Plan for the Day
- Today’s readings
- Do Canvas posts by tomorrow at 11:00 pm
The notes I have are to help you think about the films, TV shows, and stories we read. These are not final interpretations. Eventually, you’ll write essays about our readings (and, perhaps, readings outside the class).
Gender Studies and Absolutes
This subject is going to be difficult for many of us. We tend to live in a binary world or worlds: right and wrong, black and white, us and them, male and female…we have little patience to contemplate ambiguity, especially when it’s as “fundamental” as gender. The attributes and behaviors of men and women, our gender roles, seem to be essential to what’s masculine and feminine. If something violates our assumptions, at best, we think it odd, and, at worst, we hate it. Having absolutes is comfortable to us because we don’t like to have our worldviews predicated on shaky assumptions.
Unfortunately, ambiguity, doubt, and relativity are cultural conditions. We might try to ignore that or even avoid those in favor of our concrete perspectives, which are often un-examined convictions. In a class like this one that covers how culture influences the texts we read (and their creation), no absolute should remain unquestioned.
Gender is such an absolute that many don’t want questioned: men are men; women are women…why? Before we get farther into the discussion, let’s define some words:
- Feminism: the social and political philosophy advocating the equality of all people regardless of gender.
- Patriarchy: male dominated society; the powerful group in a society elevates male privilege and subordinates women.
- Sexism: attitudes, assumptions, and stereotypes directed at a particular sex/gender; especially when these are related to women.*
- Heteronormativity: the attitude that recognizes heterosexual relationships as the societal norm and ignores other possibilities.
- Heterosexist: the belief that the only valid form of relationship is the heterosexual union between a man and a woman.
- Phallocentrism: power is held and wielded by those in control of the phallus, the site of male power; male superiority based on the legitimate use of the phallus.
- Exogamy: practice of marrying outside one’s group (family, culture, “race,” species–this is a Sci Fi class. Btw, who’s seen The Shape of Water? Great film).
*There is a theory that only men can be sexist in patriarchal society because sexism is systemic–it’s part of the culture, part of the system and pervasive.
As an introduction, let’s look at a scene from ABC’s Modern Family that can have multiple readings (interpretations). On the surface, it’s a funny story and a leading character triumphs. Below the surface, it’s a trite display of gender roles and gendered value in patriarchal culture. For a brief context, Gloria feels inferior to her ex-husband’s fiancee because she’s very well educated, calm, and successful career. This threatens Gloria because she feels Manny (her son) will look up to the new stepmom more than her. Check out Gloria meeting Javier’s fiancee. (Here’s a short article about the first part of the episode–Season 4, ep. 20).
I realize a sitcom doesn’t hold the entirety of American culture, but it is a cultural product, which makes it representative of the broader culture.
Questions–Trish, the fiancee, sees the relationship dynamic differently from Gloria.
- What motivates Trish’s reasons for locking herself in the room?
- This comes at the end of the show, so what does the “resolution” value in femininity?
- Is there a comment about a woman’s proper role?
James Tiptree, Jr./Alice B. Sheldon “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972)
Alice B. Sheldon was pretty ahead of her time. She was promoted to the rank of Major in Army Air Force Intelligence and worked with (most likely) spy photos (1942-1946). She was also in the CIA from 1952-1955, but left to go back to college, and in 1967, she earned a PhD in experimental psychology and studied animal behavior. Although we can’t read an author’s work as a pseudo-biography, she was a very smart person who saw the world in complicated ways. As the Anthology editors note, sexuality is a major theme of her work. She would definitely not subscribe to a binary but, rather, a spectrum of sexuality.
Clearly, humans aren’t in control. They appear to be obsessed with aliens and alien sexuality or, more accurately, the mystique of alien sexuality. Tiptree plays on the situation of eroticizing the “other.” There is a long history of Western culture having a fetish for those from other cultures. The space dock worker waiting for his wife even mentions “the Polynesians” to refer to the way a culture has been exploited and eroticized by a colonial power (pp. 522-523).
Let’s take a look at some main passages from the short story:
- p. 518: Wristwatches on spaceships.
- p. 519: “I had him figured out now. A xenophobe. Aliens plot to take over Earth.” {Is that what the “red-haired man” is? Didn’t he seem a bit more xenophile?}
- p. 519: “Little Junction,” dive bar in DC.
- p. 520: Aliens as celebrities
- p. 522: “Man is in love and loves what vanishes…”
- Let’s unpack this because it relates to the poem.
- Every heard the idea that you love what you can’t have?
- Why not love what’s easy?
- p. 523: “Man is exogamous–all our history is one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger.”
- p. 524: “The station employs only happily wedded couples” most likely because they need the stability of marriage to keep the humans from going bonkers over the aliens. If they stray, they could disrupt the station’s business.
Keat’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci”
I guess being an English professor means I have to explain the reference to Keats’s poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (“The Beautiful Lady without Pity”…google translate used to claim it was “without thank you”). Of course, full disclosure, you know I’m not really that kind of English Professor, but I’ll wear that hat for a little while and explicate the poem…to a certain extent.
- This poem is about a young man deserted and left bereft by a mysterious and magical lover.
- Possibly a femme fatale, who seduces men and then destroys them.
Joanna Russ’s “When it Changed” (1972)
Joanna Russ creates an all-female imagined world for us to think about gender roles. This all-female world has lived without men for centuries on the planet Whileaway. The main characters rush to meet the alien men who arrive…the women aren’t necessarily welcoming to the outsiders. As you read, consider how Russ portrays the men. The women aren’t impressed with them as macho astronauts, intrepid pioneers. Why? Didn’t we hear a couple weeks ago that women love a man in uniform?
Social Construction of Beauty/Attractiveness
Even the words above are gendered to an extent. We usually don’t identify men as “beautiful,” but we interchange “beautiful” and “attractive” for women. Some might say a landscape or poem is “beautifully” written, which could led us into a deeper discussion on the word’s usage. For now, let’s concentrate on the ways Russ portrays the Whileawayans and the Earthmen.
- “Men! Yuki screamed….”They’ve come back! Real Earth men!” (p. 509) Yuki exclaimed, “I thought they would be good-looking!” (p. 510)
Later, Yuki’s excitement goes away when asked if she could fall in love with a man: “With a ten-foot toad!” (p. 514) - Janet sizes them up: “They are bigger than we are. They are bigger and broader. Two were taller than me, and I am extremely tall, one meter eighty centimeters in my bare feet. They are obviously of our species but off, indescribably off, and as my eyes could not and still cannot quite comprehend the lines of those alien bodies, I could not, then, bring myself to touch them.” (p. 509)
- What’s the role of violence on Whileaway?
Gender Roles and Stereotypes
This story imagines a world where the binary division between masculine and feminine is absent. Unlike stories of all-female worlds written by men, such as, Anderson’s Virgin Planet (1959), “When it Changed” envisions a world where women aren’t longing for the male other. In many stories, a male protagonist is used to save women–from a dragon, a band of savages, King Koopa, etc.–but Whileawayans need no saving because they’re doing fine. Clearly, Whileaway is on the verge of change, and Russ, writing in the early 1970s, was influenced by the effects of the sexual revolution and counter culture movements. I would be shortsighted to claim that those cultural events died by the 1980s, but there was definitely a return to more puritanical mores. The epidemic of STDs in the late 1970s and 1980s put a huge taboo on what was seen as reckless sexual behavior, and the rise of conservatism and right-wing religious clout in politics quelled much of the fervor of 1960s liberation. Then again, maybe the 1960s couldn’t sustain its revolution because it still operated under phallocentric assumptions. Heteronormativity is the dominant familial condition replicated in most cultures today.
Janet’s statement: “I doubt very much that sexual equality has been reestablished on Earth” (p. 514). Maybe Russ is commenting on the fact that men in patriarchal culture think there’s equality, but, being from a position of privilege, they can’t see inequality. This situation is referred to as “male privilege.”
What’s in a Name?
Janet tells readers at the end of the story that Whileaway used to be called For-A-While before the men were killed off by disease. What’s the significance of the names in relation to the story’s title?
- What does it mean to whileaway your time?
Next Week
Even though Monday, 5/25, is Memorial Day, I have an I, Robot-related page up for that day and Tuesday (5/26). I hope you will have finished Isaac Asimov’s great novel I, Robot by then. I’ll have notes and a discussion post up soon.
Don’t forget to do your Canvas posts for this week; they are due tomorrow (5/22) by 11:00 pm. In fact, if you haven’t done so already, set a reminder for the rest of this Summer term that alerts you that your posts are due EVERY Friday. I prefer you to do them on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I understand that things come up, so the deadlines are Fridays by 11:00 pm, and there are no late posts accepted.