Class topic...Gender Roles

an appropriate artist...and song for this post :)


YES Rhonesha...gender is culturally constructed... sex is biological and there are no absolutes in gender its about context..all the way across the world and my cousin and I are studying some of the same topics...lets compare notes N.E.S.H.A :) LOL but first let me explain the "aim" of the class....


RIGHT now I am actually sitting in class (bad girl) blogging and note taking.... not too bad cuz some girl is giving a presentation right now (zzzzzz)...working to my advantage because I can reflect on what was discussed before the presentation...

PARIS WAS A WOMAN...The whole point in the class is very abstract, we are learning not only Gender Roles and how they played a part in the migration of artists during the 1920's and 30's but also about the artists and writers on a whole who came to Paris for intellectual love affairs to better understand our reasoning as young artists and designers for wanting to be here..on the first day of class the instructor went around and asked all of us..WHY PARIS? My answer.... rather than continuing the semester at Parsons NY... i want to grow creatively and have more freedom to express myself outside of paramaters..then she read us a quote I'm not sure if I got it exactly right but it was something like:

"It's not whate Paris gives you, but what it doesnt take away." its from Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, you may have heard of Stein...famous for her play with language and words.. "A rose is a rose is a rose" while many writers believe that they can Master language...Stein proves that language often escapes you and has a life of its own...(have you ever said a word 10 times and suddenly it sounds wierd? or looses its meaning?) There are lots of different meanings of words...and people misunderstand each other because of the different meanings of words....Stein does not feel that she can become the master or creator of language, language creates her, she works with language as sounds, rhymes and rhythms…not just what the words mean..its not always important what the word means to her...sooo the fact that i dont always use proper puncutation on my blog, or capitalization is understandable :) and sometimes more meaningful than careless....you just have to notice (when i use I vs i for instance)

annyyyywayyyy hope you all are still with me im getting a bit immersed into the class :) turns out many of the great writers..and entertainers (Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Alice B Toklas etc) had similar reasons for being here....only they were fleeing paramaters based on gender, sexual preference, and race...I am hoping by the end of the course to better understand Paris was a Woman beyond its literary context....

last week we had two additional readings Judith Butler's excerpts from subversive bodily acts and The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. Both women...writing about the "rights of passage" of femininity and the "lost" femininity:

"Woman, we are told, envies man his penis and wishes to castrate him; but the childish desire for the penis is important in the life of the adult woman only if she feels her femininity as a mutilation; and then it is as a symbol of all the privileges of manhood that she wishes to appropriate the male organ. We may readily agree that her dream of castration has this symbolic significance: she wishes, it is thought, to deprive the male of his transcendence. The battle of the sexes is not implicit in the anatomy of man and woman. The truth is that when one evokes it, one takes for granted that in the timeless realm of Ideas a battle is being waged between those vague essences the Eternal Feminine and the Eternal Masculine; and one neglects the fact that this titanic combat assumes on earth two totally different forms, corresponding with two different moments of history."
-Simone de Beauvoir


WOMEN ARE ALWAYS lesser, men and women are NOT like two electrical pulls…there is light and dark..left and right..straight and curved,Man and Woman..unknowingly you categorize the good and bad in each of these pairs...i'll choose one example...right, left..left is most commonly the negative because of the Latin root sinistro or sinistr meaning The inability to perform acts requiring manual skill with either hand; literally, "having two left hands", Clumsy, awkwardness, or being unskillful in the use of both hands. (GO LEFTIES) lol and also in the context of religion (Christianity) the right hand of the father....the only son of God...Jesus Christ...the connotation of RIGHT is positive..and the word right is also applied in the context v.s wrong....in terms of sex...Man and Woman..straight and curved...straight is in one direction not containing any elements of SURPRISE, a woman..curvy or curvier by nature than a man the "superior" being..but what then of androgyny? A woman who is not curvy..a Lesbian, Stein herself was very masculine, had short hair and a fuller figure...outside of her social group people assumed that she was trying to be manly, because she favored women sexually and they also assumed that she preffered to look masculine, because of her own self hatred, and yearning for a male reproductive organ...according to Stein this was not the case at ALL..she and other lesbians in her social circle those percieved as "feminine" and "masculine" alike enjoyed being women so much that they had no desire to function in society with, or AS any other sex (MEN)...thus turning to each other for all of there needs..which threatened societal values...traditional views on gender roles and religious beliefs...interestingly enough...my classmates were just talking about how its illegal to perform certain sexual acts in some states in the US....i think she just said massachussets but..Idk.....THIS is because of the fear of a spread of homosexuality..in order to keep the physical relationship between a man and a woman sacred..according to religion and society..these acts should only be performed between a man and woman who are married to produce children..and for no other reason...which is why in The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir she talks about mutilation..the castration of MEN AND WOMEN to prevent the ability to recieve pleasure from sex.... ok so not to bore you.... I will cut to the meat and potatoes of my peak of interest in this lecture...and that is:

Sex and gender is the first step in our IDENTITY as human beings..for example..when a baby is born what is the first thing people ask?????? Is it a boy or a girl.....

NATURE VS NURTURE..is there an original sex? Butler talks about discreet genders and she says you are either fully male or fully female...and the ability to cross between gender lines as one pleases...then i could be a Gay man..not physically ever but gender is culturally constructed...as I said earlier...by sex (and by choice)...I am AND will always be a heterosexual woman...

also interesting is the specification of gender in language...in the english language we have.......................................... policeMAN....postMAN..fireMAN...AND TEACHER...which profession is most closely associated with a woman? In languages other than english like french there are no official female conjugations for professions like minister and engineer...so they say MADAME and use then use the male version of the word..also in spanish the plural tense of a word, even if you are addressing a room full of women and one little boy... is always the male conjugation...because the "male" conjugation of a word is considered nuetral...MAN able to apply to all...nuetral....so then is it easier for the male to cross between gender lines...or is it more accepted? At one time in history specifically in Greece men preferred each other, and only went to their wives to birth sons...In Gertrude Stein's circle openly gay men were still looked "down" upon for their sexual preference but it was not spoken about...for some reason they were not a threat..but the idea of the lesbian...a woman who does not need a man for anything..not even sexual pleasure..was considered threatning to the livelyhood of the "penis"...and cultural values that go along with it...


AND when regarding the body as a politically "RELIGIOUSLY" and culturally regulated surface..which has "openings" to the outside world....one thinks about the body in terms of borders...and the need to protect these borders (not letting anyone in and out of your borders freely) for the sake of..................................?