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Issues of Gender The individual's sense of what it is to be masculine / feminine is derived, often directly from, and always at least in relation to, the operations of prevailing contemporary discourses - which themselves may or may not be explicitly gendered. These discourses create and offer "discursive subject positions"-epistemological spaces-for individuals to occupy, they bring about a kind of textual role-playing. Discourse is therefore never a closed system; although the power of discursive practices affects every individual, there is always the possibility of resistance to specific discursive regimes. However, the forceful way in which gendered subject positions are made available to us is such that individuals usually struggle to live up to their "gendered ness, " to reproduce the most perfect replication of the discursive model in everyday life. The discourse of gender difference, then, is a particularly powerful ordering, shaping, and delimiting of the field of human possibility.
Although no actual male may ever reach the discursive version of maleness (nor a woman the corresponding ideal of femininity), these images at least partially shape, and frequently oppress, the lives of thousands of real members of both sexes (Hearn, 1987, p. 98). These images may have no concrete material referent, but they nevertheless have real-world effects. Therefore, sex and sexuality in nature are both material and highly contingent, determined by imperatives of survival. Gender in human relations is, on the contrary, social and highly normative, and discursively determined. Gender is established by images, and it connects to social power.
Gender is not a historical or transcendental, it is not a mark stamped indelibly on human existence. Genitalia, through the operations of discourse, may come to represent essential differences between the sexes in terms of behavior, emotions, and so on-but they do not solely determine gender. That the genitals perform a powerful metaphorical function which is at least as significant as their biological one may be seen in the extent to which they are attributed adjectivally to those who do not possess the actual physical attributes-such as the female who is said to "have balls. " Furthermore gender, being discursively formed, has existed in different forms in different periods. Different masculinities and femininities emerge side by side at different times and in different places (Connell, 1995).
Consequently, the prevailing contemporary version of masculine / feminine in Western societies, which we could call a modernist account of the relationship between the genders, emphasizes particular behavioral features which distinguish masculinity from femininity. This is of course not the only existing version of the dichotomy, as different versions of it always compete against each other for hegemony. The struggle is not simply of a uniform masculinity against a single voice of femininity. Similarly, actual men and women and their behaviors must be distinguished from the idealized forms which emerge in discourse. Nonetheless, according to this prevailing modern ideal, "real men" are expected to be logical, rational, objective, in control (especially of their emotions), assertive, argumentative, potent, masterful, hardworking, and incrementally progressive.
As Glaser and Frosh (1988, p. 24) note: Traditional masculinity focuses on dominance and independence, an orientation to the world which is active and assertive, which valorize's competitiveness and turns its face from intimacy, achieving esteem in the glorification of force. The fear at the heart of this image is of emotion-which makes us vulnerable and "womanly"; emotion is dangerous not only because it implies independence, but also because it is alien, a representative of all that masculinity rejects. Despite the constant demands of living up to this very phallic masculinity, men are surrounded with symbols which demand that they do just that, and this is the source of many male problems. Within this demanding framework, men are expected to close things off, solve problems, make decisions, and end perplexity. Even those males who wish to break free of the competitive, dominating image of maleness represented here find it difficult, so deeply are they immersed in it from birth onward. As Heath (1987, p. 12) argues: "I cannot - do not know how to avoid the male image, the image of bettering, of asserting superiority. " Women's corresponding socially-ascribed image is of being comfortable in disturbing the masculine sense of certainty, raising questions, and opening things up.
The rigid structures of maleness are accordingly made to flex, even to collapse entirely, as a result of these attentions. Ragland-Sullivan (1991, pp. 75 - 76) notes that: "the feminine... automatically poses a question, while masculine identification with law, logos or authority tries to stop the question. " The modern feminine, then, is associated with fluidity, openness, sensuality, and emotion; it is the antithesis of the modern masculine. In contrast to that contemporary masculinity, it represents: ... the values of caring and sharing; the prioritizing of feelings; the reality and value of the non-marketable and non-material; the importance of the imaginative and creative; a vision of the wholeness and interdependence of the world, and a knowledge of and faith in the creative potential of stillness, rest and silence. (Hines, 1992, p. 314) Nevertheless, in formulating the feminine in this way, care must be taken to avoid the effects which can be perceived in the gender-sensitive writings, where the feminine seems to have little place of its own other than as an interrogative of the masculine positive. Moore (1988, p. 185) sees this as a fraudulent masculine attempt to colonize the feminine: In deciphering the language of the "other" and then claiming it for themselves, these theoretical drag queens don the trappings of femininity for a night on the town without so much as a glance back at the poor woman whose clothes they have stolen.
The modern representation of gender difference, then, is usually not an equitable distribution-for it implies priority and value. Gender dimorphism produces two unequal parts. Masculinity has been problematized since at least the time of the Greeks, but it was not until the late Renaissance that what T. S. Eliot calls a "dissociation of sensibility" sets in, with a separation of mind and body, rational and non rational, science and spirit (Horrocks, 1994, p. 7). Masculinity became associated with the former and femininity with the latter, and this was compounded by the association of mind / intellect with the public, political, and economic sphere, and of feeling and emotion with the private, domestic sphere.
Consequently, men and women became powerful within their own demarcated zones of influence-men politically and economically, women emotionally and psychologically. Horrocks (1994) illustrates this process through a discussion of the American Western, which is analyzed as a defensive reaction to the spiritual domination of the female in nineteenth century America. In a similar vein, Virilio (cited in Guillet de Monthoux, 1996) argues that the rise of the post-Enlightenment military-industrial state would not have been possible without the success of the gendered division of the political, economic and the domestic. The two categories of gender, then, stand in dualistic opposition to each other. Gender is fundamentally binary-humans are required to be either one thing or the other. As Butler (1987, p. 136) comments: ...
the category of "sex" only makes sense in terms of a binary discourse on sex in which "men" and "women" exhaust the possibilities of sex, and relate to each other as complementary opposites... This "binaries" of gender presents a particular problem for women, because dichotomies such as this inevitably create privilege. Despite the cession of power to different genders in different arenas, and even allowing for the fact that this is a fluid arrangement, one side of the dichotomy inexorably rises above the other. Thus, masculine (public / political /economic) becomes superior to / prioritized over feminine (private / domestic ). Further, male dominance is related to and based on men's dominance of the prioritized public arena.
This prioritization tends to constitute the other term of the dichotomy (the feminine) as a conceptual waste product, defined only in opposition to the dominant term. The feminine becomes marginal, absent, other; that which the masculine is not (Derrida & McDonald, 1988, p. 175). Not only is she different, she is also inferior. Masculinity is represented by the positive, the possession of the penis and its symbolic alter ego, the potent phallus. Femininity, however, is represented, not by the vagina or the clitoris, but by the lack of a penis, an impotency. This simultaneous privileging / downgrading can be seen to be manifested in particular in those organizations regulated by masculine values, where reason and rationality are elevated to the rule of law.
Logo centrism - the process of positioning certain values and principles as at the core of a cognitive structure, thus relegating others to the margins-becomes in practice phallogocentrism because it is the masculine values of logic, order, hierarchy, and so on which are privileged. Masculinity, rationality, and power become in effect inseparable. "Feminine" values on the other hand are driven from the public arena into the private sphere, which of course supports and sustains the former. So, it is not only that human beings understand themselves as masculine or feminine, but also that the masculine is the superior form. Women, understood and understanding themselves as feminine within this framework, are considered: .".. fecund and unreliable...
and so unfitted for the cool rationality of the public arena" (McDowell & Court, 1994, p. 729). This binary division of gender also affects our understandings of sexuality. The popular image of the homosexual man, or the lesbian woman (despite much resistance to these conceptualizations amongst gay people themselves), is that of an "invert"-a term invented by Havelock Ellis to imply that a gay man is a feminine / effeminate man, and vice versa. This image appears to derive from the "binaries" of gender-masculine being the opposite of feminine, the two genders being seen to form two sides of the same coin and thus as naturally coming together in sexual communion. The insistence on binary division, on human beings as either / or , makes the phenomenon of homosexuality hard to assimilate within the discourses of gender and sexuality because this kind of activity cannot represent the coming together of opposites. Thus homosexuals are read as inverted.
In understanding ourselves as one thing or the other, then, as masculine or feminine, we come to signify "the law" (discourse) as our "own most essence" (Butler, 1987). Men and women are differentially subject to this system of corporeal production; Barry (cited in Ramazanoglu and Holland, 1993, p. 250), for example, talks of: .".. those disciplines which produce a modality of embodiment which is peculiarly feminine. " Similarly, Grosz (1994, p...
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Research essay sample on Men And Women Gender Difference
