Poststructural Epistemology-February 26

The three readings assert that gender results in the embodiment of legacies: history and public culture.  Judith Butler discusses how western philosophical literature that defines gender must be reconsidered due, in part, to the fact that there are always new aspects of womanhood that require expression.  On the other hand, Bartky analyzes the forms in which the feminine body is adjusted, revealing that the evolution of trends and desire are in a way written on the body.  Using the literature of Foucault as a backdrop to look at the evidence of patriarchy on women's bodies as well as rebellions to the this phenomenon, Bartky argues that women's bodies are most subject to men's discipline.  She uses the imagery of the Foucault's panopticon, to reveal that women fear rebellion as a result of being constantly watched by men.  Failure to ever actually to obtain the perfect mind and body that men believe to be perfect for women, women are destined to feel a "bodily deficiency" which further strengthen men's control and abuse of women's minds and bodies.  Both authors emphasize patriarchal power to discuss how gender is created and oppression of women is justified.

Standpoint Epistemology-February 24

The three assigned reading offer interesting insight into the processes and complexities that formulate the theories of oppression.  The poem "For the White Person Who Wants to be My Friend" describes Pat Parker's relationship with white people as a black woman.  Relying heavily on sarcasm, Parker criticizes how white people attempt to relate to her through overtly racist and vaguely sexist stereotypes, that result in her resentment of the effort.  Through Parker's poetry, we can begin to see the social boundaries created by misguided assumptions about black culture.  Similarly, Kimberle Crenshaw analyzes black womanhood to argue that the inability for those other than black women to understand the plight of intersectional identities creates many layers of injustice and oppression.  Furthermore, like the unsuccessful effort to remedy the social stratification between races as portrayed in Parker's poem, Crenshaw claims that the antidiscrimination laws fail to accommodate the complexity that exists in the intersection of sex and race.  This failure contributes to a double oppression for black women, which is manifested in the court's inability to judge black women's discrimination cases based on their combined identity.  Both Parker and Crenshaw emphasize black culture in their writing in order to argue that black culture, while in some aspects may be different than other cultures, does not define the individual, or rather, the woman, who supposedly belongs to that culture.  Aretha Franklin does not define Parker's world as a black woman.  Domestic abuse depicted in The Color Purple does not define the black family unit.  Understanding the complexity of the individual, separate from her respective culture, will permit the ending of discrimination.

Standpoint Epistemologies-February 19

In the pursuit of advancing feminist goals for equality among the sexes, we must first understand the nature of gender oppression around the world.  The two articles, "The Feminist Standpoint: Toward a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism" and "The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist," emphasize the structure of knowledge and its inability to be universal.  Hartsock uses a "feminist standpoint" to look at the value of women in materialism in a historical context.  To do this, she needed to eliminate nonwestern traditions from her text, as it would dilute her argument.  Using Marxist theory as a backdrop for her argument that the feminist standpoint accounts for all of the oppressed, she focuses on the sexual division of labor that reinforces male dominance.  Women are, if not more, essential to the labor force than men, as they work double days and are responsible for the creation of new beings.  Moreover, the nature of human development according to Freudian doctrine contributes to the polarization of many dualisms that exist between the two genders.  I thought it was interesting that she listed many dualisms, but did not mention public/private, which I believe would have been critical in explaining the global phenomenon of male dominance.  All of her dualisms justify sexual division of labor, but public/private accounts for women's absence from the economic public sphere as well as the political, as we see especially in Iran. For her article, the feminist standpoint encapsulates the material necessity of the proletariat to understand the oppression of women.
Narayan argues that the biggest weakness of feminist epistemology is that it does not account for nonwestern standpoints.   Feminist epistemology, according to both articles, attempts to link all oppressed groups.  However, western feminist tend to dominate feminist discourse, excluding or stereotyping the issues and values experienced by nonwestern feminists. Narayan makes it clear that west is not best when it comes to feminist epistemology, using the example that western romantic love is equally as oppressive as arranged marriages.  Furthermore, western voices dominating feminist discourse strengthens the legacy of colonization in nonwestern countries, a legacy that led to devaluation of the values of womanhood in these cultures.  Western feminist epistemology is inherently flawed due to its dominating nature, especially as it romanticizes the oppressed and fails to understand the true issues at hand.  The abandonment of nonwestern feminist concerns ultimately weakens the feminist platform on a global scale.

Gender-February 12

I thought this week's reading called "Leadership for Change" relied too heavily on gender based stereotypes in an effort to analyze the weaknesses of the patriarchal structure of leadership.  I understand the article's purpose is to highlight the positive aspects of women's nature and apply it to organizational structure.  However, the article focuses too much on criticizing masculine stereotypes rather than accepting the challenge of eliminating gender and incorporating leaderships strategies that are relevant to all.  According to Kokopeli and Lakey, women's organizations are more successful due to the nurturing tendency associated with womanhood.  In contrast, patriarchal groups are likely to rebel due to men's desire to maintain the most power and control.  We have learned that gender is a social construct based on biology.  However, the binary understanding of sex and gender are limiting and therefore reject humans who do not conform to either categories.  Due to this, Wittig argues that classification based on gender must be eliminated from the public.  This article, on the other hand, distinguishes gender quite clearly.  In fact, it reinforces gender roles that patriarchal authority thrives on.  If a well organized, democratic group is to be egalitarian, it must recognize that each person is a human.  Each person can get away with their thoughts when they feel passionate about a project or idea.  It is not in the best interest of an organization to restrict these tendencies based on sex.

Gender-February 10

The selected readings argued that gender is simply a social construct based on biology.  The construction of gender goes further than polarizing the sexes, but also creates both economic and political implications.  "The Traffic in Women" outlines the economic value of women perceived by a historical lens.  The institution of marriage allows for women's bodies to become an essential commodity for a group of people.  Selling a woman, under the guise of marriage, ties two groups together economically.  In this way, the brideswealth serves as a dowry.  In Iran, where marriage is absolutely essential for a woman, a man must offer a handsome price in order to marry a woman.  Not only that, but a male guardian overlooks the entire economic transaction of the woman's marriage.  According to Marxist theory, women account for the surplus capital in the form reproduction of labor when they are married.  It is in marriage that women's bodies become an economic entity.
Biology comprises the definition of a woman based in relationship to a man.  This relationship shows a deeply oppressive patriarchal tradition. Defining the two classes: woman and man, contributes the cycle of oppressive thought.  In getting away from the biological relationship between man and woman, we will end the heterosexual oppressive system at work.  Oppressive system serves to place men and women into roles.  Monique Wittig argues that lesbians do not fall into the role of women because they do not have the mimic a woman's relation to a man.  Furthermore, the traditional definition of woman inhibits a person from being herself, as understood by the poem "Masks of a Woman."  In the poem, the narrator reveals that she wears the mask of the Asian woman the man she has a relationship wants her to be, but that is not who she really is.

Sex-February 5

As I read the last three texts, it became clear to me that the body is what defines sex.  I believe Fausto-Sterling's articles emphasize the body as a boundary.  "Dueling Dualisms" describes a Spanish Olympian, Maria Patino, who failed the femininity test as a result of exhibiting a Y chromosome.  This event called into question, how can a person's sex be determined if biology does not comply with the social binary construct of sex?  Historically, scientists studying sex divided sex into two entities: male and female, with no account for persons in between.  Understanding of genders changed throughout history in context of a person's sexual attraction.  The basis for the divisions of sex and gender is the body.  The body in scientific perspective creates a boundary between male and female.  The boundary exists socially in the differences between genders.
Intersex beings challenge the widely accepted notion that there are only two sexes in nature, backed by respective genders.  The challenge is met with push back, making it difficult for hermaphrodites to be accepted as they are in society due to their physical inability to be bound by the male or female sexes.  Physicians and parents alike often decide to surgically "correct" their intersex children and raise them according to their assigned sex.  This action creates issues in that the child does not have any choice in this process, and therefore grows to resent their sex and their parents.  If we could just abandon the Western need to have each and every aspect of life fall into two categories, we would create a more inclusive and understanding society.  Instead, we let the boundaries created by sex and history to inhibit our ability to care for those who do not align with preconceived notions of sex.


 Summary and Response:
 Emma in her journal made many thoughtful responses to Fausto-Sterling's articles on both the Dueling Dualism of sex and the problems with fitting into our society's strict social construct of two sexes in regards to the second article. Emma also states that through these readings she found out more of what our society defines as sex. For example, she comments on how "Physicians and parents alike often decide to surgically "correct" their intersex children and raise them according to their assigned sex.  This action creates issues in that the child does not have any choice in this process, and therefore grows to resent their sex and their parents. " This issue that has been historically been happening with intersex children is one of the main problems that Fausto-Sterling mentions in her article. I enjoy how Emma also comments on how if our society abandoned the Western cultural need for the strict two sexes that these people could find a place in our society. Though personally I feel like writing about abandoning these strict categories is easier than actually doing this. Many in people in our society would have major problems with this dissection of the sexes.
~ Aubrey Sneesby

Sex-February 3

 While the readings for this week were very different, offering many layers to theory in various forms, I found that all emphasized sex.  Interestingly, exclusion and dominance based on the body, the physical manifestation of sex, strengthened the arguments of each writer.
In "Generations of Women," Mirikitani describes the deeply emotional histories of three Japanese women.  Words such as "weary" and "woman foetus" and "entering of men" echo through out this poem, contributing the overall understanding that these women suffered due to their inferiority to men.  Their physical bodies were subject to long days of labor, pregnancy, and racist mocking.  The grandmother and the mother are marked by the weakness of their sex and race during the period of Japanese internment in the United States.  At the end, the narrator (the third generation/daughter) defies the persistence of female inferiority.  She becomes proud of her mother and grandmother's experiences, and thus becomes proud of who she is--a Japanese American woman.
 Carole Pateman in "Introduction: The Theoretical Subversiveness of Feminism" argues that women have historically excluded from theory, and therefore, classic theoretical works should be reviewed with feminist lens.  The inclusion of women in theory would undermine, yet modernize the social and political patriarchal arguments made by classic theorists.  The previous, biased understanding of women as illogical deemed them unfit for the public sector, and thus unfit for making contributions to theory.  Universality, ineffectively, began to mask the obvious masculine bias of theory.  What "universality" and "individuality" fail to demonstrate is body of woman, which in itself is exclusive in that it has the ability to give birth.  The exclusion of women from social and political theory undermines the socialist themes that so many of the classic radicalists discuss.  If the point of socialism is to make everyone equal, then why do these theories not apply to women?  Shifting away from classic theory, in contemporary theory, we face a similar issue.  The issue is that theorists dismiss all women's theory as feminist, when it is impossible for all women to agree on the same theories.  This dilemma is part of the reason why I am taking this class, as I find many people do not want to listen to my ideas if I align myself with feminism, even if I do not agree with everything a modern feminist might.
Moreover, Barbara Christian demonstrates that race even further polarizes the already sexed biases of theory existing in literature.  She portrays the race for theory as an academic elitist phenomenon upon which literature is criticized using Western theory.  In order to break the shackles of Western thought, Christian turns to literature to express the philosphy she has accrued through experience.  So often, critics will classify or examine world and/or female literature with a Western, binary understanding.  This becomes an issue when in the attempt to create universal theory, critics fail to include the periphery.  I find this especially important as a history major.  I often find that what I learn is HIS-story, and excludes the experience of the smaller, yet still significant beings at play.  It is through literature that I can gain a better understand the world outside of white men's actions.

Introduction/Theory

Unnatural Speech
I felt confused by the poem.  I could not tell what the roles of the characters were.  I believe the poem is trying to convey the emotions and difficulties that minority parents face when they see their children struggle in school.  The struggle is even more difficult to overcome when it stems from cultural biases such as language barriers.

Haciendo caras, una entrada
It is easy for me, a white woman, to forget the struggles of women of color.  I believe it is the acknowledgement of personal narratives that drive emotional reaction.  The personal narratives and the reader's emotional reaction  begin on a the basic, private level and then radiate outwards.  This is what drives theory.

Feminist theories ask questions:
ontology, epistemology, and politics
ontology-feelings of being in reality
ontogony- fetal development, trace evolutionary change of human beings
epistemology-study of knowledge
politics-clash of ideology; power and domination