One of the recurring themes of Bart Beaty’s Comics vs. Art is the way that art is always on top — sexual connotations very much intentional. Art, Beaty argues, is insistently seen or figured as rigorous masculine seriousness; comics is relegated to the weak feminine silliness of mass culture. Thus, Beaty says:
Lichtenstein’s paintings failed to rise to the level of aesthetic seriousness. The core problem was the way pop art foregrounded consumerism — a feminized trait — through its choice of subject matter.
Beaty goes on to argue that Lichtenstein was eventually recuperated for high art by emphasizing his individual avant garde genius — in other words, by claiming that he transformed comics material from feminine to masculine. Either way, Beaty argues, whether pop art wins or loses, comics are the feminine losers. For Beaty, the anger at pop art, therefore, is an anger at being feminized. In this context, the fact that the Masters of American Comics exhibition focused solely on male cartoonists was not an accident; rather, it was comics rather desperate and certainly contemptible effort to establish its high art bona-fides through an acculumulation of phalluses, and a careful exclusion of those other much-denigrated bits.
Beaty’s analysis is convincing — but he does perhaps gloss over an important point. That point being that, while it may often be figured as masculine in relation to comics, high art’s gendered status in the broader culture is, in fact, extremely dicey. For example, in Art and Homosexuality, Christopher Reed notes that Robert Motherwell, a married heterosexual, was rejected for military service on the grounds that being a Greenwich Village painter meant that he must be gay. In other words, at that time art was so thoroughly unmasculine that artists were almost by definition unmanned.
If art could be seen as effeminiate, comics as mass culture could be seen, in contrast, as normal, robust — as manly, in other words. Thus, Beaty relates this anecdote about cartoonist Irv Novick and Roy Lichtenstein.
[Novick] had one curious encounter at camp. He dropped by the chief of staff’s quarters one night and found a young soldier sitting on a bunk, crying like a baby. “He said he was an artist,” Novick remembered, “and he had to do menial work, like clearning up the officers’ quarters.”
Novick was one of the artists whose work Lichtenstein later copied with such success. Beaty correctly reads the anecdote as an effort to feminize Lichtenstein — a kind of revenge for the way in which Lichtenstein feminized Novick. However, Beaty doesn’t really consider the extent to which this feminization of Lichtenstein is successful because high art is already feminized. The anecdote is effective in no small part because artists like Motherwell were always already gay until proven otherwise — and often even if proven otherwise.
The point here is that the gendered relation between art and comics is not necessarily always about masculine art taking advantage of feminine comics and comics responding with resentment at being so feminized. Rather, on the one hand, comics’ antipathy to art is often tinged with contemptuous misogyny — a denigration of high arts femininity. R. Crumb’s loud denunciations of high art, for example (or Peter Bagge’s) are inevitably tinged with the insistence that artist’s are effete fools, distanced from real life in their ivory towers.
On the other hand, high arts’ interest in artists like Crumb or Novick often seems inflected with a kind of envy or desire. Certainly, Lichtenstein’s work, and pop art in general, can be seen as a campy appropriation of mass culture to feminize the often quite homophobic art world, particularly in contrast to the desperate masculinity of Ab-Ex. But Lichtenstein’s appropriations can also, I think, be seen as a performance of desire for masculinity — a bittersweet effort to capture comics’ masculine mojo while acknowledging his distance from it.
I don’t think that these readings are necessarily mutually exclusive. But I do think that recognizing them both as potentials creates possibilities that Beaty doesn’t really wrestle with. If art is not masculine (always) and comics is not feminine (always), then it’s much more difficult to see them as polarized (always.) Rather than art elevating, exploiting, or denigrating the hapless, accessible body of comics, art and comics start to look more alike — both occupying unstable cultural positions in which, at least historically, constant assertions of masculinity have been seen as vital to prevent a collapse into a devalued femininity. From this perspective, Comics fights Art not because the two are so different, but because their cultural positions and anxieties are so much the same.
A Russ Heath panel and the Roy Lichtenstein painting based on it.
Reading a gender binary into the relationship between so-called high and low art is pretty amusing. However, I think the binary at its core is far more about class. When high art appropriates lower idioms, the motive is to escape the rarified insularity high art is prone to and get back in touch with common experience. It goes back at least as far as Dante and his decision to write The Divine Comedy in Florentine Italian–considered at the time the coarsest dialect in the language–instead of Latin. The distance you detect in Lichtenstein seems to me more about retaining his original class identification than anything else.
Here’s where you might get Spiegelman: his valorization of the anarchic, lowbrow American cartoonists and comic artists does often rely on an overblown (tongue-in-cheek, too) sense of their manliness. Does anyone have any text from Spiegelman’s “Drawn to Death” librtetto? I recall a passage — read aloud at a Comix 101 talk — where the comic men railed against the possibility that they were artists, and if you said otherwise, they’d punch you in the face!
But I do agree that Beaty’s assertions that ultimately link comics to “the feminine” seem to fly in the face of how we normally talk about comics [boy culture] and talk about art [sissified]. I am reminded of, among other things, Gerald Graff’s “Disliking Books at an Early Age” and Chris Looby’s response to said piece. Such masculine/feminine labels are assigned far too easily.
Speaking of which . . . picking on the ten male creators of “Masters of American Art” seems a bit, well, broad. I mean, who really possesses the “phallus” in that group: Crumb, Kurtzman, maybe Caniff? Maybe. But King, McCay, Feininger (!), Ware, Schulz, Herriman (!!). All those guys have, I assume, are penises.
It seems to me that in this construction, the framing of geniuses can be seen as a dually masculinizing process…it both brings artists in line with the concept of masculinity within the artform, but also serves to project masculinity to the larger culture. Art as a whole is certainly feminized in mainstream American culture, but that same culture also reacts differently to “established geniuses” such as Picasso or Warhol. So lionizing Lichtenstein not only “solved” the feminine qualities of his art, but could also be seen as a new masculine pronouncement from high art as a whole.
I do also think that chronological context has a lot to do with the fluctuating gendered relationships. When Lichtenstein was first painting his comic book panels, “camp” hadn’t been fully subsumed into the culture. Now there are Lichtenstein-esque transpositions of comic books everywhere, and “comic books” are considered a very mass-culture masculinized narrative entertainment as opposed to something for (inherently feminized) children.
Robert, I’d agree class is important…but I don’t think that necessarily obviates, or replaces, a gendered reading. Class is itself often (always?) insistently gendered, often with upper class effete, lower class virile — but also very much through the sense that to be exploited, or lower class, is to be feminized.
Peter, my point isn’t that Beaty’s wrong, but that these terms are variable, and can be deployed in various ways. So, yes, art is effete — but, as Jason says, Jackson Pollack or Picasso can be seen as performing a kind of hyperbolic masculinity.
Finally — in terms of masters of american comics, I think Beaty has the masculinity, and its critical importance, dead to rights. He quotes I think the curator responding to criticism of the lack of women by saying, essentially, well, comics is just establishing itself, so you need to create a master (i.e., male) narrative first, and then that can maybe be subverted later. I mean, as Beaty points out, even the title of the exhibition is gendered.
Just in terms of Schulz…alt comics has done *a lot* of work to make Schulz sufficiently male to serve as a high art icon. What do you think all that blather about Schulz being Charlie Brown is intended to do? And McCay’s amazing virtuosity and technical inventive genius can easily be mapped onto masculinity.
Beaty’s final chapter on Ware’s self-presentation, high-art bona fides, and performance of masculinity is pretty thoroughly devastating.
I would like to step in here and point out the inherently fucked-upped-ness of equating masculinity with “high art” or “genius”, and also always seeing “feminine” things as beneath “masculine” things. Not to mention, there wasn’t any subconscious desire to be seen as “masculine” that lead to ten men being singled out as the Masters of American Comics– that was institutionalized sexism, plain and simple, both in the immediate form of who was doing the choosing and the long term effects of sexism in the cartooning field that kept many women from even getting published, let alone flourishing artistically.
I’m going to have to check this book out, though, and will very likely prepare a full blown feminist critique of it.
Noah,
I’ll have to take your word on Beaty’s book for now. By the time I get to it, this thread will be long dead.
But doesn’t it give you pause how easily Trait X or Art Y can be “mapped onto” masculinity or femininity? It sounds a bit like one’s ability to “map” a formal set of criteria for “comics” onto the Bayeux Tapestry or Trajan’s Column, no? Culture is broad; these terms are hugely flexibly; and connections are easy to make — but those connections always come in the form of damning equations.
Case in point. If we are mapping McCay’s technical virtuosity onto masculinity, as well as Panter’s anarchic line — if we are mapping Crumb’s sexual bravado onto masculinity, as well as Schulz’s dark depression (or whatever is supposed to be masculine about Charlie Brown) — then what *can’t* we easily “map” into those categories.
As they stand, such arguments seem to admit no counter-evidence. They are always, already right. I assume that you are correct, and that Beaty does the hard work of substantiating his case. But I haven’t seen it yet.
Beaty’s not endorsing the idea that feminine is beneath masculine; he’s just pointing out the way the memes work. He doesn’t work it through to a full feminist critique, but that’s definitely the direction he’s pointing — linking comics’ status anxiety around its own masculinity to its sexism (as expressed in things like the Masters of American Comics exhibition.)
In other words, Beaty’s not saying that high art *should be* masculine in relation to comics, or that it *is* masculine in some absolute sense; he’s saying that high art is viewed as masculine, and that this is one way it’s presented as superior to comics.
I’m pretty sure he’d agree with you that this gendering is fucked up (though he sort of skirts polemic, so never quite comes out and says it that explicitly.)
Finally — I’d agree that the Masters of American Comics was institutionalized sexism…but institutionalized sexism is very often tied to ideas about masculinity and femininity, and the values given to each. Also, Beaty isn’t saying that the desire to solidify comics bona fides as masculine was subconscious. It seems to have been quite conscious, given what the curator had to say about it (i.e., you need to establish comics as high art first before you can let the women in the museums.)
Well, categories are fluid, and gendering isn’t algebra. But gender is one of the main ways we think about and map the world; it’s a huge deal. And I don’t think you need any especial perspicuity to figure out that a show called “Masters of American Comics” where all the artists represented are men has something to do with gender.
Alexa: “[It was] institutionalized sexism, plain and simple, both in the immediate form of who was doing the choosing and the long term effects of sexism in the cartooning field that kept many women from even getting published, let alone flourishing artistically.”
That seems fair. Why sneak through the subconscious back door, when there’s a red carpet for you out front?
Of course, as Alison Bechdel points out in her intro to the “Best American Comics,” simply recognizing institutional and historical discrimination in the field (and wanting to rectify it), does not, by itself, remedy the “dismal” (Bechdel’s words) gender imbalance.
And if this is a problem when one is trying to represent the “best” comics of 2011 (with 30 contributors), why wouldn’t we expect it to be a problem when one is trying to showcase the “best” American cartoonists from 1900-1990 (with ten people)?
Again, institutional sexism and people’s conceptions of gender really are not mutually exclusive explanations. The idea that institutional sexism has nothing to do with people’s conceptions of gender is kind of nuts, actually.
Thinking about categories of gender can help work to better pinpoint the whys and hows of gender imbalances. For example, comics definitional projects are often determined to separate comics from children’s picture books. That separation is in part gendered; it’s trying to keep comics sufficiently masculine to be perceived as serious. Part of the result is that children’s book creators aren’t seen as part of the comics canon — and since children’s books creators skew more female than comics creators historically, that creates a more masculine history, which effects things like the masters of american comics exhibit.
That is, it’s not just that the museum and curator happened to put together a sexist show. It’s that comics has deliberately organized, conceived, and defended itself as a medium in light of a project of masculine anxiety and justification.
Noah,
I think you just told me that you don’t need to argue the point — or any of the individual gendered equations — because the big gendered picture is so obviously true.
True, gender is not algebra. That was part of my point. But it seems that “mapping” arguments sometimes pretend to be geometry.
I didn’t say I don’t need to argue it. I said that rejecting gendered arguments on the grounds that you can’t nail them down all that easily doesn’t seem persuasive to me. And also, there is pretty clear evidence of comics’ efforts to gender itself masculine; again, not algebraic proof, but not especially counter-intuitive either.
Christopher Reed’s book, mentioned above, is very convincing about art’s neurosis around gender issues.
Yeah, I just want to jump in and respond to Alexa real quick by making clear that I take the fucked-up-ness of the gendered power dynamics under discussion as a given — my statements are trying to discuss the fucked up dynamics that exist, not trying to say that they’re correct. They aren’t. Hence my scare quotes around “solved.” I don’t think femininity actually needs to be solved, but I think the psychology of the art world acts like it does.
OK, but recall you’re sort of dealing with an “n” of one. This one show — one show which also happened to be the first major American art-museum showcase for the art form.
Here’s Bechdel’s reaction to the “Masters” show (and its title) at the time:
“The Winsor McKay [sic] and George Herriman stuff in particular blew me away. It was stunning to see it in black and white, without the printed newspaper colors. Vigorous, free, confident, accurate. I got all excited by McKay’s masterful perspective and architectural renderings. (Some people I’ve talked to have objected to the “Masters” in the title, I guess on sexist grounds, and it’s true there’s not a woman in the whole exhibit, but McKay *is* a fucking master so I’ll let it go.) His pages were so vivid I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Little Nemo tumble right out onto the gallery floor.”
Vigor. Freedom. Confidence. Accuracy. Mastery. Clearly masculinist terms — so very mappable.
Is Bechdel participating in her own systemic oppression, mouthing terms that favor men’s art and expression? Or is she claiming these terms of aesthetic celebration — and this particular cartooning heritage — as her own?
(Geez, I think I’m starting to sound a bit like Mike.)
Have you read a ton of gender studies stuff, Peter? I’m not trying to be a jerk…I’m just feeling like you haven’t, and wondering if that’s some of the disconnect here?
Bechdel is absolutely claiming those terms as her own — but that doesn’t mean the terms aren’t gendered, or can’t be gendered. One of the important things that feminists do, and that feminism has done, is to take masculine characteristics and possibilities and make them accessible to women. But re-appropriating masculine characteristics for female bodies doesn’t mean that the masculinity isn’t masculinity — or that’s not the only thing it can mean, anyway.
Probably the most obvious example is Judith Halberstam’s book Female Masculinity, in which she insists, basically, that women have their own authentic masculinity, and pretty much whole-scale rejects femininity at one point. Bechdel isn’t going that far, but more limited tactical appropriations of masculinity are central to lots of feminisms. I think Bechdel is certainly playing with that tradition (especially with that emphasis on mastery.)
Perhaps the problem here is too much gender studies.
It’s interesting that gender studies is often the target of anti-intellectualism, isn’t it?
There are so many intellectual pursuits that are the target of anti-intellectualism that you shouldn’t just pick out gender studies. You won’t find me denying that “the intellectual” is often stereotyped as “effeminate,” though. I just think there’s the third variable here that plays into such associations. Intellectualism is associated with wasting time, being useless to fundamental survival, etc., which is then contrasted with working with one’s hands, protecting what yours, etc., which is associated, more or less, with masculinity. A woman who believes in the importance of base survival, work is what makes for a meaningful life, etc. would probably be just as inclined to reject the intellectual without taking the extra step of seeing her own work as not as important as the man out on the hunt or at the construction site.
Gender studies and feminism meet with special resistance, though. And the association of the academy with gender studies and feminism has been especially important for anti-intellectualism over the last three decades, at the very least.
And as for your second point…masculinity and femininity as symbolic representations are associated with, but hardly solely linked to, male and female bodies.
I should add that this is the truest thing you ever written regarding the genderized bifurcation of reality: “If art is not masculine (always) and comics is not feminine (always), then it’s much more difficult to see them as polarized (always.)” (And why do you always put the period inside of the parentheses? Anyway …) Even though it’s a bit odd to suggest the default for comics is feminine and high art is masculine, I agree with the lack of stability. What it comes down to is that masculinity is used to label everything oppressive and in need of denouncing and femininity is everything oppressed that is need of defending. So, the gender labels slip and slide (this isn’t algebra! — only it sort of is in the sense that the variables can represent anything to fit whatever the user needs them to be for current purposes (but, granted, minus the mathematical rigor of algebra). So, at times, brute action is masculine and other times rationality and sitting in the tower is masculine. The lesson I draw from this, which you certainly don’t agree with, is that there’s nothing inherently genderized about any of this shit. Women are just as capable of worshipping the body or the mind or hating one or the other as men. That some structural positions have been typically associated with one gender over the other is a more a matter of correlation than anything else. Drawing ontological conclusions is highly problematic for that reason.
sorry about my own parenthetical troubles: “purposes (but” should be “purposes, but”
Who’s drawing ontological conclusions?
These are ideologies, not facts of existence. Gender is one of the main filters through which we see reality, but that doesn’t make it real, necessarily (presuming you can figure out what reality is.)
But just because it’s just correlative, or (to some degree) arbitrary doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Robert Motherwell was rejected for army service because of the correlation between art and femininity. That’s silly — but it’s a real consequence. Similarly, the way the world is gendered has real consequences for people with female bodies (and male bodies, for that matter).
You say that you don’t want to draw ontological consequences…but the actual conclusion you often seem to draw is that talking about gender issues is useless, or false, or creates gender. That is, feminism creates the oppression it names. I think that misses out on how insistently and pervasively we see the world through gender — and tends to blame the victim for being willing to talk about her oppression, and trying to think about how to stop it. Jumping up to say “gender isn’t real” doesn’t invalidate feminism or gender studies — on the contrary, lots of folks in feminism and gender studies say just that. But that doesn’t mean that analyzing gender is worthless, anymore than analyzing movies is worthless, even if the stories they tell aren’t “real.”
(The caveat here being that I think that there is some reason to argue that gender is more real than a lot of things we like to see as default real, like the economy or violence. But that’s another discussion….)
It’s certainly one of the points of contention, but has it caused any more contention than pop cultural studies, or any of the other really specific X studies out there? I’ve seen more heated reactions to papers devoted to the study of Madonna’s lyrics or about how Egyptians used to fly airplanes than gender studies.
I’ll have to come back later, but:
“These are ideologies, not facts of existence. Gender is one of the main filters through which we see reality, but that doesn’t make it real, necessarily (presuming you can figure out what reality is.)”
When you start telling others that there view is, in fact, about gender, then you’re getting pretty close to a ontological belief about gender guiding us through life, as if we’re all living in false consciousness, waiting for the gender theorist to tell us how it really is.
Anti- political correctness is the most virulent form that anti-intellectualism has taken in our lifetime in the US, I’m pretty positive. It’s also tied to race, of course, but the gender studies component is really important.
It’s not just gender theorists. It’s folks like C.S. Lewis. Or, you know, lots and lots and lots of other people throughout history. Gender is one of the main prisms through which people have viewed the world forever. If you find that oppressive — well, so do lots of feminists. But saying that we’ve now reached the non-gendered utopia, and therefore talking about gender is oppressing you, is, to my mind, kind of ridiculous.
If gender doesn’t matter, start cross-dressing and systematically telling people you’re a woman. If gender isn’t that important, then you should be able to change your gender without any repercussions, right? So go ahead and try that, and report back on how it’s gender theorists who are making such a big deal out of this gender that doesn’t exist. We’ll wait here.
Really, Noah? Yep, I even teach Gender Studies and have for years. In fact, I’m working right now with a student on a project that links Cixous and Halberstam. . . .
I want to write more — heck, I have written and deleted 5 or 6 different paragraphs of response — but right now I can’t get beyond what feels to me like your decision to trade argument for insult, and it shows in my writing.
Perhaps I didn’t take your assertions seriously enough, although I feel I was mainly demanding that *you* take them seriously. I’ll try again some other time.
I really was trying not to be a jerk! I guess I failed though; my apologies.
I certainly wasn’t trying to be insulting; I don’t think it’s wrong for people not to have read x or y in any case. I still don’t have a good feel of where you’re coming from, but obviously if you’re familiar with gender studies, then that’s not where the disconnect is. Anyway, I look forward to what you have to say if you decide to give it another shot. And it’s fine if you poke me a little too; Charles does it all the time!
Indeed we are all sunk into false consciousness so far that we are like those children neck deep in shit at the bottom of the cesspool in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List; human language and behavior is fully gendered and we men are dickkkheads. If you think you aren’t, then you are among the worst.
Thanks, James, for supplying this thread with some much needed insanity.
Noah, Not all gender differences are signs of oppression. Men not wanting to wear dresses doesn’t entail hatred of femininity.
I didn’t say it did, I don’t think?
I just said it indicated that gender is pretty important for the way people see themselves, and for the way they interact in their lives.
I do think that discomfort with femininity has something to do with the fact that we’re a lot more comfortable with women wearing male clothes than with men wearing female ones….but you don’t have to believe that’s the case to acknowledge that gender differences *are* differences, and that they’re pretty central to how people see themselves and how they think about the world.
I think Beaty’s gendering of the conflict is fun and somewhat thought-provoking, but generally confused. I would agree with Robert that class would have been a much more worthwhile prism through which to analyze it.
That it is confused is, I think, borne out by your reading Noah: Beaty seems to get confused what is regarded as masculine and what is taken as feminine, or at least mixes it up as it suits the narrative. As you point out, Novick’s funny anecdote about Lichtenstein is about how high art is regarded as feminine (something the cartoonists apparently fear), but for some reason the greater framework of his argument is set up with high art being masculine as you say. I suspect that things are considerably more complicated if one really wants to look at this in terms of gender and find the device as used in the book rather unenlightening, even if used to good effect in the last, rather brilliant chapter on Chris Ware.
Well, fair enough. I guess I felt like the high art masculine/low art feminine makes intuitive sense at least in some cases, but as you say he wasn’t attentive enough to exceptions/other possibilities, and as a result he didn’t really nail it down as firmly as he could have.
That last chapter is great though.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Class is itself often (always?) insistently gendered, often with upper class effete, lower class virile — but also very much through the sense that to be exploited, or lower class, is to be feminized.
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So the lower classes are virile and feminized?
I guess if I’d “read a ton of gender studies stuff,” that would make sense. Just as if I’d immerse myself in the collected wisdom of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News, Obama would indeed look like a far-leftist Muslim atheist.
I think I’ll pass on both…
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Just in terms of Schulz…alt comics has done *a lot* of work to make Schulz sufficiently male to serve as a high art icon. What do you think all that blather about Schulz being Charlie Brown is intended to do?
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So being like Charlie Brown is supposed to make you a macho, he-man stud, the epitome of masculinity?
My stomach hurts…
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Peter Sattler says:
…Here’s Bechdel’s reaction to the “Masters” show (and its title) at the time:
“The Winsor McKay [sic] and George Herriman stuff in particular blew me away. It was stunning to see it in black and white, without the printed newspaper colors. Vigorous, free, confident, accurate. I got all excited by McKay’s masterful perspective and architectural renderings. (Some people I’ve talked to have objected to the “Masters” in the title, I guess on sexist grounds, and it’s true there’s not a woman in the whole exhibit, but McKay *is* a fucking master so I’ll let it go.) His pages were so vivid I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Little Nemo tumble right out onto the gallery floor.”
Vigor. Freedom. Confidence. Accuracy. Mastery. Clearly masculinist terms — so very mappable.
Is Bechdel participating in her own systemic oppression, mouthing terms that favor men’s art and expression? Or is she claiming these terms of aesthetic celebration — and this particular cartooning heritage — as her own?
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(I’d imagine tongue is planted firmly in cheek.) Needless to say, certainly plenty of women artists, and comics artists, show all those qualities; to call those “masculinist” would hardly be accurate.
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(Geez, I think I’m starting to sound a bit like Mike.)
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Hah! Need to bump up the word count, though; never use one adjective when three will do!
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Bechdel is absolutely claiming those terms as her own — but that doesn’t mean the terms aren’t gendered, or can’t be gendered.
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Uh, are there any terms that can’t be “gendered”? Does that not then make the whole situation so malleable that reality can be bent into whatever ideology wishes to depict it as? (Thus, the lower classes are virile and feminized.)
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One of the important things that feminists do, and that feminism has done, is to take masculine characteristics and possibilities and make them accessible to women.
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Oooh, feminists have made it possible for women to create art and literature, rule countries, own businesses! (And be brutal murderers, thieves, sadistic tyrants, too.)
Never mind that for centuries — nay, millennia — before feminism, women did all that and more. Check out the “Uppity Women of _________” book series (I own them all!): http://www.amazon.com/Uppity-Women-Ancient-Times-Vicki/dp/1573240109 .
Feminism “mainstreamed” women’s rights, increased the freedoms and possibilities accessible to a far greater group. But all women didn’t need to have self-determination, creativity, adventurousness, etc. handed to them by feminism.
And by the way, what are those “masculine characteristics”?
Bear in mind, whatever you call “masculine,” is therefore not feminine, or less “natural” to women. So you’d be denying that women have those capacities, or only to a faint degree. Thus maintaining — to follow this line of thinking — that women are therefore less able (or utterly unable) to do jobs where “masculine characteristics” are called for.
“Sorry, ma’am, we’re not hiring women for the police force any more! A gender studies expert clued us in that most of the the required job characteristics are actually masculine characteristics, not ‘gender neutral’…”
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Gender is one of the main filters through which we see reality, but that doesn’t make it real, necessarily…
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Gender is not necessarily real? Okay…
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Jumping up to say “gender isn’t real” doesn’t invalidate feminism or gender studies — on the contrary, lots of folks in feminism and gender studies say just that.
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No surprise there!
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It’s interesting that gender studies is often the target of anti-intellectualism, isn’t it?
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Well, if some group argues that “there’s no such thing as male and female,” (as opposed to a more nuanced view of a spectrum of possibilities), it couldn’t possibly be more the stereotypical head-in-the-clouds absurdity that anti-intellectuals love to mock.
Noah, I don’t see the point in bringing up dress codes, then. No one was disagreeing that gender has no role to play at all. The argument is about whether everything under the sun and in our minds and probably in the noumenal realm, too, is inherently gendered or should always be read as gendered. And, of course, in this binary, M is whatever’s bad, F is whatever’s good. The reductionism drives me crazy.
I never said, and don’t think, that M is always bad, F is always good. I said that gender is one of the major ways in which we think about ourselves and our world, and that binaries tend to be gendered, or seen as gendered, for that reason.
Dress codes and self-presentation help to get at the way that gender is profoundly tied up in our sense of self, and in the way we interact with others and with the world. It’s not reductive to say that; it’s true. You can argue that it’s bad, or that we need to see beyond gender, or not consider gender…but that’s a utopian (and often feminist) dream, not a description of the way things are.
And when I say, “the way things are”, I mean that it’s the way people see things, not that it has to be that way, or that it can’t ever change, or that it’s biological, or whatever. There are lots of arguments to have around that. But pretending that gender isn’t an extremely important conceptual category just isn’t especially convincing to me. Again, if gender isn’t important to the way you see yourself and the world, then switch — if it doesn’t matter, be a different gender.
Of course, some people do switch — but that’s because they think gender matters a ton (either because they find the binaries oppressive, or because they identify strongly with a gender other than the one they’re assigned at birth), not because they think it doesn’t.
I mean, the first thing you want to know about somebody is what gender they are, the first way you start to categorize them is based on gender. In most societies throughout history, and to some extent still, occupation and lifestyle and life choices are profoundly influenced by gender. This is not counter-intuitive freudianism — this is common sense supported by huge amounts of evidence and really by most people’s sense of themselves and of how the world works.
Oh, come on, Noah. You really believe that you sometimes use ‘phallic power’ as a compliment or something to strive for? When? Maybe it was above where you talk about all the “blather” in identifying Schulz with the knuckledragging Charlie Brown.
Again, never said gender is unimportant. It’s the clear reductive antagonism that you can’t seem to acknowledge that’s the problem.
Maybe the problem is that your reluctance to actually think about these issues, and your knee-jerk opposition to anyone who has read about them, makes it difficult for you to actually read what I’m writing rather than whatever it is you think I should be saying?
Lots of feminists like masculinity. Like I said, Halberstam’s work is mostly about talking about how masculinity — power,mastery, competence, swagger — should be options for women and acknowledged as an authentic part of female identity. Part of the fun of Marston’s Wonder Woman is the way that he allows women to be masculine without losing their femininity.
Agency and power and other characteristics associated with masculinity aren’t necessarily evil. It’s just that our society values them so much, and denigrates femininity so consistently, that when you speak up for a balance, you are branded an unrealistic ideologue by folks like you, Charles. I mean, I’ve just listed some good things about masculinity. Can you do the same for femininity? At all? Have you ever tried?
And you know…this post isn’t even about attacking masculinity or femininity or whatever. It’s arguing that the terms are manipulated culturally by and against comics in order to establish cultural bona fides. I mean, you thought I was saying comics was evil because it’s feminine? Or art’s evil because it’s masculine? Or what?
Has nobody mentioned Eve Sedgwick yet? Or queerness? Very good. Here’s the breakdown: being too manly is queer, being too unmanly is queer. Has anyone managed to figure out where LMFAO’s “I Work Out” song is actually trying to say? Regardless, it could be about Steve Ditko or Rodin, or any number of artists. Fine art and comics just aren’t all that essentially different, is the thing– even in the way men and women are provisionally different (lots of in-between cases, we’re all female in the womb until testosterone arrives, unlike wasps, which are masculine unless tweaked). It’s the anxiety that’s masculine, not the media.
Although, they are different insofar as comics almost all suck now, but I blame literary fiction and video games.
You only hate comics because you hate men, Bert. Read more Peanuts!
Anyway…are video games horrible? I just haven’t really played them at all….
No, I just think that everyone who would have read comics in the past is playing video games now– the crossover is not a boon for narrative, but neither is the increasing average age of comics readers. Whereas people who would have read doggerel poetry in the past are now reading (non-manga) comics, or something,
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Anti- political correctness is the most virulent form that anti-intellectualism has taken in our lifetime in the US, I’m pretty positive.
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“Political correctness” is seen as intellectual rather than political? I’d consider intellectualism as thoughtful and intelligent (which is no guarantee against being mistaken), rather than stridently simplistic, ideologically-circumscribed, and stupid.
Consider some epitomes of PC-ness: banning the word “niggardly” from classrooms because minority kids might think it’s the “n-word”; Noah being upbraided here at HU because, by calling an argument “lame,” he was therefore “denying the humanity” of, uh, “physically challenged” people.
And yes, one can despise racism, sexism, and homophobia (as I do), and still cringe at the asinine absurdities that PC-ness can descend to; which with its shrill exaggerations taints actual, serious injustices as equally trivial.
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It’s also tied to race, of course, but the gender studies component is really important.
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“Of course”! And being against PC-ness is homophobic, too! And “ableist”…
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I said that gender is one of the major ways in which we think about ourselves and our world, and that binaries tend to be gendered, or seen as gendered, for that reason.
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Um? Let me think of the first binaries that come to mind:
black/white
hot/cold
yes/no
up/down
positive/negative
good/bad…
And so forth. Maybe if I had Gender Studies in the brain I’d see see “hot/cold” and “black/white” as “gendered”…
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I mean, the first thing you want to know about somebody is what gender they are, the first way you start to categorize them is based on gender.
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(??) Not me; who gives a shit? Are they smart, a nice person, are more what I’d think of.
OK, if somebody was setting me up for a date, I’d want to know…
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(to Charles)
Maybe the problem is that your reluctance to actually think about these issues…
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So if somebody disagrees with you about this, they’re reluctant to think about it? I’d think that his many comments show he has indeed considered the arguments; just not come to the “acceptable” conclusion.
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…and your knee-jerk opposition to anyone who has read about them,
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Yes, it’s all just brainless, unthinking reaction. As an example, Charles wrote: “That some structural positions have been typically associated with one gender over the other is a more a matter of correlation than anything else. Drawing ontological conclusions is highly problematic for that reason.”
…What could be more knee-jerky?
As opposed to that of someone who has read about the issues, and therefore is utterly and totally correct. (Are all readings equally valid and wisdom-instilling, then? What if you read books about an “issue” which are hogwash?)
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makes it difficult for you to actually read what I’m writing…
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I think what you are writing is perfectly understandable. As for factors like internal logic, correspondence with reality; not so strong there.
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…rather than whatever it is you think I should be saying?
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(????) So Charles is a non-thinker, knee-jerkily oppositionistic, ignorant (he’s not read all the Gender Studies brilliance, therefore is unworthy to critique their arguments), with poor reading comprehension…
…who is ignorantly, knee-jerkily disagreeing not with what you’re writing, but with what he thinks you should be saying?
(But, if he thought you were saying what he thinks you should be saying, why would he disagree with that? If he wasn’t so afraid “to actually think about these issues,” that is.)
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Halberstam’s work is mostly about talking about how masculinity — power, mastery, competence, swagger — should be options for women and acknowledged as an authentic part of female identity.
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Maybe it’s ’cause I’ve not been converted to the Gospel of Gender Studies, but I not only do not see “power, mastery, competence, swagger” as necessarily masculine in any way, shape or form…
(How many males outside of movie fantasies, sports, or posturing rock stars do we see who display those qualities? Damn few! Yet they’re guys all the same.)
…but find it mind-bogglingly, blatantly sexist to make it a point of ideology that when a woman has those qualities, she is therefore “masculine.”
You might as well say that the attributes of Caucasianity — intelligence, morality, a work ethic, education — should be options for blacks and acknowledged as an authentic part of black identity.
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Part of the fun of Marston’s Wonder Woman is the way that he allows women to be masculine without losing their femininity.
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Sheesh! I recall back in the 60s heyday of Women’s Lib how reactionaries griped that if women went into business, competed in non-wussy sports, were allowed to have political power, they’d “lose their femininity.” And here you are delighting over how Marston “allows” women to be physically strong, forceful, courageous — oh, excuse me, “masculine” — “without losing their femininity”; those qualities seen as antithetical to femininity. What an amazing feat of Marston’s! “You’ll believe a woman ca be strong…and still feminine!”
Thus do radical feminists circle around and share the arguments of the “enemy,” as extremists are wont to do. As when feminist Naomi Wolf’s “Vagina: A New Biography” argues — I kid you not — that the vagina is the center of Woman’s being.
Or when here — https://hoodedutilitarian.com/2012/11/utilitarian-review-112312/ — femininity, femaleness, and procreation were equated, repeatedly anti-procreation arguments were seen as anti-femininity statements. Because – so the thinking goes — having children is an essential part of being a woman; women who have no interest whatever in babies or having one of their own…are not really women; not “feminine.”
What ever happened to old-school feminism’s rejection of “anatomy is destiny” arguments? Or the thinking that those positive qualities were gender-neutral, available to all, rather than part and parcel of maleness, like those hairy dangly things?
Well, the idea of “PC” actually oppressing anyone (mildly irritating in extremis, but actually oppressing). That’s hogwash.
Certainly PC-ness is hardly Stalinism; however, consider this case:
https://hoodedutilitarian.com/2012/12/dwyck-never-just-a-joke/ . Here’s an author who’s had to withdraw her “six books that together have sold over 40,000 copies—a considerable number in Sweden…her publisher[has] now retracted the books featuring Lilla Hjärtat, apparently with a view to pulp their stock.”
They should have burned the books, which would have more appropriately reflected the situation.
Creative folks and publishers are particularly vulnerable; books and magazines (such as “On Our Backs”) espousing “non-vanilla” lesbianism haven’t exactly received a warm welcome in feminist bookstores, with pressure from some customers to ban them outright, or being shelved in “Controversial” sections.
See, also, the Duke Lacrosse Hoax and the following at http://listverse.com/2010/10/26/10-ridiculous-cases-of-political-correctness/ :
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Political Correctness can have deadly consequences, even for an army at war. In November 2009, US Army Psychologist Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people (one pregnant) by opening fire on a US Army base, all while shouting “God is Great” in Arabic (a misappropriation of Muslim prayers, but used in the 9/11 attacks). How could anything like this happen on a military base? Unbelievably, the Pentagon knew of Hasan’s emails to radical imams, and his increasingly bizarre policy recommendations for Muslims serving in the US armed forces. Many coworkers and colleagues referred to him as a “ticking time bomb.” Red flags appeared everywhere showing that Hasan was seriously conflicted about being a Muslim in the US military, but the Army’s middle management ignored these signals because they were “afraid to be accused of profiling somebody.” That PC fear may have cost 13 people their lives.
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Let’s face it. Political correctness pretty much boils down to upper class white liberals trying to do two things: keep anyone from ever being offended and make you feel like a bigot. So zealous are they in this endeavor that they’ve made the very practice of speaking a fearful one, as we have to agonize over each word choice to avoid persecution. I’ve even seen black folks surrounded by white liberals awkwardly using the term “African-American,” because even they apparently felt scrutinized by the PC Rules of Destiny. I myself tried to use this term one time, but unfortunately it was a disaster. The person I was referring to yelled back that he was from the Virgin Islands so it didn’t apply. I give up.
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More at http://thisorthat.com/blog/5-examples-of-political-correctness-gone-too-far
Amusingly, once…
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…per Debra Shultz: “Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the New Left, feminists, and progressives . . . used their term politically correct ironically, as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts”. …Moreover, Ellen Willis says: ” . . . in the early ’80s, when feminists used the term political correctness, it was used to refer sarcastically to the anti-pornography movement’s efforts to define a ‘feminist sexuality’ “.
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Emphases added; from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness .
In other words, leftists and feminists themselves used the term in a humorous fashion, to warn against the type of humorlessly Comissar-like, hypercritical attitude which would end up being embraced.
And again, I loathe the usage of actively prejudicial and insulting language and behavior against others. However, when “niggardly” is banned, this excessive uber-sensitivity trivializes the fight against people getting called “nigger.”
I will merely allow you to do your own research on the usual attitude of the U.S. military toward racial profiling (and visual profiling in general) in war zones. But I’m sure that’s cool, cause you know, it’s war, and freedom, and stuff.
Sure, Noah, in the spirit of loving stereotypes, I’ll say emotional openness, nurturing and other socalled feminine traits aren’t, as you say, necessarily evil. I, however, haven’t ever used ‘femininity’ as a substitute for what’s bad in the world. I’m the one between us who’s questioning gender metaphors being used as reductive binaries. You love them. So, when I criticize pacifism, I’m saying nothing about femininity. It entails nothing about women in finding Marston’s utopianism a footstool to evil. That’s probably all you hear, though, that I’m dismissing womanly virtues. When I prefer Katniss to Bella, it’s not because the former is more manly, but that’s what it gets processed as in your mainframe.
You don’t even seem to realize that you’ve referenced a feminist who’s saying pretty much the same thing I’m always arguing to you. I realize that you referenced Halberstam as counter to an argument I didn’t make: all feminists only see stereotypically masculine traits as a negative. And I further note that you substituted this red herring for any answer to what I actually asked: when do *you* ever promote the phallus as a metaphor for something good? Nevertheless, there’s nothing intrinsically masculine about the socalled patriarchal structure. Men have dominated it for a long time, but as women infiltrate it, the structure still operates in much the same way, not because women are becoming post-heteronormative, but because power is not ontologically phallic. Dump the otiose psychobabble and it all becomes so much clearer.
What becomes clearer? Well, case in point, the above slipshod signifiers for what’s masculine and feminine in high art versus comics (which is how we got here). You (in general, not in particular) can’t have the case where, say, Marston’s view of comics as masculine and Beatty’s as feminine co-exist in any meaningful, truthful way. If one of them is right, the other is wrong. It’s pretty clear that, in terms of stereotypes, the content of most comics, for most of the medium’s history, is masculine. Beatty, because he can’t drop the psychobabble, just can’t see that maybe the anger at pop art was the introduction of mass art qualities into the rarefied world of “real” art. No, it has to reduce to gender, and, little surprise here, the M mark is what’s seen as an expression of a negative for academics so inclined (inverted Freudian tropes are about as far out of the box as this type can get). It just can’t be that women could be just as snooty or protective of the high art world as men (but, wait, isn’t ‘protective’ a feminine trait?).
“when do *you* ever promote the phallus as a metaphor for something good?”
I just did. Empowerment is really important for women; adopting masculinity, or making masculine power available to women, is one of the great successes of the feminist movement.
I’ve talked in various places about the pleasures of the gaze too. Those are fairly strongly coded as masculine pleasures, but they’re not only masculine pleasures…and they’re ambivalent morally, but that means ambivalent, not always and everywhere evil.
“You (in general, not in particular) can’t have the case where, say, Marston’s view of comics as masculine and Beatty’s as feminine co-exist in any meaningful, truthful way. If one of them is right, the other is wrong. ”
This would be true if culture was algebra. But culture really isn’t algebra. Signifiers and signified switch around. As Bert notes, masculinity is defined not as a single trope, but as a vacillation between poles; it’s inherently contradictory. You think that makes things less clear — but it has a lot of explanatory power, I think.
And, again…insisting that class is more real than gender — I mean, that sort of makes you Marxist, but it doesn’t mean you’re somehow seeing the world as it is, or that you’ve penetrated to an obvious reality. It’s an ideological position — made more so, not less, by your constant insistence that everybody but you is suffering from false consciousness, while you simultaneously sneer at everyone but yourself for making false consciousness arguments.
Oh, Beaty’s name is spelled “Beaty” by the way; that always trips me up too.
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Bert Stabler says:
I will merely allow you to do your own research on the usual attitude of the U.S. military toward racial profiling (and visual profiling in general) in war zones. But I’m sure that’s cool, cause you know, it’s war, and freedom, and stuff.
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Just as the Right interprets those criticizing George W. Bush as hating America, sure looks like others interpret any criticism of the idiocies that PC-ness can sink to as making a flag-waving, “freedom fries,” “Rush is Right” type.
More of that Mr. A-type thinking; just ask Russ sometime about what a right-winger I am…
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Charles Reece says:
… I’m the one between us who’s questioning gender metaphors being used as reductive binaries. You love them.
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As it turns out, looking for some online list of binaries to add to those utterly non-gendered ones that came to mind, ran across this:
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Binary opposition is an important concept of structuralism, which sees such distinctions as fundamental to all language and thought..
A more concrete example of a binary opposition is the male-female dichotomy. Some western thinkers, including structuralists, believe that the world is organized according to male and female constructs, roles, words, and ideas. A post-structuralist view is that male can be seen, according to traditional Western thought, as dominant over female because male is the presence of a phallus, while the vagina is an absence or loss.
(Alternatively, Western thought could have viewed female as a presence, and male, subordinately, as the absence, or loss, of an invagination or theoretical “hole” of some kind.) The correspondence between each of the dominant Western concepts such as presence and male, as well as others such as rational (vs. emotional), mind (vs. body), thoughts and speech (vs. writings) are claimed to show a tendency of Western thought called logocentrism or phallogocentrism. John Searle has suggested that the concept of binary oppositions—as taught and practiced by postmodernists and poststructuralist—is specious and lacking in rigor.
In 1983, American philosopher John Searle reviewed Johnathan Culler’s On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism for the New York Review of Books, writing,
“In Culler’s book, we get the following examples of knowledge and mastery [attained from analysis of binary opposites and deconstruction]: speech is a form of writing (passim), presence is a certain type of absence (p. 106), the marginal is in fact central (p. 140), the literal is metaphorical (p. 148), truth is a kind of fiction (p. 181), reading is a form of misreading (p. 176), understanding is a form of misunderstanding (p. 176), sanity is a kind of neurosis (p. 160), and man is a form of woman (p. 171). Some readers may feel that such a list generates not so much feelings of mastery as of monotony. There is in deconstructive writing a constant straining of the prose to attain something that sounds profound by giving it the air of a paradox, e.g., “truths are fictions whose fictionality has been forgotten” (p. 181).
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Well, obviously Searle is “reluctant to actually think about these issues,” reacting knee-jerkily, etc…
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The political (rather than analytic or conceptual) critique of binary oppositions is an important part of third wave feminism, post-colonialism, post-anarchism, and critical race theory, which argue that the perceived binary dichotomy between man/woman, civilized/savage, and caucasian/non-caucasian have perpetuated and legitimized Western power structures favoring “civilized white men.” In the last fifteen years it has become[citation needed] routine for many social and/or historical analysis to address the variables of gender, class, sexuality, race and ethnicity. Within each of these categories there is usually an unequal binary opposition: bourgeoisie/ working class man; white/people of colour; men/women; heterosexual/homosexual…
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_opposition
Somebody’s really “swallowed that Kool-Aid”; in bucketfuls!
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Noah Berlatsky says:
“when do *you* ever promote the phallus as a metaphor for something good?”
I just did. Empowerment is really important for women; adopting masculinity, or making masculine power available to women, is one of the great successes of the feminist movement.
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All you 60s right-wingers who griped that Women’s Lib just wanted to make women like men; read, and be validated!
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…insisting that class is more real than gender — I mean, that sort of makes you Marxist, but it doesn’t mean you’re somehow seeing the world as it is, or that you’ve penetrated to an obvious reality. It’s an ideological position…
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I guess it’s totally not an “ideological position” when we earlier read:
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Gender is one of the main filters through which we see reality, but that doesn’t make it real, necessarily…
Jumping up to say “gender isn’t real” doesn’t invalidate feminism or gender studies — on the contrary, lots of folks in feminism and gender studies say just that.
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So if those wondrously wise folks say “gender isn’t real,” doesn’t that mean class can’t help but be more real than the phantasm, illusion, mirage of gender?
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It’s an ideological position— made more so, not less, by your constant insistence that everybody but you is suffering from false consciousness, while you simultaneously sneer at everyone but yourself for making false consciousness arguments.
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“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine?”
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…But culture really isn’t algebra. Signifiers and signified switch around. As Bert notes, masculinity is defined not as a single trope, but as a vacillation between poles; it’s inherently contradictory. You think that makes things less clear — but it has a lot of explanatory power, I think.
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If all that masculine power is “inherently contradictory,” then “power, mastery, competence, swagger” are also weakness, ineptitude, incompetence, cringing. And this is the incredible treasure that feminists have bestowed upon women?
As I’d earlier quoted (with no idea I’d find it demonstrated farther down the thread):
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American philosopher John Searle [wrote] There is in deconstructive writing a constant straining of the prose to attain something that sounds profound by giving it the air of a paradox, e.g., “truths are fictions whose fictionality has been forgotten”…
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Argh; keep thinking about this. Oh well; it’s my blog I guess.
First; I like Katniss and Bella. I wrote a whole essay about it — in which I said that the good thing about Katniss is that she’s butch or manly (I’m sure you’ll figure out some reason that it doesn’t count, but I can’t help that.) But yes, I do think that there are gendered interests and assumptions in choosing one or the other. You can deny that till you’re blue in the face; you can say that denying that makes you more even-handed, more rational and less ideological. Doesn’t change the fact that your preferences (for violence, for phalluses (wielded by whoever), for autonomy, indeed, for rationality) are all coded very much male, and that your conflation of all of them is a single long, drawn-out, performance of gender. The refusal to acknowledge that gender matters or even in some ways that it exists fits in too; when you’re on top, it’s easy to deny that there’s anyone on the bottom.
Halberstam doesn’t really back you up in the way you’re saying, incidentally — or at least I don’t think she does. She believes that woman can wield masculine power — but she still codes it as masculine. That is, you see women adopting patriarchal power as a sign that that power is genderless; I don’t think Halberstam agrees with that, at least not exactly. Rather, she thinks that women have an authentic masculinity — and that they should embrace it and abandon femininity, which she argues is bad for their health. Like I said, I don’t agree with the denigration of femininity — but I’m okay with the embrace of butchness/masculinity.
In fact, this is kind of one of the biggest issues in, and struggles in, feminism. Is feminism about giving women male privilege and power (which makes you happy?) Or is it about appreciating or valuing women’s work and women’s lives and trying to change the world in accordance with them? I think both are important — but the second is so consistently devalued that when I say “both are important,” folks like you hear me saying, “all men are evil! masculinity must be destroyed!” And then I’m accused of being hysterical and ideological. So it goes….
When you say that the comics/art distinction is clearly about class, not gender, you sort of miss that making it about class also involves comics being both low class and high class — or rather, attempting to erase their low class association through manipulating tropes to be high class. (You also end up not being able to say anything very intelligent about the very insistent gendering in the work of people like Warhol and Lichtenstein…and Jackson Pollack, for that matter. But anyway…) Similarly, comics’ gendering is not an absolute algorithm, but a contested and ongoing process. Here’s a Sarah Boxer quote about the Masters of Comics exhibition, which Beaty reprints.
Beaty then goes on:
Here’s Beaty on the curator:
Again, the point here is not “comics=masculine” or “comics=feminine.” The point is that comics are denigrated as being insufficiently manly (which still happens, by the by. What do you think those stereotypes of boy-men in the basement of their parent’s house are all about?) The Masters of Comics show, Beaty is arguing (and Boxer too) was an effort to overcome those stereotypes; to be taken seriously as masculine high art. To do so, the curator chose all men and names the show “Masters.” And when confronted, he said, basically, yes, that’s exactly what I was doing; if you’re going to establish a canon, you need white men to do it.
I mean, this isn’t about phalluses being evil, or men being evil. It’s about anxiety over masculinity, and what people do in order to show that they’re male/powerful/respectable. I mean, are you telling me that gender has nothing to do with how the Masters of Comic Art show was named or curated? If you think it was gendered, and if you agree that it was a uniquely important event in comics’ efforts at validation vis a vis the art world, then why did that gendering happen? Beaty has an answer to that question. I don’t see anything in any of your responses to indicate that you have an answer, or to indicate that you’re able to formulate or even understand the question.
Just thinking a bit more…you do get that being labeled as ultra-masculine, or solely masculine, in many setting actually unmans you, right? Comics is seen as a boys’ club, which is a big part of why it’s seen as not being masculine — because all-boys-no-girls is gay.
All right; I think I need to at least try to stop after this. Thanks for the conversation, Charles. I’m sure we’ll do it again….
“They should have burned the books, which would have more appropriately reflected the situation.”
Were you trying to evoke some sort of state-thought-control type situation? Her publisher could have easily “taken a stand” and she could have “stood by her product”, no? The commandant wasn’t exactly ordering her to stop. I know you’re not suggesting that people shouldn’t complain about shit they find offensive because that would be inane. Same thing with the other book situation; seems like private decisions made by private individuals and companies. I know I don’t need to say it, but liberal freedom of speech works both ways; freedom to say what you want, and freedom to get shouted down in return. That’s the complexity of the issue, right?
Also, Johnny Searle’s take on deconstruction is horribly uninformed and poorly thought out, much like many of his other positions.
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Owen A says:
“They should have burned the books, which would have more appropriately reflected the situation.”
Were you trying to evoke some sort of state-thought-control type situation? Her publisher could have easily “taken a stand” and she could have “stood by her product”, no? The commandant wasn’t exactly ordering her to stop.
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“Easily”? Have you never run across cases where someone is in the right (or at least only mildly wrong), gets overwhelmingly condemned as utterly awful, and gives up, apologizes, recants, because they think the negative consequences of continuing to fight on aren’t worth it? (Why, there have been innocent people accused of murder who pled guilty because that would actually make things easier for them.)
You think it’s so easy for an author and publisher to say “fuck you” to massively negative reactions?
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I know you’re not suggesting that people shouldn’t complain about shit they find offensive because that would be inane.
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There is a huge difference between saying, “this could be construed as offensive,” “these are the characteristics in this work that some would find offensive,” and calling something “racist,” “misogynist,” etc. (Of course there are works which fall under that category; but what we get are “upper class white liberals trying to do two things: keep anyone from ever being offended and make you feel like a bigot. So zealous are they in this endeavor that they’ve made the very practice of speaking a fearful one…”)
The latter sure gets the blood boiling, garners more headlines; which is why extremism is now the frequent discourse of politics in America, to the detriment of all but the professional bile-spewers.
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Same thing with the other book situation; seems like private decisions made by private individuals and companies.
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So all is freely done, with no arm-twisting or pressure exerted, just calmly decided upon?
Have we not many times heard how “self-censorship” — “private decisions made by private individuals and companies” — is the most insidious kind of censorship, with creators and people with different opinions deciding they’d better not say this or that, even though they feel it’s right? The negative reaction is just not worth the effort. Seems like most people aren’t into being martyrs, strangely enough.
From https://hoodedutilitarian.com/2012/12/dwyck-never-just-a-joke/ :
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Matthias Wivel says:
This controversy quickly migrated to the mainstream media…with critics pointing out the conspicuous, general absence of non-white characters in Swedish children’s books and entertainment.
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With the old “rule of unintended consequences” (one study found that alcohol consumption increased by 60% to 70% under Prohibition, with beer losing ground to hard booze; never mind the massive economic boost to organized crime, lack of respect for the law fostered), how much you wanna bet that racial “diversity” in Swedish children’s books and entertainment does not exactly get a boost from this fiasco?
Anyone brave enough to feature a black character had better make them look, act, dress and talk exactly like a white one, only with slightly darkened skin, lest they be accused of “racist stereotyping,” of emphasizing their “Otherness.”
So much for appreciating the beauty of racially-different features, exotic — oops, I forgot that’s a no-no, reeking of colonialism — er, different foods and styles of clothing, different ways of speaking, or teaching others to. All must be run through the Blanditron, with Western Caucasian-ness considered the “default setting” of humanity.
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I know I don’t need to say it, but liberal freedom of speech works both ways; freedom to say what you want, and freedom to get shouted down in return.
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Oh?
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Phrasal Verb:
shout down
To overwhelm or silence by shouting loudly.
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http://www.thefreedictionary.com/shout+down
That’s your idea of “freedom”?
In contrast, Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech” painting — http://www.crazywebsite.com/Free-Galleries-01/USA_Patriotic/Pictures_WWII_Posters_LG/Four_Freedoms_Norman_Rockwell_Painting_Freedom_of_Speech-1LG.jpg — was inspired by an experience he had in a town meeting. Where someone stood up, gave an opinion that no one else agreed with, but was respectfully listened to as he said his piece. No one tried to bully him into silence. (Which would have also intimidated anyone else wanting to express “controversial” opinions.)
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Owen A says:
Also, Johnny Searle’s take on deconstruction is horribly uninformed and poorly thought out, much like many of his other positions.
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So, when we earlier read…
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In 1983, American philosopher John Searle reviewed Johnathan Culler’s On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism for the New York Review of Books, writing,
“In Culler’s book, we get the following examples of knowledge and mastery [attained from analysis of binary opposites and deconstruction]: speech is a form of writing (passim), presence is a certain type of absence (p. 106), the marginal is in fact central (p. 140), the literal is metaphorical (p. 148), truth is a kind of fiction (p. 181), reading is a form of misreading (p. 176), understanding is a form of misunderstanding (p. 176), sanity is a kind of neurosis (p. 160), and man is a form of woman (p. 171)…
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…it was Searle who was doing the “poorly thought out” bit?
Okay…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Argh; keep thinking about this. Oh well; it’s my blog I guess.
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Sorry about always getting into arguments with the host! It’s truly nothing personal; how I wish instead of True Believer sweeping condemnations and assertions we’d get “this is one way of looking at things, which yields certain valuable insights and perceptions.” Which would inspire similarly temperate responses.
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[Re] Katniss and Bella…I do think that there are gendered interests and assumptions in choosing one or the other. You can deny that till you’re blue in the face; you can say that denying that makes you more even-handed, more rational and less ideological…The refusal to acknowledge that gender matters or even in some ways that it exists fits in too…
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Who here is refusing “to acknowledge that gender matters”? What some take issue with is arguments that it’s overwhelmingly important to everything; that when we’re doing arithmetic or boiling an egg, it’s all about gender.
And, who’s pushing this point of view? Why, the Gender Studies folks; just as the professionally religious push the point of view that God, our relationship with Him and obedience to His laws is The Most Important Thing Ever; just like Marxists say “it’s all about money and controlling the means of production,” others see racism, sexism, meat-eating or Big Gummint interference as the sinister forces controlling and sunk marrow-deep in every facet of reality.
(I can hear the counter-argument now: “You’re denying that racism and sexism even exist!” Arrrrgh….)
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Halberstam…believes that woman can wield masculine power — but she still codes it as masculine. That is, you see women adopting patriarchal power as a sign that that power is genderless…
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By that phrasing, you thereby seek to make nonsense of opposing viewpoints. You are stating as a fact (which anyone steeped in Gender Studies would clearly see as The Way Things Are, and all who don’t are ignoramuses, fools, or misogynists) that “power, mastery, competence, swagger” are masculinity, “patriarchal power.”
(Which therefore, with all this binary thinking stinking up the joint, means that weakness, ineptitude, incompetence, cringing are femininity. Yes, it’s feminists making these arguments; we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto!)
And, therefore, anyone who argues that “power is genderless” is going against the “fact” that it’s masculine.
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Just thinking a bit more…
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Uh-oh…
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..you do get that being labeled as ultra-masculine, or solely masculine, in many setting actually unmans you, right? Comics is seen as a boys’ club, which is a big part of why it’s seen as not being masculine — because all-boys-no-girls is gay.
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No, comics culture is seen as not masculine because the stereotypical fanboy and comics shop are nerdly, wimpy, utterly unathletic people and locales, where knowledge of trivia like the color of Robin’s undies in issue #87 of “Detective Magazine” (not masculine because not sports-related) is the coin of the realm.
There are plenty of all-boys-no-girls groupings — sports teams, the Mafia, elite military units, the Samurai, 300 Spartans, etc. — which are macho as can be. Only someone with an ideological ax to grind would depict them as gay.
Uh…Mike? The Spartans actually are famous for their homosexuality, and are gay icons. Samurai less well known for it, but it definitely was a part of the culture (see the book “The Great Mirror of Male Love.”) Worries about gayness in the military has been a compulsive aspect of our culture for decades (see that Robert Motherwell anecdote above.)
Perhaps…just perhaps…the problem is not that I’m an ideologue, but that you in fact have no idea what you’re talking about?
The notions that gender studies is reductive (“it has to reduce to gender”) or that it conceives gender in terms of either masculine/feminine binaries or rejects the reality of gender keep coming up in the objections to it as a theoretical lens. This suggest to me that the people making the objections are either unfamiliar with the literature in even its most basic forms, or have read that literature according to existing preconceptions.
Here’s the thing, I don’t think anyone has to accept gender and queer studies (you can’t meaningfully separate the two anymore) as good frameworks for analysis, but if you’re going to criticize it your need to understand two, really uncontroversial things about them. The first follows out of the gender/queer studies connection, and it’s that gender isn’t theorized in terms of a masculine/feminine binary. Rather, there’s a masculine/feminine spectrum that most people (as individuals and collectives) and texts adopt. The second is that what constitutes masculine or feminine is an outcome of these performances. What it means to be a man or a woman is historically culturally dependent, and the outcome of a history of performances over time. This is where the simplification about gender studies rejecting the reality of gender comes from. It isn’t that gender studies rejects it, but that it refuses to limit it to biology. This gets me to what I think is the really dopey notion that gender studies is reductive. Sure, it’s reductive in the sense that any perspective is reductive (to see something one way you have to not see it in another way, this is true if you’re seeing something in terms of religion, capital, race, gender, etc.). But it isn’t reductive w/r/t making arguments about the world. It forces you to rethink assumptions about the easy binaries we use as heuristics when we go to museums, talk to people at bars, or watch TV, whatever, and to really think about the manifold ways gender plays out in the context of a given situation or exchange. You can reject it as less useful than some other framework (class and economics are popular alternatives), but you owe it to yourself not to caricature what you’re rejecting.
Noah: “as Jason says, Jackson Pollack or Picasso can be seen as performing a kind of hyperbolic masculinity.”
You would lose your lawsuit too, Noah. Confused? See here (search for “Pollack” if you don’t have the patience to read the whole thing).
I feel you, it can be frustrating when people don’t want to listen or expose themselves to material because it’s “hateful” etc. Do you think that the liberal conception of freedom of speech means that everyone must respect your opinion, even if they find it hateful? That seems like an over-reach of the way it’s typically legally interpreted. You’re right, people get pressured by the market into making decisions about their creative works. This is one of the complicated parts about the liberal “marketplace of ideas”; liberal freedom entails me to act in my interest, and if my interest is removing something from the market, then I can use my leverage as an individual to argue against it. If you want to make controversial remarks, you have to be willing to invest yourself in them (you’re forced to be a “martyr”). This is one of the problems that de Tocqueville attempted to capture in Democracy in America way back when; the problem of the tyranny of the majority is one of the intense complexities liberal life. Don’t get me wrong, I also think that a spirit of convivial Deweyan republicanism would be a approach our cultural conversations (even if I think Norman Rockwell is a joke)! I agree with you, for the most part, it’s a difficult set of rights to negotiate (and media hype rarely helps anything), but I tend to think that most of this falls out of the liberal approach to freedom of speech as negative right (i.e. allowing the marketplace to make a majority of decisions about what speech is valuable rather than the state apparatus). It’s not “my idea of freedom”.
Let me respond to your wikipedia pull with an idea of where my perspective comes from:
I find Searle’s notion of intentionality fairly unsatisfactory, especially when there are much more interesting and comprehensive perspectives along the same lines available (e.g. Brandom). Further, his argument about Austin with Derrida is based on a sloppy reading of Doing Things with Words. Derrida is much closer to the right track on this one, though he’s definitely hampered by his structuralist baggage. This is where his “argument” against deconstruction is rooted, in a sort of modification of a representational notion of intentionality. His perspective has a lot in common with a Gricean one, which gets into sticky notions about “the social” as a network of background rules to language. See Alice Crary’s work on Austin and Wittgenstein, wherein she gives a much more compelling account that cleaves closer to the text (or, as a “middle way”, consider Tomasello’s recent primate work on the evolution of language).
Sorry, a spirit of Deweyan republicanism would be a “Great” approach to our cultural conversations. Missed the adjective there.
hahaha and it’s also How to Do Things With Words. Whoops.
I’d have to refresh my memory of Searle’s philosophy of language, but Owen’s right that he does rely a lot on assumption of explicit rules. He’s been taken to task over and over for that (Grice, too). However, that doesn’t make a poor philosopher, and I’d probably go with him before the deconstructionists these days. At least he’s trying to figure out how communication is possible, rather than impossible. His argument against Culler’s book is pretty solid. You can read it for yourself if you have a NYRB subscription and the exchange with Louis Mackey about the review is free. I think he’ll always deserve a nod of profound respect for the Chinese Room argument. It’s never been defeated, but many have tried.
Yo, Charles, Searle is a relic. I think that Robbie Brandom and John McDowell both provide way more plausible accounts of intentionality (and by extension consciousness) that sidestep the sort of deadlock representational language that Searle’s Chinese Room depends on. He does way too much hand-waving for my taste. Deconstruction has it’s issues, but at least it’s not tied into the bizarre Cartesian notions of consciousness of which Searle is a variant.
Huh…this is a field I know little/nothing about…but it seems like figuring out why communication is possible and why it isn’t would both be interesting/worthwhile questions….
Hi Owen,
I’d be more interested in hear what you think of Searle’s specific rebuke of Culler and his binary-mongering rather than in your blanket dismissal of Searle as a relic. Personally, I find myself agreeing with Dick Rorty that in the old Searle-vs-Derrida debate, Derrida never laid a glove on the American and was, in a sense, wrong to try.
But back on point. Binaries are easy — easy to create, easy to “map” onto one another, easy to “deconstruct” (in a Culler-esque way). This is, in part, because they are such a basic way of organizing things. In fact, they are *the* minimal way of organizing the world (i.e., you can’t have any fewer categories than two and still conceive of them *as* categories — as doing any conceptual work).
You seem to be of a pragmatist vein. What’s your take on the power of what, in my opinion, are Noah’s threadbare (i.e., fourth-gen structuralist) attempts to expose the gendered power structures and phallogocentrism underlying practically any two terms?
I know this tendency is strong, both in certain schools of critical theory and especially among my students when they first encounter these tools. This is a powerful way of thinking about the world — a knife that promises to cut through anything (including its own handle). All the more reason for skepticism, I find.
I know that this is s bit sketchy. But Christmas shopping awaits~! Hope it makes some sense.
I haven’t read either, but you seem to like pramatists, which I have a soft spot for, so I might prefer them, too. But many consider that philosophy a relic, too. Rorty did a lot of handwaving, as well, but maybe Brandom or McDowell correct for some of that. I know I’ve read more Rorty than Searle, and I could never make it through the latter’s intentionality trilogy, so you’re surely more knowledgeable than I on its merits. I admire Fodor, too, who’s just as much a relic, I suppose.
Peter, I guess I wonder, if it’s so easy to do gendered readings, why it is that when you do gendered readings, people consistently and extravagantly freak the fuck out?
I’m curious, too, since this didn’t get addressed above, how you conceptually feel it’s possible to separate institutional sexism from conceptual categories of gender. That is, if you agree that the Masters of Comics exhibit is an example of institutional sexism, how does that institutional sexism justify itself, or reify itself, absent an understanding of, and utilization of, masculinity/femininity as ideological terms?
Also, I’ve now given you a bunch of Beaty’s discussion of this topic. Why engage only with me, rather than with him? You could, for example, acknowledge that I’m actually complicating his terms.
And finally — if binaries are so old hat, and you can so easily dispense with them, why have you structured your discussion about binaries in terms of a binary (binaries bad/easy/decadent/old hat; non-binaries forward-looking/rigorous/truthy/cutting edge.) Surely, if binaries aren’t actually useful, there should be some way to approach the use of binaries that doesn’t so easily fall into such an outmoded form of understanding? Rather than falling into the binary trap and pushing me down to lift yourself up, shouldn’t you be using your more advanced conceptual techniques to take us both towards some more advanced conceptual realm?
It is weird that the comics/fine art binary has turned into the logical positivism/deconstruction binary. So what really scares everyone is metaphysics– the Ogre-Father of modern humanism.
Charles, no doubt Richie Rorty did a lot of handwaving. Respect though, J Fodes and Searle are still the trusted establishment when it comes to this type of thing. Also, naw, I probably know as much as Searle as you do if not less! I just know enough to know the vein of conversation that he’s engaging is not changing the footing of the discipline the way that I think some of the more interesting work is. But I should probably show a little more deference to his work, not having a real lock on it (beyond the engagement with Austin, etc.)
Peter, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t really understand binarization or queer theory. I have a strong affinity for the whole associative Haraway/Deleuze axis; binarization is just one process among many involved in the complexity of networks (the tree-rhizome continuum and all that). That said, I don’t feel like I know my way around the map well enough to figure out where we are, here. It seems like what Noah is doing is admirable, insofar as he’s saying “This binary is a reductive power mechanism for identity junkies.” As long as it isn’t some sort of hidden essentialism it’s alright with me! Though, as I said, I never feel like I have a clean grip on that world. Maybe the cog neuro as an undergrad ruined me.
“As long as it isn’t some sort of hidden essentialism it’s alright with me!”
I’m a lot more open to the idea that there’s something essential about gender than a lot of feminists (i.e. Judith Butler) are…but I don’t think that essentialism can be connected very directly to male or female bodies. I guess the thing is that anti-essentialism can become its own essentialism fairly easily, at which point you’re censuring people based on an absence/presence binary, which isn’t all that much different than censuring them for whatever other reason.
I’m not super-familiar with the Deleuze you’re referencing. I’d be interested to see someone do a reading of comics’ status issues that involve a more rhizometric (is that a word?) approach. Beaty’s obviously basing his book around binaries — Comics vs. Art — but maybe you could do something where you looked at the interactions between comics, art, and literature, for example, and the shifting efforts at validation or authentication which might occur there. Literature has its own gendered issues (Harole Bloom vs. Adrienne Rich, etc.), but I have to admit I have less of a grasp on how exactly they’re worked through or not worked through…. I know novels were originally seen as feminized, right? There’s that great scene in I think Northanger Abbey where Caroline is shocked that her suitor has read novels…
Now I keep worrying that the response to Peter was too cranky…. Peter, I’m just trying to say that I think getting out of binary thinking is considerably harder than you’re making it out to be. Gender is also a really important filter for just about everyone, and again your dismissal of it doesn’t seem especially convincing. The fact that you can map various concepts onto binaries, and that it’s easy and seductive to do so, is not an argument against the prevalent conceptual use of binaries in our culture. It’s an argument for it, it seems to me, inasmuch as when we talk about masculinity/femininity as applied to something like art/comics, we’re talking about people’s conceptual systems, not about “reality”, whatever that might be.
Also…I really am interested in how you separate institutional sexism from ideological sexism or misogyny, or how you see the first as precluding, or not necessitating, the second. I honestly don’t see how that’s coherent. You must be following a chain of reasoning that makes sense of it, but again, it doesn’t add up for me,and I would appreciate it if you could explain where you’re coming from.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Uh…Mike? The Spartans actually are famous for their homosexuality, and are gay icons…
Perhaps…just perhaps…the problem is not that I’m an ideologue, but that you in fact have no idea what you’re talking about?
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No, the “problem” is that I do not think in a simplistically binary fashion.
I am perfectly well aware that for the Spartans, as well as other ancient Greeks, it was considered normal, desirable for grown men to have boy lovers, whom they would “mentor” into adulthood. (At the time of the publication of Frank Miller’s “300,” I joined with others in the TCJ message board razzing the ahistoricity of his having Spartans mocking other Greeks as “boy lovers.”)
However, rather than just being simplistically “gay” and eschewing the ladies, virtually all had plenty of hetero sex, got married. (Indeed, for the Spartans marriage-and-kids were considered so vital a cultural obligation — slaves massively outnumbered freedmen — that singles, male and female, were locked together in darkened rooms until they paired off.)
Moreover, for an ancient Greek male to have a sexual relationship with an adult male (never mind taking the “passive” position) was mocked, considered unmanly.
Philosophically a romantic relationship with a boy was considered more admirable, because as a male he would be considered more elevated than a woman. However, from ancient Greek literature it was evident that women were, if not granted equal status, certainly credited with worth, agency, complexity, and surely many would end up being loved.
More on the subject:
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In his classic study Greek Homosexuality, Kenneth Dover points out that the English nouns “a homosexual” and “a heterosexual” have no equivalent in the ancient Greek language. There was no concept in ancient Greece equivalent to the modern conception of “sexual preference”; it was assumed that a person would have both hetero- and homosexual responses at different times.
Evidence for same-sex attractions and behaviors is more abundant for men than for women. Both romantic love and sexual passion between men were considered normal, and under some circumstances healthy or admirable. By far the most common male-male relationship was paiderasteia, a socially-acknowledged institution in which a mature male (erast?s, the active lover) bonded with or mentored a teen-aged youth (eromenos, the passive lover, or pais, “boy” understood as an endearment and not necessarily a category of age). However, as noted by Martin Litchfield West: “Greek pederasty…was for the most part a substitute for heterosexual love, free contacts between the sexes being restricted by society.”
Greek art and literature portray these relationships as sometimes erotic or sexual, or sometimes idealized, educational, non-consummated, or non-sexual. These erotic images can be found most commonly painted on pottery. A distinctive feature of Greek male-male eros was its occurrence or encouragement within a military setting, as with the Theban Band. However, the role of the band in Theban military history appears to have been exaggerated by ancient sources and its homosexual aspect is doubtful. Moreover while there are a number of ancient texts that indicate the presence of pederast couples on Greek military campaigns, their presence appears to have been coincidental rather than systematic.
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Emphases added; more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_love
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Nate says:
The notions that gender studies is reductive (“it has to reduce to gender”) or that it conceives gender in terms of either masculine/feminine binaries or rejects the reality of gender keep coming up in the objections to it as a theoretical lens.
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I quite like the description of it as a “theoretical lens”; if only some claiming the greatness of gender studies here had been so measured. I’d earlier written “how I wish instead of True Believer sweeping condemnations and assertions we’d get “this is one way of looking at things, which yields certain valuable insights and perceptions.”
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You can reject [gender studies] as less useful than some other framework (class and economics are popular alternatives), but you owe it to yourself not to caricature what you’re rejecting.
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It’s rather easy — nay, virtually inescapable — to have a simplistically negative view of a discipline when its defenders, who claim authoritative knowledge of the subject (someone taking issue was asked, “Have you read a ton of gender studies stuff…?…I’m just feeling like you haven’t”), make statements like…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Class is itself often (always?) insistently gendered, often with upper class effete, lower class virile — but also very much through the sense that to be exploited, or lower class, is to be feminized.
I said that gender is one of the major ways in which we think about ourselves and our world, and that binaries tend to be gendered, or seen as gendered, for that reason.
I mean, the first thing you want to know about somebody is what gender they are, the first way you start to categorize them is based on gender.
Halberstam’s work is mostly about talking about how masculinity — power, mastery, competence, swagger — should be options for women and acknowledged as an authentic part of female identity…
Gender is one of the main filters through which we see reality, but that doesn’t make it real, necessarily…Jumping up to say “gender isn’t real” doesn’t invalidate feminism or gender studies — on the contrary, lots of folks in feminism and gender studies say just that.
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…That passel of contradictions and absurdities picked apart by your truly and others, earlier.
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Nate says:
This suggest to me that the people making the objections are either unfamiliar with the literature in even its most basic forms, or have read that literature according to existing preconceptions.
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I plead “guilty” to the former; rather than “existing preconceptions,” however, my negative assessment of gender studies was derived from the way it was summarized and characterized by its defenders here.
Wouldn’t it make sense for someone claiming the greatness of ______ to pick its most admirable qualities, intelligent and compelling arguments? Instead we get, “lots of folks in feminism and gender studies say [that] ‘gender isn’t real’,” “binaries tend to be gendered,” “lower class [is] virile — but also…to be exploited, or lower class, is to be feminized.”
Pfui! Indeed, those bits of nonsense from gender studies “thinking” make me wonder how much of that Cultspeak is the norm, and if actually the reasonable, modest attitude of considering it as a “theoretical lens” is in the minority.
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…if you’re going to criticize it your need to understand two, really uncontroversial things about them. The first follows out of the gender/queer studies connection, and it’s that gender isn’t theorized in terms of a masculine/feminine binary. Rather, there’s a masculine/feminine spectrum that most people (as individuals and collectives) and texts adopt.
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I said as much myself, earlier: “…if some group argues that ‘there’s no such thing as male and female,’ (as opposed to a more nuanced view of a spectrum of possibilities), it couldn’t possibly be more the stereotypical head-in-the-clouds absurdity that anti-intellectuals love to mock.” (Emphasis added)
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The second is that what constitutes masculine or feminine is an outcome of these performances. What it means to be a man or a woman is historically culturally dependent, and the outcome of a history of performances over time. This is where the simplification about gender studies rejecting the reality of gender comes from. It isn’t that gender studies rejects it, but that it refuses to limit it to biology.
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Well, why didn’t its defenders say so? Of course there are plenty of aspects and facets to this “gender” stuff (like kids born biologically “one way” who nonetheless strongly felt early on that their physical “plumbing” was not who they were).
But instead of “there are more dimensions to gender than the biological,” what we hear instead — from a gender-studies defender who apparently has “read a ton of books” on the subject — is “lots of folks in…gender studies say [that] ‘gender isn’t real’.”
Who could not caricature gender studies when hearing that stuff? Or fail to see it as “reductive”?
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But it isn’t reductive w/r/t making arguments about the world. It forces you to rethink assumptions about the easy binaries we use as heuristics when we go to museums, talk to people at bars, or watch TV, whatever, and to really think about the manifold ways gender plays out in the context of a given situation or exchange.
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Sounds fine! I’d earlier stated I’d wished gender studies and other disciplines could be described as “this is one way of looking at things, which yields certain valuable insights and perceptions…instead of True Believer sweeping condemnations and assertions.”
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Owen A says:
…Do you think that the liberal conception of freedom of speech means that everyone must respect your opinion, even if they find it hateful?
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Not the opinion; where my use of “respectful” came in was how (as written earlier) “Norman Rockwell’s ‘Freedom of Speech’ painting…was inspired by an experience he had in a town meeting. Where someone stood up, gave an opinion that no one else agreed with, but was respectfully listened to as he said his piece. No one tried to bully him into silence.” (Emphases added.)
This, in response to your saying “..liberal freedom of speech works both ways; freedom to say what you want, and freedom to get shouted down in return.”
“Shout down” defined as “To overwhelm or silence by shouting loudly”; a rather odd thing to consider an integral part of “freedom of speech.”
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You’re right, people get pressured by the market into making decisions about their creative works. This is one of the complicated parts about the liberal “marketplace of ideas”; liberal freedom entails me to act in my interest, and if my interest is removing something from the market, then I can use my leverage as an individual to argue against it.
If you want to make controversial remarks, you have to be willing to invest yourself in them (you’re forced to be a “martyr”).
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Was it truly in Stina Wirsén “interest” to have her whole series of bestselling books withdrawn from the market and destroyed, to swear to never again draw the character?
If so, in the same fashion that it’s “in your interest” to hand your wallet over to a mugger, rather than get shot or stabbed…
And I like how it’s suggested we use our mighty “leverage as an individual” against the massive market; how anyone who wants to say anything controversial has to be willing to be a “martyr.”
Well, that’s a funny kind of “liberal conception of freedom of speech”:
“You can say anything you want to! Just bear in mind, your life might end up being destroyed as a result…
“Don’t let that hold you back from expressing yourself, though!”
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Peter, I guess I wonder, if it’s so easy to do gendered readings, why it is that when you do gendered readings, people consistently and extravagantly freak the fuck out?
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Well, dumb arguments (“Lesbians just want to be men!”) are easy to do. That people react in a highly negative fashion hardly makes them valid; is no sign that a Painful Truth has been brilliantly exposed.
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…if you agree that the Masters of Comics exhibit is an example of institutional sexism…
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To pick on that charge; the curating of the Masters of Comics exhibit was no example of “institutional sexism.” That the exhibit featured all male creators — instead of squishing in moderate talents like Dale Messick or Cathy Guisewite in — was that, because of various factors (sexism, less pay for equal work, the freedom-devouring condition known as “motherhood” [what good is it to have “a room of one’s own,” if the shrill cries of Baby demanding to be tended to NOW continually interrupt?], lack of role-models), the comics field was overwhelmingly male-dominated.
Therefore, significantly less women creators were involved in the field, with less of a chance for women of brilliance to rise to the top.
Rather telling that the painfully sparse pickin’s in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_comics_creators (Dale Messick or Cathy Guisewite are actually high points among women comic-strip creators!) don’t really pick up until we get to the freewheeling Undergrounds and independent comics.
I’m sure the curators — society having improved somewhat in that area — would’ve been delighted to feature women creators, had any been of sufficient stature. (For one thing, spare them condemnation for leaving them out.)
As for that griped-about “Masters” part; don’t we now have actresses preferring to be called “actors,” skipping the genre-separating? Is this not arguably part of the same approach? (Pretty regrettable that “Mistresses” would’ve had connotations of “kept women.”)
Mike…you used the Spartans to prove your point that groups of men without women are not considered gay. They’re gay icons. Your argument is ridiculous. Give it up, man.
I think you may be confused about what I’m saying? I’m not saying that comics fans, or Spartans, actually are gay, or only gay, or always gay. I’m saying that they get labeled as gay, or that their masculinity is questioned or considered compromised, because of the perception that their communities are single sex.
This has nothing to do with what they actually do or don’t do. Again, read the anecdote about Motherwell above. Because he was an artist, the army decided he must be gay and rejected him for service despite the fact that he was in fact heterosexual and married. That’s because artists were (and are) considered feminized and unmasculine. I’m talking about tropes and perceptions, not about what people actually are (though what people are is influenced by how they’re perceived, which is why anxiety about masculinity is so important for both artists and comics creators.)
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Mike…you used the Spartans to prove your point that groups of men without women are not considered gay. They’re gay icons.
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They’re gay icons among gay men, who oversimplify the historic actuality, minimize their heterosexual side, in order to adopt them as icons, illustrious and manly antecedents. (A process which is a version of Scott McCloud’s claiming the Bayeux Tapestry and Trajan’s Column as illustrious, ancient “comics.”)
Among the general culture? Hardly. Would 1962’s “The 300 Spartans” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_300_Spartans ), which inspired Miller’s comic, have been filmed if most people thought Spartans = homos?
Moreover, what could be more stereotypically manly than football? Check out the site of the Michigan State U. Spartans (TM): http://www.msuspartans.com/
The San Jose State U. Athletics Spartans: http://www.sjsuspartans.com/HomePage.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=5600&SPLASH_SET=YES
And when we hear talk of “Spartan discipline,” pederastic buggery is not what is being admiringly referred to.
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Your argument is ridiculous. Give it up, man.
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As memorably put in “Galaxy Quest”: “Never give up! Never surrender!”
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…I’m saying that they get labeled as gay, or that their masculinity is questioned or considered compromised, because of the perception that their communities are single sex.
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Sorry, but that some “communities” are single sex, hardly makes them appear gay in the eyes of the masses. Are football teams, the Untouchables, French Foreign Legion, U.S. Navy SEALs who took out Bin Laden, Texas Rangers seen as “gay” by the public? Hardly.
Of course, just as someone imbued in “gender studies” might think the masses think “black” and “white” are gendered, so someone in a “queer studies” frame of mind would tend to go around “queering” everything:
“James Bond goes around having sex with all these women to prove his manliness, suppress his fears of gayness!”
No, not just around gay men. 300 the film is widely considered a gay romp, by people of all genders and sexual persuasions. That’s the case for swords and sandals epics in general.
And, again, public concerns about the gayness of the army has been a major issue for decades.
It’s not that these are the only ways for all male communities to be perceived. They’re also perceived as hyper masculine at times. But the rhetorical/conceptual possibility of unmanning them by linking them to homosexuality is always there. It’s there with James Bond’s overblown priapism too. That’s why masculinity is significantly characterized by anxiety — as Eve Sedgwick says, it’s always incoherent, always threatening to collapse. This is why men are afraid to wear dresses, while women can wear pants, and why insulting or ridiculing someone’s masculinity can often lead to violence. And it’s why feminism is a boon for men as well as women.
Mike: “As memorably put in “Galaxy Quest”: “Never give up! Never surrender!”
Actually it was Winston Churchill who said that.
Nate, I don’t find social determinist views to be any less reductive in practice than biological reductivism. Radicalized gender/queer theory posits a causal theory that explains social normativity with constructed sexual roles. It doesn’t matter whether they’re biologically or socially based, the metaphors slip and slide in ad hoc fashion to support unfalsifiable assertions. There’s a lot in common between gender approach and evolutionary psychologists.
Noah, I’m going to try to avoid getting into another discussion of teen chick lit at this point, but Katniss is extremely feminine, the way she constantly expresses sisterly concern, her subbing for her mother in the house, and what do you mean she doesn’t care about sex? A significant portion of the trilogy is about her conflicting feelings (often lustful) regarding two boys. The thing is, she isn’t reduced to stereotypical feminine roles or a desire for sex the way Bella is, so of course you’re defending the latter. She has to make personal sacrifices that have consequences in the end, whereas Bella is more of a traditionally feminine wish fulfilled. Katniss is a much more varied and complex view of what makes a woman. Bella is pretty much a fantastic celebration of stay at home moms (do any of the women work in Meyer’s world?). To note this isn’t a hatred of or discomfort with femininity. And, again, the object of your attack in the referenced article is people celebrating what you call the manly virtues of Katniss over the feminine virtues of Bella, which pretty much supports my point that M marks the object of your attacks. So, you’re right, I did find a way of dismissing it. (Alright, I didn’t do so well in attempting to stay away from your bait. I’ll try to let you have the last word for now on the subject, though.)
Are there any radical academic feminists who are straight? I’ll trust you on Halberstam, since she seems to want to overthrow heteronormativity. She wants women to be more like men. That surely isn’t my desire (nothing wrong with that, but I happen to like a world with womanly looking women — yeah, yeah, I must be afraid of men wearing dresses). The difference here is that there’s a way of walking, talking and dressing that all have gendered influences and then there are those features that actually do have an effect on how one might competently deal with, or “master,” the challenges of life: reasoning, agency, etc.. Something like rationality is not gendered, logical thinking is not gendered, agency is not gendered, etc.., at least not inherently so. What I mean is that women, if not for socially constructed exclusion, are just as capable of being rational as men, can do all those academic jobs just as well as men, can lead countries just as well as men, etc.. These vocations and the abilities needed for them aren’t really coded as M, which is what the slipping signification should suggest to anyone with a taste for logic. If one trait can be called M, then F, depending on the needs of the current sophistry, this should be evidence that there is nothing inherently gendered about that trait. For the most part, barring some basic survival function from way back, all there is to fashion now is social construction. Which isn’t true of rationality, or logic, or math. Saying those are reducible to the mark of M does no service to women. It’s an inherently anti-feminine, anti-woman thing to say, in fact, no matter one’s good intentions for doing so. I think you’ve given short (well, no) shrift to Mike’s most important point (choosing to talk about the Spartans instead):
Jesus, this is becoming longer than I wanted, but onwards …
On the reality of gender and class: I don’t think one’s more real than the other, only that one isn’t reducible to the other, which entails that neither concept explains the effects of the other. That is, gender and class cover different facts of life. As far as high art snobbery, I’m not so sure that this is explicable by gender or class. I’m more an Adorno fanboy here, so the culture industry has more to do with the resistance to pop art than class. This isn’t the aristocracy any more, charged with maintaining culture. The way you can tell the wealthy these days is by the flagrant display of tastelessness. By and large, Adorno was right about the course of the 20th century, the culture industry has burrowed into every aspect of our lives and society. A resistance to pop art probably had something to do with similar fears (and for good reason). This has affected all classes. (I happen to disagree with Adorno on the value of some popular art, but he was right about the capitalist coarsening through entertainment, the reduction of art to capital, as art’s importance is determined by the supreme value of distraction. There’s probably a related reason that minimalism in music became successful among the younger generation around the rise of pop art in the high art world. Minimalism is really easy to like, Schoenberg is not.)
As for the Beaty (after reading 2 books from him, I still hate spelling his name that way) quotes: Yeah, it’s no algebra, not an algorithm, not math, but what you really mean is that what follows isn’t going to add up to anything rational, logical or ultimately meaningful. Noahspeak. The point isn’t that the comics equal masculine or feminine, but that they fail to be sufficiently masculine (i.e., that they don’t add up to being masculine), so the Masters of Comics exhibition is being taken to task for trying to make comics masculine (adding in enough of the masculine, or subtracting enough of the feminine). Right, this has nothing to do with the gender of comics and it isn’t supposed to be math. Why bother bringing up gender labels at all? It has nothing to do with this. What Beaty means is that comics are the loser — cheap lowbrow art — being elevated above that status, infecting the real art. Your and his use of ‘feminine’ is redundant, meaning nothing more than ‘underdog’, ‘loser’, ‘cheap’, ‘mass art’. You just love using gender terms to score points in the gender wars, but it clearly adds nothing to the analysis.
And what nonsense that you don’t wear dresses because you fear femininity. Well, maybe that’s why you don’t, but it has nothing to do with why I don’t. I hate men in shorts, too. They look ridiculous.
300 is one of my favorite gay movies of recent note. But based on the many times the film’s come up in discussions with friends (including gay men), I doubt that most people see it as such. For me, the small, isolated group of white men defending their homogeneity against the multiplying hordes of Other is a prime case for some queer analysis. It’s also the best fascist film that’s come around since people didn’t worry so much about including fascist themes in their movies. God bless Zack Snyder for all of this.
“Yeah, it’s no algebra, not an algorithm, not math, but what you really mean is that what follows isn’t going to add up to anything rational, logical or ultimately meaningful.”
This does encapsulate how you approach these issues. If it’s not algebra, it doesn’t make sense and isn’t worth talking about. I find that reductive to the point of absurdity, and don’t really know how much point there is in arguing with you if that’s where you’re coming from. I mean, do you really think culture operates in this way? People perceive symbols and ideas in terms of rational algorithms? That strikes me as more thorough lunacy than anything I’ve ever said.
Katniss is feminine in a lot of ways…but the book very strongly associates her with her father; it takes pains to emotionally distance her from her own romance; and it sets her up specifically as her sister’s savior; that is, she’s in the protector mode, which is often coded masculine. Her whole narrative arc is about combat and post-traumatic stress trauma — again, a very male narrative storyline.
The point isn’t that only men can behave in this way. The point is that her actions, her motivations, and her character are just easy to map onto masculinity. Which, again, is why many people, including many feminists and including you and not excluding me, find her congenial. Male performance is easier to like; it’s more enjoyable, more “realistic”, more cool, to see someone killing the enemy and protecting those who are weaker and being emotionally distant than it is to see someone giving birth and protecting the enemy and being emotionally effusive. You insist that this has nothing to do with gender — but the result isn’t that you eliminate gender. It’s simply that you naturalize those things more or less arbitrarily coded as male, and erase any position form which they might be questioned. Women get to be more like men, and men get to be more like men. Which is of a piece with your suggestion that queer feminists are somehow invalidated from speaking; marginal positions don’t count, the center is not merely the center, but is also the truth.
I didn’t say anything about queer feminists being invalidated from speaking. Just to be clear, thouh, you now disagree that it matters regarding the gender or sexuality of the person doing the speaking on any of these issues. Otherwise the fact that it’s mostly queer feminists where you’re getting these ideas would be relevant. Of course, your whole MO rests on the genetic fallacy, so you can’t dismiss the sexual orientation of patriarchy’s critics. I know, it’s not math, so you don’t to worry about contradictions.
No; I think gender and sexuality matter, not because it’s genetic but because they’re embedded in histories of oppression. Dismissing queer folks because they’re queer, and therefore have nothing to say to the center, is somewhat different from questioning whether those in power have the right to speak for everyone.
But you know I’m a straight man who writes about feminism all the time, right? So obviously I don’t have any kind of doctrinaire belief that you should be disqualified from talking because of your gender or sexuality.
And again I say — do you really think that cultural ideologies and perceptions can’t be contradictory? People can’t both love and loathe the same thing? They can’t desire and be repulsed by their desire? They can’t see all male communities as both quintessentially male in some cases and gay or feminized in another? I know that modernity posits rational actors and autonomous widgets and all that…but I just find it hard to believe that anyone who ever actually talks to anyone can possibly believe that stuff.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
No, not just around gay men. 300 the film is widely considered a gay romp, by people of all genders and sexual persuasions.
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Was I talking about “300 the film“? Nope. (Sheesh, what a transparent ploy…)
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And, again, public concerns about the gayness of the army has been a major issue for decades.
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Puh-lease. Have people been truly fretting, “The army’s too gay”? No, the ruckus has been about letting gays serve — openly, at least — in the military. Thus “infecting the precious bodily fluids” of the U.S. Armed forces with their queerness.
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It’s not that these are the only ways for all male communities to be perceived. They’re also perceived as hyper masculine at times.
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Yeah, like 99% of the time, among the vast majority of people.
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But the rhetorical/conceptual possibility of unmanning them by linking them to homosexuality is always there.
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And likewise is the possibility of saying the moon is made of green cheese. So?
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…That’s why masculinity is significantly characterized by anxiety — as Eve Sedgwick says, it’s always incoherent, always threatening to collapse.
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Consider the possibility that a gender studies, queer theorist, feminist who views reality through “the queer lens” might have an ideologically skewed version of masculinity, and reality.
Some of her “brilliant” insights:
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…the reader is to realise other potentially queer ways in which words might resonate. For example, in Henry James, Sedgwick was said to have observed that words and concepts like ‘fond’, ‘foundation’, ‘issue’, ‘assist’, ‘fragrant’, ‘flagrant’, ‘glove’, ‘gage’, ‘centre’, ‘circumference’, ‘aspect’, ‘medal’ and words containing the phoneme ‘rect’, including any words that contain their anagrams, may all have “anal-erotic associations.”
Sedgwick drew on the work of literary critic Christopher Craft to argue that both puns and rhymes might be re-imagined as “homoerotic because homophonic”…Sedgwick suggests that grammatical inversion might have an equally intimate relation to sexual inversion; she suggested that readers may want to “sensitise” themselves to “potentially queer” rhythms of certain grammatical, syntactical, rhetorical, and generic sentence structures; scenes of childhood spanking were eroticised, and associated with two-beat lines and lyric as a genre; enjambment (continuing a thought from one line, couplet, or stanza to the next without a syntactical break) had potentially queer erotic implications…
Sedgwick encouraged readers to consider the “potential queer erotic resonances” purportedly able to be found in the writing of Henry James. Drawing on and herself performing a “thematics of anal fingering and ‘fisting-as-écriture’” (or writing) in James’s work, Sedgwick put forward the idea that sentences whose “relatively conventional subject-verb-object armature is disrupted, if never quite ruptured, as the sac of the sentence gets distended by the insinuation of one more, qualifying phrase or clause” can best be apprehended as either giving readers the vicarious experience of having their rectums crammed with a finger or fist, or of their own ‘probing digit’ inserted into a rectum. Sedgwick makes this claim based on certain grammatical features of the text..
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Kosofsky_Sedgwick
For Pete’s sake; could anything be more utterly imbecilic, demented; more of an unintentional parody of queer-theoretical gobbledygook?
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Noah Berlatsky says:
This is why men are afraid to wear dresses, while women can wear pants…
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Yes, men are terrified to wear dresses, which is why drag among straight Brits or American comedians is a source of hilarity rather than trembling insecurity. (Indeed, on black male star, with his “Madea” movies, has made it a big part of his career.) And watch the reaction if a woman wears pants in some fundamentalist Muslim country, or amongst other religious fundies. Not exactly accepting…
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…and why insulting or ridiculing someone’s masculinity can often lead to violence.
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Indeed, men are often insecure about that. (The macho kind; I had no compunction about openly buying “Gay Comix” at the comics store; was not insecure in the slightest about working in a gay newspaper, a fun and enjoyable experience.)
So what? You think women aren’t concerned about being “feminine” enough too? They certainly go to enough effort to bump up their femme-ness; infinitely more than men do to be more “manly.” As to why it doesn’t lead to violence amongst women, it’s because they’re less likely to suffer from testosterone poisoning.
And any kind of insults or mockery “can often lead to violence” amongst males. Recently here, “an argument about the correct way to cook pork chops” — I kid you not — led to one guy loading a rifle and shooting his male roommate three times, once in the head. (Obviously, criticizing his cooking undermined his masculinity…)
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And it’s why feminism is a boon for men as well as women.
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The sensible kind of feminism, certainly. Not the “all men are rapists and hate women” variety…
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Domingos Isabelinho says:
Mike: “As memorably put in “Galaxy Quest”: “Never give up! Never surrender!”
Actually it was Winston Churchill who said that.
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“Actually” implies it was Churchill who said it instead of the line appearing in that delightful satire…which it did.
And, “actually,” Churchill never said that; what he “actually” said was:
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
“Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
“Never, never, never give up.”
…along with,
“The truth is inconvertible.
Malice may attack it
and ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is…..”
…So there! http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion/files/2010/12/1207_WVbully.jpg
(Along that vein, “Sticking out your tongue ruled illegal in Italy” http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2009/12/sticking-out-your-tongue-ruled-illegal.html )
I’ll let that be the last word, Noah. But by “genetic fallacy,” I meant this. Until next time …
Ah…thanks! I think my response still works…so I can stop too!
Gee Mike, didja ever think that maybe feminists don’t care if they are defined by your lordship as (in italics) “sensible”?