Trancending Gender Part II

The movie Juno had a particular scene which gave a nice representation of the irrelevance of gender on the ability to love. Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) knew of only one name she wanted to give to the baby which was soon to be hers: Madison. By the simple act of naming, the audience knew that she only hoped to have a baby girl to give her love to. However, Juno, a modern young woman, does not want to know the sex, she would rather it be a surprise for the Loring’s. One main element in Juno is that love is love regardless of one’s gender and with that said, gender is not so black and white, but much more complicated than many would know. Gender is also something that is a private connection one has with oneself and can often be quite ambiguous.

Therefore gender is no longer confined to the limiting criteria of man and woman as humans have come to know it. Many theorists and intellectuals are dialoguing about the very topic of gender transcendence; it is a highlight on the human struggle against gender constraints and the conversation has been enlivened. Simone de Beauvoir by way of Dorothy Parker’s Modern Woman; The Lost Sex called for not only equality, but transcendence beyond the confines of genderhood because she felt that “[her] idea is that all of us, men as well as women, should be regarded as human being.” (de Beauvoir 1).

She is asking the reader to transcend their vision and experiences beyond their sex, and ultimately, humans may redefine what it means to be a man and a woman in the twenty-first century.

Audrey Hepburn playing Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, might have an androgynous quality: her body is like a young boys, flat and square; she wears her hair up much of the time, giving it a short, boy-like structure; and she uses a pale color on her lips, highlighting her large eyes but not her feminine wiles. More importantly Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly might actually be a man, and therefore, gender ambiguity is prevalent.

The reader assumes that Holly is female because the narrator calls Holly a ‘she’ and describes ‘her’ wearing “a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker” (Capote 16), which all signify a females attire. But what if she is a drag-queen? After all, Truman Capote surrounds her with gentleman at “21,” outside of “P.J. Clark’s saloon,” and her party where she seemingly passed out invitations by “zig-zagging through various bars” (Capote 32). The narrator also describes her singing as that of “a boy’s adolescent voice” (Capote 19) and says she has “boy’s hair” (Capote 16).

These suggest a male transvestite’s behavior, receiving attention from only men and at her most natural – just after showering and drying her hair on the fire escape – she has the qualities of a young boy. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable for Capote to inject his book with a gender chameleon because he allows the biased or ignorant reader to partake in an unconscious ability to sympathize with the protagonist.

Judith Butler also notes in her article “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” that “[t]here is no ‘proper’ gender” (Butler 722) because “gendering is a kind of impersonation and approximation” (Butler 722). Therefore, when television programming blurs the traditional gender lines, they are at once saying gender is personal while capitalizing on this postmodern outlook.

Both Dirty Sexy Money and America’s Next Top Model include transgendered individuals as part of their regular programming. According to Barker, “the struggle over sexual identities…, (Kristeva) suggests, could result in the deconstruction of sexual and gendered identities understood in terms of marginality within the symbolic order” (Barker 297) and we see this within the scope of these programs.

Dirty Sexy Money has employed a transsexual (who is post-op) and plays a transsexual who is having an affair with a New York Senate lawyer. Candis Cayne who plays Carmelita on Dirty Sexy Money is breaking cultural standards of who we can love, have sex with, and ultimately, what decisions we as humans can make for ourselves. Moreover, as Butler notes, this blurring of lines does not necessarily allow one –who is heterosexual - to define another as gay, or in the case of Cayne, really a man because they are defining from their “straightness” (Butler 723). Again, it is a personal representation of oneself.

On Americas Next Top Model too a transvestite was given the opportunity to compete. Even though the contestant, Isis, is not endowed with the female anatomy, they granted her license to be who she feels she is, a woman. Much of this acceptance by mainstream programming is the acknowledgment of the ability to capitalize on gender differentiations, however, Isis has the chance to express that although she “was born physically male, […] mentally everything [she] feel [s] is female” (ANTM).

Michael Foucault in “The History of Sexuality” expresses that gender deviations were created from “three major explicit codes [that] governed sexual practices: canonical law, the Christian pastoral, and civil law” (Foucault 683). Foucault discusses how these constraints and laws placed on individuals exacerbate their sexual deviations from the implemented norms because they “extend[] the various forms of sexuality” (Foucault 689). The laws, Foucault suggests, defined an entire realm of inappropriate acts which people actually became aware of because of the imposed laws and in essence carried them out.

But what about those individuals whom, like Candis Cayne, have chosen to change their organs or everything they feel, like Isis, “is female?” (ANTM) Are they a product of the deviation from these laws? And do we has humans just ignore them as if they were the dredges of society? Moreover, who is the ultimate decision maker of a person’s gender identity? According to Barker “sexual identity is not an essence but a matter of representation” (Barker 297). A representation which the individual may make for themselves and Norah Vincent, arguing against the traditional gender positions by disguising herself as the other, illuminates this representation.

Norah Vincent blurs the traditional gender lines in her book Self-Made Man, One Woman’s Year Disguised As A Man; she, however, did so in a way that allowed her to share in the experiences of the other sex through the pretensions of her male counterpart, Ned. Vincent experiments with gender by disguising herself as a man for a year and a half and taking part in all aspects of male life: friendship, sex, love, work, self, and spirituality. What she discovers, against her instincts, is the damage that has been done to not only women but men as well, and like de Beauvoir, attempts to find that “transcendence is[…] overshadowed and for ever transcended by another ego (conscience) which is essential and sovereign” (De Beauvoir 11).

Vincent is the Yang to de Beauvoir’s Yin because, like de Beauvoir, she shows how men who “feels himself a demigod as compared with women” (de Beauvoir 8) are actually fraught with pain over “the essence of what our culture has come to think of as masculine tutelage applied roughly to the moral soul: break a man down to build him up stronger” (Vincent 171).

She talks about a men’s workshop that she joined, where women were not allowed. It was based off of the bestseller, Iron John by Robert Bly and the men were attempting to find a happy medium between what Bly called “the fifties man who was suppose to ‘like football, be aggressive, stick up for the United States, never cry, and always provide.’ But was callous and brutal, isolated and dangerous” (Vincent 229) and the man who came from the sixties “beset by guilt and horror over the Vietnam War and encouraged by the early feminist movement to get in touch with his feminine side” (Vincent 229). Part of the workshop - and central to it - was that the men had to hug one another. Vincent recalls that the hugging was very different from any of her encounters as Ned because they would cry and share reassuring words to regain that “surrogate brotherly/fatherly love” (Vincent 233), and “reverse a lifetime’s worth of programming” (Vincent 233).

Not only are women programmed to behave appropriately, Vincent notes that men are as well. She also shows how each of a gender’s programming inhibits them or encourages them to act a specific and often inappropriate way because we are reacting to the gender laws placed upon humans. Take for example her dating research; it succinctly details the trauma that our conditioning has caused.

Ned’s experiences in the dating world, Vincent sees that “[d]ating women as a man was a lesson in female power, and it made me, of all things, into a momentary misogynist […] I saw my own sex from the other side, and I disliked women irrationally for a while because of it. I disliked their superiority, their accusatory smiles, their entitlement to choose or dash me with a fingertip, an execution so lazy, so effortless, it made the defeats and even the successes unbearably humiliating. Typical male power feels by comparison a blunt instrument, its salvos and field strategies laughably remedial next to the damage a woman can do with a single cutting word: no” (Vincent 127).

She points to “[a]ny smartly dressed woman who has ever walked the gauntlet of construction workers on lunch break or otherwise found herself suddenly alone in unfamiliar male company with her sex on her sleeve […]” (Vincent 21), and since they are intimidated by the cat-calls or unprovoked sexualization, “(t)hey tended to see a wolf in every man they met, and so they made every man they met into a wolf” (Vincent 107).

We tend to put one person’s wrongdoings under the umbrella of their whole sex because “[r]omantic hurt equaled romantic blame, and because they were exclusively heterosexuals, romantic blame was assigned more often to the sex, not the morals, of the person inflicting the pain” (Vincent 100). Yet, as Vincent has discovered, we are all stuck in this “sexuality that is economically useful and politically conservative” (Foucault 1) as if our bodies and the choice we make of who we are is a commodity to be sold. There is tons of material to be gobbled up though, as seen in Susan Bordo’s ‘Material Girl’: The Effacements of Postmodern Culture, of how we define ourselves as predetermined by our gender. These, too, have created an irrational image of traditional gender signs, causing many to literally mold themselves to fit the typecast.

Postmodernism has brought humans, who mind you are of the fitting class, the ability to design their face to look like the perfect image of the gender they wish to symbolize. For example, a female’s idea of beauty is developed through the commodity exchange lens of advertising. Bordo likens it to humans acting god-like in our reconstruction of our bodies. Humans are, “re-arranging, transforming, and correcting […] the very materiality of the body” (Bordo 1). She describes this as a sort of barbidization of the human body, what Bordo calls the “cultural plastic” (Bordo 1) of Western society. While humans are able to define their gender through the modern age of medicine and science, there is still a limit based off of what is shown on television and magazines of the ideal beauty.

Bordo sites magazines like Fit, which is geared towards women, and Details, a predominately male-centered magazine that have made statements regarding plastic surgery as “another fabulous [fashion] accessory” (Bordo 2), and one can “sculpt your body into a work of art” (Bordo 2). Yet, these magazines show the exact look that a female or a male should have with the advent of breast augmentation and lips on steroids for the female client or pectoral implants and penis enlargement for the male. We are perpetuating a look that is female or male centered, and thus, perpetuating the gender typing of each sex.

Jean Baudrillard, in his article The System of Objects, suggests that the gender castings, by way of “material goods” (Baudrillard 417) are “merely the objects of need and satisfaction” (Baudrillard 417). While some agreement on the advent of plastic surgery can be made, disagreement on it only consumed for need and satisfaction is prevalent. As children and forced into the symbolic order of which we are born under, we are wrapped in either pink or blue. We are gender stereotyped from the womb based off our sex organs. The “need or satisfaction” is not just what consumption entails because of this very symbolic act of wrapping babies in their gender. The movie Juno expresses this very well.

Vanessa Loring decides she will paint the room of the child she is adopting to an eggshell or custard color because it is gender neutral. If she paints it pink and the baby is a boy, what will happen? Will he be a homosexual at the very sight of the female color or confused and ridiculed that his room is a girl’s room? So, eggshells must be treaded lightly, we would not want a confusion to occur about the palate of the room. What is interesting to note, this choosing of gender or gender neutrality is solely on the parent. Vanessa is choosing what will be appropriately stimulating to her newborn. And whether or not Diablo Cody, the writer of Juno, meant to critique gender stereotyping, she does in the act of framing a pink, Jiffy Lube note.

When Juno writes on the pink piece of paper and it is for a typically male centered career of car mechanics, she is blurring the gender lines. The color of the paper is female and the receipt itself is male, being from a car oil-changing business. More importantly, this act is expressing that the framing of the note is from Vanessa’s personal sentiment to the note itself. Instead of focusing on what the baby will be and it’s appropriately designated color, she is celebrating the child as a gift that she was unable to have herself. Her own ideas of gender have been muted; she is no longer concerned with pleasing the appropriate gender stereotype by remaining neutral to its mystery. Moreover, she owns the very joys she is experiencing in having someone to express mutual love when framing the gender mixed note.

These various texts can be viewed as a challenge to the boundaries of what it means to be a male or female as well as showing the detriments of sole focus on gender. Simone de Beauvoir and Norah Vincent both use their experiences to express that her womanhood (and Vincent’s manhood) is not “defined by limiting criteria” (de Beauvoir 2). Moreover, the networks are granting the transgendered community a soap-box that enable human’s a right to be whomever they themselves feel that they are truly. And movies, like Juno, express that simply focusing on a gender is no way to encourage unconditional love. Therefore, human beings may gain a bit more compassion and understanding towards those they encounter, and hopefully, as these texts set out to accomplish, regardless of sex, one may be valued for intellect and ability and ultimately choose what is best for themselves.

Work’s Cited

Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 3^rd edition. London: SAGE

Publications Ltd., 2008.

Baudrillard, Jean. "The System of Objects." Post Structuralism, Deconstruction, and

Post-Modernism: 408-19.

de Beauvoir, Simone. “Introduction: Woman as Other.” (1949).

Bordo, Susan. "'Material Girl': The Effacements of Postmodern Culture." Cultural

Studies: 1099-115.

Butler, Judith. "Imitation and Gender Insubordination." Gender Studies, Gay/Lesbian Studies, Queer Theory: 722-30.

Capote, Truman. Breakfast At Tiffany’s. New York: Penguin Books, 1958.

Foucault, Michael. “The History of Sexuality.” Gender Studies, Gay/Lesbian Studies,

Queer Theory: 683- 91.

Hatland, Katie. Transgender contestant on America’s Next Top Model. 26 September

2008. 13 October 2008 .

Juno. Dir. Jason Reitman. Perf. Ellen Page, Michael Cera, and Jennifer Garner. DVD. 2007.

“Chelsea Lately Candis Cayne Interview.” YouTube. 2008. 13 October 2008.

Vincent, Norah. Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man. New York:

Penguin Books, 2006.

Barbidization of America

As said in the above mentioned posts, S. California particularly has an obsession with obtaining perfection, but that can lead to very dangerous places and not only in S. California. A news report last week told of a Korean woman who injected her face with cooking oil when she ran out of silicon. She wound up looking like she had a severe case of elephantiasis.

Madonna has also had some of her own fixing's up and
there have been horrendous pictures of her post-procedure. She, as Susan
Bordo states, is not what she initially set out to be, one who scoff's
in the face of patriarchal conformity. Although I never thought she did
anything revolutionary, she just happened to have a soapbox to project
what many women in the sex industry have done for ages. Only she brought
their image to young girls to emulate. Go Madonna!

Youth, Style, Re'sistance

I am certainly part of a subculture, it's funny though because I am not
die-hard or fanatical about the scene, I just personally love the style.
But here is a link to a site where the die-hards hang out and cheese
about. This is where the Kitten 66 joke comes in. The joke touches on
how when people get into the whole subculture thing they can become so
completely immersed in being different and relish in their unusualness,
but really there's a total saturation and their oddity has become
commonplace.

www.rockabillyfever.com

On a similar note, I find the - for instance - punk scene to have
started with very good intentions. You know, eff the government and
anarchy rules, but a virus has come about and threatened to change all
that... It's called Hot Topic and a punk documentary said that it gave
way for saturation and thus a corporate spin and complete alteration of
what it means to be thumbing your nose at the very institutions that are
now making money off the punk scene. It's interesting how capitalism
finds a way to make money off the anti-capitalists.

Translation over the Internet

I thought this was a perfect example of how even though we may be
genderless, ageless, etc over the internet, we still struggle with
translation. Here is an email I was sent that illustrates... I
personally like the chicken slogan :/


The world is smaller. The internet has done that.
But language still poses many barriers.
What I say and what you hear may not always be the same.
Don't believe me? Buy a product made overseas and read the English
translation of the instructions.
Need more examples? These marketing failures may help to illustrate . . .

1. Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose", into Spanish, where it was
read as "Suffer from diarrhea".

2. Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an
American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

3. Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into German only
to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use
for the "manure stick".

4. When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same
packaging as in the U.S., with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the
label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put
pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read.

5. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a
notorious porno magazine.

6. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish
market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el
Papa), the shirts read "I saw the potato" (la papa).

7. Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi
brings your ancestors back from the grave", in Chinese.

8. Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "it takes a strong man to make a
tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man
to make a chicken affectionate".

9. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Ke-kou-ke-la", meaning
"Bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax", depending on
the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic
equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le", translating into "happiness in the mouth".

10. When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were
supposed to have read, "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you."
Instead, the company thought that the word "embarazar" (to impregnate)
meant to embarrass, so the ad read: "It won't leak in your pocket and
make you pregnant."

In light of Barker being a difficult and often confusing read for me, I
can not help but feel that I am reading an historical account or ancient
text when looking at the chapter titled "a new world disorder." Partly
because I am not finished with the chapter yet and waiting for Barker to
say "but that has all changed" and the other part is that the onslaught
of technology which speeds up our ever-changing history mixed with the rapid
decrease of our economy, our consumerism is coming almost to a halt.  The 
section called "patterns of consumption" seems so archaic, take for example 
"the majority of western societies has sufficient housing, transportation, 
and income to be in a post-scarcity situation" (152) when now - and 
probably less than a year from when this book was written - one can say not 
true to all three above mentioned. It's kind of scary how fragile 
capitalism is because when we are dealing with an economic meltdown and 
have only sought a band-aid to fix the problem (that is really only 
benefiting the boardroom,) one can only ask: what's going to happen next?

Another aspect of this read that I am finding interesting is the concept
of "consumption of signs" (153) because a little voice is telling me
that as we fall further down the rabbit hole of consuming and begin to
realize that consumption will inevitably end, our value signs will have
to shift to something that has more permanence.  Maybe the green jobs and
humanitarianism will be the new Gucci/Versace; as I experience
the changes I can't help but think that those values of "aesthetic
signs" are going to dip back into the cracks and be altered by the
effects of greed that our society has gobbled up so ferociously. The
more permanent will be held in assisting and enlightening until our society
is back up and running and then Gucci/Versace will rear it's pretty little
head again :)

Phantasmatic

I wish I had read Judith Butler's article before writing my paper, it
fit perfectly with the subject of surpassing the "phantasmatic plenitude
of naturalized heterosexuality." (Butler) Now, I didn't talk about
sexual preference, but gender and sexual preference, or even the lack of
a preference, fit nicely. I love this image that her and Derrida speak
about, a sort of apparition -that one who does not feel they are of the
normative heterosexual male or female construct - will certainly become.
Or they are this mime who "imitates nothing, reproduces nothing, opens
up in its origin the very thing he is tracing out, presenting, or
producing, he must be the very moment of truth" (Derrida), however, the
mere force of this heterosexual/gender norm creates only the unauthentic. 

It makes me think about Prop 8 and, based off of citizens morals, the
want for a separate but equal definition of marriage, thus creating this
"ghost that is the phantom of no flesh." (Derrida) By constitutionally
changing the definition we are in essence telling those who do not fit
into our social constructs, they are of the minority, therefore, they do
not receive the same body which us - heterosexual males and females- are
blessed with or that we have a claim on the "gender proper to one sex
rather than another... that sex's cultural property." (Butler)

Furthermore, Butler states that even the "normal" heterosexuals are in
fact a phantasm of their own making. I see this image of those who hold
fast to their "proper" sexual identities and really they are like this
ghost following their own shadow. So are we all, dogs chasing our tails.

And to further this thought, and a much clearer thesis I could of had to
express succinctly why it is important to transcend our implicit gender
roles, I must directly quote Butler. She talks about the "psychic
mimes" which is the self inclusive with the Other model. She says
"(g)ender as the site of such psychic mimes is thus constituted by the
variously gendered Others who have been loved and lost, where the loss
is suspended through a melancholic and imaginary incorporation (and
preservation) of those Others into the psyche" (Butler). But while this
"mimetism" occurs we are failing our own internal struggles to define
ourselves based off the supposed self or Other. It reminds me of Maggie
the Cat, she defines herself as the "natural woman" and is needing 
Brick to confirm that naturalization of her 'self' through procreation
or even just his mere masculine attention.

Romance of a Radical Sort

I find it funny that the radical aspect of the romantic comedy has now
become this notion that, (gasp) wait for it.... Woman actually enjoy sex
just as much as men, maybe even more. And even though this was discovered
by the Kinsey report, we saw that the sex comedy kept that on the back
burner by still emphasizing a woman's need for a solid commitment. With
that said, and in the context of the women's movement of the 70's, a
woman's sexual necessity is not a shocking revelation. After all, they
-the feminist movement- are trying to define what women actually want. 

I do disagree with McDonald's suggestion that the romance of sexual
encounters has been lost. Romance is a lot about fantasy, why can one
not have a fantasy during intercourse? [I did, however, love the line
"what was there to stop the romantic comedy heroine from sleeping with
the hero?" (60)] Regardless, this idea made me think of a poem that I
just read by Andrew Marvell where he is extremely insistent on his lover
and him consummating their love because death can come so soon and
unexpectedly. Now while this may be a seemingly cheap ploy to bed his love,
the poem is a romantic one of longing for her. It is also quite selfish
that he is so entirely obsessed with bedding her, much like the previous chapters
of McDonald when she speaks about the battle of the sexes. 

This is why I think that movies like Annie Hall consist of characters who are
investing in themselves as opposed to self absorption, and in return they are
investing in their future of a better relationship. I think it is important to be familiar
and in tune with all of our experiences, this means practice, why not have some
fun practical lessons in our sexual encounters?

Transcending Gender

“My idea is that all of us, men as well as women, should be regarded as human beings.” (de Beauvoir 1) Something interesting is occurring here and has been for a great many years; Simone de Beauvoir, by way of Dorothy Parker’s Modern Woman; The Lost Sex, succinctly calls for not only equality, but transcendence beyond the confines of genderhood. Along with de Beauvoir; Truman Capote, Michael Foucault, primetime television, and Norah Vincent express their apprehension in return. And thus, these text not only assist the reader to transcend their vision and experiences beyond their sex, but ultimately, they redefine what it means to be a man or woman in the twenty-first century.

Audrey Hepburn playing Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, might have an androgynous quality: her body is like a young boys, flat and square and she wears her hair up much of the time, giving it a short, boy-like structure, but what is more, it was suggested that Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly is a man.

Looking back over, it is a very reasonable and stimulating question. The reader assumes that Holly is female because the narrator calls Holly a ‘she’ and describes ‘her’ wearing “a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker,” (Capote 16) all signifying a females attire. But what if she is a drag-queen? After all, Truman Capote surrounds her with gentleman at “21,” outside of “P.J. Clark’s saloon,” and her party where she seemingly passed out invitations by “zig-zagging through various bars.” (Capote 32) The narrator also describes her singing as that of “a boy’s adolescent voice” (Capote 19) and says she has “boy’s hair.” (Capote 16)

These suggest a male transvestite’s behavior, receiving attention from only men and at her most natural – just after showering and drying her hair on the fire escape – she has the qualities of a young boy. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable for Capote to inject his book with a gender chameleon, and thus, the biased or ignorant reader partakes in an unconscious ability to sympathize with the protagonist.

Television programming has begun to set precedence in the west’s visual media world by blurring the traditional gender lines as well. Both Dirty Sexy Money and America’s Next Top Model include transgendered individuals as part of their regular programming. According to Barker, “the struggle over sexual identities…, (Kristeva) suggests, could result in the deconstruction of sexual and gendered identities understood in terms of marginality within the symbolic order” (Barker 297) and we see this within the scope of these programs.

Dirty Sexy Money has employed a transsexual (who is post-op) and plays a transsexual who is having an affair with a New York Senate lawyer. Candis Cayne who plays Carmelita on Dirty Sexy Money is breaking cultural standards of who we can love, have sex with, and ultimately, what decisions we as humans can make for ourselves, ie. what symbolic gender we attach to ourselves.

On America's Next Top Model too, (thanks to Katie Hatland for posting on her blog) a transvestite is given the opportunity to compete. Even though the contestant, Isis, is not endowed with the female anatomy, they are granting her license to be who she feels she is, a woman. The cynical part of me says that it is only for ratings, but the flip side is that she has the chance to express that although she “was born physically male,… mentally everything (she) feel(s) is female,” (ANTM) and Isis goes on to say that she feels she “was born in the wrong body.” (ANTM) If, as many religions believe, we have a soul, Isis suggests that her soul is separate from her physical anatomy.

Michael Foucault in “The History of Sexuality” expresses that “(u)p to the end of the eighteenth century, three major explicit codes… governed sexual practices: canonical law, the Christian pastoral, and civil law” (Foucault 683) Foucault discusses how these constraints and laws placed on individuals exacerbate their sexual deviations from the implemented norms because they “extend() the various forms of sexuality.” (Foucault 689) The laws, Foucault suggests, defined an entire realm of inappropriate acts and that people actually became aware of them, in essence, they carried them out.

But what about those individuals whom, like Candis Cayne, have chosen to change their organs or everything they feel, like Isis, “is female?” (ANTM) Are they a product of the deviation from these laws or are their souls inappropriately attached to the wrong body? And do we has humans just ignore them as if they were the dredges of society? According to Barker “sexual identity is not an essence but a matter of representation” (Barker 297) and Norah Vincent, arguing against the traditional gender positions by guising herself as the other, illuminates this representation.

Vincent blurs the traditional gender lines in her book Self-Made Man, One Woman’s Year Disguised As A Man; she, however, did so in a way that allowed her to share in the experiences of the other sex through the pretensions of her male counterpart, Ned. Vincent experiments with gender by disguising herself as a man for a year and a half, taking part in all aspects of male life: friendship, sex, love, work, self, and spirituality. What she discovers, against her instincts, is the damage that has been done to man, and like de Beauvoir, attempts to find the “transcendence (that) is… overshadowed and for ever transcended by another ego (conscience) which is essential and sovereign.” (De Beauvoir 11)

Vincent is the Yang to de Beauvoir’s Yin because, like de Beauvoir, she shows how men who “feels himself a demigod as compared with women” (de Beauvoir 8) are actually fraught with pain over “the essence of what our culture has come to think of as masculine tutelage applied roughly to the moral soul: break a man down to build him up stronger.” (Vincent 171)

She talks about a men’s workshop that she joined, where women were not allowed. It was based off of the bestseller, Iron John by Robert Bly and the men were attempting to find a happy medium between what Bly called “the fifties man who was suppose to ‘like football, be aggressive, stick up for the United States, never cry, and always provide.’ But was callous and brutal, isolated and dangerous” (Vincent 229) and the man who came from the sixties “beset by guilt and horror over the Vietnam War and encouraged by the early feminist movement to get in touch with his feminine side.” (Vincent 229-230) Part of the workshop (and central to it) was that the men had to hug one another. Vincent recalls that the hugging was very different from any of her encounters as Ned because they would cry and share reassuring words to regain that “surrogate brotherly/fatherly love,” (Vincent 233) and “reverse a lifetime’s worth of programming.” (Vincent 233)

Vincent also discusses this in terms of Ned’s experiences in the dating world. Vincent sees that “(d)ating women as a man was a lesson in female power, and it made me, of all things, into a momentary misogynist… I saw my own sex from the other side, and I disliked women irrationally for a while because of it. I disliked their superiority, their accusatory smiles, their entitlement to choose or dash me with a fingertip, an execution so lazy, so effortless, it made the defeats and even the successes unbearably humiliating. Typical male power feels by comparison a blunt instrument, its salvos and field strategies laughably remedial next to the damage a woman can do with a single cutting word: no.” (Vincent 127)

She chalks this up to “(a)ny smartly dressed woman who has ever walked the gauntlet of construction workers on lunch break or otherwise found herself suddenly alone in unfamiliar male company with her sex on her sleeve…,” (Vincent 21) and since they are intimidated by the cat-calls or unprovoked sexualization, “(t)hey tended to see a wolf in every man they met, and so they made every man they met into a wolf.” (Vincent 107)

Hence, we tend to put one person’s wrongdoings under the umbrella of their whole sex because “(r)omantic hurt equaled romantic blame, and because they were exclusively heterosexuals, romantic blame was assigned more often to the sex, not the morals, of the person inflicting the pain.” (Vincent 100) Yet, as Vincent has discovered, we are all stuck in this “sexuality that is economically useful and politically conservative” (Foucault 1) as if our bodies and the choice we make of who we are is a commodity to be sold or there is a "right" way to behave and feel. Yet on the flip side of that logic, there is tons of material to be gobbled up and discoveries to be made about the so-called dredges of society

In summary, these various texts can be viewed as a challenge to the boundaries of what it means to be a male or female. Simone de Beauvoir and Norah Vincent both use their experiences to express that her womanhood (and Vincent’s manhood) is not “defined by limiting criteria.” (de Beauvoir 2) The networks, as well, by granting the transgendered community a soap-box enable human’s a right to be whomever they themselves feel that they are truly. Therefore, human beings may gain a bit more compassion and understanding towards those they encounter, and hopefully, as these texts set out to accomplish, regardless of sex, one may be valued for intellect and ability.

Work's Cited

Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 3^rd edition. London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2008.

de Beauvoir, Simone. “Introducion: Woman as Other.” (1949).Capote, Truman. Breakfast At Tiffany’s. New York: Penguin Books, 1958.

Foucault, Michael. “The History of Sexuality.” 683- 691.

Hatland, Katie. Transgender contestant on America’s Next Top Model. 26 September 2008. 13 October 2008. (online)

“Chelsea Lately Candis Cayne Interview.” YouTube. 2008. 13 October 2008. (online)

Vincent, Norah. Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man. New York:Penguin Books, 2006.

Simone de Beauvoir

conceptualizing woman separates us from them, the man. This idea was a
more poignant one that stood out in de Beauvoir's The Second Sex because
it made the very word woman a damaging one,  as she expresses in saying,
"the antifeminists have had no trouble in showing that women simply are
not men." It reminded me of the "bitch" discussion we had on Tuesday and
how the one student said she thought that that was synonymous with the
"c" word. To de Beauvoir, woman is synonymous with the "c" word, because
it creates a barrier from men and makes us the "Other." Furthermore,
when de Beauvoir says that "the attitude of defiance of many American
women proves that they are haunted be a sense of their femininity,"
expresses this idea of the word being a negative because they attempt to
do male things so that they are part of the male game instead of playing
the female game or just simply being a person in the game.

I also thought the slave concept was an interesting juxtaposition. I
felt that it proved that the male is actually fighting against his fear
of the female form. De Beauvoir stated that "in the legends of Eve and
Pandora men have taken up arms against women." Would not this mean that
men are in fact slaves to women? They want to dominate us because of
their lack of understanding of women. It's like killing an animal and
mounting it on one's wall, they are able to say I conquered that which
is thought of as difficult to conquer. This I feel is wholly expressed
in de Beauvoir saying that "it more or less successfully conceals a
desire for self-justification," because they are so wrought with
uneasiness and uncertainty of their supposed superiority. They must
prove and, where I believe the slavery of man to himself comes in,
constantly prove that they are superior to something that does not have
any qualitative measure to superiority. 

so, to bring this last thought to pop-culture,we are constantly trying
to define what does it mean to be female. When we see movies that depict
women, like Fatal Attraction, we see a man very much so controlled by
his nether regions that he loses all concept of reality. Doesn't he see
the manipulation by Glenn Close's character? Doesn't he see that the
idea of no strings attached is an allusion? This is where women control
much more than a man could ever and in resisting this control men
entangle themselves deeper into the web that is being spun.

Transcendence

The Barker chapter 9, specifically the writings of Julia Kristeva, will
appropriately assist in my response paper because I will be discussing
the twenty-first century hurdling itself beyond the traditional roles of
our sexes and teachings by patriarchs such as Freud. Barker states that
"Kristeva's work is centrally concerned with signs/semiotics, that is,
with the symbolic order of culture." (Barker 296) I can not help but
relate this to our discussion on Breakfast at Tiffany's, well more so,
the suggestion that Miss Golightly is really a man. 

We, as readers, assume the use of female signs: makeup, wordage, dress,
etc. all indicate the signifier to be for the female, yet by Saussure's
account, the reader "assume(s)  that the linking of a name and a thing
is a simple operation - an assumption that is anything but true"
(Saussure 78)  When reading BaT, we assume that because Capote says
"she" than what he meant was a female by nature and not her own
invention or inclination. Why does Holly ask the narrator if he knows
any good lesbians for her to room with, maybe in this regard the
narrator is actually a woman. 

It also reminds me of a show that I often watch and listen to on the                                                    
radio; The Rachel Maddow show. She is a
lesbian and opts for the more traditional
masculine features - short hair, pants and
button-down shirts, minimal (if any) make-
up - but more than that, she discussed an
encounter with a makeup artist. The makeup
artist curled her eye lashes and she felt as if
she had "spiders" on her eyes. She was
predominantly on the radio so makeup was not
a necessity. After her brief co-hosting on MSNBC,
she gained her own show and a thicker face of
makeup. It's funny to see her pictures before the
TV show and the after effect. Her eyes have become
more made-up and highlighted by liner and
eyeshadow,  only too because she is signified as woman.

Fascinating!

Holly Golightly Traveling

Parte una

I, too, have reached the halfway mark and there is one element of the
story that I keep coming back to. The party, I think, explained a lot
about Holly's character. Besides her fancy for travels, and the various
men in her life, she keeps the element of surprise and aloofness while
still maintaining a connection with the men. She is the bait on the
fishing pole and she obviously likes it that way because when the only
woman, Mag, came to the party she insinuated that she had either a
disease or was loose in her sexual morals. If the men had indeed all
slept with Holly, wouldn't they have been concerned when seeing all of
the other possible suitors or bedders? Wouldn't they have been concerned
with her being "clean?" 

So, what I've gathered thus far, Miss Golightly is simply a mystery and
that is what grants her so many prospective men. I am not saying she has
not slept with any of them, nor is she a prostitute; I think it is more
along the lines of granting herself the occasional fling while still
maintaining a horde of attention. If she gave up her pretensions, she
would lose the mystery and just be another girl.

This is where I don't buy the comment of her not wanting to be a movie
star, I think she would have loved to, but she would be scrutinized and
that would be the problem. This way, in maintaining the affection and
attention of men, she can be a star among them but not have to face the
judgment that comes with Hollywood stardom.

Parte dos

So, I finished the remainder of the novella and I certainly see why this
book was included in the list of texts for our Radical Romance class. We
have a host of characters, all entirely different from love and
relations' status quo. Holly is a free spirit, brought to life by way of
a questionable upbringing, which gives her license to live a
single-woman's lifestyle. I, too, would be frolicking around with all
different types of characters if at the tender age of fourteen were
married to what could be my father. Then we have the various playboy
millionaires that come in and out of her apartment, all looking to
"settle-down" with the hottest ticket on the market, the pinnacle of a
trophy wife. Next, Joe Bell, the homosexual bartender along with the
narrator who seems to be rather asexual, they are defiant characters
against the manly-and ironically so - Rock Hudson type.  Moreover, Holly
herself uses much language in reference to "bull-dykes." In essence,
Breakfast at Tiffany's employs the richness of all walks of life (when
speaking about sexual-preferences or lack-there-of) that I can see
perfectly why this is considered a Radical romantic novella.
 

I should have done it on Ivan Kane's lame restaurant

Part 1
Like I just stated, I should have done my ethnography on the bar/restaurant that my friends and I stopped at last night -I was attempting to get a job closer to my apartment, so I wanted to meet the manager informally and chat. I could have watched Dave Nevaro "summon" the hostess (a long-legged model type and probably a good two feet taller than he) and observe the play of gender and the supremity of bachlerhood in all its glory- all day long. He did not move a muscle to grab her attention, I think he gave a look and she went up and introduced herself and sat for awhile. He kept his compsure very staunch, yet almost too casual. It was as if he were on his throne. He passed through the bar area on his way out, she rushed to her purse and said, "Here, I'll give you my card." She also had an air of coolness, but by the traditional role-reversals and all the leg work she did to acquire his attention, I knew she was "working it" so-to-speak. As she went into her purse, Mr Nevaro - who must have been as tall as I and I'm 5'1 1/2" - peeked his head around my tall friend and smiled at me. Now, I'm thinking that he went out of his way to get my attention. This is interesting. I have to suppose that this is due to my nonchalance and being one of three of the younger females in the entire restaurant (it was primarily a "sausage fest"). I smiled back and shuddered, he is a very odd little man. His head is a bit too big for his body and his eyebrows are too thick. At the same token though, I felt a sense of power. It's not everyday that a girl can ignore a celebrity and they make the effort :) But this is not what I did my ethnography on, so here is the 'real' one...

Initially, I walk into the Baja Cantina - "Marina Del Rey's premiere
Mexican restaurant" - I am greeted by the Barbie-esque porcelain statue;
she stand's about five feet tall and wear's a red and white polka-dot
bathing suit with a pink floral lei around her neck. She is also holding
a surf-board that says today's specials - It's BBQ night. I look around
and there are trinkets, posters, TVs, everywhere. It is overwhelming to
say the least, but festive and provides an easy-going atmosphere. I sit
down at the living-room inspired area to the direct let of the entrance
and begin my survey.

There is a server wearing a chicken hat, it is literally a chicken
sitting atop her head, talking to a cocktail server on a Monday night
football jersey. They chat nonchalantly at the host stand. To the right
of me are two girls and a guy talking. One of the ladies is wearing a
professional, white blousy top and her blond hair pulled back into a
pony-tail. The other girl is much more laid back; she has long brown
hair with sunglasses on top. holding it not away from her face, but as a
head band. She wears a nude color tank top, and unlike the professional
one, she is distracted by the little details and people passing by. The
man is apparently interviewing them because he has a Baja Cantina polo
on and is supporting most of the conversation. I think the brunette will
get the job, she seems more unprofessional and laid-back. The
chicken-hat girl behind me at the bar is asked by the female bartender
to do "the cluck." She obediently clucks and the few people sitting at
the bar (including the bartender) laugh. She says "au revoir" all the
while wearing the chicken hat.

Three men walk through the front door; they wear shorts, hats, and
button-down shirts. The man in the red trucker-hat and scruffy facial
hair smiles at me, I quickly look back at this pad. The two girls are
being led around the restaurant by the manager. He states that the men's
room is here, all day long women will go back here and you'll tell them
the ladies room is over there (he points to the opposite side of the
restaurant.) Another one of the 'hat guys' comes back towards the front
door, he helps himself to the server-yourself chips and salsa. He smiles
at me before and after he gets the chips and salsa. Apparently writing
by oneself is not the norm here.

The vastness of ages is interesting; a couple in their sixties walk
through the front door, both in casual-chic beach wear. They smile and
walk up to the hostess. She seats them on the dining side to the right.
They seem to have been here before because the man walks directly to the
mens-room after being shown to his seat. There is also an older (maybe
late fifties) Venice local type with full sleeves. He is saying
"jackass" and I realize he is talking in a mimicky version of my voice.
He is mimicking what I might be writing. He laughs and goes back to his
Budweiser. He asks the bartender, "who's playing tonight?" She doesn't
know and he says. "you're the bartender!" he is obviously a local, they
call him "Sleaze" and he chats with the two managers that stand in the well.

Part 2.1
So what I realize about Baja Cantina and the patrons is based directly
on their physical environment. It's a Monday, they are by the beach with
music playing, everyone seems carefree. The place has been in business
since 1975, so not only do they have regulars who seem confident where
to walk and who to talk to, but they have all ages. If you were not a
regular here, you could definitely feel comfortable with the relaxed
vibe. The one  interesting aspect that I noticed was that the managers
were all men, there were three of them. Conversely, the bartender and
servers were women. That seemed to be a hierarchy of genders, but at the
same token, the girl wearing the chicken hat did not seem to be in
gender constraints! Maybe on a weekend it would have been more wild :)

Part 2.2
I was trying to figure out how I was going to relate what I observed to
what we have been discussing and reading despite not actually seeing any
women and men intermixing on a physical or date-like level; I think the
material on "the science of sex" in Barker touches perfectly on what I
observed between the men and the women.  Firstly, when Barker talks of
the different areas of the brain I can figure that into why the women
were predominately in the serving end of the restaurant and the men were
in the management position; the women have to talk with the customers
much more extensively than the men, whereas the managers stick to the
pragmatic end. Furthermore, the servers have to keep all of the various
tasks running through their brains organized. Coinciding with the
chapter, "women are more verbal,... and organized than men," (Barker 286)
and to paraphrase, men are more efficient at focusing on specifics and
less in the multitasking arena.

This also plays into the female bartender chatting with the customers
and the two servers (including the chicken-hat girl) talking; they all
exhibited higher verbalization. The manager showing the would be hires
around was doing most of the talking, yet this proves evident in the
reasoning behind "greater spatial, mathematical, and motor skills,"
(Barker 286)all necessary for operating efficiently. Even the gentleman
that was mimicking my voice and was asking about the game had specific
plans to drink at the bar and watch football, all very pragmatic.

Genre, schmenre

I agree with Charles Donah that what we are defining are - for the most 
part - movies made quickly and carelessly. The fat-cats in Hollywood 
rely on their audience to be tired and drained from hours of work and 
stress; I mean, who wants to analyze a movie after a long and exhausting 
work week unless you are a film critic, student, independently wealthy 
and have that leisure and brain power left? Romcom's are easy and light. 
They sell because it doesn't take much to watch them and if you are on a 
date and you miss something ;), you probably haven't missed much. 

I am always insulted though, I do not think our society is given enough
credit for it's intelligence and we are shafted by trite and easily made
films. These scripts are pumped out in less than a month, the actors are
pre-picked, and the formula is so incredibly mundane. It's not even
boy-meets-girl-loses-girl-regains-girl anymore; it's let's see how many
times we can recycle this script/actors before anyone really notices.
For example, Judd Apatow films. He likes Seth Rogan, Adam Sandler, Will
Ferrell, etc. I personally do not like the same ol faces in every
comedy. I like when I can watch a film and not be distracted by a
recognizable face.  Furthermore, if I watch a movie and feel like I'm
watching a re-run because they employ the same writing technique or
actors, I'll lose interest real quick.  

Even the action films are dull. And the horror... I loved "the Descent,"
but that was not an American film and oversees companies seem to take
more chances. Furthermore, if I see another Saw, I think I'll throw up!
 And yes, Die Hard was a good film, Die Hard 4, not so much. The studios
though, were not afraid to throw millions of dollars at Bruce Willis to
reprise John McClane because they knew the audience wanted to reacquaint
themselves with an oldie but goodie. 

I guess when it all comes down to it, little disappointed in the genres
as a whole. Maybe critics will call Romcom's "the most generic of
genres;" I think most movies rely on stock characters, familiar
situations, and the formula of both script and actors. It's easy and
cheap and that makes for millions!

How did I contribute to the cage?

To be sure, CC conceptualized the cat "trapped in a cage," and I agreed on the overall theme as a good starting point. The group met and hashed out all the ideas that we had and how we could fit our different views of the play within the "cage" theme. I had already read an article , which was comparing Maggie to the Goddess Diana/Artemis. However intriguing that notion is, I rather liked the quotes they used in describing the female form. It was here that I came into my own conceptualization of the cat "trapped in a cage" by way of Western societies beauty ideal, specifically the gender constrictions placed upon the female form. So, within this context, along with the other various ideas that the group contributed, we collectively came to the conclusion of using three film clips that would showcase our mini themes under the umbrella of the cat "trapped in a cage." Nick and I are sharing the responsibility of analyzing War of the Roses and how Barbara Rose (Kathleen Turner) fits into these gender constrictions as well as comparing the relationships to that of Maggie and Brick and Mae and Gooper.
Moreover, within the mini-groups, we are also acting as MC's to ensure an overall great conversation flow for the actual class presentation. We have compiled a list of questions that each of us came up with and will use those if there is a lag in the discussion. We would like the class analysis to be more spontaneous, yet we will use the questions as a sort of plan B.
Beyond the mini-groups and the group as a whole, I have worked to facilitate a conversation between us outside of class. I have attempted to keep in contact with the other members in order to ensure that we are all on the same page. Nick and I have kept an active dialogue going in order to delve deeper into the War of the Roses and how we see the similarities of the characters with those in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.