Once Upon A Time: Can We Escape the Male Gaze?

I am an avid follower of the abc series, Once Upon a Time. There are certainly some drawbacks to the show, and I wouldn't exactly call it the greatest thing on television, but I'm fascinated by fairytales, so I'm always on the lookout for a new retelling - lately, I've even been watching The Secret Circle, just because of its (subtle) connections to Irish mythology. And Once Upon a Time is an interesting retelling, particularly with complex characters like Rumpelstiltskin. So I'm not bashful about my interest in Once. 

But recently I discovered an interview with the cast and creators of the show, and I was surprised when they asked the show's writers to stand up - they were all men. Later, I heard them mention a female writer, but all the creators on the stage were men, and the majority of the writers appear to be men too. Yet the majority of the show's viewers are women.

When you imagine the reverse - a show produced and written by women, with a majority male viewership, it sounds worse than unlikely. It sounds laughable even. Yet women generally have no problem watching a show produced and written by men - so tell me, what do you think? In this kind of market, where men and women gobble up stories by men more readily than stories by women, is there a way to escape the male gaze? Should we?

Les implications de la langue, or how I learned to obsess about language

People used to ask if I'd read the dictionary. Go figure.

Note: this is a cross-posted article that Erica wrote for Go Girl Magazine.

A few years ago, a friend and I were talking about language and gender balances. I don't remember how we got on that subject, except we were both undergraduate English majors and this was normal for us. At any rate, he brought up the word brethren: what, he asked, would be its feminine counterpart? Even today, I'm still stumped. Sisters, or sisterhood, don't carry the same level of formality as brethren, and both already have their counterparts (brothers and brotherhood). What would we use as a counterpart to brethren?

Being multilingual myself, I'm used to the fact that languages are an expression of a worldview; my turns of phrase, the things that make me self-expressive, differ depending on the language I'm using at the time (I'm far more poetic in French, and less direct in Irish, than I am in English). For example, Irish doesn't really have a phrase for "I" the way we do in English. There's mé, which is joined with a verb to describe myself doing something, or mise, which is roughly translated as myself. But Irish doesn't have the same unitary concept of "I" that can be found in English, French, or Spanish. Similarly, those of us who grew up speaking English are all familiar with the confusion we felt when we learned that other languages give gender to basic nouns like tables, chairs, and plates. Even worse, different languages gender these nouns differently!

For a long time, I thought that the gendering of nouns was silly. Did French really need to distinguish between le and la for basic household items? Old English used to distinguish between things, though seemingly arbitrarily (the roots of the words wife and woman carried two different grammatical genders), and we managed to give these up to use the much-more-neutral the. If I'd become a true linguist, I would've delighted in sorting out the genders of various nouns to see if there was a broader pattern of discrimination. Were all feminized nouns, for example, the ones that could be associated with house, hearth, and home? Why not generate a new neutral way of saying le and la, the way German did?

The more I've thought about it, though, the more I've realized that simply gendering the form of "the" that a language uses isn't the only way to distinguish patterns of gendered thought. Many native English speakers are probably familiar with the unofficial gender of ships, cars, and other machines ("she," in case you were wondering), but there are other colloquial examples as well. What about slut and its increasingly-popular counterpart, man-slut? Purse and man-purse? Or what about the other terms we so often feel the need to specify: doctor and female doctor, captain and female captain, and others? In English, we pretend at neutrality, but often we have to address the cultural assumptions behind the vocabulary we use. Slut is assumed to refer to a woman, while a captain is presumably male. I don't think that French gendering necessarily highlights a history of discrimination, but I think that English gendering might indeed.

To come back to the brethren point, consider what it implies. It's an archaic plural form for brother, and yes, sistren (a plural for sister) is its binary counterpart. However, brethren is still a term used today to refer to a formal body of comrades, while sistren just sounds silly. Brethren still fits in particularly formal contexts, especially religious and Masonic ones, where the term really found footing as a formalized way of recognizing group membership. To me this begs the question: where were the formal groups of women at that time? Oh right. The survival of one term but not the other, while clearly more complex than just this analysis, nevertheless points at the disparate conditions that men and women faced when forming and maintaining formal groups back in the day.

Another example: look at the colloquial terms for husband and wife in French, mari and femme. Both come from the Latin terms for man and woman, though the Latin for man (maritus) carried the connotation of being married. The French words for man and woman, however, are now homme and femme, homme being derived from the Latin for human or man (marital status going unmentioned). Again, the complexity of etymology means that I need to specify that these are simple inquiries that leave a lot of variables untouched; however, do other readers notice that a French man's identifier changes based upon his marital status, while a woman's does not? This could go in a couple of different ways: either the woman is constant and unchanging while her husband must adapt to his new status, or the woman, historically being the property of various men, is unchanged by marriage because she gains nothing while her husband gains control of her fortune. Did either of these interpretations of archaic French social structure play a role in the development of these modern French words? I have no idea, but it's fun to speculate.

As I continue these lines of thought, I find myself wondering what other languages might indicate about their previous and current social interpretations of sex and gender. As noted, not all grammatical genders bear any relationship to social genders, but I firmly believe that language and culture do inform each other in some capacity (again, just think about the word slut and you'll see what I mean). When you think about the languages you've encountered, and the cultures using these languages, have you ever noticed historical or behavioural parallels? Even when you take it down a notch and just look at a word's history- for example, bonfire, which comes from the Irish Oíche Samhain tradition of setting tine cnamh, or bone fires- you learn so much about the culture that generated it (Oíche Samhain, by the way, is the origin of Halloween). What are some of the funny, interesting, sexist, cool, horrifying, or just plain bizarre linguistic things you've noticed in your travels?

Dodge follow-up (from Erica)

Apparently, Dodge has been taking heat for their misogynistic "man's last stand" commercial lately, and instead of rolling over and getting rid of the ad as they ought to, they've opted to produce another ad that doesn't exactly make up for everything.

The original ad- images of men voiced-over by a male voice making promises of "civilized behaviour" a la putting the toilet seat down and eating fruit for breakfast, all the while implying that these are from the checklist of emasculation- is bad enough, but the new one is even worse. It features a woman standing out on the lawn of a house while her male partner yells at her and throws her stuff out of a second-story window. She then gets into the advertised Dodge sedan and drives away while a text banner declares that Dodge makes getaway cars. I'm not making this up! Apparently, escaping from your angry partner who's throwing stuff at you is a marketing tool.

If you want to watch the ads, the original is available here and the new one is available here. I'd post them in here, but I don't really want their links to dirty the site.

Military gendering (from Erica)

Today's question is going up a bit late, and I apologize. Here it is, though, regardless: bearing in mind that male hormones have as strong an impact on human behaviour as female hormones do (i.e. testosterone induces aggression just as much as progesterone induces dysthymia), and that socialization has an impact on male and female gendered behaviours, what are some of the advantages or disadvantages to having a predominately male or predominately female military?

From Erica: Gender neutrality, androgyny, and the invisible gender

NB: There are many academic articles that have been written on this subject, and I have copies of them all- in my parents' basement. Thus, many of the ideas from "some theorist" in this post are referencing a real author whose name I can't see to cite from.

When I was in my undergrad at McGill, a lot of my friends liked to play with gender. Many identified themselves as genderqueer or genderfuckers, some identified as trans, and a few identified as people who liked to play for the sake of performance. Some of them maintained their assigned pronouns, and some didn't. One thing struck me though: of all of the gender-queering folk I was friends with, only one of them queered in the direction of femininity. Everyone else- including the friends who chose to present as gender-neutral as possible- presented many characteristics that are very strongly associated with masculinity. Short hair, pants, "men's" work shirts, ties...the list goes on. And for many of these friends, their assigned gender identity had been feminine for most of their lives, so for them masculine traits were a new experience, a realm for exploration, and the complete opposite of what they'd been forced (in one way or another) to present and pretend to own for a very long time.

But for me it begs the question: what happened to gender neutrality? One of the theorists I read in my undergrad days pointed out once, in discussions of oppression, that the key to maintaining a hegemony, a dominant group, is to make the dominant group invisible. In this view, White/Caucasian isn't a race, male isn't a sex, heterosexuality isn't a real sexuality, and masculine isn't a gender presentation. Well, they are, but no one perceives them that way; race, sex, sexuality, gender are all things that belong to people in Other categories. Thus, People of Colour have race, females have a sex, queer folk have a sexuality, and femininity is a possessed gender presentation. Another way of phrasing this is to say that people who are members of the dominant categories are often completely unaware of these characteristics that they have that are used to marginalize the people who do not have them. Think about it: how many straight folk are aware of their straight-ness or are conscious of how they indicate it? Often, unless they've mistakenly wandered into a queer club, they're oblivious.

The thing is that masculinity has not only been coded as invisible, but it's been coded as androgynous. With the one exception, every genderqueer person I knew at McGill played with masculinity to express their gender neutrality; the only friend I had who used femininity to genderqueer got all kinds of flack from outsiders for "doing it wrong," in lay terms. Somehow, too, this wasn't just connected to the assigned genders and sexes of the people who were playing or identifying with genderqueer presentations. It wasn't a situation in which formerly cis women were playing with masculinity and formerly cis men were playing with femininity- and, to be honest, I don't know (and don't care to know) what everyone's assigned genders and sexes were. Some folks kept their assigned sex (including pronouns) while playing with gender, and enjoyed disclosing it, while others did not. But it seemed that the universal consensus was that femininity was only gender-neutral when done in certain ways- a shaggy "boy" cut, dark eyeliner and/or lipstick, breasts that weren't bound- and masculinity should be presented otherwise. In that community, the general idea was that androgyny looked like a Goth cis-boy.

This isn't something that's particular to my own favourite community, though. Even in other areas, where genderqueering isn't exactly the expected, trending towards masculinity has been a big thing. Another theorist I read had a field day with cis-women's fashions and bodies in the workforce. Her argument was that since the early 1970s, especially for White women, expectations of bodies and clothes have been getting progressively more masculine- especially in the workforce. Of course these clothes and ideals maintain SOME element of femininity- God forbid our culture should fail to distinguish between men and women!- but, overall, the expectations are shockingly non-neutral. Power suits, for example, have become coded for women as well, especially with pants. Women in the workforce shouldn't wear ties, but should buy blouses with ruffles at the neckline and down the bosom- the feminine version of a tie. Of course, too, women should be skinny, and while they should maintain a certain amount of their curves- a push-up bra is a must- they absolutely shouldn't have an obvious hourglass figure or "flaunt" those curves in any way. In short, they should look boyish and masculine-professional, but not so masculine or so professional as to destroy the male-dominated gender-binaric power structure we've got going on in the US. Can you imagine the ruckus that would go up if some cis-man on Wall Street wore a skirt to be professional? Pants have become universalized- and this isn't a bad thing, because they're so comfy and practical- but have been coded as neutral while feminine articles, such as skirts, have not.

In majority culture in the US, we continue to believe that many things are neutral that really aren't- as Emily pointed out a few days ago. And, to a certain extent, I understand why so many masculine traits have become absorbed into the realm of the neutral while many of the "higher" feminine traits have not: high heels, skirts, fitted shirts, highly stylized hair, jewelry, and "unnaturally natural" makeup are all inconvenient, expensive, and occasionally painful. At the same time though, they can be a lot of fun, and they can look great on people. As my femme-leaning genderqueer friend proved time and time again, feminine characteristics can be worn and manipulated in ways that are flattering, phenomenal, and still a big middle finger to the gender binary. So why can't we get over the assumption that gender-neutral necessarily means masculine?

My theory, at least in part, is that the feminine traits we're foregoing in our cultural attempts to achieve neutrality- or, as in the case of the business world, to achieve some sort of reasonable "anyone can do it" professional standard- are not only traits that don't belong to the Golden Standard of masculinity, but are traits that belong to a group of people that have historically been marginalized, abused, and oppressed. Wearing a skirt and high heels isn't only occasionally uncomfortable; it's also a signifier of a particular power position in majority US culture. It's as though our fashion choices are revealing our decision: to be powerful, to be in control of our lives and identities, we have to be masculine. And- as a card-carrying cis-woman who enjoys her heels and skirts from time to time- I don't intend to deplore femme presentations, but these are historically the signifiers of victimhood. Of subordination. Of powerlessness. Heels make it harder to walk or run. Skirts limit the length of your stride. If you're worried about your makeup or your hair, you're not likely to do anything to get you messy.

The thing is, they don't have to be. While most of the cultural examples of kick-ass personalities in high femme getup are still sex objects intended for heterosexual male desire- fictional and real, and here Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes to mind- they're still kick-ass. They're not being victimized- except in a broader cultural sense, as I just mentioned- and they've earned themselves high amounts of respect. Who would call Michelle Obama a victim at this point in her life? Aside from the fashion magazines that are constantly picking on her for having arm muscles or wearing a sleeveless blouse or whatever fashion faux pas they're accusing her of now, she is influential and highly respected- and wearing heels and skirts.

I'd love to see that sort of dynamic be extended into the realm of gender neutrality or gender universality. Where it doesn't have to come from masculinity in order to be neutral or universal. Because as long as we're saying it does, or acting as though it does, we're implicitly saying that, in our gender-binaric culture, any cis-man who wears a skirt is giving up his right to social power and control. Femininity is only okay as long as it's performed by cis-women, and only as long as they understand that they're second-rate. I'd love to overturn that.

From Erica: genital restructuring survery for survivors of female genital cutting?

This morning, I woke up to an email from my partner with this link included. The article, published by Newsweek, talks about a doctor- a doctor who happens to have undergone genital restructuring surgery herself as part of a male-to-female transition- who has started working to adapt the procedures used to "create" the labia, clitoris, and vaginal openings for use on women who have (often forcibly) undergone female genital cutting.

Of course, there are some problems with the article- for example, the prevailing assumption (both from the writer and from the article's main interview subjects) that a person needs the full complement of normative female genitalia in order to be a "real" woman- but it also did a wonderful job of highlighting the myriad of roles that genitalia and sexuality play in broader human experiences. Whether it's in attaining a genital look and feel that have been taboo in one's culture, or whether it's changing the body to match one's expectations of gender and sex identity, the possibilities for effective genital restructuring surgery are broadening.

So too, as the article mentions, are the ways in which cultures can respond negatively to those feelings of empowerment that (may) come with newly restructured genitals. The article discusses the possibility of rejection that their interview subject might experience as a result of stepping away from the cultural tradition of female genital cutting; of course, negative judgement isn't limited to "Other" cultures, and while people in the United States are likely to respond positively to this particular person's surgery, trans folks in America get the short end of the stick when they pursue similar procedures.

As always, it's an interesting world out there.

From Emily: Dating and communicating

We're all familiar with the stereotypes about how men and women approach communication. According to these stereotypes, women are more likely to initiate serious conversations and men have the emotional maturity of a toddler, which leads them to do everything they can to avoid direct communication. This is an essential theme to family sit coms; the woman puts her hands on her hips and says "we need to talk," and the guy whines and groans and does everything he can to distract her. (Has anyone seen "Everyone Loves Raymond"?). I don't know how accurate these stereotypes are, and I have no intention of making an argument about their accuracy or lack thereof. What I would like to explore today is how traditional gender roles in heterosexual dating patterns contribute to this stereotype.

Not everyone follows traditional dating roles, and I say thank goodness for that! But even some very liberal and socially progressive individuals adhere strictly to the idea that a man should pursue a woman, and not the other way around. She can reciprocate the interest, the argument goes, but she shouldn't take over the chase because she deserves a man who's willing to chase her. My thoughts on mixing hunting metaphors with dating descriptions aside, this view is surprisingly prevalent in mainstream television, film, etc. (Just look at the book and film He's Just Not That Into You). But how do these prescriptive roles influence the way men and women communicate about their feelings, motivations, and intentions?

Here's how I see it: These roles make dating a more straightforward experience for men than for women. If a man who adheres to these roles is interested in a woman, he asks her out on a date. He instantly knows whether that first date will happen, because she tells him "yes" or "no" right away. If he is still interested after a first date, he asks her out again. And so on. There's always a chance the woman is accepting the dates without interest, or a chance that she'll accept a date only to cancel later, but in general a man can tell whether there will be another date very soon after inviting the woman on another one. In a storybook world this would never be a problem. A man would ask a woman out, she would accept or not accept, and couples would figure out how they felt one date at a time, until that crucial moment when they would both reveal their love.

But what happens when a man doesn't initiate another date right away, and the woman isn't sure why? Whatever gender stereotypes tell us about female intuition, most people can't read minds, so this is a plausible scenario. It could be the man is busy, or that he feels broke at the moment. It could be that he isn't sure whether he's interested and needs some time to sort things out. But then again maybe he's lost interest, and he simply won't call. This scenario could happen whether he said "I'll call you" or not. To a man in this predicament, the situation is clear. If he's interested he'll ask her out again, even if it takes a week or two before he calls. But the woman must wait before she learns his intentions. I attend school in a conservative environment, and I frequently hear men complain about women who make up excuses to avoid dates instead of admitting they've lost interest. Yet how many of those same men let women know that they will not be calling for another date? I would guess almost none. It would probably feel rude and presumptuous. Besides, the man knows that he's lost interest and will not initiate another date, so he doesn't need that information communicated the way that the woman will if she's interested in him.

So, if a woman is confused about a man's intentions, or if she wants to change the pace at which they're dating, or if she isn't interested but a man keeps asking her out despite all the hints she drops, what are her options? She could try to initiate a date with him, but that would be straying from traditional dating patterns. Some women will do this, but many who adhere to traditional gender roles will not. So, short of exiting traditional roles, she has only a few options:

1. Drop hints/ play games and hope she can subtly get (or share) the information she needs

2. Accept her confusion / annoyance, and just grin and bear it

3. Initiate a serious discussion

The problem with the first option is that subtlety often falls flat. And the second option can be extremely unpleasant. This leaves the third option: verbal communication. Many people avoid this option simply because they want dating to feel casual and natural, and it can't feel that way if everything is vocalized in explicit detail. In traditional heterosexual dating, a man would have more reason to avoid it, though, because he already has the information he needs: If he likes the woman he'll ask her out again, and if not he won't. If he wants to go out more, he'll ask her out more, and if he wants to go out less often, he'll ask her out less often. But if a woman is placed in the position of only saying ,"yes," "no," or "how about later," she may in fact need to discuss the relationship in a way her traditional male counterpart doesn't understand, and that need would make her much more likely to risk the awkward elements a discussion may bring.

Personally, I think the behavior patterns you start when you're dating carry over into longterm relationships and marriages. If a man and woman do develop serious difficulties communicating while they're dating, then a couple rings, a cake, and some vows probably won't make that go away. So maybe we can all be a little more open, honest, and direct, regardless of what dating patterns we prefer.

--Emily

From Erica: Community and gender socialization?

Today's topic- community, gender socialization, and psychology- is significantly more complicated than these tags suggest, and indeed there are several tags missing. Personal preferences, cultural standards, pressures, and immediate community (as opposed to ideological community) all influence and affect the things I've been rolling around in my brain these past couple of days, and I think they'll all be acknowledged here. The question is, how do I start to talk about something so enormous?

The whole need to discuss community, I suppose, is the best place to begin. I've spent most of my life in close-knit groups of people- small towns, or school groups- that support, tend to, celebrate with, and comfort each other. For me, a community does all these things. A community, in my mind, is a metaphysical "safe space." Since leaving behind both the communities I've lived in, 11 months ago, I've made friends, but had a hell of a time finding anything that truly constitutes a "community." This lack of a community, of a cohesive social network, has been devastating to me.

This is the part that bothers me the most. Why is the need for that- the "cohesive social network"- so significant in spite of all the positive social relationships I've managed to form in the past 11 months? A few things have come to mind as I've worried this subject the way my cat worries her nip-filled toys. Here they are, in list form:

-I'm from a small town

-My family is large and strongly interconnected

-I'm a cisgendered woman

I'll take these one at a time, for simplicity's sake.

I'm from a small town

Being from a small town is probably self-explanatory to anyone who's grown up in one or who's familiar with North American stereotypes about small town interconnectedness. Small town = small number of people = sense of knowing everyone = sense of connection and community is how the basic formula goes, I believe. I think this one applies fairly well. Growing up in an area where people watch out for each other- where family friends call you and take care of you when you're 11 years old and your mother's been rushed to the emergency room at 10 PM- makes it difficult to imagine the world any other way. The support network is undeniable. Living in my first city hardly changed my worldview; I was there in the context of a community where again members were there for each other at the drop of a hat- even when they didn't want to be. Membership in that community happened naturally, though not immediately, and so the urban environment did little to change my belief that community is vital.

My family is large and strongly interconnected

This one, again, is relatively easy to illuminate. My family is Irish-American Catholic, on one side, and white and Asian (predominately Chinese and Philippina) on the other. My immediate family consists of four people, but my extended family on both sides consists of almost fifty. We're spread out across the country, and thus don't get to see each other very often, but the social connection remains incredibly strong. If I make a trip to Los Angeles, there are easily five different relatives I can stay with; if I merely pass through the city, ten different people offer me a chance to have lunch, visit, or offer me a ride. Holidays were never small affairs, and when I moved into my first apartment, I found myself overwhelmed by a plethora of pots, pans, toaster ovens, and other paraphernalia that the relatives thought I might need.

Simply put, the family is close-knit and takes care of its own.

I am a cisgendered woman.

Since this post is already becoming ridiculously long, I'll try to keep this brief. Essentially, the current feminist and sociological literature (and some of the past) explores the relational nature of "women"- meaning here, the group of people who are assigned the sex "female" and the gender "girl" or "woman" at birth and who never conclude that they are anything else. What these arguments claim is that women are socialized, through the way they are treated by parents and caregivers and later by teachers and peers, to view the world in terms of relationships. Most of these arguments go on to apply this relational view of women to Western notions of traditional women's work- women as caregivers, women as relationship-builders, women as selfless nurturers, etc. Obviously, these are all generalizations that can't be expected to apply to everyone who identifies themselves as a woman.

I'm interested in the question of whether I've become so invested in this idea of a community in part because of my sex/gender identity: cisgendered woman. Obviously, as I've already discussed, other reasons apply as well. But the question remains: does my craving for stable, interconnected relationships have something to do with the fact that I've been socialized to see the world in those terms?

Maybe a more appropriate question, instead of "does," would be "how": how does my gender identity shape my desire for a community? A lack of community appals me and leaves me feeling vulnerable, unsafe, and insecure. This could be due to the fact that, without those networked relationships and that safe space, my gendered mind has very little material with which to engage in the world around it. While the other facets of my brain work overtime in other capacities, the emotional, relational aspect of it remains lost, at least to a certain extent. It doesn't have the full complement of social relationships to interact with in this new setting; instead, it deals in the simpler terms of individual friends.

It's entirely possible that I'm over-reading the situation, and that my gendered psyche has little to do with my desire for community. The literature hardly suggests that; in fact, the notion of community as embodied in a "society," with rules, standards of care, and specified members and non-members, is often attributed to men (here, I'm thinking of Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, and Engels). Furthermore, sociological "gendering" is incredibly difficult to pin down and isolate from other aspects of personality development as an individual grows up. It's entirely possible that being from a small town had more to do with my community-seeking than my gender socialization did. Moreover, it's just as likely that my psychological profile, my unique personality that no one can source, is simply community-oriented.

Which brings me to the topic I'm most likely to explore in my next post: psychology in terms of brain development, individualization, and intimate partner abuse.

P.S. These posts are, in case you can't tell, rough drafts. This blog is about the exploration of ideas and not their formalization.

--Erica