Really guys, a MAN for president?!?!!

To: The United States of America

From: A concerned citizen

Now, it doesn't take a genius to realize the world is changing and there are some serious issues the country needs to consider when voting for the next president.  The United States is at a drastic point in its history and we don't need it skyrocketing out of control.  So, I got two words and a letter for you: George W. Bush.  People, really?  Since when did you think it would be okay to elect a man as president?  I mean, I'm not trying to be sexist but it’s science!  You can't argue with science!  Men are feelings-oriented.  It’s just a fact of life.  It’s inevitable that at least once a month they get overwhelmed with their emotions, and who knows what they might do!  There's no way of telling when they're going to get PMS—or Pissy man syndrome as I call it—and with the way men get at this time of the month, they might just decide to blow up a country that pissed them off!  It’s science people; it’s in their hormones—their testosterone. They just get too upset and emotional too often to be effective leaders. 

As for other matters, let’s be honest.  Whether you want to say it or not, we all know the man's place is in the home.  That's what he does best!  He should feel proud of what he was genetically made to do: support his family and kids and take care of the home.  Men are made to be naturals at it!  Hell, God made Adam first to support and serve the rest of the family with everything he had, including his rib.  Not only is it where he should be, but man's paternal instincts would make him too sympathetic to situations where he may have to be a little tough.  We can't have someone like Bush thinking about the enemy’s families and then turn his eyes so the enemy can bomb us.  And back to nature, when he messes up he's going to be so upset he'll need someone to rescue him. The job is just too dangerous for a man to be in charge!

Finally, let’s get to the facts that no one else wants to say.  How long does it take your man to do his hair in the morning?  World War III could start and end before most men finish doing their hair in the morning.  And when he's finally finished, he STILL has to pick out the perfect outfit which in turn will probably distract the public from listening to him.  It’s embedded in our society and inevitable that a man will be concerned with how he looks. And moreover, men are too promiscuous.  A man president would try to find a way to spend the national budget on shoes and ties for his perfect outfits, and then turn around and cause a media frenzy around what he's wearing instead of paying attention to, I don't know if you remember this, but THE COUNTRY?! And let’s say someone criticizes his outfit or says that men take criticism too harsh!  They take everything someone says to them personally.  There is no way they could hear criticism and not cry and be offended.  What would we do if our leader was being criticized and in front of Chinese political leaders he just cries?  China would say: "Um America? Your son is crying.You’re going to have to come pick him up.  Yes, he took his nap and ate all his food.  We told him he couldn't have what he wanted and he hasn't stopped crying, sorry." 

People, it’s natural to want to make things equal.  I mean, men deserve rights too!  But when it comes to leadership, we have to think of all the factors in science and what we know about men.  All I am asking is before you elect our newest leader, just think about what a man is capable of doing to our country.  The possibilities are horrifying.

"If you're gay, you're gay."

I've seen this video about two dozen times over the past year or so and if you want to know the truth, I still think its funny. I get a kick out of this clip for what I consider obvious reasons––the classic big hair and night gown, the perfection of the Long Island mother accent, the absurd one liners. But what really gets me time after time is the familiarity.

I can't help but feel like I know this woman. She's in Long Island, Boston, and everywhere in between. I've seen her at family functions, town meetings, in church and out at the bar. Shes my neighbor. Shes my great aunt. Shes my 6th grade teacher. And I think if you really think about it, she is yours too. 

At one time or another, more often for some than others, we have all witnessed the attitude of this character in regards to homosexuality because its everywhere.

The satirical sketch comedy by John Roberts, writer and star of the video, makes the devastation and confusion of a mother discovering her son is "gay", a loaded label full of negative connotations, appear as realistic and ridiculous as it truly can be. 

In Judith Butler's essay, "Imitation and Gender Insubordination", she discusses indentity politics and how assuming the identity of a lesbian can be liberating yet simultaneously perpetuate the oppression of the homosexuals by validating heterosexist thought.

Heterosexuality has gained advantage by claiming the dominant role of the "natural." Our society tends to view anything that contradicts the heterosexual lifestyle as strange and clashing. Butler argues that "gender is an imitation for which there is no original," meaning that the idea that heterosexuality is the norm is a falacy that lives on through repitition. 

Saying "I am a lesbian" poses a problem for Butler. She cannot accept or reject the label because she feels "identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes" but also identifies with the meaning of "lesbian", at least in part. Butler does not refuse the sign of "lesbian" but she does refuse any stability of its definitive meaning. Any label can be restricting and all labels come with connotations both negative and otherwise.  

Which brings me back to the video. "Gaaaahd!," wails the Long Island mother in a moment of pure anguish. She wants an explanation for her sons defiance of heteronormativity. She places blame in unreasonable places. "Gay," she says, "he moved to the city and now hes gay."

The word "gay" means something bad to this woman. It means different, unnatural and it comes with a feminine hand motion. It's breaking her feminine heart because, you know, women are naturally emotional. ...Right?

Wrong! Or so I've been told. 

The meaning of woman (or man for that matter) is not concrete. This may not surprise you nearly as much as it did me but at the ripe age of 22, I'm learning. Before reading Butler and our class discussion, I hadn't given very much thought to gender roles or what comes with identifying as gay, straight or anything for that matter. I knew that as a woman, I could have a variety of "feminine" as well as "masculine" qualities, but I had never thought about what those terms really mean or where they came from. 

I can see now how identity politics create a divide between all people. Language forces us to think in terms of wrong and right, natural and unnatural but none of it is authentic. Reading Butler and class discussion has been personally enlightening––I only hope I can someday share my new perspective with the distraught mother of a "gay" man.

Nothing Essential

                Helene Cixous and Judith Butler are both post-structuralist feminists.  Both theorists discuss the notions of masculinity and femininity, but while Cixous acknowledges binaries that are constructed by language, Butler examines the need for those concepts, which she sees as essentializing, in feminism.  Cixous, in her essay “Sorties,” begins her conversation by emphasizing the hierarchy of binaries and how they have influenced philosophical and literary history.  The notion of “difference” controls all thinking and naturalizes the superiority that is established from those differences.  She shows that logocentrism and the existence of the active/passive binary have created a man/woman binary in which the man is always privileged, yet she sees that the binary is unstable.  Her discussion centers on a desire to deconstruct language and the masculine/feminine binary, indicating the influence of Derrida in her work.  

                Cixous argues against Freud and Jones, who identify a “specific femininity” and reinforce phallocentric superiority (Rice & Waugh 233).  She writes, “We must guard against falling complacently or blindly into the essentialist ideological interpretation, as, for example, Freud and Jones, in different ways, ventured to do” (Rice & Waugh 232).  In this sense, Cixous, influenced by Lacan, is not essentialist as Foucauldians would argue.  Rather, she acknowledges the existence of the binary and looks to deconstruct that.  She views the binary and history’s use of the binary as something constructed in the symbolic through language.  This structure is ideological rather than essential, as we interpret her argument.  Although she stylistically rejects the masculine linear style of writing, her rejection of that style could be seen as a further attempt to deconstruct the binary rather than an essentializing quality of her work.   She writes that were the language and binaries to be deconstructed, “That which appears as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ today would no longer amount to the same thing.  The general logic of difference would no longer fit into the opposition that still dominates.  The difference would be a crowning display of new differences” (Rice & Waugh 234).  Therefore, gender is something that is created within the realm of language rather than essential.  This deconstruction, she argues, would allow the woman to reach jouissance and liberation.  

                Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, focusing on language, influences Cixous’s work.  Ashley Shelden’s guest post argues that, “There is no human subject, for Lacan, before language,” showing that there is no identity.  Furthermore, the idea of identity creates anxiety as the subject knows that it will always be lacking and unstable.  Cixous, in using Lacan’s theories, shows that the deconstruction of language and therefore the binaries is what will allow a woman to achieve jouissance and a destabilization of the self.        Butler, in Bodies that Matter, argues that gender is a performance rather than something essential.  To Butler, a Foucauldian, resists identity politics and the notion of an essential feminine.  Further, she rejects naturalizing a gender identity.  For Butler, gender is an example of iteration, showing that heterosexuality is always already a performance.  Through the influence of Derrida, she finds that the subject does not have a center and is not autonomous, indicating that there is nothing essential about someone, and therefore there is no essential feminine.  She finds Cixous’s work problematic, criticizing it for essentializing the feminine.  Contrary to Cixous, Butler uses a more traditional and linear style of writing, further denying the existence of an essential feminine.  For Butler, there is no essential masculine or feminine because of the performative nature of gender.  

                Heterosexuality as a performance demonstrates that the gender norms are constantly at risk and unstable.  Referring to gender norms, she writes, “Such norms are continually haunted by their own inefficacy; hence the anxiously repeated effort to install and augment their jurisdiction,” (Rice & Waugh 247).  Here she acknowledges that gender norms need to be maintained and therefore do not embody someone.  According to Aurelia Armstrong, “a Foudauldian approach to identity production demonstrates the role played by cultural norms in regulating how we embody or perform our gender identities.”  Armstrong indicates that Butler’s rejection of the essential feminine in feminism for it generalizes and establishes gender norms that insist on an identity and stable subject.   There is no stable subject, according to Butler, and it is through the performance of gender that the male/female binary is created and stabilized to begin.

Heterosexuality depends on stabilizing the binary between male and female, but according to Butler, drag disrupts this binary and emphasizes that gender is a performance and not an essence.  She writes, “What is ‘performed’ in drag is, of course, the sign of gender, a sign that is not the same as the body that it figures, but cannot be read without it,” (Rice & Waugh 247).  Drag therefore shows that the normativity of heterosexuality is illogical and must be a performance, because its dependence on masculinity and femininity insists on those essential qualities, which Butler finds impossible.  Butler therefore uses drag to emphasize that gender is only a performance.  

In terms of the “feminine” role in feminism, we argue that femininity is a capitalist construct projected on society through the hegemony.  For example, the ideal feminine identity accepted in the 1950’s and even before and after was one of being a housewife submissive to the needs of her husband.  This projection was offered through ISAs which as Althusser and Marxists argue construct the hegemonic ideals and perpetuate them in society.  Females believe their femininity is part of being a free autonomous subject with a unique personality when in fact they are being controlled internally.  Therefore, we would agree more along the lines of Butler through a Marxist approach that femininity is a performance that has been projected by the hegemony onto females through ISAs in a way that makes females believe they are choosing within their femininity but they are actually being interpellated by that femininity.  There is no gender binary because gender socialization is a corporate construct and therefore is a performance.  In this way, we are all in drag because a female only dresses as a female because it is a social construct, and a male only dresses as a male because it is the social, capitalist construct; however, if it weren’t for the hegemony a male may be dressing as a female and vice versa.  Therefore, the only reason there is a feminine identity to begin with is because the hegemony has created a notion of feminine through the corporate culture and projected it through ISAs.  The repetition of femininity, particularly through ISAs that privilege masculinity and normalize heterosexuality, shows that gender norms are always at risk of destabilizing.  Hence, there is no place for the “feminine” in femininity because outside of the social structure the feminine doesn’t exist.