To be clear: I did not write the following post. In fact, a friend wrote this (so eloquently, I might add) in response to my initial post. I give all the credit to the following blog to Ed Fleming, as he writes:
Just thought I'd respond to your blog entry, and the silly comment box
has a character limit within which I refuse to work, for you offer far
too much to discuss. You present a beautiful, well-wrought argument. I
would like to suggest that Butler (and many deconstructionist
theorists) may be hitting the nail on the head with the suggestion
that the masculine and the feminine simply do not exist. We have seen
that these concepts are almost completely arbitrary and shift not only
from culture to culture, but from time to time as well. Who defines
the concept of the overriding "masculine" authority is much like the
concept of "whiteness": desirable traits are determined by a social
elite who wish to maintain a code of behavior among those in power.
In regards to biologically sexed identities, Freud argues that the
male identity comes from the castration anxiety, which directly
results in male behavior being territorial, guarded, aggressive, and
in some ways intellectualized; however, if the female is determined by
her envy of the phallus in turn, those same traits would be absolutely
beneficial in her control of the phallus. Why, then, should a woman
choose submission and emphasis on external beauty to achieve the same
effect? And, conversely, why can a man not avoid castration by making
the phallus (read masculine) beautiful? Wouldn't a male beauty pageant
be just as competitive in concept as an Olympic sport?
One can easily argue that the traits most valued by the dominant in
society have always been "masculine" traits because physical violence
has always proven a more effective method of control than beauty or
literature. This is, of course, untrue over time; violence is a sure
means of obtaining power, but often does not maintain a society.
Historically, civilizations that manage to maintain peace often do so
in periods of high cultural growth (art, language, music, etc.). In
the long-term, the "feminine", then, proves the most generative. You
may wish to tie that back to the biological as women, possessing a
womb, represent regenerative growth while males are more destructive,
but again, we run into problems in polarizing this argument. The
"masculine" does not disappear in peace-time, but it is, perhaps,
better restrained and more productively channeled through the
"feminine". The ideal state, therefore, is the presence of both
gendered identities existing in harmony within one larger identifiable
whole.
This is most apparent in religious studies. Religions are founded on
the masculine and feminine ideals in one entity; Jesus Christ does not
exemplify masculine traits alone, nor do the Bodhisattva. Male
stoicism is meaningless on its own without female compassion, yet we
have some strange preoccupation that these traits are contradictory:
how can one deny emotionalism (masculine), and yet have the level of
compassion necessary to sacrifice one's life for the common good
(feminine)?
In reality, gender roles have nothing to do with sex, but the
disenfranchisement of a minority, and as long as we argue that it is
possible for a woman to shift from the feminine to the masculine and
back again, we contribute to the maintenance of the status quo. A
woman in our society knows that playing sports is a masculine
behavior, regardless of the fact that just as many women are athletic
as men; conversely, she also knows that being a stay-at-home parent is
a feminine occupation. The curious thing to consider is: if the social
normative is determined by those in power, why has the adaptive woman
become more desirable than the traditional Stepford wife? My argument
would be that since the 1950s, the economy has grown (or declined
depending on perspective) to a point where dual-earner households are
almost required and women must be able to compete in the workplace to
complement the male role as breadwinner. Thus, our society is more
celebratory of a woman who can show independence, critical thinking,
and general masculinity because she ensures the economic survival of
the male; of course, the catch is that she still must conform to
traditional standards of feminine beauty while simultaneously
operating in a masculine world. You address this nicely when you
suggest that a woman who enters into a monogamous relationship is
somehow limited in her freedom (though discussion of monogamy is
probably better left for another day).
Conversely, the male is strongly discouraged from emulating the female
even in today's society: your example of men wearing mascara is
somewhat anomalous because it is not by any means as standard a
practice as women wearing pants. Men who wear mascara (or, more
strongly to the point, women's clothing) are marginalized for doing
so, and their sexual identity is always questioned (except, perhaps,
in the case of Alice Cooper). Long hair is the most accepted of male
emulation of the female look; however, it has a longer history and
most recently began in the US as a form of rebellion against the
patriarchal order of conservative America, and thus represented a
"masculine" ideal (emphasized perhaps more by the ubermensch hair
metal of the 80s than anywhere else). I would say arguably that male
fashion is nowhere near as feminized as it could be, but actually
revolves around hiding the male body as a potential sexual object; the
high point of male fashion being the tuxedo, there are a good three or
four layers of oversized clothing between the male form and the suited
appearance, leaving a lot more to the imagination than the average red
carpet gown. Even in dress, masculinity is expressed through guarding,
hiding, or showing superiority (even men who appear shirtless/nude
outside of homosexual culture are often muscular, athletic
individuals). The trend here is that males may not seek to emulate
female beauty, because anything "feminine" is taking step down on the
ladder of hegemony. The troubling part of this is that both women and
men discourage transvestite behavior, thus women reinforce the idea
that a man should not "sissify" himself by trying to look like her.
Here, we see a huge problem in the idea of a female separate from
gendered identity that goes somewhat further than her need to be
validated by a man.
I wish I had more time to go into the androgyne, but I have to wrap up
for now. Most of what I've said is reinforcing what you wrote, with
some different perspectives. I do think there's a biological advantage
to gendering; one of the things you learn in animation is that the
female is often exaggerated because she has to be in order to express
the fact that she is female. In a day and age where people are even
more disconnected and rely more on surface evaluations than ever
before, behavior and dress should be more important in determining
gender; however, through the various feminist movements over the past
century, we actually see a trend in the opposite direction. What I
would propose is that this "obvious" trend is somewhat false; while
women do not wear traditional female clothing as often as they once
did, female clothing is still very much about framing the woman as an
object to be desired/looked at, with the male as observer. This
continues to match up with instinctive reproductive drives; however,
we should be trending away from the necessity of reproduction as
society becomes less interested in genetic reproduction and more
invested in social forms of reproduction: art, culture, literature,
etc. Child-birthing is not a primary goal for many in today's society,
and certainly not to the degree that it was a hundred years ago, yet
we continue to follow archaic codes that separate genders and devalue
women, encouraging the female to validate herself through her
desirability to the male (or, more realistically, to other women,
which is where the real competition lies) and to submit her agency to
male authority. These value judgments are strongly related to male
hegemony and, like the concept of "whiteness", should be pushed to
determine whatever true values may lie within the dominant culture,
and what may need to be eliminated.
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