Reading Response (9/19)

Teresa de Lauretis’ “The Technology of Gender” was far from an easy read. I can’t actually remember the last time I had such trouble understanding what I was reading. However, there were a few points she makes that I understood. I think de Lauretis’ discussion of gender and how it is completely cultural and should be eradicated completely is so uncomplicated that it’s almost inaccurate. Although gender and sex are completely different, gender cannot be replaced with this unitary view of sexuality. There are differences between the male and female and they shouldn’t be ignored. Perhaps de Lauretis wants gender to be eradicated because traditional roles for women are oppressive and constricting, but rejecting gender separatism won’t solve misogyny.

I very much agree with de Lauretis when she notes how the female sexuality is not owned by women, but by men. Film and pop culture constructs “women as an image, as the object of the spectator’s voyeurist gaze”. This is because most of the media industries and technology industries are male dominated. Men make things for the view of other men since they’ve been the most important target market since the beginning of Hollywood. With this in mind, the woman in media is always sexualized and idealized in the eyes of man.  The pornography industry is the prime example of how the male gaze is the only one represented in society. Hence, since most females are represented through the eyes of man, we (as women) do not own our sexuality. Our bodies become our currency as we learn from the ripe age of 3 that while boys are learning to use their strength to manipulate their surrounding, we learn to present ourselves as objects to be looked at.

I really liked how de Lauretis defined gender as a social relation that represents an individual and is separate from sex because although children have a sex, they do not have a gender until they realize their place and fit in society as either man or woman. It’s just interesting because I remember up until middle school, our teachers taught us that sex and gender were interchangeable and the same. To simplify things for us, I guess for our identities our sex and gender did match up (cis-gender), but it completely ignores and invalidates the experiences and voices of transgender people.