Troubling Gender: linguistic and bodily solutions at the end of an epic narrative

Section 3, chapter iii: Monique Wittig: Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex

Butler begins the second half of her “Subversive Bodily Acts” section with a discussion of Monique Wittig’s “bodily disintegration and fictive sex” (151). She compares Wittig’s claims with those of Simone de Beauvoir: according to Butler, Wittig’s claim that “the category of sex is neither invariant nor natural, but is a specifically political use of the category of nature that serves the purpose of reproductive sexuality” (153) is congruent with Beauvoir’s insistence that women are made, not born. However, Wittig’s claim that “woman […] only exists as a term that stabilizes and consolidates a binary and oppositional relation [later defined as heterosexuality] to a man” (153) opposes (or perhaps takes further) Beauvoir’s claims about the existence of sex as a category. According to Wittig’s second claim, a lesbian would not be defined as a woman, because she exists not in oppositional relation to a man, but in, as Butler says, “a category that radically problematizes both sex and gender as stable political categories of description” (153). To Wittig, the category of sex is “discursively produced” (154) and relies heavily on language. She claims that the language of sex (the category) “forms perception by forcibly shaping the interrelationships through which physical bodies are perceived” (155). Even in naming parts of the body, says Wittig, we restrict them; we are reducing our bodies to fragmented sexual parts instead of a whole.

Butler continues to discuss Wittig’s views on language and compulsory heterosexuality. According to Wittig, there are two levels of reality, the “discursively constituted reality” and a “pre-social ontology.” Although Wittig doesn’t adhere to the concept of ontology in the traditional structuralist sense (i.e. that something original existed and we just put our cultural scripts onto it—at least that’s how I’m understanding it), she does acknowledge a pre-social ontology in order to emphasize how strong a force this discursively constituted reality actually is. In fact, she goes so far as to say that this force—specifically through the linguistic act of “naming” sex—is “an act of domination and compulsion, an institutionalized performative that both creates and legislates social reality” (157). Additionally, the “straight mind” (compulsory heterosexuality) oppresses lesbians, women and gay men by assuming that heterosexuality=subjectivity in discourse (in other words, if you are straight, you are a person, recognized as legitimate and able to have subjectivity in language—just because of the linguistic constructions that exist). Wittig also proposes the idea that there may be not two but many sexes, an idea that Butler expands in her next section on bodily inscriptions and performative subversions. According to Wittig, a “reverse discourse of equal reach and power” (163) is necessary—instead of letting linguistic realities be imposed on us (especially as women, lesbians and gay men, who do not benefit from the heterosexual imperative of subjectivity in language), we can impose our realities on language.

Butler takes some issue with Wittig’s exploration of lesbianism, or at least with her binarism between gay and straight. She says this kind of separation “replicates the kind of disjunctive binarism that [Wittig] herself characterizes as the divisive philosophical gesture of the straight mind” (165), and maintains that homosexual relations do not exist in a vacuum—they are “embedded in the larger structures of heterosexuality” (165). Butler does not want to transcend heterosexuality, but rather advocates for the “subversive and parodic redeployment of power” (169) that she discusses in the last chapter of this section. Additionally, she says that even lesbianism as a refusal to adhere to compulsory heterosexuality still maintains “a radical dependence on the very terms that lesbianism purports to transcend” (169). Lesbian sex is still constructed, Butler says, and ends her chapter by saying:

What a tragic mistake, then, to construct a gay/lesbian identity through the same exclusionary means, as if the excluded were not, precisely through its exclusion, always presupposed and, indeed, required for the construction of that identity.

As usual, Butler refuses to accept a new rigid system of categories as a solution to dismantling the gender binary. But what does she advocate? She actually gives some insight into this in the next chapter and more extensively in her conclusion.

Section 3, chapter iv: Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions

This (much shorter) chapter introduces the concept that Butler is famous for: performative gender. Butler puts many of her philosophical ideas to practice by applying them to the concept of “the body.” Just as gender is created, sex is too—whereas we see the hegemonic concept of the body as completely normal, Butler once again questions the genealogy of such an idea: “How are the contours of the body clearly marked as the taken-for-granted ground or surface upon which gender significations are inscribed, a mere facticity devoid of value, prior to significance?” (176). She draws on Foucault’s idea of “expos[ing] a body totally imprinted by history” (qtd. in Butler 176), but dismantles this concept of an imprinted body even further. She states that we have created boundaries and norms even within the way we see our bodies: “If the body is synecdochal for the social system per se or a site in which open systems converge, then any kind of unregulated permeability [i.e. oral and anal sex, as she says later] constitutes a site of pollution and endangerment” (180). I found this statement particularly interesting in light of what we had “gut reactions” to when reading CAKE. How socially informed were these so-called “intrinsic” reactions?

Butler explores gender performativity in light of drag—especially emphasizing the concept of fabrication. She states that drag “implicity reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well its contingency” (187) and says that gender is not a stable construction. Rather, she describes it as “instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” (191). I got particularly excited when she talked about this repetition as forming gender—I’m really interested in the cognitive patterns that form our everyday lives, especially those that we see as inherent or natural but that are really just there because we have repeated them time after time. I’m also curious about what acts we can dismantle and repattern, and where our impetus would be for doing so would be rooted.

Conclusion: From Parody to Politics

In her conclusion, Butler restates many of the points she made in Gender Trouble and, surprisingly, brings them to a level of practical application. Her goal is to open up and destabilize categories and identities that we have always taken for granted as stable, and she starts (just as she began the book) with the feminist “we.” She counters the traditional identity politics of feminism by saying that “there need not be a ‘doer behind the deed,’ but rather that the ‘doer’ is variably constructed in and through the deed” (195). This theory maintains that these deeds are “discursively variable construction” (165) and in changing, they create new and constantly changing identities. The process of becoming a subject (especially in language) works the same way—she uses the example of our usual and “exasperated” lists of predicates—“color, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and able-bodiedness [that] invariably close with an embarrassed ‘etc.’ at the end of the list”—to indicate the potential for an “illimitable process of signification itself” (198).

She closes with the idea that I got so excited about—“repetitive signifying.” After having stated that no “original” concept of gender or identity ever existed and that we constantly reconstruct our gender through changing discourse, she states the same for patterning actions: “there is only a taking up of the tools where they lie, where the very ‘taking up’ is enabled by the tool lying there” (199). She talks about practices of parody and light-heartedness as a way to dismantle hegemonic oppressive systems, saying that inhabiting “ontological locales that are fundamentally uninhabitable” has potential for “depriving the naturalizing narratives of compulsory heterosexuality of their central protagonists: ‘man’ and ‘woman’” (200). Ontology is always normative, she says, based on constantly-changing discourses. In order to “redescribe those possibilities that already exist, but which still exist within cultural domains designated as culturally unintelligible and impossible,” (203), Butler says we must inhabit those spaces. In doing so, we can dismantle our assumptions and sufficiently trouble gender.

I’m curious about what inhabiting these extra-discursive (to apply Hollway’s term here) spaces actually looks like, especially in terms of behavior patterning. Can you identify situations in your life or others’ lives where this happens? What are the cultural implications involved, especially on a local (social) level?

Making "the fair deal" fair

Braun, Gavey and McPhillips’ article offers a complex and nuanced view of reciprocity, specifically sexual reciprocity, in heterosexual relations. They focus on the orgasm as a “measure” of reciprocity, though they do acknowledge in their article and notes that orgasm is by no means the only measure of pleasure or reciprocity in relationships.

Braun et al. begin this article by placing their study in context of other discourses of reciprocity, asserting that “we can see heterosex practices, and accounts of these, as being produced and taking place within a social context shaped by competing discourses of heterosexuality” (238). They then acknowledge the influence of Wendy Hollway’s three overarching heterosexual discourses: 1) male sexual drive (the “men need to come” mentality), 2) the have/hold theory (traditional romantic ideal: especially applies to women—getting more out of a relationship than just sex), and 3) the permissive discourse (anything goes as long as no one gets hurt). This acknowledgement allows Braun et al. to use Hollway’s terms in analyzing their study, and it also places their article in a certain strain of poststructuralist feminist discourse.

Braun et al. then introduce the concept of reciprocity, noting its presence in popular and academic discourse, particularly in radical feminist critiques of heterosex. To Braun, Gavey and McPhillips, a study by Gilfoyle, Wilson and Brown produced the most “pertinent examination of reciprocity in heterosex:” the “pseudo-reciprocal gift discourse” (240). In such a discourse, women “give” themselves (their bodies, their vaginas) to men to help them achieve orgasm; in return, men must “give” women orgasms. Braun, et al. note the complex definitions of giving and receiving in this discourse, as well as its gendered nature. This idea, they say, is problematic for women despite the promise of an orgasm: “Men are positioned as active, as agents, giving and taking pleasure. Part of the problem, therefore, is what is seen to be a lack of ‘real’ reciprocity” (240). Based on their study, Braun et al. agree with Gilfoyle et al.’s critiques, but wish to push the argument forward to include more complexities than the “men=abled and women=disabled in sexual encounters” model.

Braun et al. interviewed 15 men and 15 women, most of whom were college-educated and of European descent. All had experience of heterosex, and ranged in age, work, parenthood, and relationship history. The researchers then analyzed the data with discourse analysis influenced by feminist poststructuralist theories of language, emphasizing that “language and discourse constitute meaning, and hence particular discourses enable and constrain people’s options for how to be and act in the social world” (241). This was interesting to me in light of last year’s Women’s Studies seminar, “Women and Language,” which focused on linguistic models for gender relations.

I their study, Braun et al. observed a pattern of sex in their participants that went something like this: fondle, touch, man goes down on woman and she has an orgasm, man enters woman and coitus ensues, he has an orgasm. Braun et al. note the more active status of the male in these accounts: the man produces his partner’s orgasm, but she does not entirely produce his. Braun et al. also emphasize the presence of the “coital imperative”—the expectation that coitus constitutes the end goal of sex—in their subjects’ accounts. In their responses, male subjects tended to associate coitus as their only option for orgasm, which Braun et al. call “the conflation of male orgasm with coitus.” In the way of reciprocity, an “orgasm imperative” was present, and reciprocity came to mean “her orgasm in exchange for the promise of his orgasm through coitus” (244).

From these responses emerges what Braun et al. call a “discourse of reciprocity” in which both partners having orgasms is deemed fair and right (245). In their examinations of non-reciprocal sex, Braun et al. concluded that this discourse is prominent in heterosex, but also that the female orgasm is often deemed less important and that male orgasm usually signals the end to “sex.” Factors contributing to this attitude, they say on page 248, might be the continuing debates about the female orgasm and the influence of the have/hold discourse (the thought that women might legitimately get more out of other aspects of a relationship than they do out of sexual pleasure). Braun et al. also note, in congruence with the quote offered at the beginning of the article, that men can gain positive identity through women’s orgasms—they can feel sensitive and unselfish, and also feel proud of their “sexpertise” (249).

As they unpack reciprocity, Braun et al. give more attention to women’s experience in particular because, as they argue, “the potential drawbacks of this discourse on women are greater than on men, both materially and in terms of subjectivity” (250). They focus on the actions and identities that are “constrained or enabled by particular constructions of heterosex” (252), acknowledging the complex potential links between entitlement and obligation.

Braun et al.’s main claim in this section of the article is that while women should be allowed to have orgasms and that it is wonderful that the idea of women’s pleasure has been opened up, this entitlement may become tied up in obligation, in an expectation to have an orgasm in order to be normal. Furthermore, this expectation can be tied up with men’s feelings of status or self worth: her orgasm signifies that he is a good lover and that he is not selfish. The practice of women faking orgasm further illustrates this feeling of obligation on the part of women.

Ultimately, Braun et al. see reciprocity as a both/and discourse: it can be “both oppressive and/or genuinely reciprocal” (255). Unless we examine these (potentially coercive) obligations that can and do take place in the discourse and practice of reciprocity, it will be impossible to move into a straightforward and truly reciprocal model.

To me, this article seemed to problematize CAKE a little, but it a good way. I could see traces of Levy’s argument present in the study—what does it mean for men’s pleasure that women are needing to fake orgasm (or at least feel obligated to have an orgasm) even in a system of reciprocity? Though I would never complain that women are allowed to have orgasms, implications of this pressure do exist in heterosex. I think CAKE’s demand that women have pleasure is a step in the right direction toward a true discourse of reciprocity, but I think moving outside androcentric discourse/language would have allowed CAKE readers to express true reciprocity more fully.

Moving beyond pure discourse and into practice (and solutions of sorts), what does reciprocity imply in our own relationships? How does this relate to Hollway’s concept of extra-discursivity? Is there a way to move outside the obligation-saturated reciprocity model and into a true, practiced model of reciprocity?

Also, I’m curious about this model outside of heterosex. Do these patterns manifest themselves in homosexual relations as well? If so (or if not), what implications does that have for this poststructuralist feminist discourse that seems to be incorporating elements of psychoanalysis and social analysis?

Sabo's new vision of new porn

Professor Anne Sabo’s article “A vision of new porn” brings together many of the themes we have been discussing over the past couple of weeks. She begins by introducing the anti-porn/pro-sex division in feminism that continues to manifest itself in texts such as Levy’s book and Gallagher and Kramer’s CAKE guide. In her introduction, Sabo acknowledges the “growing popularity and legitimacy of porn” (222) alongside a culture that still holds onto “lingering experiences of gender inequality and oppressive gender roles” (222). In light of these two cultural elements, Sabo proposes that we examine porn for what it can offer young people as they explore and discover their gendered identities.

Sabo presents and analyzes porn made by women in the United States and Europe, explaining how plot lines, artistic expression and other filmic elements contribute to an overall aesthetic and sexual message. She begins the section “Porn as discourse and film: the predicaments of language and pleasure” with Simon Hardy’s claim that porn might be a way of “transforming the traditional balance and pattern of heterosexual eroticism” (qtd. in Sabo, 223), contrary to what anti-porn feminists such as Brownmiller, Dworkin, Morgan and MacKinnon may have argued. Although Hardy advocated an anti-censorship view in his article, Sabo draws our attention Hardy’s caution against being blind to power. As Sabo says, Hardy “advises us to be attentive to the formation of new power formations” in erotic expression (223). This point—the fact that we have the power to configure new kinds of power in erotic expression and not just adhere to the active/passive dichotomy—was, to me, one of the most poignant in Hardy’s article. As we see later from Sabo’s descriptions of pornography, filmmakers are using various techniques to demonstrate equality (among other things) in erotic expression. This is something I don’t think CAKE does very well—I think Gallagher and Kramer may still be stuck in the dichotomous view of heterosexual erotic expression. While they could have expanded this definition of power like some of the porn producers in this article, they chose to adhere to a dichotomous view of power in which one partner is dominant, be it male or female.

Sabo also draws attention to the power of porn to elicit bodily sensations and therefore its power to “speak to a new generation of women,” to “move its viewer,” and to simultaneously keep “a critical eye on its appropriation of language” (224). She then launches into description and analysis of porn films from the United States and from Europe.

In her analysis of porn in the United States, Sabo highlights the work of porn producer Candida Royalle, who co-founded an erotic film company called Femme Productions in 1984. Sabo chronicles Royalle’s Eyes of Desire (1998), drawing attention to its complex plot and Lisa’s (the main character’s) desire and pleasure. She also highlights Royalle’s unique use of the gaze in Eyes of Desire, stating that the film “capture[s] a gaze that is mutual and democratically exchanged between two individuals” (226). Sabo says that “Royalle legitimizes both the activity of looking at sex, and the pleasure of being the object of someone’s gaze” (226), and I believe this democratic exchange has more implications than the mere reversal of power suggested in CAKE. Although I have never seen Eyes of Desire and may have a different or more complex opinion after I do, this gaze seems to propose a new kind of power, an erotic, sensual power that is founded in equality.

Sabo also engages Hardy’s analysis in her argument about Royalle’s film, saying that Royalle’s response to the hegemonic heterosexual erotic discourse is to “engage it reflectively and ironically” (226). This can be seen, Sabo says, in the ways Royalle’s characters overcome shame, fear and inhibition, and in the emphasis the characters have on playing their parts, not being their parts. Sabo also notes that all sex in the film is consensual, warm and loving in addition to being playful.

Next, Sabo analyzes Royalle’s Under the Covers, an erotic film that highlights the paradox of a sexual consumer culture in the United States paired with a conservative government that emphasizes abstinence-only education. Although Sabo says that some of the aesthetic quality of the film is lost, it emphasizes the message of sex education (through the character of a sex therapist) and the notion that “sexual repression is defeated by pleasure” (228). Sabo states that the film has potential to give voice to a young generation of sexual men and women in the United States.

In her section titled “Shagging in Europe: A different kind of porn,” Sabo highlights the work of British porn producer Anna Span, whose work is currently widespread in Scandinavia. Span’s work and popularity reflect a cultural comfort with sex in Scandinavia, according to Sabo. Span’s work de-emphasizes the seriousness of Royalle’s films and instead concentrates on “frolicking in some jolly good sex mainly for the fine fun of it” (231). Sabo notes that this difference in the two women reflects cultural and generational trends (Royalle was born in 1950 and lives in the United States; Span was born in 1972 and lives in England). Although the two producers use humor differently as a result, neither uses humor to rise above the plot of the film, says Sabo in a footnote. They both engage the viewer fully, using the bodily experience that Sabo mentioned earlier to do so.

Thirdly, Sabo highlights the work of Swedish porn-maker Erika Lust, who produces porn with a “revamped look” similar to a music video. Lust’s porn, according to Sabo, “reflects the range of real twenty- and thirty-something women and men today across Europe and the westernized world” (233). She sees this reflection as a potential voice in the “gap between the ideal and the practice of gender” (Hardy qtd. in Sabo 234). Sabo sees this as “one of the most intriguing aspects of re-visioned porn” (234).

In her conclusion, Sabo re-emphasizes the power of porn alongside women’s consumption of porn as a force for social change. While I agree with Sabo’s claim that “commercialization is easily dismissed as the enemy, but in a commercialized age, denying access is tantamount to denying a voice” (235), something about the female consumption of porn still retains a classist quality to it that male consumption of porn doesn’t seem to. Although I’ll need to research this claim further, porn that favors male pleasure and desire seems widespread and available to people of all classes (in other words, free on the internet), whereas porn that highlights mutuality or female desire seems only available to “classy, well-heeled, middle-class professionals” (Attwood paraphrased in Sabo 234). If we accept the commercialization of porn, do we also need to accept the corruptions of porn that involve distribution without rights? I’m not sure if I’m well enough versed in the process of distribution to argue this point, but I pose it as a discussion question.

I'm also curious about whether these middle-class women deserve to be the only consumers of female-made porn. When one is revising the system to account for new visions and identities concerning power and gender and equality, does it seem classist (and a little ironic) to be posing this equality only for a certain class of people?

The Hot (er...well...college-educated, white, urban, wealthy) Woman's Handbook

Part I Gallagher and Kramer’s The Hot Woman’s Handbook: The Cake Guide to Sexual Pleasure is titled “On Your Own,” and it addresses personal issues concerning women’s sexuality. The introduction to the book, titled “The World According to Cake,” voices CAKE’s mission statement and promotes a new vision of female sexuality, one in which women are “more satisfied and in control than ever before” (1), and one in which women can have “more options” (2) than what they previously have been exposed to. Gallagher and Kramer also claim that CAKE “set[s] the record straight”—the record being the “disconnect between how women are portrayed and how women really live” (1). They also tout “The Cake Philosophy” in which women like to initiate sex, get turned on every day of the week, are visual, fantasize, know how to get themselves off, like sex better than shopping, know how their bodies work, and say that sex isn’t over until they orgasm (3).

Although CAKE claims to refute limited views of women’s sexuality, I found Gallagher and Kramer’s “philosophy” rather monolithic. In their narrative, Gallagher and Kramer effectively reclaim sexuality on an intimate level by relating women’s personal experiences, but I find the personal narrative style simultaneously intimate and problematic. It is problematic because, until chapter three, Gallagher and Kramer use no other sources to explain complex scientific, sociological and emotional phenomena—it is entirely based on women’s experience, which is inherently influenced by patriarchal cultural norms. Such a style has wonderful potential to incorporate cultural critique, but Gallagher and Kramer do not take advantage of this opportunity. Stereotypes and universal statements such as “You’re no more than eleven years old” (8) instead of the presentation of a plurality via “perhaps you…” or “you may have” present a vision of female sexuality that is based on a linear trajectory that all women have allegedly experienced. (On another subject, Gallagher and Kramer briefly acknowledge the rather monolithic class and educational background of their audience in their introduction, but then tout their lifestyle as though it is the norm for all women. See the “Pleasure Tip” on page 66 that references a “Murakami Louis Vuitton handbag […] that you bought for, like, $9 million.")

Chapter 2, “Rock you Body and Reap the Rewards” addresses body image. Although the order of the chapters in the book addresses the trajectory of female sexuality as originating with the female herself (a good thing, in my opinion), Gallagher and Kramer still use the language of the patriarchy to describe females. As they describe feeling good about your own body, Gallagher and Kramer say “your tits look perky, your tummy is smooth, your bottom looks rounded, and you think, ‘Ohhh, yeah, take that!” (21-22). They acknowledge that unrealistic standards of female beauty are “pure fantasy” (23), but they do not explore systems of patriarchy at work that perpetuate this fantasy, nor do they offer an alternate language to describe women’s bodies—they continue to refer to the bodies of celebrities and models as “perfect” and “free of blemishes” (23). In my opinion, linguistics is infinitely important; calling these bodies perfect and calling anything outside that norm a “blemish” perpetuates the system.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 address masturbation—the techniques (ch. 3), the tools (ch. 4), and the orgasm (ch. 5). While I think that The CAKE Guide to Female Sexual Pleasure is a much more comprehensive, female-focused alternative to Cosmo or similar magazines that young, sexually interested women might be reading for advice, I found these chapters linguistically problematic as well. Although a few phrases peppered throughout the book acknowledge lesbian sex, it is primarily seen as a mode of experimentation or fantasy (“Surrender the Pink” on page 41 is a pretty good example) through which you can achieve better sex with your man (for example, page 77). Gallagher and Kramer’s heteronormativity, alongside their reluctance to acknowledge these fantasies and modes of female sexuality as socially located within their own experience (in terms of their urban location, heterosexuality, race and especially class) is disturbing to me, especially since they present their vision of female sexuality as though it is the norm. They use exclusive—not to mention patriarchal—language alongside the testimonies of mainstream media-influenced women to present this sexuality instead of exploring linguistic alternatives and offering challenges to a consumer culture.

Questions to think about:
Gallagher and Kramer claim to offer an alternative narrative about female sexuality. To what extent does their vision liberate women in their sexuality, and to what extent are they just promoting their own limited vision (another “version of the feminine mystique" [25])?

What do you make of Gallagher and Kramer’s narrative style? I’ve made my position clear, but there are definitely arguments for and against scholarly research for popular publications. What place do personal narrative and scholarly research have in publications such as this one? How can or should they coexist?

What subliminal cultural messages are at play in this book, and where can we identify them in both Gallagher and Kramer’s language and in the language of the women they interview?

Intro

Welcome to my blog for Women's Studies 399: Third Wave Discourses. Like many of us said in class, I'm happy to be in community of scholars and activists who all have a similar language in which we can discuss gender issues. I expect to be challenged in this course to compare current scholars' discourses; I also expect that we as a class and as individuals will form our own discourses and voices in context of third wave feminism.

About me and my previous studies: I'm a senior, majoring in Women's Studies, English and a CIS (Center for Integrative Studies) major titled "Social Justice Studies." Although many of my Women's Studies and Social Justice Studies classes are similar, I decided to complete the Women's Studies as well so I could be part of this community of wonderful people! Classes in my major that I expect to inform this course are Intro to Women's Studies, where I was first introduced to concepts such as Rich's compulsory heterosexuality, Wolf's beauty myth, and hooks' intersectionality of oppressions, Feminist Theology, Philosophy and Feminism, Women's Literature, and last Spring's seminar on women and language. Other classes such as the American Conversations program and Islam and Civil Society (abroad) have given me insight into domestic and international gender issues.

That's about it for now...I'm pumped for this course!