A knife is a girl's best friend

[truepenny]

I am, as I have said, reviewing Joanna Russ's The Country You Have Never Seen for Strange Horizons. This is going to be challenging for a number of reasons, including the fact that it feels hubristic to be writing a review of a reviewer who can write rings around me, but that's not my point here.

In her review of Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology, Russ write:

I could not at first understand Daly's insistence that femininity has nothing to do with women, that femininity--what a bizarre assertion!--is a male trait, and yet she is right. We're still all too prone to talk as if "femininity" were produced by the selective obliteration of some natural female traits and preservation of others or the exaggeration of some traits at the expense of others. But Daly is more perceptive: Femininity is a male projection of a solution to problems in the male situation, which is then imposed on women. That is why Daly states that she will no longer use the word "androgyny." Femininity is not an incomplete part of anyone's character but a man-made mess from the word go.
(p. 158)

Granted both book and review are nearly thirty years old (the review appeared in 1979), this paragraph, this idea made me ring like a bell. I have never been comfortable with my own "femininity" (and it's a great relief to be able to put that word in quotes and just leave it there), and Russ and Daly between them have just explained why. Because "femininity" is something I don't necessarily have to have. It's not just that "feminine" is a gender role, it's that it's a gender role that has no necessary connection to anything inherent in myself. Or, alternatively, since I am a woman, anything I do is "feminine," regardless of cultural conditioning and social opinion. (Somewhere else, in a throwaway line, Russ remarks that we never talk about "race roles" or "class roles" in the way we talk about "gender roles," and she is utterly correct. In point of fact, the idea is almost comically offensive.) In either case, the word ceases to have meaning.

Or, to put it another way, the fact that "femininity" doesn't fit me isn't my fault. It's not that I'm deficient or not trying hard enough; it's that nothing about being a woman has any necessary correlation with being "feminine." I can own my own performance of gender and it's right because it's mine.

I figure reaction to this post is going to be pretty evenly split between people disagreeing with me and people wondering where I've been all this time that I've only just figured this out. (The thing about consciousness raising is, everybody has to do it for him- or herself. And you can't do it to a timetable, either.) But I am talking very specifically about myself, and about the feeling I've been struggling with since puberty that I'm doing it wrong, that I'm at best a fake girl (D cup not withstanding), that I got socialized wrong and am gauche and maladroit and really not fooling anybody ...it feels like Joanna Russ handed me a knife and I've cut myself free of the painful, entangling wreckage.

Not, of course, that it's that simple. But I like this knife. I'm hanging onto it.

And for the first time since puberty, writing female protagonists feels like an adventure instead of an obligation. And you can bet your ass I'm not sending them out without a knife, either.

Comments

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

*Interesting*.

My definition of myself as "feminine" depends on environment. Among geeks, I'm definitely feminine. Among Southern women, I'm a boy. In Indiana, I definitely wasn't a girl.

Need to think about that.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Brava to you and Ms. Russ both.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

Well, it does feel kinda 1982 to me, but you have to find your own process in your own way. Good for you!

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

This is cogent. I can't immediately figure out whether or not it boils down to being congruent to what Darwin wrote about as sexual selection, applied to humans, though.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks, though there's something excessively tempting about finding a book for thirty dollars when most places offer it for about $80. Weirdly, Walmart offers it for $35.

Aside from that, I think Russ and Daley are on to something there. I also believe that "masculinity" is a scam--it's a fantasy invented and to a large extent maintained by a minority of the more aggressive men. It doesn't necessarily have much to do with real-world men.

Well, actually, quite a bit of gender policing is also done by women. I'm not sure how all the pieces fit together, but it's not just a system for the convenience of (some) men.

[tessagratton.livejournal.com]

>>Well, actually, quite a bit of gender policing is also done by women. I'm not sure how all the pieces fit together, but it's not just a system for the convenience of (some) men.

Russ doesn't mean that femininity is something men DO to women, or that women can't participate in the policing of it (everyone self-polices). The discourse she's refering to isn't one in which we can say, "well this man said this and made all these other people do that for his own convenience," but nevertheless, the dominant discourse was (and is, arguably) one that conveniences some men over women. When behaviors/patterns attributed to men are valued more than behaviors/patterns attributed to women (no matter "who" is marking the values, and no matter if it's men or women portraying the behaviors/patterns), then it IS a system that IS about convenience. And even if women are actively participating, it's still the men (whose behavior has greater value) that benefit the most.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

It's not at all unusual for some members of an oppressed group to police other members of the oppressed group. (I'm thinking here of stories I've heard about some Blacks chastising others during the civil rights era, and about how FGM is largely carried out by women on younger women.) A person who has made peace with their role in the system can feel threatened by anyone who questions the system because it calls into question *their* choices and sacrifices, and of course, there's "the devil you know" too--many people fear and resist change even if that change might be to their benefit, because uncertainty always comes with it.

[flit.livejournal.com]

I was chatting about this sort of thing recently and suddenly realized that even though I've had some very serious sexism perpetrated on me by males, including out and out workplace sexual harassment by someone who was in a position to, and did, make my life incredibly miserable, the things that stung me the most, even though they were objectively far more minor, were enforcement of feminine sex roles by other women, particularly by family members but even from girls or women I actually *disliked strongly* and whose opinions I would consciously reject.

Is it sexism in myself that causes what women do to *matter* more to me?

[pnh.livejournal.com]

The University of Chicago Press's webpage also offers a paperback edition, pubdate October 2007, at $35. Shipping to US addresses only.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It turned out that the cheaper copies were all advance notice of the paperback.

[avram]

I also believe that "masculinity" is a scam--it's a fantasy invented and to a large extent maintained by a minority of the more aggressive men.

Yes, this is true.

[sensawunder.livejournal.com]

Agreed on two points: masculinity is also a scam perpretrated on all men by a minority with power -- most of them men, but also a few women. Most men don't fit the mold any more than most women fit the femininity mold. And definitely femininity is a scam perpetrated by patriarchy on women in whichmen and some women police women to reinforce it. My father once called me a "ball breaker" for refusing to back down on a point. He said it half with admiration and half fear that I would never find a husband. I did. :)

I look around and see evidence of the women gender-police all around me. I am a rather bookish, introverted intellectual-type of person to whom clothing is mostly functional. My sister-in-law took it on herself to tell me that I did my nails the wrong way. They're supposed to be squared off instead of oval, didn't you know? She was amused that I didn't know how to be a proper woman -- she with 36D implants, gel nails done with a french manicure, dyed hair with extensions, year-round tan, buff-bod with requisite tattoo on her lower back, visible thong, who is 40 going on 18.

You bet your life women police gender.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yep. I know that other people react differently, but when I was a physics student, being aware that I was gender integration on two feet made "femininity" whatever I said it was. There's nothing more feminine than my own self in a pair of hiking boots, jeans, a flannel shirt, and an Einstein T-shirt, attaching modules into a NIM bin. I've worn gold sparkly pumps and a cleavagey red evening dress, and it had absolutely nothing on the boots etc. for femininity.

[larryhammer]

You will, I hope, pardon me when I say, as an ex-physics student, Yowsa.

---L.

[ombriel.livejournal.com]

Yes! Exactly. I have a number of female acquaintances who have disowned the identity "woman" because to them to be a "woman" is to accept the femininity regimes imposed on female persons. To me it's more productive to claim the word woman and define and perform it in terms that resist normative femininity.

Each has to find her own way through this mess.

[kate_nepveu]

nothing about being a woman has any necessary correlation with being "feminine"

Yes. With bells on.

(I wish I know how that became one of my bedrock foundations, so I could help pass it on.)

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Contrary to what some would believe, if the shoe doesn't fit, there is no rule requiring you to start cutting off bits of your feet to make it fit, like Cinderella's stepsisters. The reward is not the handsome prince, but having to dance at the wedding on mutilated feet.

At best, these notions are fig-leaves for the anxious; when you look at human history, the markers change so much that it's laughable. Choose the shoe that's comfortable, and let the world deal.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's an awesome change of perspective. So right. Hear, hear!

[rosefox]

Oh, that's lovely. I would like to put this in my .sigfile; how may I credit you?

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Either fidelio or L L Webb is fine.

[rosefox]

Thank you very much!

[cow.livejournal.com]

I'm in the second camp--welcome onboard. :)

It's neat reading things like that from the 1970s, as I feel like they often foresaw some of the culture of the now. The internet helps here; almost nobody (unless they know me in person) knows what gender I am, because it doesn't matter. Which is awesome.

Really, it's more freeing--I'm as masculine and as feminine as I want to be, except that's not even true; it's more that I'm me, and "masculinity" and "femininity" are simply external labels applied to make that make sense for other people.

To look at it from another angle, that's one of both the challenges and joys of writing science fiction and fantasy: our characters can be rebelling against established gender roles (Tamora Pierce gets a 72-point <3 for this) or can be living their own lives free of such ideas. In some sense, it allows a miniaturization of the struggles so many people face now since, in the end, so much of fantasy society is a reflection of our own postmodern struggle.

Whoa, someone threw my academic cloak over me when I wasn't watching. :D I'd better stop that before I write a term paper in comments...

[ckd]

That's a really neat way of defining it, and not one I'd really thought about. (I haven't ever had to think about it, after all; it's all in the invisible knapsack.)

More generally, I think any time something is defined by what it isn't (particularly when it's presented as either a binary choice or the only slightly less oversimplified one-dimensional spectrum), there's an inherent subordination to the "real" concept.

Hooray for Russ, and Daly, and you (and your new knife).

may I link, please?

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who needs to read this...

Re: may I link, please?

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

Er, oops. Just went and read your profile and "reading list policy." You would have thought I would have done that sooner. Thank you!

Re: may I link, please?

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

And said friend found it quite intriguing, considering her own interior demolition and remodling project.

Thank you!

Re: may I link, please?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You're welcome ... that's not exactly the right sentiment, but I hope you know what I mean.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

It helps, though it's difficult, because the naturalistic explanation is so entrenched in the dominant ideology, to consider masculinity and femininity as co-dependent concepts created from the division of humanity into classes of people in order to allow the exploitation of some people by others, and which would lose their meaning and their importance if that dynamic were to disappear.

In the narrow, marxist sense of "class", capitalists exploit workers (by paying them less than the value created from their labour), and notable differences accrue to each class from the social and psychological consequences of that economic division, even within groups of the same ethnicity or gender. Whether someone belongs to the group of people in power or to the people who are exploited determines the opportunities accorded to that person to a huge extent. In the case of racial exploitation, it's skin colour (and so forth, for various definitions of race) that signify that appartenance. Skin colour, as the marker for that hierarchy, also becomes the excuse and justification for that hierarchy in racist ideology, just as (capitalist) class characteristics then become justifications for class oppression.

In the case of gender-based exploitation, males exploit females (quite often in ways that analyses of capitalist, waged-based exploitation fail to account for, because they do it through other modes of production), and the division of humanity according to sexual characteristics -- not the existence of those characteristics in and of themselves -- creates the classes of men and women: men and women, with their extremely variable attributes, depending on historical and local particulars, which those who embrace naturalist ideology keeps having to find new reasons for, because they de facto exclude social factors (and, therefore, oppression).

[callunav.livejournal.com]

In the one lit crit class I took in college, which was feminist lit crit and full of the French feminists, and a very exhilarating ride as a whole, one of the students in my class defined femininity as "women in drag." There's a whole lot more than that to be said, but somehow, that has stuck with me.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

"As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag." Patti Smith

[shadefell.livejournal.com]

I love that phrase, "women in drag." I have several female friends who, when we fancy ourselves up, we refer to it as being in drag. Whenever I go shopping for high heels I feel like I'm buying parts of a costume. It's really awesome to find that other people have the same perception.

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

*blinks*
Wow. Someone just took my blinders off, and I wasn't even aware that I was wearing them.

I'd long since come to terms with the idea that I wasn't particularly feminine -- not that I was particularly masculine, but the ideas and ideals that my mom had tried so hard to indoctrinate in me had never stuck, and I just never felt any of that was at all important or relevant.

It had never occurred to me that by that statement, I was reinforcing someone else's power to define me, in terms of what they felt should be my defining characteristics. Because even if I didn't feel the label applied, I'd never questioned their right to measure me against that label.

But of course, when we say "feminine" we really aren't talking about traits that have anything to do with being female... we're talking about traits that the larger percentage of females have chosen as the best coping strategy for enhancing and exploiting their status within the male-dominated heirarchy.

And once we see that, we don't have to play that game. Words have power. "Feminine" is what we make it.

Heady stuff. I think I like this knife, too. :-)

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I encountered this concept when I was around 20- probably via Daly- and for a while my mantra was "I am a woman; therefore anything/everything I do is womanly." I kept saying it until I believed it, and it's been a great help and comfort. To a considerable extent, it's made me somewhat oblivious to gender roles, especially as they pertain to me. (It's also helped me in teaching- I teach metalwork, an "unfeminine" thing to do, and just assuming this makes it easier for me to encourage women to get past the stereotypes.)

When I do occasionally behave in a very "girly" way, my husband is appalled! So I do it sometimes to tweak him. :) I also consider normal female-wear as drag, erven though I generally wear skirts myself for practical reasons.

But it is very freeing- and I think it's been freeing for him, too. I can do stereotypical feminine things, followed by stereotypical masculine things, and not feel any particular cognitive dissonance. That does make life easier.

Of course, there's always a ways to go- but it's a good path, I think.

[redbird]

Thanks for the reminder.

Even someone who has seen this for years will forget it, over and over, because there is so much of the culture pushing us to take feminine and masculine as actual things rather than arbitrary labels or even-more-arbitrary goals that we can say no to, just as we can say we don't want to have perfect nails, climb Mount Everest, or work ourselves sick to get a corner office.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

And the stuff is pervasive! It gets everywhere.

Conversation I took part in nearly thirty years ago now

Small girl: And then you will pretend to be stuck and I will save you.

Small boy: That's not right! Mommmmm! She's doin' it wrong!

Me, the mom: What are you talking about?

Small boy: Girls don't save boys!

Small girl: I will if I want to!

Me: Okay, let's all settle down. You're saying there are girl things to do and boy things to do?

Small boy: Everybody knows that!

Small girl: Everybody is just dumb! If I am doing it and I am a girl then girls do so it!

Me: Well, that's a good point. Tell me something everybody knows girls don't do.

Small boy: Girls don't play with trucks!

Small girl: But I do play with trucks. And I'm still a girl.

Me: Huh. Maybe 'everybody' isn't always right.

Small boy: This stuff is just confusing.

Small girl: Well, I'm a girl. No matter what I'm doing. Like you're a boy even when we make cookies.

Small boy: Oh. Yeah.

Neither one of them was more than six years old. Both were being raised by a feminist. They had limited television/movie access. Both attended a feminist friendly pre-school. And yet the boy already had his 'everybody knows' and the girl already had to begin teasing out her definition of self against what evereybody knew.

Fast forward to five years ago, and the small girl's offspring had an almost identical conversation in my earshot. I didn't kknow whether to laugh or cry.

[mevincula.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the neighbor children a couple of years ago. Tiny, blond, girl in a frilly dress to her older and larger brother and cousin "I don't want to be the princess in the tower this time, I think you should be the princess and I should get the sword to rescue you."
Funny of course, but very telling. In her mind, the person in need of rescuing was automatically labeled "princess" not because they were female, but because they were helpless. Nor did it occur to her to arm the "princess" with her own sword (knife?) to break free, instead it was necessary for the princess to be rescued through an outside agency. I feel all too many women are still waiting for their knight in shining armor to effect their rescue, rather than tackling life on their own terms.

[ombriel.livejournal.com]

Sarah, does Russ by chance list what edition and page that Daly quote comes from? Thanks!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. Since nothing in that paragraph is actually a direct quote from Daly, there aren't any page numbers

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

Oh! Wow! I had never thought of it quite that way. Thank you.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's an excellent point on "race roles" or "class roles". I think I'll save it for when I don't have a knife handy.

It's an excellent point about femininity. It pisses me off when a woman is accused of not acting feminine, and I think this is a clue as to why. All the labels: feminine, ladylike, bitch, slut, &c., all seem to've come from the men. I'm starting to think we ought to just throw them away and go our own way. No reclaiming, thanks anyway.

[flit.livejournal.com]

The "gender roles" vs. "race roles" or "class roles" was a serious eye opener for me. Thank you!

And "girl with knife" makes me smile a lot, because my current most active RP character started out as the summary: "A Jane Austen character, with knives. Because it's better that way."

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the reminder. Oddly enough, I'm better at fighting that pernicious idea when it comes to race ("I'm doing it. I'm black. Therefore, black people do do this.") than I am with gender. It's one of those things that I think I have to be reminded of from time to time.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

I like that idea - and I don't think I've heard it expressed like that before so it is very helpful.

I have been wondering a bit lately about the fact that I consider I was brought up to be a person, rather than a woman and therefore there are some typical assumptions that I don't make about people - which means that I don't expect people to make them about me. Sadly, sometimes I feel it would be useful to have learned how to wheedle...