Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study and academic field devoted to gender identity and gendered representation as central categories of analysis. This field includes Women's studies (concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics), Men's studies, and LGBT studies.[1] Sometimes Gender studies is offered together with Study of Sexuality. These disciplines study gender and sexuality in the fields of literature and language, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, cinema and media studies, human development, law, and medicine.[2] It also analyses race, ethnicity, location, nationality, and disability.[3][4]
Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one".[5] This view proposes that in gender studies, the term "gender" should be used to refer to the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities, not to the state of being male or female in its entirety.[6] However, this view is not held by all gender theorists. Other areas of gender study closely examine the role that the biological states of being male or female have on social constructs of gender. Specifically, in what way gender roles are defined by biology and how they are defined by cultural trends. The field emerged from a number of different areas: the sociology of the 1950s and later (see Sociology of gender); the theories of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; and the work of feminists such as Judith Butler.
Gender is an important area of study in many disciplines, such as literary theory, drama studies, film theory, performance theory, contemporary art history, anthropology, sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis. These disciplines sometimes differ in their approaches to how and why they study gender. For instance in anthropology, sociology and psychology, gender is often studied as a practice, whereas in cultural studies representations of gender are more often examined. Gender studies is also a discipline in itself: an interdisciplinary area of study that incorporates methods and approaches from a wide range of disciplines.[7]
Each field came to regard "gender" as a practice, sometimes referred to as something that is performative.[8] Feminist theory of psychoanalysis, articulated mainly by Julia Kristeva[9] (the "semiotic" and "abjection") and Bracha Ettinger[10] (the feminine-prematernal-maternal matrixial Eros of borderlinking and com-passion,[11] "matrixial trans-subjectivity" and the "primal mother-phantasies"), and informed both by Freud, Lacan and the Object relations theory, is very influential in gender studies.
Some feminist critics have dismissed the work of Sigmund Freud as sexist, because of his view that women are 'mutilated and must learn to accept their lack of a penis' (in Freud's terms a "deformity").[12] On the other hand, feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin, Jane Gallop, Bracha Ettinger, Shoshana Felman, Griselda Pollock[13] and Jane Flax have argued that psychoanalytic theory is vital to the feminist project and must, like other theoretical traditions, be adapted by women to free it from vestiges of sexism. Shulamith Firestone, in "The Dialectic of Sex" calls Freudianism the misguided feminism and discusses how Freudianism is almost completely accurate, with the exception of one crucial detail: everywhere that Freud writes "penis", the word should be replaced with "power".
Lacan's theory of sexuation organizes femininity and masculinity according to different unconscious structures. Both male and female subjects participate in the "phallic" organization, and the feminine side of sexuation is "supplementary" and not opposite or complementary.[14] Sexuation (sexual situation) — the development of gender-roles and role-play in childhood — breaks down concepts of gender identity as innate or biologically determined. (clarify-refutes?challenges?)[15] Critics like Elizabeth Grosz accuse Jacques Lacan of maintaining a sexist tradition in psychoanalysis.[16] Others, such as Judith Butler, Bracha Ettinger and Jane Gallop have used Lacanian work, though in a critical way, to develop gender theory.[17][18][19]
Main article:
Julia KristevaJulia Kristeva has significantly developed the field of semiotics. In her work on abjection, she structures subjectivity upon the abjection of the mother and argues that the way in which an individual excludes (or abjects) their mother as means of forming an identity is similar to the way in which societies are constructed. She contends that patriarchal cultures, like individuals, have to exclude the maternal and the feminine so that they can come into being.[20]
Bracha Ettinger transformed subjectivity in contemporary psychoanalysis since the early 1990s with the Matrixial[21] feminine-maternal and prematernal Eros[11] of borderlinking (bordureliance), borderspacing (bordurespacement) and co-emergence. The matrixial feminine difference defines a particular gaze[22] and it is a source for trans-subjectivity and transjectivity.[23] in both males and females.
Main article:
Mark BlechnerMark Blechner expanded psychoanalytic views of sex and gender, calling psychoanalysis "the once and future queer science".[24] He has argued that there is a "gender fetish" in western society, in which the gender of sexual partners is given enormously disproportionate attention over other factors involved in sexual attraction, such as age and social class. He proposes that the words "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" be given prefixes, depending on the dimension that is the same or different between partners.[25] "Age heterosexuality" would indicate an attraction between people of different ages, for example. What is conventionally called "heterosexuality" (attraction between a man and a woman) would be called "gender heterosexuality".
Cultures can have very different norms of maleness and masculinity. Blechner identifies the terror, in Western males, of penetration. Yet in many societies, being gay is defined only by being a male who lets himself be penetrated. Males who penetrate other males are considered masculine and not gay and are not the targets of prejudice.[26] In other cultures, however, receptive fellatio is the norm for early adolescence and seen as a requirement for developing normal manliness.[27]
Psychoanalytically oriented French feminism focused on visual and literary theory all along. Virginia Woolf's legacy as well as "Adrienne Rich's call for women's revisions of literary texts, and history as well, has galvanized a generation of feminist authors to reply with texts of their own".[28] Griselda Pollock and other femininsts have articulated Myth and Poetry[29] and literature,[29][30][31] from the point of view of gender.
The emergence of post-feminism affected gender studies,[15] causing a movement in theories identity away from the concept of fixed or essentialist gender identity, to post-modern[32] fluid or multiple identities.[33]
See Donna Haraway, The Cyborg Manifesto, as an example of post-identity feminism.
More recently, the relation between post-modernism or post-structuralism and masculinity has been considered. Masculinity can be taken as always in movement and never fixed or stable. See Reeser, Masculinities in Theory (2010) for a comprehensive overview of this approach.
After the revolution of the universal suffrage of the 20 th Century and the women´s liberation movement of the 1970´s promoted a revision from the feminists to "actively interrogate" the usual and accepted versions of the History as it was known at the time. New way of looking at history came out of the analysis. This gave birth to the Gender History studies.[1]
Women's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. It often includes feminist theory, women's history (e.g. a history of women's suffrage) and social history, women's fiction, women's health, feminist psychoanalysis and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences.
Main article:
Men's studiesMen's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning men, masculism, gender, and politics. It often includes masculist theory, men's history and social history, men's fiction, men's health, masculist psychoanalysis and the masculist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences. Key theoretical contributions reconciling the relationship between masculist/feminist interpretation of gender studies include Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men[34] by Dr Warren Farrell and James Sterba, and Gendering, Courtship and Pay Equality by Dr Rory Ridley-Duff.[35][36]
Main article:
Judith ButlerThe concept of gender performativity is at the core of Butler's work, notably in Gender Trouble. In Butler’s terms the performance of gender, sex, and sexuality is about power in society.[8] She locates the construction of the "gendered, sexed, desiring subject" in "regulative discourses". A part of Butler's argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of "natural" or coherent gender and sexuality. In her account, gender and heterosexuality are constructed as natural because the opposition of the male and female sexes is perceived as natural in the social imaginary.[8]
Historian and theorist Bryan Palmer argues that gender studies current reliance on poststructuralism — with its reification of discourse and avoidance of the structures of oppression and struggles of resistance — obscures the origins, meanings, and consequences of historical events and processes, and he seeks to counter the current gender studies with an argument for the necessity to analyze lived experience and the structures of subordination and power.[37]
Pope Benedict XVI has denounced some of the gender theories, warning that they blur the distinction between male and female and could thus lead to the "self-destruction" of the human race.[38][39]
Rosi Braidotti has criticized gender studies as: "the take-over of the feminist agenda by studies on masculinity, which results in transferring funding from feminist faculty positions to other kinds of positions. There have been cases...of positions advertised as 'gender studies' being given away to the 'bright boys'. Some of the competitive take-over has to do with gay studies. Of special significance in this discussion is the role of the mainstream publisher Routledge who, in our opinion, is responsible for promoting gender as a way of deradicalizing the feminist agenda, re-marketing masculinity and gay male identity instead."[citation needed] Calvin Thomas countered that, "as Joseph Allen Boone points out, 'many of the men in the academy who are feminism's most supportive 'allies' are gay,'" and that it is "disingenuous" to ignore the ways in which mainstream publishers such as Routledge have promoted feminist theorists.[citation needed]
References
- ^ "Gender Studies". Whitman College. http://www.whitman.edu/content/genderstudies. Retrieved May 01, 2012.
- ^ "About - Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS)". The University of Chicago. http://gendersexuality.uchicago.edu/about/. Retrieved May 01, 2012.
- ^ Healey, J. F. (2003). "Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class: the Sociology of Group Conflict and Change".
- ^ "Department of Gender Studies". Indiana University (IU Bloomington). http://www.indiana.edu/~gender/. Retrieved May 01, 2012.
- ^ de Beauvoir, S. (1949, 1989). "The Second Sex".
- ^ Garrett, S. (1992). "Gender", p. vii.
- ^ Essed, Philomena; Goldberg, David Theo; Kobayashi, Audrey (2009). A Companion to Gender Studies. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-8808-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZPgYDTa9P84C&dq=genders+studies&source=gbs_navlinks_s. Retrieved 7 November 2011.
- ^ a b c Butler, J. (1999). "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity", 9.
- ^ Anne-Marie Smith, Julia Kristeva: Speaking the Unspeakable (Pluto Press, 1988)
- ^ Griselda Pollock, "Inscriptions in the Feminine" and "Introduction" to "The With-In-Visible Screen", in: Inside the Visible edited by Catherine de Zegher. MIT Press, 1996.
- ^ a b Bracha L. Ettinger, "Diotima and the Matrixial Transference: Psychoanalytical Encounter-Event as Pregnancy in Beauty." In: Van der Merwe, Chris N., and Viljoen, Hein, eds. Across the Threshold. NY: Peter Lang, 2007
- ^ Karen Horney was one of the first to question the theory of penis envy. She argues that it is "the actual social subordination of women" that shapes their development: not the lack of the organ, but of the privilege that goes with it. Karen Horney (1922). "On the Genesis of the Castration Complex in Women" Psychoanalysis and Women. Ed. J.B. Miller. New York: Bruner/Mazel, 1973.
- ^ Griselda Pollock, Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive. Routledge. 2007.
- ^ Lacan, J. (1973). Encore. Paris: Seuil, 1975.
- ^ a b Wright, E. (2003). "Lacan and Postfeminism (Postmodern Encounters)"
- ^ Grosz, E. (1990). "Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction", London: Routledge
- ^ Butler, J. (1999). "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity".
- ^ Ettinger, B. (Collected Essays from 1994–1999). "The Matrixial Borderspace", University of Minnesota Press, 2006
- ^ Gallop, J. (1993). "The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysi", Cornell University Press
- ^ Kristeva, J. (1982). "Powers of Horror"
- ^ Bracha L. Ettinger, "Matrix and Metramorphosis." In: Differences. Vol. 4, nº 3: 176–208, 1992
- ^ Bracha L. Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006 (articles from 1994-1999).ISBN 0-8166-3587-0
- ^ Bracha L. Ettinger, "Matrixial Trans-subjectivity" in: Problematizing Global Knowledge. Theory, Culture and Society, Volum 23, Numbers 2-3, 2006.ISSN 0263-2764
- ^ Blechner, M. J. (2009) 'Sex Changes: Transformations in Society and Psychoanalysis.' New York and London: Taylor & Francis.
- ^ Blechner, M. J. (1995) The shaping of psychoanalytic theory and practice by cultural and personal biases about sexuality. In T. Domenici and R. Lesser, (eds.) 'Disorienting Sexuality.' New York: Routledge, pp. 265–288.
- ^ Blechner, M. J. (1998) Maleness and masculinity. 'Contemporary Psychoanalysis,' 34:597–613.
- ^ Herdt, G. (1981) 'Guardians of the Flute.' New York: McGraw-Hill.
- ^ Mica Howe & Sarah A. Aguier (eds.). He said, She Says. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001.
- ^ a b Vanda Zajko & Miriam Leonard (eds.). Laughing with Medusa. Oxford University Press, 2006.
- ^ Humm, Maggie, Modernist Women and Visual Cultures. Rutgers University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8135-3266-3
- ^ Nina Cornietz, Dangerous Women, Deadly Words. Stanford University Press, 1999.
- ^ Grebowicz, M. (2007). Gender After Lyotard. NY: Suny Press, 2007.
- ^ Benhabib, S. (1995). "Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange" and Butler, J. (1995) "Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange".
- ^ Farrell, W. & Sterba, J. (2008) Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men, New York: Oxford University Press
- ^ Ridley-Duff, R. J. (2008) "Gendering, Courtship and Pay Equity: Developing Attraction Theory to Understand Work-Life Balance and Entrepreneurial Behaviour", paper to the 31st ISBE Conference, 5th–7th November, Belfast
- ^ Ridley-Duff, R. J. (2010) Emotion, Seduction and Intimacy: Alternative Perspectives on Human Behaviour (Third Edition), Seattle: Libertary Editions ISBN 978-1-935961-00-0
- ^ Bryan Palmer, "Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History", Trent University (Peterborough, Canada)
- ^ News.com.au
- ^ http://www.zenit.org/article-24652?l=english
Bibliography
- Armstrong, Carol and de Zegher, Catherine (eds) (2006). Women Artists as the Millennium. Cambridge Massachusetts: October Books, MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01226-3 . OCLC 62766150.
- Boone, Joseph Allen and Michael Cadden, eds., 1990. Engendering Men, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90255-X . OCLC 20992567.
- Butler, Judith, 1993. "Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex", New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-90366-1 . OCLC 27897792.
- Butler, Judith, "Feminism by Any Other Name", in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies June, 1994. ISSN 1040-7391
- Butler, Judith, 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-92499-5 . OCLC 41326734.
- Cante, Richard C. (March 2008). Gay Men and the Forms of Contemporary US Culture. London: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 0-7546-7230-1. OCLC 173218594.
- Cárdenas, Micha and Barbara Fornssler, 2010. Trans Desire/Affective Cyborgs. New York: Atropos press. ISBN 0-9825309-9-4
- Cranny-Francis, Anne, Joan Kirkby, Pam Stavropoulos, Wendy Waring, eds., 2003. "Gender studies: terms and debates", Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-77612-7 . OCLC 50645644.
- De Beauvoir, Simone, 1989. The Second Sex. New York: random House Inc. ISBN 0-679-72451-6 . OCLC 20905133.
- Ettinger, Bracha L., 2001. "The Red Cow Effect", Reprinted in: Mica Howe & Sarah A. Aguiar (eds.), He Said, She Says. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. 57–88. ISBN 0-8386-3915-1 . OCLC 46472137.
- Farrell, W., 1994. The Myth of Male Power: Why Men are the Disposable Sex, New York: Berkley Books.
- Ettinger, Bracha L., 2006 (Essays 1994–1999). The Matrixial Borderspace, University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-3587-0 . OCLC 62177997.
- Ettinger, Bracha L., 2006. "From Proto-ethical Compassion to Responsibility: Besidedness, and the three Primal Mother-Phantasies of Not-enoughness, Devouring and Abandonment". Athena: Philosophical Studies. Vol. 2. ISSN 1822-5047.
- Foucault, Michel, 1988. "Care of the Self the History of Sexuality", Random House Inc. ISBN 0-394-74155-2 . OCLC 20521501.
- Foucault, Michel, 1990. "History of Sexuality: An Introduction", London: Random House Inc. ISBN 0-679-72469-9 . OCLC 5102034.
- Foucault, Michel, 1990. "Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality", London: Random House Inc. ISBN 0-394-75122-1 . OCLC 5102034.
- Foucault, Michel, 1995. "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison", translated by Allen Sheridan, London: Random House ISBN 0-679-75255-2 . OCLC 32367111.
- Fraser, Nancy, Judith Butler, Seyla Benhabib, and Drucilla Cornell, 1995. "Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange", New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-91086-2 . OCLC 30623637.
- Frug, Mary Joe. "A Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto (An Unfinished Draft)", in "Harvard Law Review", Vol. 105, No. 5, March, 1992, pp. 1045–1075. ISSN: 0017-811X
- Grebowicz, Margaret, (2007). Gender After Lyotard. NY: Suny Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-6956-9 . OCLC 63472631.
- Healey, Joseph F., 2003. Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class: the Sociology of Group Conflict and Change. London: Pine Forge. ISBN 0-7619-8763-0 . OCLC 50604843.
- Kristeva, Julia, 1982. "Powers of Horror. Trans. Leon Roudiez", New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-05347-9 . OCLC 8430152.
- Farrell, W., Sterba, J. "Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? A Debate", New York: Oxford University Press.
- Kahlert, Heike / Schäfer, Sabine (eds.): Engendering Transformation. Post-socialist Experiences on Work, Politics and Culture. Opladen, Berlin, London, Toronto: Barbara Budrich Publishers 2012, ISBN 978-3-86649-422-0.
- Palmer, Bryan D., "Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History", Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-87722-720-9 . OCLC 233030494.
- Pinker, Susan, 2008. The Sexual Paradox: Extreme Men, Gifted Women and the Real Gender Gap. Random. ISBN 0-679-31415-6 . OCLC 181078409.
- Pollock, Griselda, 2001. "Looking Back to the Future". G&B Arts. ISBN 90-5701-132-8. OCLC 42875273.
- Pollock, Griselda, 2007. Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-41374-5 . OCLC 129952714.
- Ridley-Duff, R. J., 2005. Interpersonal Dynamics: A Communitarian Perspective, paper to MCA-ENROAC Conference, Antwerp. 7–9 April. [2]
- Ridley-Duff, R. J., 2007. Emotion, Seduction and Intimacy: Alternative Perspectives on Organisation Behaviour, Bracknell: Men's Hour Books, ISBN 978-0-9754300-1-9, [3]
- Wright, Elizabeth, 2000. Lacan and Postfeminism. London: Icon Books Ltd. ISBN 1-84046-182-9 . OCLC 44484099.
- McElroy, Wendy, 2001. Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on Women, Jefferson: McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-0226-1 . OCLC 34839792.
- Oyewumi, Oyeronke, ed., 2005. African Gender Studies: A Reader, London: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 1-4039-6283-9 .
- Reeser, Todd W. Masculinities in Theory (Malden: Wylie-Blackwell, 2010).
- Scott, Joan W. "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis", in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
- Spector, Judith A, ed., 1986. Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminist Criticism, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-87972-351-3 .
- Thomas, Calvin, ed., 2000. "Introduction: Identification, Appropriation, Proliferation", in Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06813-0 .
- Zajko, Vanda and Leonard, Miriam, 2006. "Laughing with Medusa". Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-927438-X .
- de Zegher, Catherine (ed.) (1996). Inside the Visible. MIT Press, Boston. . ISBN 0-262-54081-9. OCLC 33863951.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| History |
|
|
| Variants |
|
|
| Concepts |
|
|
| Theory |
|
|
| By country |
|
|
| Lists & Indexes |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pre-modern era
|
|
|
|
16th to 19th century
|
|
|
|
20th century
|
|
|
|
21st century
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
![[icon]](http://web.archive.org./web/20130905132109/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small}
