/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4330248]

Hello /lit/

I have never taken a class in gender theory and I would like to learn more about it. I feel as though it has often been portrayed as "men are bad" studies and I would like to know whether or not this is the case. What are some of its main tenets?

And yes, I am creating several threads of this sort in order to expand my knowledge on subjects in which I am relatively ignorant.

[Anonymous No.4330287]

Last year at university I saw one of those schedule containers outside a classroom door with a note shoved into it. It was for one of the classes held in the room, and it read like:

>WMN242 INTRODUCTION TO GENDER THEORY: 5/6 GENDERS WELCOME! NO MEN ALLOWED!

Guess someone had a bad experience. Seriously though it's a fake thing bor.

[Anonymous No.4330299]

If you are male and the teacher is a feminist expect to get a bad grade, and be very careful to not have any opinions that could be even slightly offensive.

[Anonymous No.4330329]

>>4330287
>>4330299

Oh, I'm not planning on taking a class, I was just wondering what gender theory is about. Is it really all about hating men and "privilege"? I don't care about academics (trust me, if I did, I would have given up on literature a long time ago), I'm only interested in the theories themselves.

[Anonymous No.4330363]

Just take /pol/ and imagine they are women hating on men. The theories in itself are useless to think about because the promoters of them are intellectually bankrupt and trying to discern their convoluted logic only leaves you worse off. A good example of this is their idea that rape has nothing to do with sex but is about males enforcing a patriarchal ideology onto "independently thinking women" and how all men secretly participate in the conspiracy to the point that if their mothers/sisters were raped they would be joyful. No matter how much you try and think about it nothing useful can be gained.

[Anonymous No.4330380]

>>4330363
How much gender theory have you read? I'm just trying to confirm the validity of what you said, because it seems ridiculous that such a discipline would be allowed in academia.

Also, are there any gender theorists who are not like that?

[Anonymous No.4330385]

>>4330363
rape has little to do with sex.

[Anonymous No.4330395]

First off, you should actually read the books and not just ask people on the internet. Secondly, gender theory and feminism are not ideological. They do not have "tenets." They are disciplines or discourses. Think of them like anthropology or literary theory or labor studies or whatever. There are a lot of people saying a lot of different, often conflicting points within gender theory and feminism. Reading de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is a good place to start. Judith Butler (who you've obviously already heard of) is a very good read as well. For more militant, ideological feminists check out Dworkin and Daly. For more philosophical writers, read Foucault and Klein.

But my first recommendation if you're serious about this is to get as far away from the internet as you can. The only "feminism" the internet knows about is either the Tumblr social justice identity politics bullshit or the reactionary uninformed conservative masculinists. Although occasionally a journal like The New Inquiry will publish something online that's worthwhile.

[Anonymous No.4330403]

Low-level gender studies resorts to blaming men or looking for misogyny in stuff like Beowulf or Biblical lit like it's a fucking revelation.

In a senior or grad-level class, you'd do something more serious like Butler's performativity or questioning "sex" with Turner and Sedgwick.

Some of the major ideas are breaking the binary (there are not just two genders or two sexes, gender and sex aren't the same thing / both are just imaginary interpretations of real conditions, gender isn't something you express, but a label based on your performance) and disrupting the definition of a sex act (from consensual missionary PiV to puking in each other's mouths on stage), etc.

[Anonymous No.4330452]

bump

[Anonymous No.4330455]

>>4330248
>What are some of its main tenets?
Men are bad.
That's it.

[Anonymous No.4330456]

Average gender theorist

[Anonymous No.4330484]

bump

[Anonymous No.4330488]

>>4330456
haha fat ugly feminist.

[Anonymous No.4330493]

>>4330488
fat ugly deminist is a redundant term

[Anonymous No.4330501]

>>4330248
It is more or less a fundamental facet that men, white, straights are bad in roughly that order.
Basically imagine someone applying marxist class rethoric towards skin-colour, gender and sexual preference.
You grew up in a crack-addicted home in South Africa under the ANC?
"Be aware of"/check your privilege bro. The patriarchy is a global white oppressor so you're inherently privileged/bourgeois regardless of your situation.

[Anonymous No.4330553]

>>4330501
don't polarize around the concepts opressor/opressed so much

one of the things that Foucault brought to the table is that there isn't an opressor (a being that only opresses), neither the opressed: me, as a white rich male, i'm usually the one opressing, but there are times where I AM opressed, especially on the times that my potentalities are denied because of machism

that doesn't mean i can be the protagonist of the feminst movement, for example, but the emancipation of the women (of anyone), by definition, has to be with someone, no one emancipates alone

[Anonymous No.4330584]

>>4330553
>don't polarize around the concepts opressor/opressed so much
I'm not, that's merely how it has been almost consistently been applied in both politics and academia.
They're way more invested in "intersectionality" bullshit rather than Foucault's power structures at any rate.

[Anonymous No.4330605]

>>4330584
lel

[Anonymous No.4330617]

>>4330385
rape has everything to do with sex, especially considering half are regretful sex, a quarter are fetishist shit, and the last is men getting raped in prison because if your serving life, what difference does it make, a hole is a hole.

[Anonymous No.4330629]

>>4330403
>there aren't two genders or sexes
are you retarded? what is a Y chromosome?

have you taken biology. I'm not even conservative. christ. you can't change scientific definitions just because you feel it should be different. they're how they are for a well documented reason.

definition of a sex act though i can agree with. but sexes will always be binary because of genetics are binary

[Anonymous No.4330633]

>honestly looking for information on gender theory on 4chan

aw you don't know anything at all

[Anonymous No.4330643]

>>4330553
being rich, white or male doesn't equal oppression.

is your definition of oppression mean envy?

There are not systematically oppressed peoples in 1st world countries.

[Anonymous No.4330645]

>>4330617
>half are regretful sex
citation needed, pal.

[Anonymous No.4330647]

>>4330501

I remember when my home got addicted to crack. The foundation went and everything.

Such a sad time in my life. He was such a role model. ='(

[Anonymous No.4330649]

>>4330629

Intersex? Kleinfelter's syndrome?

Genitalia is interpreted differently through history. Just because the majority of the human population is easily categorized doesn't mean the categories are platonic truths.

[Anonymous No.4330656]

>>4330633
i feel like about a year ago he would have gotten plenty of decent recommendations. this place has really turned to shit.

[Anonymous No.4330680]

>>4330649
>genetic disorder that affects an incredibly small part of the population and an even smaller part of them exhibit outward symptoms
Yes, clearly this is what society should be based around.

[Anonymous No.4330686]

>>4330649
its not about genitalia. nor interpretation. There are only two sexes throughout the animal kingdom. its not a mental thing, its not being "gender fluid"

Kleinfelters isn't exactly common considering the population. Mutations occur and are discounted due to being sterile. Those arguing for more than 2 sexes aren't victims of it. They were born with either 2 xx's or xy. nothing can change that ever, no amount of perfect surgery or gender reassignment therapy or hormone therapy can alter that genetic code. Insinuating that genetics aren't the final say on the sex of a creature is just you being obtuse. Sex has nothing to do with social problems or whatever someone feels or thinks about. there isn't a philosophy about sex because chromosomes are well known, well defined truths

>source: human genome project
>Source: 9th grade biology

[Anonymous No.4330695]

>>4330656
because "gender studies" itself has degenerating into what seems like a "clique" for 20 somethings and teenagers get into because they feel like they're helping an "oppressed" group

[Anonymous No.4330709]

>>4330695
you seem jealous

[Anonymous No.4330724]

>>4330709
I took the class in conjunction with majoring in Psych.

We met up with other classes from other schools. Nobody cared about the subject matter. All they talked about was how this movie was sexist or how "insert pop culture' was disrespectful to trannies. and shit like that. we had a textbook that we never used and you were graded on participation.

It was just sad, disappointing and just overall embarrassing to say I ever wanted to take that class

[Anonymous No.4330744]

>>4330724
i see what you mean and have experienced it myself, but at the same time i experience that kind of thing in loads of classes that involve participation. self-congratulatory victims aren't representative of an entire field.

[Anonymous No.4330750]

>>4330248
Gender Studies are deeply rooted in the ideology of post-modernism. Therefore, relativism is the unquestioned paradigma of it, leading to the post-modernist notion of pluralism.
It started all with Judith Butler at the end of the 80s. To make it short: before that, feminism struggled to give a rather positive notion of femininity, ending up in speculations about matriarchy and new age esoterics (ecofeminism kind of follows this root still a bit). From Butlers impact on, feminism did not try to make positive notion of femininity but to deconstruct the existence of sth. like femininity or manhood, following the post-modernist paradigma of social constructivism (buzz words: 'gender is a social construct') and the metod of derridas deconstruction.

It is not completely understandable why there has to be a theory for all this, as respecting women breaking out of their gender role should be common sense for normal people right now.

Sometimes Butler os recoted to have said that not only gender butalso sex is socially conatructed (did she though?). If this is true it shows pretty well in what absurdity the relativist constructionism of this movement leads to.

Furthermore, many followers are quite sexist. If you are male white hetero for them you are the opression itself, as others said already in this thread. Dismissing philosophy as a whole because it is male white is fashionable, you hear this all the time.

[Anonymous No.4330788]

I took a queer theory class taught by a Marxist. We mostly read Butler and Marxist responses to Butler. Shit was cache.

I'm male and got A btw, and most of my papers disagreed with whatever we were reading.

[Anonymous No.4330872]

>>4330617
>rape has everything to do with sex
lel no

Rape is about dominance, not about sex. Normal consented intercourse(non-existent to gender studies) is the ultimate instance of acceptance between two individuals. Transgression against this principle is a matter of denying the other it's consent, thus suppressing a part of his/her will.

>>4330649
>genetical disorders are a relevant social gauge
My head hurts.
You are the kind of people who let that sickfuck and hack John Money have a career.

[Anonymous No.4330895]

>mfw one of your fellow sociology student classmate compares your posture, attitude or mannerisms, and style of speech as being similar to those of Judith Butler.
btw I'm a girl ;)

[Anonymous No.4330905]

>>4330895
g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-go out with me???!

[Anonymous No.4330917]

>>4330905
Hell, why not ? Where are you from?
I should inform you that I only consider love as a form of purely platonic, ideal and immanently transcendantal passion. A virtual boyfriend could meet this criteria!

[Anonymous No.4330930]

>>4330917
You are looking for a man named Dante Alighieri

[Anonymous No.4330941]

>>4330930
Eh, I'd search the seven circles of Hell, for such a mighty pen, yet I might find my head lost in the clouded skies of idea, fantasizing about reality; You see, I have come to realize that in a very schizoid type of eschatological fantasmagory, I have ruptured the bridges between fiction and reality, and may as well transfer all my desire in words, rather than in the world. What a divine comedy!

[Anonymous No.4330959]

>>4330941

Stay away from this bitch, she doesn't put out.

[Anonymous No.4330964]

>>4330959
I am curious to know what you do mean, by the expression to "put out" ?
English isn't my first language.
Thank you for your explanation !

[Anonymous No.4330976]

>>4330964

To "put out" is to have sex.
When someone says a girl doesn't put out, it means she's the type who is saving herself for marriage or something along those lines.
Generally, this is looked down on, as such women are often self-obsessed and arrogant.

[Anonymous No.4330990]

>>4330959
A quick search for the meaning of the expression has informed me of the potential sense you might have used it for in your sentence.
In fact, I do put out, however not in the name of love, as a principle. I do actually enjoy very much the carnal pleasures of the originating wound, in a masochistic rendering of the believer's meaning of passion.
In that sense, I am passionate physically, and one could also say that my libidinal drive is rooted deeply in knowledge. I have taken a habit of categorizing myself as a "sapiosexual" when it comes to sexual orientation. Learning, and teaching lessons, in a passive-aggressive authoritarian ideal of the master teacher, is my guilty pleasure.

[Anonymous No.4331018]

>>4330380
Most academia is shit these days. Think post modernism.

[Anonymous No.4331043]

>>4331018
I agree with you, Anon. Having studied gender theories long enough to be able to go around the subject in depths, I would say that when it comes to innovative breakthroughs in terms of practical sociology of gender and sexuality, the academia doesn't "put out" enough, in the sense that most of it's work is based on theoretical advancements, yet so little is done to physically abridge the conflicts and inequalities relevant to the topic. Most of the action that these theories would get is through academic conferences, publications and now, and then, argumentation in the media to instrumentalize them in a political discourse.

[Anonymous No.4331067]

Gender theory's a fruitful way of reading shit. It's not just about thinking along the lines of, "Men suck," or even, "Women are oppressed." Instead, the most basic gendered readings, surprise, focus on how a text constructs gender--how it defines male and female and, as is often the case, how it puts those two things into a good old binary of male/female versus, say, a sliding scale or something all undefined and totally made up--basic identity included--as Butler would instantly understand "Adventure Time's" BMO to suggest. Come to think of it, BMO had a whole episode devoted to it's indulgence in a fantasy adventure in which it assumed a fictional identity quite different from its own(implicitly a frequent occurrence when Finn and Jake leave the house)... So yeah, gender theory as applied to "Adventure Time".

Gendered readings of things frequently overlap with historically informed readings. Historical context naturally is used to make sense of the interactions, conflicts, oppressions, etc. of different genders in a work of fiction that was written in a certain time and place. Thus, BMO's gender (un?)identity might be understood in light of modern, progressive, popular notions of homosexuality and gender in fiction and politics.

One of the basic "tenets" here is that gender and sex are two different things. Sex is biological, and gender is the "performance" (to use Butler's term) of that sexuality. There is enough variation among the performances, historically and today, to suggest that gender is largely made the fuck up. That said, there are some sexual constants, like only guys having beards. Now, how important a beard is to one's gender identity was/is variable--Early Modern Englishpeople thought beards to be one of the central pillars of MANLINESS--an absolute requirement. But nowadays that's not as big a deal.

Gender theory a useful way to look at literature. It opens a lot of doors and, more importantly, helps me come up with pages of shit for my papers, which I don't write for insane super-feminist professors as I've never had one before.

[Anonymous No.4331086]

>>4331067
>tfw your insane super-feminist lesbian dominatrix professor has a crush on you, and hints it at you during her lectures.
>tfw afraid to look away, or reject her for fear of passing as homophobic.

Is this how a heterosexual man feels when he's being hit on by a gay guy ?

[Anonymous No.4331091]

>>4331067
Recently read Harraway's A Cyborg Manifesto where she uses the science fiction cyborg as a model for the hybridity of gender in analysing literature (BMO is a great example) and it's also a great companion to de Beauvoir's The Second Sex.

These are the only texts i have read in the subject but i think they cover a lot of points that would be useful for introducing anyone to gender analysis of literature.

[Anonymous No.4331103]

queer theory sounds really interesting, what are some good introductory books to it?

[Anonymous No.4331114]

>>4331091
Ah, this reminds me of a book mentioned in a conference about a man who becomes a woman, through the use of cyborg technologies. I think the name of the man was Anders, but I can't remember the title of the book, nor the writer, though I do believe it was written by a woman.
Could this be this book that you are talking about? I've done a few research but it doesn't seem to match the current informations that I have of it. Thanks for your help!

[Anonymous No.4331121]

>>4331091
I'll check it out--seems interesting, and applicable (so long as there's scifi , there'll be cybors, robots, and the like, I'm sure). Thanks for the recommendation.

[Anonymous No.4331123]

are there any good texts that deal with women "in the abstract", rather than how women actually behave? could be men and women, but i'm more interested in women.

[Anonymous No.4331127]

>>4330248
Read Baedan: A Journal Of Queer Nihilism. I knew nothing about gender theory before reading, but it was very informative, extremely provocative, biting, and vicious, but an exciting thrilling read all the way through. It is also currently very popular with insurrectionary/post-left/egoist anarchists.

[Anonymous No.4331144]

>>4331123
I think Nabokov's presentation of the character of Annabel Leigh, as his first infatuation, is abstract in the sense that he builds up an idealist fantasy of the mythical image of the nymphet to describe how his desire was rooted in an abstract understanding of his sexual drive.

[Anonymous No.4331148]

>>4330329
Old-fashioned gender theory: "Why are women inferior and don't achieve things men do"
Modern gender theory: "Why are all men disgusting pigs why only think of oppressing women"

[Anonymous No.4331158]

>>4331123
>>4331144

Also, to continue this train of thought, the idea of an abstract representation reminds me of the reading Slavoj Zizek makes of the conceptualized figure of the Femme Fatale, in a psychoanalytic lacanian interpretation of some Alfred Hitchcock's movies, as being the object of a desire that is precisely desired because it seems inaccessible in the real, and is the objectivation of an ideal transfer of fantasy in reality.

[Anonymous No.4331163]

>>4331086
Denounce her for terrorism.

[Anonymous No.4331182]

>>4331163
I wouldn't dare take such radical stand against this form of psychological sexual harrassment, for she is highly influential in the research laboratory in which I plan to follow my Phd in political philosophy.
I will simply await the end of semester to say so long and goodbye to her dreadful attentions, and continue on my merry way.

[Anonymous No.4331195]

>>4331114
I hate to say this but it doesn't look like this is the same book :/ . A cyborg manifesto is an essay critiquing traditional feminist theory. Where traditional feminist theory (de Beauvoir's Second Sex) argues that women are defined as all aspects that man does not consider to be part of himself, Harraway's essay argues that women should move away from from traditional gender definition adopting the more appropriate hybrid model of cyborg. Women as Harraway argues should define identity rather than their affinity to male gender roles.

[Anonymous No.4331205]

>>4331195
Thank you for your explanations!
Interestingly enough, if I were to come accross the book mentioning this man made woman through cyborg technologies, it would be intriguing to associate the theories of the Cyborg Manifesto to it's literary analysis.
Maybe one has inspired the other, who knows?
I hope I will solve this mystery one day.

[Anonymous No.4331212]

>>4331205
Ah, I've found it!
The book is called " Selbstversuch" and is written by Christa Wolf. I had to search back to the archives of this unfamous research lab to find a copy of the conference presentation, dating from three years ago, look up the intervening Phd student's bibliography and going through it completely to finally find it!
Case solved!

[Anonymous No.4331217]

>>4331182
ladies and gentlemen. salute the brave members of academia

[Anonymous No.4331226]

>>4331217
Ironic, isn't it?
A political philosophy student sexually harrassed by it's same-sex gender theorist teacher who does not dare to argue about it. It will be one of the chapter of my memoirs.

[Anonymous No.4331268]

I've read some feminist critical theory, it can be pretty crazy even for a generally trustworthy author. I guess she was trying to show the different viewpoints or something.

What I read about was how language has superior male ideology built into it, and thus couldn't be trusted / had to be reconstructed, then it talked about how some older feminists refer to everyone as he to remove gender distinction.

Another idea in it was that logic itself was a male invention and things that were dismissed as insanity in women could still be considered correct, then it went on to talk about this female replacement logic that made sense to women and not to men and how dismissing it as insanity was sexist.

A third idea was that marriage enforces women as subservient to men and that marriage basically turns a woman into a slave because she's expected to do housework for free.

Finally, the argument that made the most sense was about how women traditionally were only succesful when they emulated men and that women were never appreciated for their worth in feminine roles.
Take it as you will the book is titled critical theory today: a user-friendly guide by Lois Tyson.
pick it up at http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_3965.pdf

[Anonymous No.4333138]

>>4331103
I'm pretty interested as well.