal people when it comes to gender presentation, and discouraging gender disruptive behavior

Transgender vs. Transsexual

Spade and Halberstam and Herndon -transgender: focuses on how one presents the body to the world --> identifying as a man or woman vs. identifying as a male or female --> performances or enactments of femininity or masculinity --> cross-dressing, butch, drag queen -transsexual: actually bodily alteration through some kind of medical intervention --> hormonal treatment, surgery - you can be transgender yourself, on your own, but you need medicine to become a transsexual -MAIN DEBATE: is line drawing or "border wars" --> is a stone butch a man or is a FTM a true man? -basically butch lesbians will get mad at FTMs for becoming men because they see them as traitors

Epistemic violence

Spivak -Misrepresentation of what someone wants or needs. -->For example, discounting what someone is saying even when they are speaking very clearly. -to suppress a form of knowledge as not counting as knowledge -it is the dominant/most powerful form of imperialism -Spivak developed and applied Foucault's term epistemic violence to describe the destruction of non-Western ways of perceiving the world, and the resultant dominance of the Western ways of perceiving the world. --> Conceptually, epistemic violence specifically relates to women, whereby the "Subaltern [woman] must always be caught in translation, never [allowed to be] truly expressing herself", because the colonial power's destruction of her culture pushed to the social margins her non-Western ways of perceiving, understanding, and knowing the world

Sovereign subject

Spivak -individual in whom desire, interest, and power (agency) are aligned; subject who knows its own interests, determines its own desires based on a rational calculation of self-interest, and acts to realize strategically aligned interests and desires -toddlers may have a lot of desire to do something, but not know their self-interests --> thus, their self-interest and desires are not aligned, which is why they need someone to watch over them and speak for them -the white male has the most potential to be a sovereign subject -Spivak is interested in critiquing both the 3rd world sovereign subject and the western educated one

Empiricism

The unsystematic registration of things as they are and the refusal of forms of analysis which penetrate beneath the surface of observable social phenomena -objective data that excludes experiences and feelings Rose -"common sense" or normal notion of what is a "woman" used as reason for sexism -empiricism as bourgeois -ex: Boston Marathon Runner: "of course women can't run 26.2 miles", a world in which it's common sense that women can't run marathons, supported by the fact that none had before Freud -psychoanalysis and empiricism: through dreams, slips, symptoms, people fight against "norms" and try to say what they want to say MacKinnon -objectivity of the male gaze as being the equivalent to empiricism

Gay marriage campaign v. Queer politics

Warner -entire queer movement has been reduced to one issue: marriage -giving rights to one group of people takes away the rights from others -marriage itself is by its very nature an exclusive concept: some people are married and some are not -gay marriage simply reinscribes this exclusion -so gay people that don't want to get married aren't fitting in to society nor are they getting the political, legal, and economic benefits that come with getting married ?????????????add more from notes??????????????????

Homonormativity

Warner -homonormativity: the abandonment of challenging heteronormative ideologies and instead arguing that homosexuals are just as good parents, lovers, etc. as heterosexuals -problem with it: it leaves a restrictive and disciplinary model that excludes people who don't see monogamous marriage, procreation, or home ownership as the ideal -part of gay marriage campaign as opposed to a queer politics that challenges the notion that any relationship should be regarded by the state --> ex: critique that married people shouldn't have rights that unmarried people don't have because it sees unmarried people as being "less legitimate" members of society, or not conforming to the "sexual ideal" of monogamy Hong -"The emergence of homonormative gay and lesbian identities that mark themselves as parents, tourists, homeowners and taxpayers"

Essentialism

Wittig -the idea that our biological make up of our bodies makes the difference between men and women --> this is why "women are better care-takers, teachers, etc" because they are "naturally" more loving -"by admitting that there is a 'natural' division between women and men, we naturalize history, we assume that 'men' and 'women' have always existed and will always exist Combahee River Collective Statement -belief that there is some kind of male or female nature that precedes education, socialization - there is no essential person to any of us and denying idea that people have "core being" -critique of essentialism: men's biological maleness is not what makes them what they are

Epistemology

objective theory of knowledge MacKinnon -she critiques the epistemology stance as being non involved and focusing on the exterior -says it represents power in the male form Sedgwick ?????????????????????????????????????????????????

Gloria Anzaldúa

she's interested in cultures' purity-seeking/chastity and how that affects women -when we don't recognize our white privilege, we reinforce the dominant system/racist system -Anzaldúa is highly known for this semi-autobiographical book which discusses her life growing up on the Mexican-Texas border. -Borderlands examines the condition of women in Chicano and Latino culture. -The first half of the book is a series of essays, which feature a view into a life of isolation and loneliness in the borderlands between cultures. -The latter half of the book is poetry. -Anzaldúa writes this book in two variations of English and six variations of Spanish. --> By doing this she makes it difficult for non-bilinguals to read without being frustrated. --> This was done on purpose in order for people to understand the frustrating life Anzaldúa grew up in. Language was one of the barriers Anzaldúa dealt with as a child. She wanted readers to understand how frustrating things are when there are language barriers. -This book was written as an outlet for her anger and encourages one to be proud of one's heritage and culture. -She made contributions to ideas of feminism and contributed to the field of cultural theory/Chicana and queer theory. -One of her major contributions was her introduction to United States academic audiences of the term mestizaje, meaning a state of being beyond binary ("either-or") conception, into academic writing and discussion. -In her theoretical works, Anzaldúa called for a "new mestiza," which she described as an individual aware of her conflicting and meshing identities and uses these "new angles of vision" to challenge binary thinking in the Western world. -She points out that having to identify as a certain, labelled, sex can be detrimental to one's creativity as well as how seriously people take you as a producer of consumable goods. -The "new mestiza" way of thinking is illustrated in postcolonial feminism. -In the same way that Anzaldúa felt she could not be classified as only part of one race or the other, she felt that she possessed a multi-sexuality. --> When growing up, Anzaldúa expressed that she felt an "intense sexuality" towards her own father, to animals and even to trees. --> She was attracted to and later had relationships with both men and women. -While race normally divides people, Anzaldúa called for people of different races to confront their fears in order to move forward into a world that is less hateful and more useful. -In "La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness," a text often used in women's studies courses, Anzaldúa insisted that separatism invoked by Chicanos/Chicanas is not furthering the cause, but instead keeping the same racial division in place. -Many of Anzaldúa's works challenge the status quo of the movements in which she was involved. --> She challenged these movements in an effort to make real change happen to the world, rather than to specific groups. --> Scholar Ivy Schweitzer writes, "her theorizing of a new borderlands or mestiza consciousness helped jump start fresh investigations in several fields -- feminist, Americanist [and] postcolonial."