Grappling with the Patriarchy, Socially and Economically

On November 1, 2019 By vaxjonesIn VaxLeave a comment

According to Critical Theory Today, the big concern in materialist feminism is how women are economically and socially oppressed (Tyson, 93-94). Colette Guillaumin notes that women are expected to give up their personal time and the products of their bodies (hair, milk, children), while being obligated to provide sex to men and care to their family members (cited in Tyson, 95). This is made more complicated by considering class as well; for example, higher class women do less domestic work than lower class women due to the ability to hire paid help. However, all women experience this appropriation, as Guillaumin calls it, to some extent. My interest is in how women subvert, exploit, or otherwise rage against the expectation that they are supposed to give, give, give to men.

There is a compelling line in the materialist feminism section of the text that inspired me: “Women’s sexual obligation to men occurs in both marriage and in prostitution. For Guillaumin, the primary difference between the two is that time limits are placed on a man’s use of prostitutes, and he has to pay for the specific acts he wants” (Tyson, 95). Within the patriarchy, we see a limiting duality to womanhood: “good girl” or “bad girl.” Now the bad girl, the whore, is socially disparaged, but this quote suggests she has more economic power than her counterpart because men have to meet her on her terms. This is precisely why she’s disparaged, because the patriarchal male considers her a threat to his absolute power (Tyson 86). So the text gave me one very overt answer to my question, but the thing that snagged me is that prostitutes do not have much social power. The choice between “good girl” and “bad girl” seems to be a choice between which appropriations to attempt to reclaim, the social ones or the economic ones. We know women are not actually this dichotomy, but how do they present their complexities in a way that men are forced to acknowledge? Better yet, is that even possible under a patriarchy?

This week, I looked for my answers in Thelma & Louise, and I came to the tentative conclusion that this is possible for women to achieve this presentation, but it is difficult to sustain. In Thelma & Louise, Thelma starts out as the “good girl,” keeping house and submitting to her asshole husband’s authority. She has little independence from him, and she’s expected to put all her time and energy into tending to his lifestyle needs. Meanwhile, Louise is more of the “bad girl.” While not a prostitute, she supports herself, and she has agency outside of a man from the beginning. This dichotomy quickly starts to break down once, as neither woman fits wholly into either type of women. Thelma cheats on her husband and robs gas stations, completely flipping her social and economic “goodness” on their head. At the same time, Louise asks her boyfriend for a loan and tries to figure out a solution to their problems. This comes to a head at the end of the movie. The audience knows that Thelma and Louise are complex people… and then they die. More precisely, the process through which their humanity and personhood came to light leave them in a place where choosing to die is better than any alternative.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. 3^rded., Routledge, 2015.

Thelma & Louise. Directed by Ridley Scott, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayers Studios Inc., 1991.

Feminist Criticism and the STEM push

On November 1, 2019 By lausou17In LaurenLeave a comment

One of the biggest places where I’ve seen a big feminist perspective is in science and math in schools. In the Feminist criticism chapter of Critical Theory Today, Tyson focuses heavily on what girls are told they can and cannot do as children. (Tyson 82-83) Her biggest example is the subject of mathematics and how most girls are told that they will never be good at math and don’t need to study the subject. (Tyson 83) While this may have been true for Tyson’s childhood, it was certainly not true for mine.

As I was going through school, I was experiencing the culture shift from pushing girls away from math and sciences to pushing them into it. Throughout middle and high school, teachers and administrators would push the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program onto as many students as they could. My little sister’s class had a huge focus on computer programing. Our culture seems to have gone through a huge shift in the past few decades, from telling women that their place is in the home and doing domestic work to actively encouraging young girls to seek employment in fields where they would not have been welcome a generation ago. Many people have criticized the science, engineering, and computer programing fields as being too male dominated and as it being a place that women need to break into. My school advertise these subjects by telling the female population of the school that they would have more opportunity in those fields because of how male-dominated they were. My high school specialized in their STEM program and had a focus on ‘getting girls into STEM.’ They would tell girls that they could do STEM related careers just as well as their male counterparts.

This shift falls under feminist criticism because of the focus on making sure that women in this field are becoming seen, heard, and celebrated. Women who go into these fields are seen as rebelling against the patriarchy because they are making a space for women in a previously all male space. This new enthusiasm for women in STEM is also trying to dismantle the sexism that was previously present in these fields, such as Tyson experiencing young girls being told they couldn’t do math. It is promoting women’s equality by showing that women can excel across a variety of different fields and by creating workspaces that have a more equal division of genders in STEM related fields. I find this criticism so interesting because of how quickly it took effect. Just with in the past two generations, it was odd for a woman to have a job that wasn’t nursing or teaching, but now we are heavily encouraging our young girls to pursue as many career paths as are available to them.

Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

Elevator Speech – Gender roles and power in Shakespeare

On October 1, 2019 By lausou17In LaurenLeave a comment

For my potential project, I want to look at Shakespeare’s plays and how men and women use power differently. I know we haven’t looked at feminist theory yet, but its still something I want to use. I have noticed in many of Shakespeare’s plays, men tend to show their power through their actions while women tend to show their power through words. Like how in the Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio shows his power over Katherine by forcing her into marriage, but Katherine shows her power over Petruchio by mocking him. Or how in Richard III, Queen Margaret, who is supposed to be a very powerful figure, has to show her power over Richard by verbally cursing him multiple times, while Richard just murders people. My topic is the how gender in Shakespeare’s plays. My question is how gender affects the way the characters show that power. My response is that gender causes male and female characters to show power differently because of their gender. A critical article that I could potentially look at is “Silence, Speech and Gender in Shakespeare’s Othello: A Presentist, Palestinian Perspective” by Bilal M.T. Hamamra. It looks at the different ways that male and female characters speak in Shakespeare’s Othello and could really help me draw a distinction between the speech and actions of the characters in that specific play.

Bilal M.T. Hamamra. “Silence, Speech and Gender in Shakespeare’s Othello: A Presentist, Palestinian Perspective.” International Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, no. 4, 2015, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsdoj&AN=edsdoj.107b55b5158489cbcfbde6fd2f00246&site=eds-live.

Found with OneSearch from the Washington College Library and Academic Technology page.