Terminology in Freedman, Fausto-Sterling, and Rosser

Anne Fausto-Sterling and Estelle Freedman mention the intricacies of terminology surrounding gender and sexuality, and how new terminology has been developed, or altered, to accept shifting identities. Gender and sex, two terms which seem indistinguishable to the untrained eye, are defined in Sexing the Body, and presented with their historical context. The concept of bisexuality, something that many people acknowledge today, seemed to be unfathomable to people in the past (Fausto-Sterling cites women who would discover they were lesbians despite being happily married, simply for being attracted to a woman in addition to their husband). Alfred Kinsey’s studies put a scientific spin on sexuality, with his 0 to 6 scale, and he created terms to refer to sexual relationships and the act of sex itself (such as “orgasm”). Each different definition of sexuality (from the restrictive religiousness of Europe in the Middle Ages to today’s post-Kinsey world) seemed to slowly displace the previous definition (at least, within the scholarly world).

Even Sexing the Body, published in 2000, seems a little outdated in its use of terminology – not merely with regards to sexuality and gender (particularly its mentions to the trans* community), but also technologically. A listserve, for example, while still an extant concept, has been displaced by social media for the most part. Still, the concept of Fausto-Sterling’s “Loveweb” listserve seems to tie into Sue V. Rosser’s description of cyberfeminism in her essay. Fausto-Sterling is using the communication avenues available through the Internet to communicate with like-minded individuals. Rosser’s conception of technology extends to various subgroups of feminism. However, Rosser repeatedly emphasizes that technology is (for the most part) created by men (not literally, however – women are likely to work in electronics assembly), and therefore excludes women by design because they do not consider female users. Feminist movements are now rising to acknowledge and combat this, serving as yet another part of the shifting movements within feminism, even causing the creation of even more, new terms (like cyberfeminism).

As long as human culture changes, the terms used within studies of gender and sexuality will change. Freedman’s book, which views feminism through a historical lens, notes some of the evolving terminology of feminism. In its introduction, it mentions the divergent concept of womanism, the term developed by Alice Walker to define a black feminist or a feminist of color. The development of this term makes sense alongside the civil rights movement. Events like the civil rights movement alter the course of feminism, creating a critical need for an alteration in language. Fausto-Sterling alludes to the dualism of what is real and what is constructed – how people can accept something to be a definitive truth, but then either societal perceptions or some new, revolutionary scientific research will change these previously accepted truths.

Reading Response: Rosser

I found Rosser’s first chapter in Women, Gender, and Technology to be an incredibly useful guide to understanding some basic, yet deeply powerful ways that technology influences our daily lives, specifically in how it has been harnessed as a tool to reinforce oppressive social and political constructs. I’m also grateful for the double-function it serves by providing readers with a brief synopsis of some popular forms of feminist theory, especially in how they intersect and depart from one another.

Similarly valuable is Rosser’s emphasis on the historical flaw of technology being shaped by men and for men. In other words, despite the reasons for male dominance of the industry, i.e. biological or social, technological designs and their practical uses over time have been disproportionately created both to satisfy patriarchal constructs, as well as to reinforce them. This point is crucial because it helps explain why women have struggled to gain a solid footing in the world of technology invention, creation and application. When one considers, for example, how much we take for granted in our basic conceptions of science as an objective field, the methodologies we employ in creating our collective knowledge base may seem subsequently less reliable. Positivism, which Rosser quotes Jaggar as implying that “all knowledge is constructed by inference from immediate sensory experiences,” for example, is not a universally accepted philosophical system of thinking (Rosser 16). Socialist feminists and African American/womanist or racial/ethnic feminists reject positivism as lacking objectivity because the very “basic categories of knowledge are shaped by human purposes and values” (Rosser 17). Furthermore, considering the historical dominance of males in the public sphere, we must also note the connection between these supposedly “objective” approaches and the masculinity of the thinkers that purport them. That is to say, it may not be enough, as liberal feminists might claim, to attack the “gender-stratified labor market” by removing “overt and covert barriers that prevent women from entering engineering education and remaining as practicing engineers” (14). Simply redistributing responsibility and financial compensation within the labor market is not enough to defeat discrimination based on gender. The problems lay deeper, as Rosser points out, in the ways we conceive of technological application. We need new perspectives altogether on how technology may serve society.

Socialist feminist and African American/womanist or racial/ethnic feminist perspectives, which aim to take in to account a wider range of intersection, i.e. race, class, gender, age and ability, understand that liberation and equality for marginalized groups requires more than inclusion; it requires the complete revamping of our conceptions of difference and how it influences our everyday lives (Rosser 20-21). It requires new models of analyzing how to best serve the “common good” (Rosser 19). Again, regardless of whether differences between masculine and feminine perspectives of the world are rooted in biology or socialization, technology has been dominated by those perspectives that are characteristic of men who fall under the hegemonic definition of masculinity, which sociologist Erving Goffman defines as, “young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual, Protestant, father, of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight, and height, and recent record in sports…”[1] While it is obvious that some of these traits carry more weight than others, it is important to note how pointed the ideals society projects on people can be.

Rosser also introduces a compelling defense of integrating women into the field of technology by highlighting Knut Sorenson’s point that “‘women have a care, other-oriented relationship to nature and to people, an integrated, more holistic and less hierarchical world-view, a less competitive way of relating to colleagues and a greater affinity to users’” (Rosser 28). In other words, their particular position of oppression and subordination women with a greater sympathy to how a wider range of institutions may be employed to oppress a wider range of people, which in turn makes them more considerate and capable allies to humanity at large.

While there is still much disagreement about why gender distinctions are so powerful in society, progress towards understanding how they affect different people in different ways is becoming an increasingly important issue to address. Similarly, progress towards understanding how to combat such oppressive power structures is becoming an increasingly relevant lens in which to look at a variety of arenas of everyday life. It seems to me that only by broadening focus in terms of difference and intersectionality will we be able to enfranchise those who don’t satisfy the hegemonic definition of masculinity, or, in other words, most of the people on this planet.

Reading Response 9/12

With Fausto-Sterling’s conversation about dualisms in mind, one of the major reoccurring themes I noticed in The Hunger Games was the dualism (or more accurately, the desconstruction of) between nature/ nonhuman and unnatural/ human. As Fausto-Sterling defines, dualisms are “pairs of opposing concepts, objects, or belief systems” that are central to a Western way of seeing the world (2000, p. 21). Furthermore, Fausto-Sterling critiques that this view often masks the interdependencies of each pair by emphasizing the dominance of one (2000). These statements felt true as I tried to unscramble the face-value of the dualism in The Hunger Games.

I suppose a major flaw in thinking of dualisms is that they are static and that one side is more favorable, true, etc. It is clichéd to say that there is more than one side to everything, but it is applicable to the shortcomings of dualisms. An example would be the woods in District 12. Following a dualism format, District 12 is the unnatural/ human area filled with industry and encased in a supposedly electrified fence to keep residents from going into the natural/ nonhuman (and even antihuman?) woods that are filled with “flesh-eaters” and “added concerns like venomous snakes, rabid animal, and no real paths to follow” (Collins, 2008, p. 5). However, Katniss and other residents know that the woods is also an area to forge and hunt for food, which is essential to survival (of humans). While District 12 might not have the dangers of the woods, it is not very inducing to survival. Katniss succinctly calls District 12, the place “where you can starve to death in safety” (Collins, 2008, p. 6).

Related to the nonstatic positions of supposedly opposing ends of a dualism, there is fluidity between. The fluidity and even overlapping between the opposing ends of a dualism more or less negates the purpose of it. A Hunger Games example would be the Arena for the Games. While the Arena is a natural terrain filled with elements and animals/ plants, etc., it is within the control of the human Gamemakers. The Gamemakers can add any “unnatural” element such as a wall of fire or the systematic drainage of water sources to the Arena if they felt the pace of excitement for the audience is not on par. Certain animals found in the Arena and the rest of Panem also embodied this fluid/ overlapping state of the natural/ unnatural. They are the muttations/ mutts such as the jabberjay/ mockingjay or the tracker jacker wasps. They were mainly developed as weapons for the Capitol during the war. Other than the manmade (and supposedly not natural) beginnings of these animals, it is interesting to note the aftermath of these animals. For the tracker jackers, Katniss notes that Capitol destroyed most of them, but possibly kept some nests of the wasps as a warning sign to the Districts, which shows some control the Capitol had over these natural/ unnatural creatures. The jabberjays on the other hand, managed to breed with mockingbirds and create a new species, the mockingjay, despite the Capitol’s attempt to destroy the creatures. The ultimate overlapping of the natural and unnatural creature are the wolf-like mutts towards the end of the Game. Katniss might have described them as “unnatural” and having “unmistakably human” eyes, which seems to land the creatures smack in the unnatural/ human camp of the dualism, but she also wonders if these creatures that are really the embodiment of the dead human tributes (such as if their memory is intact, etc.), which raises the question of the humanity of these creatures.

Fausto-Sterling also included an interesting quote by philosopher Val Plumwood. Dualisms can be seen as a cultural “store of weapons” that “‘can be mined, refined and redeployed’” (qtd. in 2000, p. 21). While the concept of dualisms is problematic, it can be used as weapons for resistance and be changed into other dualisms for such a purpose. The use of the mutations might be an example. Jabberjays were used by Rebels against the Capitol. Katniss had used the mockingjays and tracker jackers to her advantage in the Games. And from the spoilers I skimmed from Wikipedia, it seems like a dualism between natural and unnatural might be disassembled for a dualism between the Capitol and the Districts?