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Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 18:07:20 -0700
From: jonathan marshall
Subject: Re: Gender&Tonic
I'll more or less repeat Jen here and say that if you
are going to consider gender dynamics, as a thing in
itself, then you have to consider it cross culturally
- or else you just start thinking that what is the
case in our socieities is biological, or natural,
rather than cultural.
Then there is always the problems of individuals, its
probably not hard to think of people you know who
break the mold of expected gender behaviour, and to
say that they are men with femal brains, or vice versa
(which people often do, seems to be saving the theory
of inate universal differences at the cost of
violating the theory.
The hormonal thing is also ambiguous, as you no doubt
know, men without oestrogen, and women without
testosterone are somewhat unusual creatures in all
senses of the term....
As well there is considerable evidence to suggest that
the hormonal condition of the mother also influences
development of the child, which possibly can be
influenced by psychological states and the food
available.
I'd have to say that relative importance of biological
and social determinates is not yet decided to any
degree at all. Obviously biology is relevant (humans
are the only animals we know with human like cultures,
though not the only animals with cultures), but there
is a hell of a lot of variation in what is normal
human behaviour (and that is also biological :)
And on the issue of Jung, Jung was always ambiguous
about archetypes and stuff, but seems to have
generally considered that the content of the archetype
was social/cultural, but the structure and dynamic was
innate.
jon
--- John Andrews <newsouth@GAMEWOOD.NET> wrote:
> Wyn...I think we're on the same page...I do agree
> with you completely, I think. The engines of
> bio-chemical processes are the core determinants in
> gender behavior - not social constructs. DNA
> triggers or hormonal animators, to say the least,
> are not socially dependant or functionally connected
> in some glutinous causality to the psyche...Perhaps,
> a primordial psyche soup existed as a first cause,
> though.
*************
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 20:08:46 -0500
From: wisdom's aspirant
Subject: Re: genome project, was Re: An Alternative Alternative
There was a program on the genome project on Nightline the other night. I
missed all but the last two minutes! In what I saw, they seemed to be saying
that a lot of the chemicals on our DNA are there not as our specific human
DNA but as the "property" or environment-creators for the multitudes of
bacteria, etc, that inhabit us! Does anyone know anything about this? It
fascinates me, and sounds very sensible.
Deanna
*************
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 20:11:55 -0500
From: wisdom's aspirant
Subject: Re: Gender&Tonic
>For years I had weirdly unpredictable periods, but always knew when mine
>was about to start because suddenly I couldn't stop cleaning house. Nothing
>seemed so fascinating and important as cleaning house! No conscious
>reasoning (or even awareness, often) present whatsoever. I'd just look
>around and realize I'd been cleaning feverishly for the last four hours. To
>appreciate this, you have to know what a total slob I am; I otherwise NEVER
>clean house.
>
>
>--Wyn
I need some of that. Can I get it in pill form?
Deanna
*************
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 18:17:09 -0700
From: jonathan marshall
Subject: Re: genome project, was Re: An Alternative Alternative
I don't know much about this, and i expect you need to
read Lynn Margulis, the person Richard Dawkins
described as something like the evil one... :)
Basically the idea is that humans, and most other
animals are colonies, not only at the macro level, in
which we need intestinal bacteria and stuff to
function, but also at the cellular level, and that
different parts of the cell are actually different
creatures which found it usuful to live symbiotically,
and that the genes and dna, is a 'uniform' way of
constructing all these different creatures - some of
whom help build the dna for the others.
There is also the issue of junk dna, there is heaps of
the dna structure, that we as humans don't seem to
use, some of it may be error correction redundancy and
some of it may be left from mutations that didn't
work, and some of it may be left from the evoltuioary
past.
But then again if dna is simply a chemical life form
in itself, then there is no reason to assume it would
have to be efficient at constructing humans - it only
needs to be good enough
but this may all be my interpretation and totaly
wrong.
jon
--- wisdom's aspirant <athena@BROOKSDATA.NET> wrote:
> There was a program on the genome project on
> Nightline the other night. I
*************
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 22:34:58 -0400
From: dstreever
Subject: Re: genome project, was Re: An Alternative Alternative
I'm in agreement, Jon, I tend to see humans as being just another colonizing
critter. We like to expand and conquer!
Yeee haaa!
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 11:40:14 -0400
From: Dominic Fox
Subject: Lacking a sense of humour
I am a french feminist who subscribes to rigid dogma of biological
essentialism, and I am lacking a sense of humour - as well as the phallus.
I am objectively risible and the part of me that is aware of how men and
savvy, fluidly-sexual-identity-shifting postmodern cyborg-women laugh at me
behind my back is made deeply miserable by this fact. My misery is a
dreadful pollution spreading from my unclean psyche: my heaviness, my lack
of a sense of humour. Your levity offends me and makes me deeply miserable.
I am a kind of blockage in the system of life, its vibrantly savvy orgone-
flows converting to cellulite and foul-smelling necrosis all over my body.
I am an enemy of all that is supple and fluid, a midden of festering signs
and stale dogma of biological essentialism. Your bullet will liberate me. I
am a mass grave of abortion politics and academic unfreedom, deeply
risible, a bad odour in every neighbourhood. You wouldn't wish me on your
worst enemy, and I am your worst enemy. I subscribe to rigid dogma and
stale washing-up in decaying plastic bowls, smell of detergent and
festering necrosis. Everything happens this way because I am lacking the
phallus, as well as a sense of humour. Your bullet sinks into my unclean
cellulite and is lost forever: fasten a clothespeg to your nose and come
with scalpels to dig it out. Black ink squirts from every cut: I'll make
you regret your incisiveness. Everyone disagrees with me / finds me
disagreeable, and my back is made deeply miserable by this system of life.
Can you imagine my shit? Can you imagine the shit that has to go through
me? I am neither savvy nor orgasmic, I can never come and I can never know
anything apart from rigid dogma of biological system, tired old victim
politics. All the hate literature in the world is about me and my lack of a
sense of humour (jackbooted nazis and their sense of humour). I am a french
necrosis in every plastic bowl, your bullet is cleansing me, your bullet
enters my womb, it dawns on me: your bullet makes me come, black ink
squirts from every dogma. Annihilate me and make me happy, unsubscribe me,
make me happy, annihilate my rigid cellulite and stale unfreedom, make me
cyborg-politics and fluid abortion, fasten a phallus to your sense of
humour and make me, make me.
I'll make you regret your sexual-identity-shifting. I'll come with scalpels
to dig it out. This system of life is french feminism. I'll make you
imagine my shit. I am a deeply tired old victim, and I am lacking your
sense of humour.
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 12:14:51 -0400
From: Dominic Fox
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
Actually, I mainly wrote it to put Alan off his breakfast...
I can't make "biological essentialism" stick to Cixous, Kristeva or
Irigaray really. It bugs me when people get this kind of thing wrong;
the
laziness of it especially bugs me. In order to have a biologically
essentialist discourse you need i) biological discourse, a discourse on
biology, and ii) essentialist discourse, a discourse on essence and
essences. Biological essentialism is a fairly specific conjunction of the
two; it belongs to sexology, to popular evolutionary psychology, to John
Gray and, I suppose, to one or two feminisms I can think of. "The body" in
C, K and I, is not the object of a biological discourse: it tends to rebel
against precisely that sort of objectification. "The feminine", similarly,
does not correspond to an essence in an inventory of essences - Irigaray
goes on for page after page making exactly this point...
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 14:04:11 -0300
From: Rose Mulvale
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
Dom wrote:
> Actually, I mainly wrote it to put Alan off his breakfast...
And Rose comments:
Delightful! When I read it, the thought that came to mind was "Dominic has
been reading Alan for a very long time..."
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 11:48:26 EDT
From: Jennifer Vasil
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
Bwahahahahahahahaha! That's about the funniest French feminism I've ever
read! And here I thought you were just a scholar... ;-)
Thanks for the laugh,
Jen
In a message dated 4/16/2001 10:40:14 AM Central Daylight Time,
domfox@YAHOO.COM writes:
I am a french feminist who subscribes to rigid dogma of biological
essentialism, and I am lacking a sense of humour - as well as the phallus.
[[snip]]
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 18:08:45 +0200
From: Enok Kippersund
Subject: Re: Since so many asked....
I use to meet people who "know" that France is the slowest in class when it
comes to let women participate in leadership. If they are not very beautiful,
they have to be very very skillful to have any chance to succeed.
I would be very happy to have you teach me that these people are wrong.
Enok
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 21:54:49 +0400
From: Salwa Ghaly
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
Dominic,
I'm assuming you're interested in a response (?) OK, here goes. A
partial response, because my brain can't process all the issues you raised in
one shot.
I agree we shouldn't be mixing apples and oranges, and differences, which
are very real, shouldn't be ignored. I'll just make a few points about
Kristeva. If you trace the evolution of her thought from the sixties
through the epistolary work *Le féminin et le sacré*, which she published
with Catherine Clement a year or two ago, you begin to see a certain
deterministic view of "femininity." As you notice, I've avoided "biological
essentialism," although I don't agree with your narrow usage of the term.
:-) Anyway, here are a few points from her latest book.
She takes stock of new findings in genetics and accepts the view that the y
chromosome was a relative latecomer; woman is therefore the source of life.
The feminine is associated with Being, the masculine with doing and being
done (paraphrasing Winnicott whom she quotes).
She has long letters about the female body in trance, the connection between
the female body and the sacred (she cites Bataille as an authority on this
issue) and the link between the sacred and hysteria, associated again with
women. The letters come equipped with long historical examples and
references to an impressive number of female saints.
On the basis of what she sees as women's direct access to the sacred, she
then advances the following view about atheism, which goes like this (63):
women have a natural affinity with atheism, because, unlike men, they
mistrust the Word. This mistrust makes it easier for them to fall into
trances. Women are "estranged" from the Word, lacking the Phallus-Word
which inscribes men in the symbolic domain: the phallus is the foundation
of all binary logic, representing that which can be present/absent,
being/non-being etc. [I seem to be paraphrasing your other post here!!!]
Women's sense of "castration" links them with the pre-linguistic and
detaches them from the phallic/symbolic order (96-97), an idea encountered
in her much earlier works as well. For that reason, "latent atheism" is
associated with femininity.
Kristeva here is not discussing or questioning cultural interpretations of
anatomical sex; she is ascribing certain characteristics to women, their
thoughts and writing purely on the basis of what she *believes* to be static
sexual differences. She then goes one step further to envision their role
as mothers first and foremost. I have no quarrel with motherhood, but to
argue, as she does in the second half of that book, that motherhood is the
be-all and end-all of existence for women, and that "despite the Sexual
Revolution, women still want to have babies" because of an inborn need or
lack, is too limiting a view for me to accept.
I'll stop here before I bore the others to tears.
Salwa
-----Original Message-----
From: Dominic Fox
To: CYBERMIND@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Sent: 4/16/01 8:14 PM
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
Actually, I mainly wrote it to put Alan off his breakfast...
I can't make "biological essentialism" stick to Cixous, Kristeva or
Irigaray really. It bugs me when people get this kind of thing wrong;
the laziness of it especially bugs me. In order to have a biologically
essentialist discourse you need i) biological discourse, a discourse on
biology, and ii) essentialist discourse, a discourse on essence and
essences. Biological essentialism is a fairly specific conjunction of
the two; it belongs to sexology, to popular evolutionary psychology, to John
Gray and, I suppose, to one or two feminisms I can think of. "The body" in
C, K and I, is not the object of a biological discourse: it tends to rebel
against precisely that sort of objectification. "The feminine",
similarly, does not correspond to an essence in an inventory of essences -
Irigaray goes on for page after page making exactly this point...
*************
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 12:20:44 +0400
From: "Dr. Salwa Ghaly"
Subject: Re: Since so many asked....
[[Elizabeth writes]]
>> But, must we attack "male" modes of discourse (if there is such
> > a thing!) by arguing that we, women, are "unique" in the way we wield
> > language?! Wouldn't we be strait-jacketing ourselves by accepting
> > such a contention?
>
> Some modes of discourse, I think, should be attacked -- or at
> least, discouraged, challenged, deconstructed, etc. These include
> such things as obscene male conversations intended to be
> overheard by women for the purpose of making the female
> listener(s) feel uncomfortable so that she will leave what they
> consider to be "their" male-dominated space and go back to what
> they consider to be "her" proper feminine sphere, such as her
> house.
I am all for attacking some modes of discourse, but from angles different
from the ones proposed by some French feminists. Yes, of course, many men
use language to intimidate. I was in a graduate class once in which a
revered scholar, whose name I'd rather not mention, reduced a female student
to tears for NO apparent reason; he wouldn't let her finish her argument; he
was sarcastic; he showed impatience; there was no personal animosity or
antipathy between them that one could detect. So why he behaved so
inappropriately (to say it politely), I have no idea! It was very upsetting
to witness this cheap spectacle of sheer masculine power-wielding and verbal
aggression especially in times of political correctness and in
academia.
> Women are a large group who share certain experiences quite
> broadly, so that does tend to influence their use of language. Men
> have the same thing with the same result, but their shared
> experiences are different ones. BUT you have to remember that
> not only does thought influence language, language also influences
> thought.
Very true. And insofar as the French feminists and others are involved in
creating a new vocabulary to contain and represent women's new realities,
they are to be lauded.
> > Agreed. But, from my experience with comparative literature, when
> > writings are clearly gendered, they are so by virtue of their themes
> > and worldview, as you put it, and not necessarily or consistently
> > because of any "feminine" idiosyncrasies in language, style or
> > literary technique.
>
> In my experience, I see that most of the difference falls on
> theme and worldview -- but those also color the language and
> literary technique used. Women seem particularly fond of the
> "epistolary" form (a story presented as a letter or series of letters
> exchanged between two characters), for instance. I've seen more
> of those written by and for women than men. In science fiction
> particularly, women seem more intrigued with characters' feelings
> and men by characters' actions -- in fact, the rise of "sociological"
> SF (concerned with the cultural and personal implications of
> technology or other plot motifs) as well as hard SF (concerned with
> the technology or events themselves) is due in large part to the
> entry of female writers into the field. The cool thing is that today,
> we have writers of *both* genders who excel in *both* styles, which
> makes for much richer reading material.
You mention the epistolary genre; I must confess I don't know much at all
about recent developments in science fiction, but I'm happy to learn and
will look up some of the sources you and others mention. I would like to
add autobiography as one sub-genre that has a special place in women's
literature in the Western world and beyond. Women since the 19th century
have been yearning to give expression to their own gendered experience of
reality, and it is for this reason that their autobiographical or
semi-autobiographical literature has resonated well with women readers in
particular. Was it Showalter who spoke about the "literature of the kitchen
and the nursery"? I forget now. Yes, women's literature does strike a
different note, but is that because of some biological reason?
Speaking of the body, someone who writes very powerfully about the female
body aggressed and contained is, of course, Toni Morrison. In all her
novels, the body looms large, but again there are historical and
sociological reasons for that. And Morrison is someone who has been
viciously attacked by male reviewers and readers partly because of how she
dissects the socio-historical context in which this body is tampered with.
Some men still show zero-tolerance for this kind of honest writing.
How many men have I endeared myself to this morning, I wonder?!!!
Anyway, your points are well taken, Elizabeth.
Salwa
*************
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 10:59:53 +0200
From: Rowena
Subject: Re: Since so many asked....
On 17 Apr 2001, at 12:20, Dr. Salwa Ghaly wrote:
> How many men have I endeared myself to this morning, I wonder?!!!
is that your aim Salwa,
alas I am female....
Rowena
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 15:02:19 -0400
From: dstreever
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
Quite honestly, I do rather believe the ultimate "purpose" so to speak of
women is to be impregnated and become a mother; and my ultimate "purpose" as
a man is to impregnate a woman and be a father.
Of course, that's just evolutions design on me in my humble opinion... it
seems like almost everything about me was designed to attract a mate (some
here may argue my opinion on purpose and evolution is an undesirable trait,
but in my personal experience, the majority have found it to be attactive)
Quite honestly I don't want to have children, and have decided that I never
will, so this might help clarify what I mean by "purpose"; I believe it's
genetically coded to all living things to Recreate ad infinitum, and that's
our "genetic purpose".... not really something anyone should take offense
to, I hope ya'll don't find me too unbearable after sharing this ;-)
I'm really usually a nice guy!
~David
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 23:23:02 +0400
From: Salwa Ghaly
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
David,
> I believe it's genetically coded to all living things to Recreate ad infinitum,
Now that's what I call humor! I suppose procreation is at times recreation
too! Many of us would rather have the latter without the former.
Thank you very much!!!
Salwa
*************
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 14:46:01 +0400
From: "Dr. Salwa Ghaly"
Subject: Re: Since so many asked....
Rowena,
I'm assuming "we" women wil close ranks here!!! :-)
Salwa
Rowena wrote:
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 15:39:35 -0400
From: Dominic Fox
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
I think the status of "Woman" or "women" in Kristeva is less than certain;
she doesn't maintain these categories in complete isolation from biological
femaleness, it's true (and why should she?), but I don't think they're
biologically foreclosed either. Judith Butler takes issue with K on
motherhood amongst other things, and I think her critique is generally
valid, but the issue in that debate is not biological essentialism but
Kristeva's deployment of what Butler sees as heterosexist categories (or
categories constituted within and supported by a heterosexual matrix which
is maintained in a kind of reserve out of deconstructive reach). Most often
in K - and I must admit to only knowing a few texts, chiefly "Powers of
Horror" - it seems that "Woman" denotes a relationship to the symbolic, a
type of libidinal organisation, a place within (or without, or a no-place,
or a khora...) the narratives of Being and Truth etc. - the discursive
register here is neither biological nor essentialising, although that
doesn't mean that K's references to "Woman" and "women" are not problematic
in other ways...
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 16:42:24 -0300
From: Rose Mulvale
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
> I'll stop here before I bore the others to tears.
Salwa,
You and the others plying this thread are not boring - you are
teaching.
Please do not stop.
- Rose, settling happily into lurkerdom
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 15:46:22 -0400
From: dstreever
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
Laughing, I did not get it at first; sometimes humour confused me, I admit,
as another here pointed out (Rowena or Renata? I do not know; sometimes I
am confused by names, too!) but I read it 4 or 5 times, and finally
understood, I had meant procreate, of course!
My apologies,
David
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 23:52:21 +0400
From: Salwa Ghaly
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
Why apologize? A great Freudian slip that was! And you know what? It
undercuts everything else you said in that post. So, David, what are you
*really* thinking now? Deep down?!! LOL
Salwa
*************
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 16:07:50 -0400
From: dstreever
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
I have always considered myself to be singularly "un-funny" and yet I make
people laugh... how did this curious juxtaposition come about???
My thanks for allowing me to be funny, Salwa!
Cheers
*************
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 10:42:16 +0100
From: catcher at times
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
--- David S wrote:
> I had meant procreate, of course!
> My apologies,
You shouldn't apologize for making people laugh - or were you
embarrassed?
Anyway, I'm telling my friends now that we were genetically designed
to recreate and most of them agree. ,-)
renata
*************
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 00:34:46 +0400
From: Salwa Ghaly
Subject: Re: Lacking a sense of humour
To:
>I think the status of "Woman" or "women" in Kristeva is less thancertain;
she doesn't maintain these categories in complete isolation from biological
femaleness, it's true (and why should she?), but I don't think they're
biologically foreclosed either. Judith Butler takes issue with K on
motherhood amongst other things, and I think her critique is generally
valid, but the issue in that debate is not biological essentialism but
Kristeva's deployment of what Butler sees as heterosexist categories (or
categories constituted within and supported by a heterosexual matrix
>which is maintained in a kind of reserve out of deconstructive reach).
I can't remember Butler's criticism of K very well, but it seems to me that
the issue is not biological essentialism precisely because Butler's focal
point is not women but the heterosexual matrix. The whole thesis of _Gender
Trouble_ is one that runs counter to some of the views espoused by K in her
later work. Well, yes and no. Let me qualify what I've just said: it seems
to me that to the degree that I, C and K question and desconstruct the
dichotomy masculine/feminine, and they do, though in a wishy washy way, IMO,
Butler seems to feed into the same stream, but she, of course, goes way
beyond them to examine the very bases upon which heterosexuality is
generally peddled as "normal" sexuality. But, when K begins to associate
"chora" with the womb, this is where she and Butler are bound to part
company. And K does make these dangerous associations in her latest works
in particular. Their tenets at that point become diametrically opposed. I
find Butler's positions well reasoned, though her conclusions may be a bit
disturbing for some.
On another note, I really like K's *Etrangers a nous meme* a much more
interesting work, it seems to me, than all this sappy and confused/confusing
stuff about motherhood. This is where she appears rather Levinasian in her
pursuit of intersubjectivity: how do I define myself in terms of the Other?
This is all very engaging and brings her back into proper deconstructive
terrain. At the same time, it injects her work with a clear ethical agenda
that may one day be of relevance to us lost postmodern souls and Co!
Salwa
P.S. I now have to go back to Butler and re-read her! Do I really
need this extra work now? Darn!