Reactions to the Previous Class

I am breaking my blog post into two sections. I feel that my reactions to the previous class merit their own discreet posting, as much for length as for theme.

In reflecting on the concepts of the previous class, I was (and continue to be) struck most by the notion of gender roles as constraints – or, in a harsher sense, traps. The notion of role, especially with regards to gender, seems a most intensely oppressive concept, for it deals solely with perception, and only “masters” of perception are able to alter this aspect of their reality.

Consider the idea of Gender Studies. Consider the implications thereof. If Gender Studies, as evolved from Women’s Studies and/or Queer Studies, then that begs the question of what “Masculine Studies” would entail. Now, one may respond that the contemporary focus of Gender and/or Queer studies are a reaction to the previous monolith dominance of the Male Hierarchy which has suppressed the previous two. I am uncomfortable with that for two reasons. First, a suppression or nullification of the masculine in favor of the other two smacks of the same oppression redirected. Second, once again, it traps the male within this monolith of culture.

The idea of gender role entraps everyone. Yea though it is an natural function of humanity – humans being natural selectors and categorizers – it also demonstrates the fundamental weakness of that nature. Human beings are predators, and the chief function of the predator is to identify prey and commit acts of predation. Social orders allow neat demarcations of “self” and “other” and, by their structure, produce norms. Thus, the roles created by perception, while a natural outcropping of human intelligence, function as little more than mob rule by an essentially headless beast.

What use is society to an individual if one must gauge one’s gender role not only by the norms of one gender but also the reactions of the opposite gender to the first, and the reactions of the first to the second?

This does not seem like a triumph of the individual, as one might hope for in an enlightened society. Instead, it seems like societal mutually-assured-destruction.

Post-script: I’m unwilling to leave this meditation on such a defeatist note. Thus, I inject some humor. One, a clip from the Coen Bros’ film The Big Lebowski, and the other, the trailer for the film adaptation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch – perhaps the best film about gender freedom I’ve ever seen.

Warning: Offensive Language Abounds