As my last post indicated, we are currently studying and applying feminist literary theory in one of my classes, although we will quickly be moving on to another school of thought. At this point, my complaint is more with the author we are reading than it is with the theory itself, although my critique would probably raise all sorts of eyebrows and refutes from at least the more extreme of feminists.
Robert Parker, in How to Interpret Literature: Critical Thoery for Literary and Cultural Studies, tells this heartwarming story in the introduction about how his students (at the University of Illinois) needed a resource that illustrates a basic understanding of the various literary theories. Thus, he wrote the book, essentially a survey of those theories. The problem is, parts of the book are much more prescriptive than they are descriptive. That is to say, he takes sides, and does it quite cheaply. Now, I have no problem with taking sides. Professors do it all the time, and so do I as a student and writer. However, Parker does it while pretending he is offering an objective survey. Some of his tactics are pretty much intellectual bullying.
In his chapter on New Criticism--of which I am no expert or devoted follower--he did lay out most of the underlying principles of the method, but also quickly labeled most of the New Critics--many of them also Southern Agrarians--as racist and sexist (with very little use of their text) to explain why he refers to them in that way.
A few chapters later, we get to feminism, which he lavishes with praise. Fine and dandy so far. He tells about how feminism has helped bring about the right to vote and own property for women, which is unarguably a good thing. But all he is doing at this point is backdooring his reader in, which is why I say he's a bully, and perhaps less than honest. He tells us feminism "is about taking women seriously and respectfully." Again, something that hardly anyone would agree with, but you have to wonder, What does it look like to take women seriously and respectfully? As is almost always the case, the semantics matter.
But eventually he works his way to the place at which he wants his readers to arrive. "Contemporary feminist theory usually sees gender as the constructed product of culture rather than the natural, inevitable product of biology and anatomy." Now, much of academia has accepted these definitions (much like it has accepted the definition of racism as racial discrimination from positions of power, essentially elininating the possibility that a minority could be racist), that sex and gender is different, and at least gender is completely culturally constructed. He, of course, keeps going, because this all progresses to the intended end, which is--ta da!--"we cannot understand sexual anatomy apart from cultural ideas about gender, which structure how we construct anatomy." So now, not just is gender constructed, but sex is also constructed. I want to fully disclose here in the name of honesty that the quote I just pulled is an analysis of what a specific feminist--Judith Butler--argued, and Parker doesn't necessarily agree with it (although it's implied).
So how is this bullying? Well, for starters he essentially claims that anyone who criticizes Feminism is just threatened by it. So basically in his world, there is no acceptable way to criticize feminism. (A pretty convenient tactic, don't you think?) Parker has also set up a binary situation in which a reader, particularly one who doesn't think very critically, thinks that to take women seriously and respectfully and to support a woman's right to vote, own property, and work in a setting of her choosing is to believe that sex and gender is completely constructed, which of course has all sorts of implications for sexuality, family, procreation, surgeries, and other very real life issues. If you do not think people really believe this, you are either not listening or not spending time with the same people I am. I taught with a woman in Jacksonville who was convinced it was wrong to call her students "boys and girls." A colleague in grad school has a sister that does not allow anyone surrounding her child to make comments that might suggest one of the traditional genders. (Can you imagine all the emotional work that will have to be done later on in order to come to grips with that person's sex and gender?)
What makes this all even more interesting is that I am both teaching and taking classes right now. In a class I teach, we make our way through Jean Twenge's Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable than Ever Before in order to generate responses from students in their writing. Somehow we got onto a conversation about whether or not a woman could or should be president (even though both major political parties have very influential, some might even suggest presidential, women). I could not believe how many of my students, both male and female (it was a girl who originally made the claim), agreed with the statement that a women shouldn't be president. A very good question to consider is, what happens between zero and eighteen that leads so many of those students to believe a woman cannot be president? I supposed this view is picked up mostly from parents and families and churches, and probably more in Indiana than some other places.
The very same night in my graduate class, someone willing to challenge the notion that sex is socially-constructed rather than designed was next to impossible to find. So the next question worth considering is, what happens between eighteen and twenty-two that leads so many graduate students to believe sex is completely culturally-constructed. Now, some of that is definitely emotional; I'll concede that. College students have friends who come out of the closet; they may know someone who has changes sexes medically; they may experiment with their sexuality more than they ever have before. But I would also argue that this assumption comes out of the prevailing academic worldview. (It's not very surprising, is it, that the next unit in my class is on "Queer Studies.") These topics are important, but unfortunately they are often tactically approached by bullying: If you are not/do not believe...then you are sexist/racist/bigoted/intolerant/ignorant.
What is the alternative? Put in simple terms, one could take women seriously and respectfully, while acknowledging that sex is designed--that male and female are different--and that gender is both a manifestation of sex, while also being culturally influenced. This is the biblical view, as best as I can understand it. We are different--male and female--but neither is superior or inferior.
For example, as very broad generalizations, men tend to be physically stronger than women, and women tend to be more emotional than men. This is not to suggest that there are not exceptions. But there are scientific reasons why both of these generalizations tend to hold true. That does not mean that a man couldn't be a nurse or a woman couldn't be an excellent basketball player in her own right (those types of things are definitely culturally constructed).
You may think I am avoiding how much this possibility has been manipulated and abused. It definitely happens. How many men out there are quoting the verse about wives submitting to husbands when they want their wife to do what they want? (Those men are definitely divorcing the verse from its context, but I'll let you read the passage for yourself.) Even worse, the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse from men to women is real and disheartening. This is not to exonerate many women out there who use sex as a tool to manipulate men. My point is accepting that male and females are different can defintely be abused.
Inevitably, the next plea from the "Sex is all socially-constructed" crowd will be about hermaphodites--also called the intersexed, which are babies that come out of the womb with both or a combination of or ambiguous sexual parts. As you can imagine, life gets a lot complex for those people and their families. (The correct response for and to them is not hatred, by the way.)
But hermaphodites should also not be treated as an intellectual tool to be used on your way to bullying a point. Depending on the definitions, hermaphodites make up between zero and two percent of the populations, with most figures well under one percent. It might be a harsh way to put it, but it is a defect. If a child comes out of the womb without an arm or a leg or with too many fingers, that doesn't make arms and legs and fingers social constructs; in fact, they are still biological any way you spin it. The same goes for sexual parts. (And no, it does not help your case to tell me that worms are mostly hermaphodites.)
All this to say, there is a vision that embraces the tensions and the complexities, while also maintaining that males and females are different. Those differences are good but can and unfortunately are often abused. To paraphrase Wendell Berry (on a much different topic), it is an old question (problem) with an old answer (solution). And no, you do not have to believe sex and gender are solely socially-constructed in order to take women "seriously and respectfully."
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