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.

Reading Response 2: de Lauretis

I found de Lauretis essay to be an interesting yet confusing read. It’s hard to grasp what she’s trying to say in a lot of the essay because she circles around a topic and uses multiple sources without properly explaining them. Sometimes I felt like I was reading a puzzle or a tongue twister due to how she tried to convey a point and how wordy her sentences were.

I agree with her when she says that there is a problem with Althusser’s statement, “ideology has no outside”. When he says outside I think he’s referring how people can’t see things from an objective point of view because they’re trapped within their own ideology and believe in their decisions. de Lauretis disagrees and says there is an outside where ideology can be seen for what it is. Often people feel that science is the only thing that can be logical but de Lauretis argues that people can look at a subject and be rational about it, in this case it’s about gender.

I think she brings feminism to a whole new level that I never thought of and I also find it quite silly at the same time. She talks about how when we fill out forms guys and girls check out the female and male box and therefore define themselves as being of that gender.  She talks about how when we marked that F on the form you are not only marking that form but also marking yourself and how that mark sticks to us. I feel that she’s viewing female as being a negative thing. She seems to want to break away from these labels and not have the existence of female and male but it’s only normal that people who are essentially different in certain ways are labeled differently. I don’t see myself being female as a bad thing, it’s just like how we have labels for everything else in this world, in race, ethnicity etc. For me when I think of feminism I don’t think of wanting to be the same as men. There are just certain things where we would like to have the same privilege to.

Once again she seems to not want to accept the differences between a male and a female when she says. “In other words, only by denying sexual difference (and gender) as components of subjectivity in real women, and hence by denying the history of women’s political oppression and resistance, as well as the epistemological  contribution of feminism to the redefinition of subjectivity and sociality, can the philosophers see in “women” the privileged repository of “the future of mankind.” The fact is, men and women do have differences. Personally I’m okay with those differences and don’t expect us to the same in every single way. One thing I do think she brings up a good point in regards to feminism and technology are movies and how they play a role in setting up this gender role. Movies often portray this cliche idea of how women and men should be and the mannerisms depicted in these movies are then brought into society once again.

Reading Response: de Lauretis

The part of the de Lauretis reading that interested me was the discussion of the sexualization of the female body. In Western culture, a connection is made between the woman and sexuality, and the woman’s body becomes something sexual. This is prevalent in many films, where, according to feminist film theorists, the female body becomes an image, an “object of the spectator’s voyeuristic gaze.” This reminded me of a book I have read previously to this, John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, in which he discusses the woman as an image to be looked at by men in paintings and other works of art.  As our culture becomes more technologically advanced, this concept becomes increasingly prevalent.

I also was interested in a part of the passage that stated “Even when it is located in the woman’s body, sexuality is perceived as an attribute or a property of the male.” So the conclusion that I draw from this is that women’s bodies are sexualized, often without their consent, and then they do not even have ownership of this sexuality, because sexuality belongs to men. This also only leaves room for heterosexuality, involving a woman’s body which represent “sexuality,” and a man who owns the “sexuality” that a woman’s body represents.

I think that the solution to this that de Lauretis perhaps doesn’t really touch upon is that I think we need to use technology to improve views on women are emphasize for the world that women are more to be looked and and are not just representations of sexuality but active participants.

A little humor

Doing Gender

(That’s Judith Butler. I got the image from Buzzfeed, but I don’t know who made it originally.)