Tag: gender

Link Wednesday #1- Feminisms, Same-Sex Marriage, and Caitlyn Jenner

1. Rita Alfonso Surveying Feminisms

Dr. Rita Alfonso thinkphilosophy.org
Dr. Rita Alfonso
thinkphilosophy.org

ThinkPhilosophy is a philosophy website run by “Dr. A” (Rita Alfonso), who taught philosophy and gender studies at Grinnell College and U.C. Berkeley before retiring. She is now an independent scholar and professional photographer.

Alfonso’s first few podcasts seem aimed at making a general audience clearer thinkers through reading and writing practices. Her blog is a text-accompaniment to her podcast. (Also neat: if you subscribe to her site, you can get Feminism: A Very Short Introduction as a free download. Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series gives a quick survey of a topic by experts in the field. They run ~100-150pp and ~$10).

I came across Alfonso’s site when looking up gender studies blogs. Her first podcast that I heard was her explanation of three prominent feminist theorists: Simone de Beauvoir (existentialism/Marxism), Luce Irigaray (psychoanalysis), and Judith Butler (post-structuralism/queer theory). De Beauvoir pretty much kicked off Second-Wave Feminism with her The Second Sex. One of her most famous lines is “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.” In other words, sex is not identical with gender, but gender has a cultural history. According to Alfonso, Irigaray takes de Beauvoir in an egalitarian direction while Butler takes her in a radical direction.

The audio runs ~38 minutes.

What do you make of de Beauvoir’s quote? Are women reducible to wombs or to what is called “feminine”? Is femininity something that is stable in a person or something that must be constantly maintained? How much is femininity a performance or projected image and how much of it is innate to a woman? Is woman simply the Other of man? How does liberal feminism differ from radical feminism?

How does Irigaray critique de Beauvoir’s “othering” (abbr- where you set up an opposite of yourself or your group to say “I’m not that” and use it as identity reinforcement) of women? Is Irigaray saying de Beauvoir sees women as simply non-actualized men in need of full (male) agency? How different does Irigaray find women and men as subjects?

Butler argues that if we take de Beauvoir’s sex/gender distinction seriously, we have no guarantee that a sex results in a given gender; if you always exists in a culturally expressed gender, do you ever exist solely as your sex? In other words, are bodies and biological sex ever interpreted free of cultural bias? In Alfonso’s questioning, does gender occur as naturally as a falling rock demonstrates gravity (every time)? Alfonso interrogates sex as a natural category: should it not result in a particular gender expression? Is the nature/nurture distinction itself a cultural product?

2. Albert Mohler on Attending Same-Sex Weddings

Albert Mohler is extremely influential in the Southern Baptist Convention and president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His output is prolific. He has an almost daily podcast called “The Briefing” where he analyzes current events from an evangelical perspective.

I started listening to him because I wanted to gauge where real evangelical leaders are coming from and rather than being filtered through various outlets like Salon or other media which focus more on sensational figures (thinking Pat Robertson here) rather than on what broader evangelicals accept.

Albert Mohler albertmohler.com
Albert Mohler
albertmohler.com

If you are unaware, sometimes religious leaders play with a supposed (from an outside perspective) or real party line (again, this is why I think essentialism is unhelpful). While holding to a traditional view of marriage, Mohler also claimed that the church was guilty of homophobia and aggression (rather than redemption) against homosexuals.

The podcast I listened to on Monday was dated. He analyzed Sen. Marco Rubio’s statement on attending a same-sex wedding. Rubio would attend one if he loved the people, even though he doesn’t support same-sex marriage. Mohler argued that based on the phrasing from the Book of Common Prayer (“If any of you can show just cause why they may not lawfully be married…”) one’s attendance of a wedding is silent consent to the marriage, and that therefore, Rubio’s statement doesn’t make sense.

The segment on Rubio is the first ~7 min of ~18 min.

What do you make of this? Does Mohler’s assessment work for you? Can one not attend a same-sex wedding, love the people involved, and still disagree with what they are doing? Does attendance or presence equal consent? Does Rubio’s statement conflate loving people regardless of their sin and what people affirm? If a mother-in-law doesn’t like the spouse her child has chosen, and she still attends the wedding, is she affirming their marriage or her child? How does Mohler employ the term “category”? What does Mohler mean by love? Does he define it?

3. “Bruce Jenner Is Not a Hero”

Yesterday was a mixed bag on my Facebook feed. There didn’t seem to be much middle ground surrounding Caitlyn Jenner’s reveal on the cover of Vanity Fair. This post was a negative assessment of her coming out. When I tried to find out about the author, she didn’t have an “About” section. Scrolling through her posts, I gathered that she is a mother seeking to explain a Christian worldview in light of cultural (generally sinful) trends. What caught my attention in her post was the following quote: “I never want to shy away from speaking something that needs to be said even if I know it is not something people want to hear.”

What prompts someone to speak to an issue to the point of saying that their words “needs to be said”? I can think of some possibilities: everyone is doing it, your position hasn’t been heard, your position has been maligned, your position has been misunderstood, you like to hear yourself talk, imminent danger, etc. I think in this case she sees a societal danger, but you tell me what you think.

How is Emily Suzanne using gender? Does she buy a distinction between sex and gender, or are these two items even distinct? How is she characterizing arguments in favor of Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out? What sources of authority does she use? How and why does she use them? What does she mean by “common sense” when coupled with a Christian worldview? How does Caitlyn coming out as a woman constitute being “lost, sinful, and desperately in need of Jesus” in itself? According to her definition of a hero, has Caitlyn not sacrificed and risked? When Emily Suzanne uses “we,” who is included and who is excluded?

I plan on using Jenner’s case as a launch pad to talk about the biology and politics of sex in an upcoming post, possibly before Saturday. Again, in Saturday’s post I am going to discuss how I relate religion and gender in my studies.

What Do I Mean “Your Sexuality Isn’t Natural”?

In my post “Working Thoughts on Gender and Sexuality,” I used the words “natural” and “naturally” to describe something I don’t subscribe to. When I was explaining my thoughts included there to a friend at work, he got me thinking how I’m using those words.

Natural can refer to socially constructed things, because no one exists outside of social relations. In that sense, all that humans do is natural. Even the prisoner in solitary confinement has food brought to him or her; social relations do not have to include words. They simply infer what one does not do oneself. So I may cook my own food, but Walmart workers stocked shelves, from materials transported by truck and train, from materials worked on a farm, from seed and antibiotics administered by farmers, bought from corporations, produced from still more materials, etc. While all that involves many steps, it is natural in the sense of humans produce and consume socially.

I do not mean natural in that way, however. What I am reacting against is “essentialism.” This word (essentially, ha!) carries the idea that if an object or concept is called by something, then it must contain all elements of the definition, or else not be that. Take the word “human” or anything having to do with humanity. One-size-fits-all definitions tend to leave out a lot of human phenomena. If humans are featherless bipeds, do persons who are quadriplegic qualify as humans? If humans are meaning-making animals, are people in comas or vegetative states nonhuman? If women are defined functionally by having the ability to bear children, do women who cannot bear children (or just don’t) not qualify as women?

To the person who says we need definitions in place to have a conversation, I will agree. But I think definitions need to be working definitions to deal with living data. If my definition does not capture all that is human, I need to interrogate the usefulness of my definition. Definitions necessarily leave something out, but how much do they leave out (or how far are they inclusive?) before they cease to be useful? I also think definitions need to be brought into discussion rather than just thrown around as if they have innate meaning. African-Americans and white Americans many times mean completely different things with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” until they discuss their situatedness.

Speaking of situatedness, I am aiming in my writing for more concreteness. My same friend asked me what percentage of people are born gay. I don’t think we’re born anything because we haven’t expressed anything yet when we’re born. I think there are predispositions for things at birth—presence of genetic markers for given traits, a certain ratio of sex hormones—but again, these do not determine outcomes. Babies don’t think other babies are hot or want to date people with a different or similar pair of genitals; they want to eat, if even that. Their self-expression is limited to eating, sleeping, pooping, and peeing. I attribute gender and sexuality to personhood, and babies, while starting their journey of personhood, simply don’t have much yet.

My initial bias does not include much interaction with genetic research on gender, I will admit. What I was trying to say is that possessing certain criteria (I provided three—hormones, sex organs, and chromosomes) does not determine existence. So maybe “non-determinism” regarding gender and sexuality is what I was talking about and not “unnaturalness,” or more concretely, “You’re not born with sexual express.” As I will admit throughout my blog, I offer ideas in process. Because of this stance, I invite questions, disputes, clarifications, negations. All I ask is that we bring a stance of at least understanding the other on their own terms before disagreeing with them on our terms. If I fail to do that, call me out. I don’t know it all. I just kind of claim to know where I’m coming from, though that isn’t always the case either.

Working Thoughts on Gender and Sexuality

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I like things having to do with social theory. One of my first musings about society had to do with gender and sexuality. This post won’t so much deal with gender theory as with the biases I bring to research. My thoughts on gender and sexuality developed as I sought to define my own gender role and sexuality. Furthermore, I noticed that some people didn’t fit gender stereotypes and I wanted to know why. If gender were a naturally occurring phenomenon and not socially constructed, how did such a position account for the presence of “gender anomalies”? What of “alternative” sexualities?

Explanations of gender and sexuality aberration that did not satisfy me were childhood trauma or mere force of will. These explanations assume a few things. First, they assume that heterosexuality and traditional gender expression occurs naturally, almost as if parents and other authority figures left children to their own devices from birth, they would come out “naturally”—i.e., heterosexual and traditional in gender expression. Second, it assumes something drastic has to happen to overturn one’s natural makeup. When a given makeup is attributed solely to males and solely to females (and only those two sexes), childhood trauma or choosing not to be normal can make sense of a minority population. However, there are tons of people who don’t fit normal gender and sexual stereotypes who weren’t abused/neglected and who didn’t choose whom they were attracted to. Regarding abuse/neglect, more often people express gender in a male/masculine female/feminine way and are heterosexual; how then would the variable of abuse/neglect produce butch females, effeminate males, or people wishing to transition to another gender, when such account for so little of the general population?

I see gender and sexuality formed, discussed, censored, attacked, reinforced, encouraged, defined, redefined, debated, or denounced from infancy onward. The so-called “natural” heterosexual is such through continued inculcation of the following: constant reinforcement that heterosexuality is natural and “other” sexualities are aberrations from this norm. If it were natural, I don’t think heterosexuality would need constant reinforcement. Statements such as “Boys don’t cry,” or “Son, if you walk like that, it won’t be girls you attract,” or “That’s not ladylike,” or “Boys don’t like girls who speak their mind,” or “Boys who like theater are gay” wouldn’t need to be said. Even more basic than that, though: nurseries are decorated according to a certain color palate based on a baby’s sex. What toys they play with and how their parents interact with them from birth is already playing into a budding personality. And this doesn’t even touch on intersex individuals. I guess in my mind, natural=instinctual (understood this way, how much of what humans do is natural?); if something has to be taught, it ain’t natural. Perhaps that is too narrow of a definition but that is how I understand it currently.

But I also don’t assume that homosexuality is natural either. Sexuality is such a complex thing in my mind, that while it entails natural phenomena—hormones, sex organs, chromosomes—such do not determine how things will flesh out socially. The mere fact that I possess more testosterone than estrogen, working sex organs, and xy chromosomes does not put the stamp on how I will express gender or sexuality. What do those shared traits have to do with radical social differences within genders and even within sexualities?

Regarding definitions, Brian K. Smith (brought to my attention by Russell McCutcheon) helpfully notes that definition is not a finality but a beginning, at least concerning scholarship. It gets a conversation started and can be modified along the way. So with this initial post on gender and sexuality, I attribute their expression primarily to socialization. Biology has its part to play in providing the props; social activity is the actor who employs the props.

In later posts, I want to develop these thoughts in how I play them with “religion” (scare quotes, because in religious studies, this word is notoriously hard to pin down).

I invite and hope for your thoughts.

What I Learned This Year

Here are some things I’ve learned this year in school:

  • I am capable of a lot of work when I put my mind to it, but I also recognize my finitude. I have sometimes taken on too much to the detriment of my family. This will require that I plan my time better in adopting a consistent sleep schedule and study plan. My family deserves better than I gave them this year.
  • I had an inkling of this, but it got fleshed more out in my research of Gordon Kaufman’s theological method: all theology is constructed, from beginning to end. It does not exist “out there” to be discovered and exegeted but emerges out of a thinker’s use of sources. This means that one is responsible for what one says; one cannot just blame something on God.
  • Because of what I discovered with Kaufman, I am giving Christianity not another try, but a different try. I will be actively engaged in the process, not just uncritically accepting certain things. In a sense, Christianity exists “outside” the person because it is a social phenomenon. However, Christianity does not exist above and beyond the individual, because it is always embodied and expressed by individual persons. It shows up socially, too, social or political movements. I’m still working out what this even means.
  • I’ve come to realize more and more that I cannot universalize my personal experience and call myself a responsible person. I don’t call what I do “common sense,” “the way things are,” etc. I own what I do, say, and believe to the point that I recognize I have to demonstrate to others how I’ve come to some of my conclusions. I can’t take for granted that people share certain elements of experience with me to come to the same conclusions. And so this gives me room to hear other people’s stories and how they’ve constructed meaning on their journeys and not dismiss them out of hand; those are their experiences, as important to them as mine are to me. True dialogue can occur after each person recognizes this in the other, once we accept that we are not the same, and then attempt to find shared spaces or possibly create them.
  • There’s a world full of religions (one could just as easily say cultures since “religion” and “culture” intersect so seamlessly sometimes) that have worked for peoples to organize their societies. It’s interesting to learn how diverse understandings of religion arbitrate the relationship between church and state, individual and group, secular and sacred, what actually constitutes “religion,” male and female, or beyond binaries in more recent thought.
  • The word “religion” means something obvious to everyone else besides religious studies scholars. Ninian Smart outlined seven elements that most religions of the world have at least some of: doctrine, ethics, narratives/myths, ritual, experience, material culture, and institutions (here is a picture showing the interrelations of six of those dimensions, minus material culture). Some religions will denigrate others for not emphasizing what they emphasize. Some emphasize ritual and minimize ethics and doctrine, while others do the complete opposite. Both wonder at each other as a foreign, exotic “Other,” which is nonetheless wrong. Religion can also be defined in other ways: functionally, essentially, descriptively, and normatively.
  • There are lots of smart people in the world. I no longer feel the impulse to be the smartest in the class or see myself in competition with others to do better. I’ve adopted a more cooperative attitude that feels better. When I treat my classmates as fellow scholars or collaborators rather than as competition, we all benefit. I don’t glean nearly as much as when I share with others and they with me in a dynamic relationship. I just do my best and hope for the best.
  • Facebook and other internet activities waste a lot of my time. So does Netflix. Not to say these aren’t wonderful things in limited quantities, but they kind of contribute to me being a more passive than active person, making my brain feel kind of mushy after indulging for too long.
  • After reading an article by Richard Godbeer (his writing is as cool as his last name sounds), I encountered the idea that discourses of sex are always present in every sex act. One never “just has sex”; one is playing a script, like it fulfills a biological need or emotional desire, acts as a means to bond with a lover, a duty to fulfill, a peak experience with another involved, etc. He was drawing his ideas from Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality in three volumes, some of which I’d like to read this summer. The class I was in, Sexuality and American Religion, has actually given me some ideas of possible minors I’d like to pursue alongside the major of religious studies, like gender or sexuality studies and their presence in religions.

That is all I can think of for now. If I think of other things, I’ll edit this post and add them. Ask questions or comment if you want.

Social Justice, Liberation, and “Negative Utilitarianism”

I’m listening to an interviewee, Toby Ord, on a podcast called “Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot” on choosing between ethical theories. He was talking about consequentialism when I thought of something: how does social justice fit into these theories? This has all been culminating from Micki Pulleyking’s ethics unit (which involved selections from Michael Sandel’s Justice), Phil Snider’s ethics course (Sandel again), and Kathy Pulley’s assignment of James Cone’s A Black Theology of Liberation and Miguel de la Torre’s Latina/o Social Ethics. It would probably fit under consequentialism/utilitarianism, or “in/action that would cause the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people” (what usually goes with this is “regardless of means”). I thought whether there is an inverse to that, action that reduces the sum misery of all (but which also goes, as far as possible, through painless means; but then, how much positive change is truly without its pains?). I might term this “negative consequentialism” or just come up with a cool name for it if it doesn’t already exist. I have communitarian concerns in mind when I think about this. As I’ve been wondering about various types of liberation–
here are some I can think of:

  • Gender- transcending binary stereotypes, and allowing for transgender, women having the freedom to maximize potential
  • Race- oppressed peoples (regardless of skin color) whose voices have been silenced by the powerful
  • Class- when the rich few control the social, economic, and political realities and opportunities of the mass, and don’t fairly distribute resources
  • Animal- they are given as natural of lives as possible; when endangered, helped; domestic animals allowed more freedom in life, freedom from too many unnatural strictures, even those bred to eat
  • Sexual- where sexual needs and desires are met as far as possible, with dignity for partners involved, protection from disease, protection from relational abuse or mistreatment, non-exploitative, unrestricted, not duty-bound but flows with desire
  • Psychological- freedom from the pains of mental illness, freedom from the stigma of “crazy,” opportunities for health, education, and career
  • Queer- ability to flourish without oppression due to one’s sexual orientation, to love whom one loves, to marry the person(s) of your choice (liberation from monogamous hegemony maybe?)
  • Dogmatic- where religion is used to stifle creativity or maintain a status quo based on uncritical acceptance of (a) charismatic leader’s(‘) influence and thought, where “other” is demonized or cast as “sinful” “heretical” or worthy of any type of this-worldly punishment at the hands of said community
  • Familial- where family members abuse others based on some form of power (parental, older sibling, size, economic, etc.)
  • Political- where one is constrained just a bit too much by the government
  • Etc.- each of these has more to say about it, are not mutually exclusive, and is not exhaustive in what one can be liberated from. Pretty much all of this looks like escape from the definitions, abuses, and clutches of the powerful.

I’ve wondered at what the ideal society would look like. To me it would be where voices aren’t shut out because of marginality. Voices would be heard irrespective of their origins. People would have dignity with no fear of attack on their persons. People wouldn’t be stifled based on constructed otherness. Basic needs would be met and psychological needs would be apt to be met. Communities would think things out critically and for extended periods. The arts and humanities would flourish. With this idea of negative utilitarianism, I would need to think through what I believe misery is, its causes, and then think of ways out. What do you think? Does liberation strike chords with you positively or negatively? Can you think of types of liberation I’ve omitted?