Gender Essentialism, Genre, and Me
I’m late to the party. The first major SF/F controversy party. And while this post won’t be about Kemp’s argument specifically, it does come out of the discussions about his post — most particularly the criticisms.[1] Part of the problem I have with traditional gender roles is the way they assume what manhood (or womanhood) is based on behaviors which are definitively not gendered. There’s nothing explicitly masculine about aggression or nobility. There’s nothing explicitly feminine about child rearing, except insofar as it is currently required for women to be the carriers of unborn children. Gender essentalism, however, assumes there are definitely gendered behaviors, such that chivalry is read as “male/masculine” and cowardice is read as “female/feminine.” If this association sounds negative, that’s because the construction of male/female or masculine/feminine is frequently a negative. These associations are also oriented around agency, where masculine behaviors are active and feminine behaviors are passive. There are all manner of gendered constructions, and each is based on arbitrary, culturally-determined factors. The impact of gender essentialism in this particular context is often unintended, but, by the nature of a culture’s ability to transmit its behavioral modes, it is also pervasive. We are all coded by our gender without ever having a say in the matter. My culture tells me I should behave in certain ways because that is what men do; it tells me there is a true form of manhood; and it tells me that I am deviant, even in an innocuous sense, if I do not conform to these standards. It’s that absence of agency which should make all of us pause. In effect, I am, as Louis Althusser might argue, interpellated by/into my culture’s gender paradigms as it codes my identify for me and I, as all children do, react by internalizing these values.[2] As I grew older, it became clear how pervasive and abusive these standards and values were. When I was told as a young man that I was not masculine (i.e., male enough) because I did not engage in feats of strength, it was implied that I must acquire that masculine behavior to properly assert my manhood. If I wasn’t into sports, I was naturally feminine. If I shared my emotions, I was more woman than man. In other words, my youth was a process of cultural assault, by which my behaviors had to be coded along gender lines, interpreted, and then rejected if they did not conform to the norm. This is not exactly a unique experience, either, though my examples above are certainly reductive. Women are told all manner of similar things, too, so I imagine I’m not wrong in asserting that the psychological impact of gender essentialism is rarely positive for any gender. It reinforces gender roles as fixed, when in fact they are anything but, and it shames those who do not conform by implicitly stripping them of their gender and assigning a new one. Thus, women who are aggressive are “manly.” A great genre example is Grace Jones’ performance of Zula in Conan the Destroyer (1984). Here, we’re presented with a woman who is every bit as aggressive and noble (or not) as Conan (Schwarzenegger). She wields spears and screams warcries as she cuts into enemies. She doesn’t shy from battle or give in to injury or the intimacy of others.[3] But she is definitively a woman, and expresses that behavior in ways particular to herself, not to her gender.[4] That she is the female opposite of Conan is not insignificant: she isn’t an enigma, but the embodiment of an anti-essentialist stance on gender (incomplete though that stance may be). Women can be warriors without becoming “men.” Women can be brutal and limited in their emotional expression without sacrificing their gender association. In other words, this idea that there are “gendered behaviors” in any pure or stable sense should seem absurd to all of us. We can easily point to examples whereat someone behaves contrary to their assigned gender, and yet in doing so, they do not cease to be whatever gender they so choose.[5] That’s the point I think more of us need to grasp in the SF/F/H community. If you want to write characters who behave like chivalrous knights, then do so. But there’s no reason to assume those characters must be male, or that their behaviors are masculine by nature. We can do without thinking in those terms. We’d certainly be better without it… ————————————————— [1]: Based on my interactions with Mr. Kemp, I think I am correct in saying that his post was ill-considered in certain respects. I understand what he is trying to say, but his methods for making that point were unintentionally sexist. Instead of saying “I like writing masculine stories because men,” he might have said “I like writing stories that feature these virtues and behaviors.” He might even have said he is most comfortable writing men, which is hardly an offense in my opinion. I, for example, am only semi-comfortable writing men, which might explain why many of my protagonists (in written, not published fiction) are women (or sometimes something other than straight white guys); whether my writing is good is a whole different question. In any case, it’s the fact that his post reinforces traditional gender roles and applies certain virtuous actions specifically to male behavior which poses the problem for most. [2]: This is a horrible reduction of Althusser’s work. I hope you’ll forgive me. [3]: In all fairness, she is perhaps naturally distrustful of others because she is treated quite poorly by the people of her world. I wish she had appeared in more Conan films, though. Zula is such a fascinating character, and easily one of my favorites. [4]: I should note that Zula was actually a man in the comic books. She may not be the best example to make my point, but I love her, so I’m sticking to it… [5]: I realize that there is some slipperiness in the
Link of the Week: Amal El-Mohtar Calls for the Expulsion of Theodore Beale from SFWA
You’ve probably already seen it, but if you haven’t, here you go. If you scroll down to the comments section, you can see a lot of other responses to the situation. In short, Theodore Beale (a.k.a. Vox Day) is our resident loud-mouthed racist and misogynist. This is not a bit of name calling. This is just established fact. The things he’s written about women and people of color so clearly define him as among the most vile minds among us that I’m surprised it took until Amal’s post to spark serious discussion about expelling him from the SFWA. Then again, I suppose this is the first time he’s explicitly broken “the rules.” And that’s the crux of the matter: Beale/Day used an official SFWA space to increase his readership (as opposed to N.K. Jemisin who gave a speech at a non-SFWA function), and in doing so, he turned SFWA’s voice into a loudspeaker for racism. It’s like the guy comes straight out of a D.W. Griffith film… I may have more to say about this whole thing later, but if not, there’s plenty of interesting stuff to read in Amal’s post alone. The links at the bottom of that post add a whole lot more. Anywhoodles.
SFWA, Sexism, and Progress (A Response to Jason Sanford)
(Note: I originally intended this as a short comment on this recent post by Jason Sanford. In his post, he basically suggests that the men in our field need to stand up and say “no” to sexism; his post is, I think quite obviously, a response to the SFWA Bulletin kerfluffle from this weekend, which he also wrote about here. Both of his posts are worth reading. In any case, my response will maintain its original format, so assume the “you” refers to Sanford.) I’ve found it rather frustrating to hear people defend some of these sexists (or people engaging in sexist activity) against attack (I’m not using any particular individual in this comment, even though I think it’s obvious that your post is in response to the SFWA Bulletin thing). They often say things like “attacking the person is wrong” or “they are really nice people” and so on and so forth. I don’t doubt that a lot of people who say or do sexist things don’t realize that what they’re doing is, in fact, sexist (not all, but some). Some of them have always done these things and probably haven’t been formally challenged before; their responses, in many cases, are not unusual in that respect. When you’ve done something your whole life, and have never been properly challenged for that behavior, a shift in the dialogue surrounding said behavior may seem like an attack on one’s person. I am, of course, speaking from my own assumptions and from my own experiences as someone who considered himself a pro-women’s-rights-but-not-a-feminist man who subscribed to a number of sexist concepts/ideas/assumptions without realizing they were sexist. Granted, I’ve never seriously suggested anything quite as batshit as we’ve seen among the radical contingent in SF/F (i.e., the Vox Days). But there comes a point at which we have to demand change. Just because you are a nice person and you do nice things for writers and what not is not an excuse for us to ignore other poor behavior. Bad behavior is bad behavior. Holding our tongues just because someone is a nice person or because it’s supposedly “civil” will not change that behavior. People who defend the sexists in our midst sometimes don’t understand that leaving such behavior unchallenged actually validates it. It reinforces the behavior. While it’s a nice thought to suggest that women should have stood up for themselves back in the day, we have to remember that a lot of the ideas we’ve seen raised in official SF/F platforms are descended from a time when women didn’t have the political authority to change things from the inside — not if they wanted careers in SF/F. In some respects, that’s still true (as you noted when you pointed to Ann Aguirre’s disheartening post about her treatment as a woman in our community — the hate mail is horrifying). SF/F is getting better, but it is not helped by leaving sexism or any nasty ism unchecked. And that means telling people off for shitty behavior. I’m not sure how you do that without making those individuals realize that there is a social cost for said behavior, which is where I tend to disagree with some defenders who call foul on ad hominem attacks — if the statement is true, then the fallacious form does not arise. Another thing that annoys me about this discussion is the odd, and sometimes occasional, double standard. For some reason, we’re supposed to accept sexist behavior as “something you wave off,” whereas other isms are unacceptable. If X spends an entire column saying anti-Semitic or clearly racist things, we are right to look down on that — you don’t talk about *insert racial slurs here* in our community without paying the social cost everyone else pays. But if X say a bunch of sexist things, suddenly you can’t go after them. We just have to realize they’re nice guys, and we should show them the same respect they…don’t show to women? (See N.K. Jemisin’s comment below for why everything in this paragraph is bullcrap.) I think that’s bullshit. There isn’t an easy way to point out sexism without going after the person. Behavior comes from within. Good people look at criticism of their behavior and learn from it. They don’t self-censor. They learn. I’ve learned a hell of a lot the last few years, despite having always been a feminist (sorta — see above). And it has made me a better person, because I recognized my own failings, my own sexist inclinations (inherited from a still largely sexist culture), and I worked on them. That’s not censorship. That’s not thought-policing. That’s what we do when we want to make for a better world. We try to be better people. I think it’s fair to say that you and I (or anybody) are not expecting perfection.* We are expecting some semblance of growth, though. It’s no longer acceptable to say “back in my day, we could do whatever we wanted and nobody said a thing.” That kind of logic allows one to support all manner of poor behaviors. Progress doesn’t happen when we are stuck in the past. It happens when we learn from the past and try to move towards something better. Humanity is an imperfect beast, and part of life, in my mind, is trying to reach the next step on the way to perfection. It’s like a ladder to the stars: each new rung brings us closer to the nearest star, until finally we reach it and realize there are other stars to reach, and so we continue putting up new rungs. I’m rambling. The point is that I agree with the notion that we all need to speak out against this behavior (though some of us never will). We need to support the people who have already spoken out, whether they are women or men. Sexism is wrong (obvious statement is obvious). No. It’s bullshit. We should call it out when we see
Video of the Week: Damsel in Distress 2 — Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (Feminists Rule!)
If you haven’t seen part one, go here. Otherwise, enjoy the continuation of Anita Sarkeesian’s brilliant series on women in video games.
Link of the Week: Judith Butler Explained with Cats!
This. I’d put the images up here, but that’s not fair to the individual who decided combining cats with Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble would result in pure, theoretical wonder. Enjoy!
Link of the Week: Strange Horizons’ 2012 SF Count!
If you haven’t seen it already, Strange Horizons recently released their assessment of the data for books reviewed and reviewers, divided by gender, at major SF review sources. It’s definitely worth checking out. (Yes, I mentioned this in my post on gender normativity earlier today.)