Why is gender such a huge thing? Why are there such dramatic differences, and for that matter so many ways in which genders differentiate themselves? Who does it serve? For some it’s clear. For some it’s not. “The Five Sexes" and “Doing Gender” look at where gender identities are birthed and what flaws are innate to them. They do so by examining gender as a social construct. And they make the reader challenge their notions of where gender comes from and it’s concreteness. And they do so convincingly. The question of, “what’s in it for me?” may really be at the heart of why gender roles are so emphasized in the world. The way I am describing this may have struck you as somewhat vague. I am not using the language of “patriarchy” and that of being “hand-cuffed by socially enlisted gender constraints” or talking about “male perpetuated systemic violence.” And, I am doing so because of two women I have never met. Two women in my wife’s graduate program who evidently are “post-feminist.” They ascribe to the thinking that these notions are bunk and have no relevance. And I just can’t understand how this is possible. So, I thought, maybe vagaries are the way to introduce the ideas. These two essays may be the perfect stating point for this conversation. Just the fact that gender is in reality “done” (not as in finished but as in acted out), may allow some to consider its flaws.
Having lived in the quagmire that is living as an undocumented immigrant, Jose Antonio Vargas has first hand knowledge of his subject matter. He can not only espouse his expertise but use his life to make his points. For instance, Vargas tried, best he could, to loose his accent. he was paranoid and stressed about his place in the country. He validated his life in the US by speaking and writing the language. These fears were not so out of step as he tells us how at the time Gov. Pete Wilson was re-elected partly for his support for a bill that would have prohibited undocumented immigrants from attending public school.
Shereen El Feki rebukes the Clash of Civilisations model propelled by the NYT's Thomas Freidman and Samual P Huntington, author of the book of the same name. Tariq Ali's Clash of Fundamentalisms provided a sound framework for where the conflict that no doubt exists, likely comes from, while El Feki through her description of "cross-cultural hybridization," demonstrates the ways in which the Arab and Western world overlap. For centuries the two worlds have intermingled and influenced one another. The two fundamentalist religious populations have not only been at odds with each other; they have created conflict within their respective cultures. The myopic boxes Huntington forces the Arab and Western worlds into discounts years of history and in some way lacks cultural nuance. Poverty, injustice, lack of education, and dark-ages-patriarchal-constructs seem to fuel radical fundamentalism in both cultures. Examining how our similar radical fundamentalist mindsets come in to popularity is a far more helpful tack. To view our cultures as a whole as at odds with each other leaves us with no where to go but down. El Feki does us a service by turning our attention towards our similarities and our common hopes for a better future.
We have of course seen fashion and popular culture travel around the globe since the beginning of the spice trade. The western business suit has become the de facto attire among most of the world's male business and political class. 19th century's empires left behind their customs and cuisines after their overreach has subsided, with the Bahn Mi sandwich being one of my favorite examples. The Tango is danced all over the world. Michael Jackson, end of story. Not all of these influences are so benign. The western construct of modern warfare has delved many a nation into unrest and suffering. Technologies through out history, such as the gun, as they develop are not sanitized of their cultural origins. Any bit of technology that gains popularity around the world no doubt carries with it on its underbelly the barnacles of the society from whence it came. Here in the US, one could assert, we are the supreme benefactors of this "cross-cultural hybridization." With our history of immigration, the melting pot of America has the benefit of simmering all our peoples differences till our distinct flavors come together to a savory aroma. The hegemonic stature the US has held for so many years has not only enabled the country to steer the world, good or bad, toward a western dominated culture, but also to usurp attributes that enrich it along the way. When you have recent immigrants contributing to the American Literature, the more intrenched culture gains new insights into themselves through their fresh dialogues. Maxine Hong Kingston, Jose Antonio Vargas, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Geeta Kothari pieces all in subtle and not so subtle ways give us insights into our own lives while bringing the insights of their origins into our subconscious. Whether we see it or not in he hybridization The short film "All You Need is Love?" is a smart reversal of the dominant position heterosexuals play in our world. Ashley is a young girl realizing she is a heterosexual in a dominantly homosexual world. The film is a great little switch for folks, especially young people, not able to see the insanity required in disparaging, not accepting, and bullying folks who don't align with their values or help them see that their values are skewed.
The film highlights the need kids have for at least one place where they can find support, love, and refuge. When there is no support at home, then it has to be found in someone at school, or somewhere else. Growing up as any kind of bullied outcast, one is likely doomed if love is conditional everywhere they look for it. Even though she had it extremely rough during her high school years, a friend of mine really saved her own life by running away from home. She stayed out all night with us and got in to trouble; she robbed a bank at one point. But the only way she was able to leave her growingly-abusive-pastor father, was with the support of her friends and her much older girlfriend, who's apartment provided refuge. Getting in trouble the way she did got her help and mental health services her parents never would have let her find. The title "All You Need is Love?" strikes at the many religious institutions around the world that purport to perpetuate the love of their savior or god or what have you. I am no theologian and have not read a great deal of religious texts. Whether the conditions for this love are in there or not, I don't know, but it is clear that there are followers who see them and those who don't (or at least pay them less attention.) I think, the people who see these conditions on love, and acceptance are, more likely than not, struggling with the conditions that were put on the love they received growing up. The elders pain gets passed on to our kids and will continue to be a cancer, until it is honestly reflected on, felt in earnest and accepted. I have to return to the idea of the American Dream. "The Discovery of What it Means to be an American" by James Baldwin is perfectly pertinent to the current day American. I suppose this is the mark of a quintessential American work. Though he doesn't address it outright to a large degree he comments on what we still refer to as the American Dream. Here we view ourselves as infinitely mobile. There is no glass ceiling in America. One's hard work and ingenuity can unlock any door as far as it will Take him. Baldwin writes:
We must, however, consider a rather serious paradox: though American society is more mobile than Europe's, it is easier to cut across social and occupational lines there than it is here. This has something to do, I think, with the problem of status in American life. Where everyone has status, it is also perfectly possible, after all, that no one has. It seems inevitable, in any case, that a man may become uneasy as to just what his status is. The myth of the American Dream you see turns social divisions into a false meritocracy. Th unequal distribution of wealth is due to the hard work of some and the extreme laziness of others. The gap salaries between women and men is explainable in some rationale. Levels of incarceration of the nations minorities are just. Status in America holds, therefore, a far more weighty definition as it is directly related to our willingness to put in a hard days work and our innate talents. Status in Europe being a notion so long entrenched and outwardly accepted loses much of its gravity. Furthermore when status is supposedly such a fluid notion as it is thought of by Americans it creates a "social paranoia" that puts at odds with everyone around us with whom we are in competition with in our quest for upward mobility. Any difference between us is is easily disparaged. Yet paradoxically we are supposed to be on equal footing. The perpetuation of the Dream hinders our ability for national introspection. Writers, artists, academics, all those critical thinkers doing the heavy lifting come up against "a very deep-seated distrust of real intellectual effort (probably because we suspect that it will destroy, as I hope it does, that myth of America to which we cling so desperately.)" Living in Paris for Baldwin let him free from all his constraints. He allowed himself to relish his otherness as a Negro in America and intern realize his otherness of that of an American in Paris. Often it is only by way of changing our local can we gain insight into our many otherness' intricacies. Here Baldwin elevates our understanding of what it means to live in America as one of any othernesses Is identity malleable? Is it moldable? These are yes and no type questions. People, especially in this country are obsessed with being remade or reborn. To some degree that is precisely what the US was founded on. The American Dream is the dream of remaking one self in a new light on new soil with all the tools for the task at your disposal. Whether or not such transformation is real is in the eye of the beholder or maybe in the mind of the convincer or convincible.
Because though people are capable of remaking themselves to their liking they still carry inside their roots so to speak. Identity can be looked at, as two sides of a coin. How others see oneself and how oneself sees oneself. Either side I suppose is moldable but not necessarily in the same way or even in the way one might hope. When living in New York I suppose I saw myself as a New Yorker to some degree. Whether others saw me the same way is doubtful. My wife who grew up in New York City was often mistaken for a non-native just by virtue of how she carries herself. Outside her hometown I think most aren't surprised to hear she's a Brooklyner. Maybe I misconstrue image with identity. But again how can the two really be separated? If how one is treated is so linked with their, what I'll call image. And how one is treated very much influences ones identity. In fact outside pressures shape and change ones identity all the time. Our experiences in the world create it. Our own agency in the matter is all contingent on our own will and what outside forces we are up against Identity can be looked at as linked with a sense of home I suppose. New York is a city of immigrants historically and currently. Some who move there like me in my early 20s feel like they are coming home in a way. Some who move there find themselves identifying even more with their roots. They over exemplify their westcoastness or their Italianness more so than they might of back in their "hometown." Myself having lived in New York for so long have this kind of feeling even though I am back in my actual "hometown!" People might find me delusional. They may be correct. But in my defense it doesn't feel like a contrived notion. I don't walk around shouting "baada-bing!" My time their just left such an impression on me I suppose. But its not just so simple. Identity can be split. Stretched across continents and seas. Always tinged with a little grief, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes excruciating. My Identity is also rapped up in the North Coast of Oregon where I spent a second majority of my time growing up and where my family has at least shallow roots. I can't think of anywhere else where I breath more deeply, feel more at home. But there to my friends I am no doubt a New Yorker, This week we read two works that relate to the authors personal or familial and public identities, one by Amy Tan and one by Richard Rodriguez.
They both really dealt with their youth. Childhood is the time when we become who we are so to say, or at least really examine it. It is such an intense time that often seems so slow going. All one can really do is work on formulating their identity. It does make me think of people who may have lost their childhood from having to work or through some tragedy. Both the authors palette for painting the picture of their childhood is well formed. Writing about their lives no doubt has given them insights far beyond those of us who have not had or taken the time to ponder the subject. I find myself mourning Rodriguez' loss to some degree of his spanish tongue. 'If only they just spoke a bit!' He doesn't relate the sentiment. He is him self, Richard Rodriguez. His public self to some degree became his private self. What he does remorse is the loss of his private life in the early days of his youth. Maybe for him he couldn't regain that with language. Besides the point about her public face presented after her death, I struggled somewhat with what he was trying to say with the story about his grandmother, a beautiful anecdote. Maybe what he is saying is that its the people and the memory of the people who show him back to his self. His grandmother did pass when he was nine, sort of the same time he was discovering his new fully cultivated public self. Dealing with being an outsider is another major theme of the two essays. Of course when else but childhood is this more intense. Maybe parenthood? The parents in the essays struggle so much with their desire to put their kids in the best position in life, while dealing with their own inadequacies as an immigrant. The American Dream is a powerful, powerful draw. The people who maybe came here buying in to the idea, first of all must be a special kind, and must have had so much hope for the things America held possible. So I dare say the children of those folks, who are many of us, have a lot of explaining to do when they are forced to live in the America of Reality rather than the one of Dreams. It must be tough to see ones children as the first truly "american" person one gets to intimately know. So what do the pieces say of their identity? The authors certainly don't shy away from their past. They uplift it. It seems to have given them a better sense of who they are. For Amy Tan her mother was an adversary, a loving one in ways, but an adversary nonetheless for her to push against and by doing so find her limits and passion. Rodriguez developed a keen awareness from living in his two worlds, as well as stout positions regarding who we are and as Americans. As we then get older, and watch our parents age, as the authors do in their pieces, we reconcile our childhood struggles with identity, or hopefully so, to become who we are. This reconciliation can be a painful process and a cloudy endeavor. I had to look up the dictionary meaning of "identity" a number of times while writing this. I keep looking for some elusive quality to tell me "oh thats what it is!" But I still haven't found it. This speaks to "identity's" importance to me and I think us as maybe Americans. I don't know I can only speak for myself. Does everyone regard it with such importance? Do some just look at the word and say: "oh it's just some distinguishing characteristics blah blah, no big whoop"? But I can't seem to get over just what the hell do I say when asked of my identity?! Maybe the exercise is to get to the point of "it's no biggie." "We are all one!" But I feel its evident when you meet someone who lacks that 'sense of identity' or is questioning it. But what is it they lack? As parents I think it may become especially important because we want to instill it in our kids, that confidence Rich-heard's parents wanted to instill in him. That which was evident in the voices of the gringos. Or in Amy's high flying piano antics. But confidence isn't the whole story. It can be false. It can also be broken while one's identity remains intact. So where does our identity lay? Maybe in the story. Maybe in our past, we are what we do. Maybe inside the people we hold dear. Rodriguez' Granny no doubt had no words for the store clerk, but Richard did, and I bet she had the poise. I have never actually been to a meeting, but in AA they say you have to hit bottom to want to get clean. The Utopias I can think of in science fiction literature often seem to reside in resource starved waste lands, or places where people learn to coexist after eons of conflict and destruction of their once beautiful far off planets. It is troubling that to some degree my imagination, either stuck on these tales or genuinely caught up in the destitution of present day, has a hard time conjuring up a utopia that isn't similar to an Ursula K LeGuin novel, or at least a utopia that isn't in actuality really bland.
All I can hope for is a world where as Plato said our "elected" leaders 'must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark' and not command the republic only to enrich themselves. A world where oh maybe after 200 years the country in which I was born could simply have the decency to look honestly at from where it came to be. A world where the physical sciences were distinguished apart from the political mire. Where all pupils were allowed to explore the humanities so as to ponder the human condition and find their ethical bearing (note: you can't do this in abject poverty). A world where our consistently upward trending productivity actually raised the standard of living for everybody instead of lining the pockets of a few. A world where sexuality was looked at in a whole different and magnanimous light. Where power was not held over anyone, a no gods, no monsters kind of thing. A real democracy would be a start, at least to try it out. Suppose I said that already. I would like my grandchildren, if I am blessed with them, to see a glacier when they look at Mt Hood, to fish an abundant healthy toxin free salmon fishery. To enjoy the north coast air without coal pollution form across the Pacific. I'd like to take a high speed train to said coast rather than drive my old car. (Sounds like I'll be on the coast in my utopia, check.) Transportation won't be rolled in with our identity. Its fucking transportation. People got sick of horse manure on the road back when. I'm sick of fretting over the future of the planet. Oh yeah guns, they are useful, hunting blah blah I've done it, fun and tasty, but if your hobby has laid to rest over 31,000 people in 2012, consider model trains. 34,000 traffic deaths by the way too, fast and furious! Or maybe after we as a whole figure out how to make em fit in a healthy society we can have some racetrack, gun ranges where you check you're AK and your GT at the door. The thing is utopia is really very close. We just need to slough off our propensity for fucking up and fearfully hoarding all our eggs until they are rotten. Just the basics are really all you need. Those folks in Poland in 1980 in Talking Heads had most of it down! A baseline of decency and respect. Then we can all go off and live our in own little utopias as long as they're not paved with gold and they respect the life, dare say celebrate the lives of everybody else we share this far off planet with. I'll still fight with my wife and friends. But we all might be a little less burdened with the stress of selling our soul. I'll work a little less than I used to and a little more than I do now, and it won't work that is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, with excellent childcare! That'd be nice. Anyway I hope we won't have to hit bottom before we clean up. But it seems we aren't puling out of this dive to quickly. I hope it doesn't sound like I have a grim outlook, maybe just lowish expectations? Oh yeah, and world peace too. Hi everyone. This is my first ever blog post. My shitty first blog post so to say. So, it feels good to be published, especially since I did it my self. Please to enjoy the ramblings of a scatterbrain in the future.
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