Hello everyone:) I hope you have all enjoyed a pleasant week off of school. In any event, lets get down to business. (Dr. Mahoney I hope you are enjoying your conference, and I know you will kick some major rhetoric ass while you're there!)
In the readings that were assigned for today, I seriously enjoyed "Disciplining the Feminine" not only because of its unveiling of a white male dominated academia (sorry guys), but also with the connection between the feminist perspectives we all presented on last class. Is a professor's true worth, the quantity of the work that is published? Obviously, I think not. As a mother, I understand the need for women to divide themselves into many areas of life, and when we are focusing on raising families, our work quantity suffers, but the quality does not. In a recent class I had, a young teacher stated that he handed in a 40 page paper, when only a 5 page paper was wanted by the professor. Just because he wrote so much, does not mean he is a better student than most, or even had a better quality paper; however, it shows his lack of a social life and family life. Similarly within the text, the women professors are degraded because of their lower quantities of work after receiving the doctorate. The output that is shown for the men does not necessarily equal the quality of the feminine work; also, as the authors point out, the women profs. tend to write journal articles that are cross spectrum, not solely focusing on what is at hand. Therefore, women build communities in education, not only with those that are like them, but also with those whose discipline differs, which takes greater focus and determination, not to mention more time to fully accomplish a completed work.
The authors, merely in bonding together to create this rhetorical text says much. They are not afraid to build a community amongst themselves, much like Mary Astell and Christine de Pisan insisted were necessary for the true female culture to be able to thrive in an academic setting. The authors quote John Berger who states:
"To be born a woman has to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men [ . . .] But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split in two. A woman must continually watch herself. . . . From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman." (576)
This quote speaks so much in only a few lines. Women, are not allowed community with one another, because they are confined to the job of waiting on men. She is therefore fractured into pieces (like Bahktin and DuBois state) like the double voiced/double consciousness theory expounds. We as women are self alienating. How can we grow intellectually and creatively, if we are forced into a box/confined space? We are reminded that to be good at something we must constantly measure ourselves against some male standard, and if we deviate either way, we are not longer accepted within the constraints of normalcy. If women always fight against themselves they do not have the opportunity to bond with other women, which allows the men in power to use us as pawns, because we are so involved with our alienation, that we cannot create community. This brings to my mind Julia Kristeva's ( I think) idea that there is no true feminine reading possible in any text, because we are stained by the phallocentric dominated world. Therefore, how can we be judged in the same category in academia with men? It is rather unfair and pointless, because we are two separate entities working for differing goals. When we as women are measured alongside men, we will sometimes fall short, because it is the male dominated academia through which we are judged. Can we ever truly rid ourselves of the maleness in our minds? I think as Hickson et. al. demonstrates, it is impossible.
Jen
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2 comments:
I love the way you think. I can go on and on for hours with tangents about how much women are devalued in a society were work is considered the staple to who a person is. Well guess what, I can swing a hammer too! Do you want to stay home and change diapers and listen to the screaming of a baby? Better yet, do you want to do those things while trying to find the time to clean the house, do the dishes, and wash the clothes? Oh yeah, and do you want to make dinner? It infuriates me. Just because certain men can get large lists of things done in a day doesn't mean those things were done right. I think women (not all mind you) know what is more important when it comes to getting things done. Quantity doesn't mean a thing. I could write a novel that is 3000 pages but that doesn't mean it's any good for an audience to read. For all you know it could just say "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" over and over and over again.
And while we're on the subject of work, why is it that women still make (on an average) $.75 to a man's $1? I can't believe it. It's 2007, not 1948. What is with this country? Don't get me wrong I love where I live but aren't we supposed to set the precedent for other countries? And then we get so appalled when those countries set unfair rules for their women. Get a clue, you know? Ok, that's all my stress level can handle right now.
Probably the thing I hate the most in this world in terms of non-genocide bias, bigotry, or prejudice, is the arrogance, ignorance, and pervasiveness of male patriarchy. Of course I hate anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, and the like, but it the subjugation of women which absolutely drives me crazy. Mostly, this is because women get hit twice by dick-swinging (or yardstick swinging) troglodytes, whether academic or not. Black women are disenfranchised for being black and women, Jewish and gay women, also get hit on the same two-fold front. What I'm saying is that at the very least successful, heterosexual, white women already have one strike against them in a world dominated by men. Jen's post made me burn with a rekindling hatred for such assholes--but not towards arrogant men, but also facile women who take on the "male-centered" characteristics of thinking like the badge of honor shined up by a plantation-house slave. It does seem that women not only have to contend with men, but also others of their own gender who give credence to subjugation. The one last thing, I'd like to comment on is Jen's view of "masculine" orientation in women's thinking. Though it is true hierarchy, exclusion, academic potshots, etc are very much apart of the thinking of men...there is also another side. This is the "old-boy's club." It strikes me as odd that women don't seem to have any version of this very male organization strategy. I for one, would like to see women start bonding together on the basis of their ideological similarity AND their gender--in the same way that white, rich, heterosexual men seem cut each other slack and actively try to help each other achieve hegemony. This may seem extreme, but if women have been infected with male-thinking, they might as well also benefit from what has made men dominant as a means for attack and revolution. Viva le vulva! Steve S
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