gender

We need to keep in mind that there are feminisms, not just feminism; feminist
lenses, not just one feminist lens. At the very minimum (check out the taxonomy
chart on the left to multiply paths) we could note the presence of (1) "humanist
feminists," those who argue that gender is irrelevant because we are all human and
therefore fundamentally equal; (2) "essentialist feminists" who argue that men and
women are fundamentally different but the attributes and qualities women have
should be celebrated, not devalorized; (3) "social constructionist feminists" who
argue that there is very little that is inherent, essential, or natural about gender.
That is, gender is a social construct or social performance: identity, sexuality, and
roles are created by specific cultures, but they have over time become
commonsensical, natural, and norma. Again, these are only three generalizations,
but there are, nevertheless, some shared assumptions and goals.

Why We Read

A reader interested in gender shares many of the same assumptions and questions
that all "ideological readers" ask except that a feminist is keenly interested in
gender issues, roles, representations. We could add that a feminist reader wants
to simultaneously critique representations complicit with patriarchy while
recovering, rereading, and celebrating texts that address the interests and needs
of women. As Patrocinio Schweickart argues, "feminist critics must fight on two
fronts: for the revision of the canon to include a significant body of works by
women, and for the development of the reading strategies consonant with the
concerns, experiences, and formal devices that constitute these texts" (273).
Schweickart adds that "if feminist readings of male texts are motivated by the
need to disrupt the process of immasculation, feminist readings of female texts are
motivated by the need 'to connect,' to recuperate, or to formulate-they come to
the same thing-the context, the tradition, that would link women writers to one
another, to women readers and critics, and to the large community of women"
(276). We could sum up the feminist project by saying there are actually three
fronts, for a feminist critic wants to (1) question representations of gender that
others have made, (2) recover works that have been ignored and undervalued
because readers have lacked the proper reading strategies and prior
acquaintance, (3) celebrate texts that challenge patriarchy or subvert traditional
representations of gender. However, be aware of "surface subversion" or texts
that seem to challenge traditional gender roles but reinforce them in new ways.

What We Read

Like other ideological readers, feminists focus on gender representations of all
kinds, particularly, but not always, representations of women. Many feminist
readers are involved in an important project of recovery. That is, female authors
traditionally have been ignored, discarded, and poorly appreciated, and we need
to recover those texts and offer new, more productive and insightful readings of
these texts. Feminist critique also extends to systems of all kinds, including
academic curriculum, institutions, popular culture, language use, etc.

How We Read

As noted above, the key tasks are

(1) question representations of gender that others have made,

(2) recover works that have been ignored and undervalued because readers have
lacked the proper reading strategies and prior acquaintance,

(3) celebrate texts that challenge patriarchy or subvert traditional representations
of gender.

To begin, try asking the questions listed below and direct your answers to one of
the projects described above. Creating a structuralist chart of binaries (what
behaviors, actions, qualities, places, ways of thinking, etc. are associated with
each gender or with particularly kinds of men and women) is also a helpful pre-
writing exercise. If your text seems absent of male and female characters, then
you will need to pay more attention to how objects, places, or events are
"coded." That is, is an object, place, or event described in terms of gender or
male/female imagery?

� What roles are most often assigned to women/men?

� What attributes or associations are tied to certain behaviors and certain types of
women/men? (i.e. in fairy tales beauty is nearly always tied to being chosen,
getting rich, getting married, and being happy. External appearance signals inner
value.)

� How and why do female/male characters succeed or fail?

� What kind of reward do they receive?

� How are "femininity" and "masculinity" defined? What is a "woman"? What is a
"man"?

� What are the qualities of a "good" or "bad" woman or man?

� Explore how the role of women in stories, poems, novels, etc. works to support
or undermine the social and political system of the past and present readers. In
other words, why this text at this time? Why that text at that time? You need to
contextualize and historicize the text: How does this particular representation of
women function? Does the text reinforce or challenge patriarchy? What does it
tell us if it does both simultaneously?

� How does gender intersect with race, class, and other social categories?

� How does form and function intersect? (i.e. What Virginia Woolf says intersects
with how she says it.)

� What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics
tell us about the operations of patriarchy?

Writing Suggestions:

You have several choices here; choose a path:

A. Feminist as Cultural Critic:

Historicize and contextualize the text with an eye on gender issues. When, where,
and why did the text appear? If you are dealing with ads, then you need to reveal
the network or magazine, the time of day (or issue date), the target audience,
between what TV show (or between what articles, etc.). If you are dealing with a
literary text, then you need to talk about the author, the location of the text (is it
part of an anthology or textbook? How would you characterize the textbook?).
You can choose to use surveys and field research or not. The key here is to
explain how your text functions at a particular moment in time. Given a particular
historical/cultural context, does it reinforce or challenge traditional notions of
gender? Does it vacillate in between? Does it seek to redefine or reconceptualize
what it means to be a man or a woman? Once you are ready to make a claim,
use those familiar verbs again. (i.e. The text suggests, reinforces, undermines,
challenges, suggests, serves to, implies, etc.) In other words, connect the
structure of the text with an ideological or social structure.

B. Feminist as Literary Critic:

I don't mean to imply that feminism is ever ahistorical, but this method emphasizes
a text's relationship with other literary texts. Follow the task suggested above,
but connect your text with the literary tradition. Is your text part of a long tradition
in its representations of gender or does it seem to break the cycle? In other
words, connect the system of the text with other literary structures or systems (in
relation to other works by the same author, the same time period, or with an
older literary tradition). You can connect your text to writers who share the same
gender or contrast your writer with an established tradition or pattern.

C. Feminist as Theorist:

This project focuses more on the act of reading and writing itself. Is it possible to
trace a difference in the way men and women make sense of texts? If a man does
not like a "female-oriented" text, is it because he lacks the ability to "properly
interpret and appreciate women's texts-due, in large part, to a lack of prior
acquaintance" as Kolodny argues? If he does like it, is it because of some form of
prior acquaintance? Try surveys to note differences between male and female
responses to your text (Whom do readers identify with? What aspects of the text
appeal to readers? Do readers want to rewrite or reimagine the text in different
ways?). Do men and women read differently? How so? Why? What does
language use have to do with gender? Is there such a thing as "ecriture feminine"?
"female discourse"? "male discourse"? "androgynous discourse"? Organize your
argument by proving that there is a pattern in your reader surveys, and then
move on to discuss the source and implications of those patterns. In sum, this
option requires you to link reading and writing strategies with gender.

In sum, it's all about representation: How are women and men represented and
how should women and men represent themselves?