"UNTITLED"
an essay on feminism and some other related issues
by Peter Gelleri
ELTE BTK DELL
Budapest 1994
Antonia Burrows
Language and Gender Roles
7 December 1994
An introduction to the Game
Our modern era is often thought of as an excellent breeding ground for all sorts of movements. Indeed it has produced a great number of isms and abstract notions which, although they seem to refer to different things, are similar in that all of them are more or less unintelligible. This does not necessarily mean that we are unfamiliar with the meaning of a certain term we use every day - even though it happens quite frequently that we praise, criticise, or blame something without being able to give a sensible definition of what it is exactly.
There seems to be considerable discrepancy between meanings and reality.
We have heard starving homeless human wrecks calling themselves poor and we have also met well-to-do middle-class people complaining about "poverty". We have been told we now live in "democracy", still people by no means appear to have equal rights and opportunities. Perhaps this is just the way it is: we say something and we mean something else while pretending and often believing that we say what we mean. Mankind, you mystify me!
Life is probably nothing but a set of rules and roles one of which is, for example, that you must always hold an opinion. There is no such an option as sitting on the fence. You are expected to belong somewhere. You have to like one thing and hate another. You have to be able to point at "bad" and "good" and separate them. You must seem confident that you understand the world and yourself in it. And most important of all, you have to act all this out in such a tricky way that neither you nor anyone else are consciously aware of what is going on. Once you have uttered the dreadful word "delusion", you are out of the game.
Indecision as nonconformity
Just like people, causes, and theories, movements come and go. What they have in common is their end: change for the better. In addition, they always define their for's and against's. You may disapprove of a movement. Or you may join it and disapprove of those who disapprove of your favourite movement as they support other isms which you disapprove of because those who belong to them disapprove of your ideas...and so on.
But you may never support and question a cause at the same time unless you are up to baffling other people. Consequently, indecision is nonconformity.
What is it?
Since it ends in the magic three letter combination, "i s m", feminism can easily be identified as a movement. Therefore it must be for something and against something else. When asked, most of us seem to adapt this pattern and express our opinion based on some backround knowledge about the topic in question. ie. everything we have heard and seen including not just reports, articles etc. but views of those who we respect and slight, too. We may start our answer with "I think" and "In my opinion" but what follows is likely to be some sort of echoing of previously internalised ideas. The sentence, for instance, "I think gipsies cause a lot of problems", even if it seemingly (semantically) expresses personal judgment, may not be the outcome of individual experience and/or analysis of scientific data but rather the result of acquiring and repeating other people's views. This is how prejudice is born.
As to feminism, people's reactions vary. The answers to the question "What do you think of feminism?" is, however, likely to be one of these:
(1)"I think it's rubbish"
(2)"Oh, why not let women amuse themselves?"
(3)"Frigid, ugly, furious lesbians"
It is important to point out that even the act of bringing up feminism for discussion may trigger instantaneous rejection: some people - and also some females among them - will simply not want to talk about it. Besides surprised and rather angry reactions such as "Are you kidding?" or "What is the matter with you?", one of the most common responses is exemplified in (1) above. A curt and negative judgement as it may seem, (1) is by no means a real evaluation of facts or personal experiences. The sentence implies something else that is normally not verbalised but often hinted, viz. dismissal and denigration of the topic. Consequently, (1) can be interpreted as "I don't want to talk about it" or "What you're talking about does not exist". Rarely are such statements accompanied by any reasoning. If they were, it would be either admission of one's tunnel-vision ("It's rubbish because it forces me to revise my views, which I do not want to do"); or admission of ignorance ("...because I don't know much about this topic"), which would automatically invalidate the original statement, for one cannot label any topic "rubbish" if one is ignorant of it. This kind of reaction is similar to those of parents who are afraid of confessing their children (and themselves) that they are wrong. The following fictitious dialogue exemplifies this:
Child: How about keeping a polecat?
Parent: I won't tolerate those stinking rats in the house.
Child: But polecats aren't smelly. Everybody knows they're tidy and intelligent.
Parent: Stop talking about it! You're making me angry!
The way in which the parent in the above exchange refuses any further discussion apparently never fails to work and is frequently applied in terms of all sorts of "embarrassing" topics. To convince the parent or those who say (1) of the fact that they are wrong would probably turn out to be a futile attempt and would result in even stronger rejection and anger.
But (1) is not the only way. (2), for instance, implies that although the speaker may accept the existance of feminism, s/he can deny its merits by denigrating its importance. What (2) actually means is something like "OK. There is such a movement but it can't be serious and therefore it should not be taken seriously". (2) also implies that there are only female feminists. This proposition is obviously wrong. Moreover, in (2) there is a typical element of condescending "permission" suggesting that it is men who allow women to take part in special activities the goals of which can only be amusement and never anything serious.
(3) is certainly the most far-fetched statement. Yet instead of immediately declaring that it is false, let us try and examine its components in order to find out what is behind them.
The basic premise upon which (3) rests - apart from the recurring and indisputably erroneous idea that it is only females who may become feminists - is that there is something wrong with women who are not entirely satisfied with the world as it is and, what is more, they go as far as to express their discontent. The postulate of Voltaire's ironic novel, "ours is the best of all worlds" seem to linger on, even though most of us do not think of it as ironic - unfortunately. So the commonly shared assumption is that our world is more or less perfect.
If anyone comes along and points at some flaws in society or just dares to propound new alternatives saying that our way of life is not the only one and perhaps not even an ideal one, if anyone attempts to make us revise our deeply planted views to which we adhere so firmly, well, then what this person is doing is committing suicide. Men who still do it will be called "artists", but women are not that lucky. Should a female complain about the world and especially about males, people will think (since ours is a perfect world and hence she should have no problems at all) that she has some other problems and this is why her dissatisfaction. So it will automatically be taken for granted that she has some other ulterior reasons for her discomfort. Now, what can these reasons be? First of all, she can be ill. She can also be homosexual and consequently dislike men, her rivals. She may be frigid. Or she finds men and "male-dominated" society wrong because males do not like her as much as she want them to, perhaps because she is unattractive. So she puts the blame on males and, as it were, wants to take revenge on them, poor and innocent men. So it goes. But even if she is attractive and does not happen to be homosexual, she cannot be right about men; she must have some other reason why she is so upset and wants change. Maybe she is bored. Maybe she has problems at work. Maybe she is not very intelligent and wants to make up for it by posing as a revolutionist. Whichever be the case, she is furious and has to channel her frustration and anger. Hence the "evaluation" in (3).
And hence feminism.
The Act
From a certain point of view, life is a play. The process of becoming an adult seems to include mastering some basic gender roles. People enjoy playing the roles assigned to them, but apparently very few of us know we are actresses and actors. We behave as we think we are expected to behave. We think as we think we are expected to think. Playing games can be fun so it is not the roles themselves that may cause problems but rather the very realisation that they are just roles.
Some roles are traditionally assigned to females and others are assigned to males. Boys want to be men and girls want to be women. Boys learn what they should look like and how they should behave and girls learn their own set of roles too. And they can hardly wait for the curtains to rise. Then at long last boys can prove they are strong, brave, clever and aggressive and girls can show they are fragile, silly, weak, and seductive. And no deviation please!
Those beloved misconcepts
Gender roles, and various assumptions stemming from them, have left traces on nearly all facets of our society and culture. In magazines for the young, for instance, adolescent people are advised on how to set up a new relationship: it is suggested that females should give indirect signs of affection to the male target but they must not on any accounts seem active. In other words, it is crucial to keep up the pretence of males being active and females being passive. "Just make him believe it was him who picked you and conquered your heart" as it is often counselled. Another piece of advice for females: "Make him believe you are weak and fragile and that you need his protection". All this is tantamount to saying "Just make him feel superior". Many women - and consequently men too - surmise males need evidence of their masculinity, viz. their strength, superiority, ultimate control over a relationship, and aggression.
Males, on the other hand, also share some misconcepts about the other sex. The ideal woman is similar to fashion in that both of them are prescribed rather than described.
One good example is the size of breasts. Men contend that the size of breasts is proportionate to femininity and eroticism. Even young boys adopt this male assumption and often pass remarks on sizes, causing some girls to envy those who are better endowed. If a male loves a female who has small breasts, he is likely to receive comments from other males such as "Can't you see she's got no breasts?!" or "What the hell do you see in her?". Statements such as "Actually she hasn't got big breasts but I love her" are often heard from males. I wonder what they are apologising for.
Nasty genes
The feminist literature makes frequent mentions of two different worlds in which males and females are brought up. Although there is no barbed wire to separate the two sexes, the segregation is quite evident. When a baby is born, the very first question people usually ask is whether it is a he or a she. Parents will go to any lengths to indicate sex on their babies, ie. girls are given skirts and earrings while boys get trousers. Girls are given dolls and boys get guns. Just for starters...
Theories which purport that females and males have different mental abilities and psyche, even if this proposition can be justified statistically, do not take into consideration the highly institutionalised segregation of sexes in society. Of course it is more convenient to put the blame on the genes than to blame our own society (ie ourselves). The genes are not us. And since the gene theory sounds very scientific and convincing, we can stop at this point and start spreading the word: ours is the best of all worlds...
Changing the Wor(l)d
Today many people know and accept that women were suppressed and discriminated in many fields. Some say this unequality does not exists now. Yet statements such as (1), (2), and (3) above prove the opposite, viz. women may be right in complaining about their inferior status. However, solutions are by no means easy to find, especially because even making a diagnosis seems to border on impossibility, let alone constructive ways to cure the problem. People are still arguing whether or not women are really at a disadvantage over men in our modern society and if so, to what extent the disparity exists. I wonder if an official verdict will ever be made.
It is also in the literature that first we must change our language in order to change our views (the world). Here again we find the covert objective to take the easy way out, viz. it is the easiest to exclude some words from our dictionary and change or adopt others. No doubt this is useful and may create a feeling of male-female equality in language, but would it really change our thinking and judgement? So the ultimate question is the classic "the chicken and the egg" one: is language a mould with which to give a shape to the world, and in this sense language is a cause, or is it a symptom that reflects society? Or both?
So very much depends on the point of view one takes. A person wearing clothes can be called "a dressed-up person" or "a naked person in clothes". But the point of view we tend to take when it comes to judging ourselves is usually such that we can be sure we are on the right side and if there is any problem, it is always some other people who are to blame. We credulously believe ourselves and our own judgements. Doubt is thought to be a defect of the mind.
Nevertheless, it may be the only tool that can help us see the problems so that we can solve them and create something better, something of which we can really be proud.
The very first step towards wisdom is uncertainty.
No doubt about it.
Bibliographical notes
(Some of the ideas presented in this essay originate in seminars held by Antonia Burrows at ELTE BTK DELL [1994] and written material as follows:
Spender, Dale Man Made Language.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
Russ, Joana How to Suppress Women's Writing.
London: The Women's Press, 1984.
Miller--Swift Words and Women.
London: Penguin Books 1976.
by Peter Gelleri
ELTE BTK DELL
Budapest 1994
Antonia Burrows
Language and Gender Roles
7 December 1994
An introduction to the Game
Our modern era is often thought of as an excellent breeding ground for all sorts of movements. Indeed it has produced a great number of isms and abstract notions which, although they seem to refer to different things, are similar in that all of them are more or less unintelligible. This does not necessarily mean that we are unfamiliar with the meaning of a certain term we use every day - even though it happens quite frequently that we praise, criticise, or blame something without being able to give a sensible definition of what it is exactly.
There seems to be considerable discrepancy between meanings and reality.
We have heard starving homeless human wrecks calling themselves poor and we have also met well-to-do middle-class people complaining about "poverty". We have been told we now live in "democracy", still people by no means appear to have equal rights and opportunities. Perhaps this is just the way it is: we say something and we mean something else while pretending and often believing that we say what we mean. Mankind, you mystify me!
Life is probably nothing but a set of rules and roles one of which is, for example, that you must always hold an opinion. There is no such an option as sitting on the fence. You are expected to belong somewhere. You have to like one thing and hate another. You have to be able to point at "bad" and "good" and separate them. You must seem confident that you understand the world and yourself in it. And most important of all, you have to act all this out in such a tricky way that neither you nor anyone else are consciously aware of what is going on. Once you have uttered the dreadful word "delusion", you are out of the game.
Indecision as nonconformity
Just like people, causes, and theories, movements come and go. What they have in common is their end: change for the better. In addition, they always define their for's and against's. You may disapprove of a movement. Or you may join it and disapprove of those who disapprove of your favourite movement as they support other isms which you disapprove of because those who belong to them disapprove of your ideas...and so on.
But you may never support and question a cause at the same time unless you are up to baffling other people. Consequently, indecision is nonconformity.
What is it?
Since it ends in the magic three letter combination, "i s m", feminism can easily be identified as a movement. Therefore it must be for something and against something else. When asked, most of us seem to adapt this pattern and express our opinion based on some backround knowledge about the topic in question. ie. everything we have heard and seen including not just reports, articles etc. but views of those who we respect and slight, too. We may start our answer with "I think" and "In my opinion" but what follows is likely to be some sort of echoing of previously internalised ideas. The sentence, for instance, "I think gipsies cause a lot of problems", even if it seemingly (semantically) expresses personal judgment, may not be the outcome of individual experience and/or analysis of scientific data but rather the result of acquiring and repeating other people's views. This is how prejudice is born.
As to feminism, people's reactions vary. The answers to the question "What do you think of feminism?" is, however, likely to be one of these:
(1)"I think it's rubbish"
(2)"Oh, why not let women amuse themselves?"
(3)"Frigid, ugly, furious lesbians"
It is important to point out that even the act of bringing up feminism for discussion may trigger instantaneous rejection: some people - and also some females among them - will simply not want to talk about it. Besides surprised and rather angry reactions such as "Are you kidding?" or "What is the matter with you?", one of the most common responses is exemplified in (1) above. A curt and negative judgement as it may seem, (1) is by no means a real evaluation of facts or personal experiences. The sentence implies something else that is normally not verbalised but often hinted, viz. dismissal and denigration of the topic. Consequently, (1) can be interpreted as "I don't want to talk about it" or "What you're talking about does not exist". Rarely are such statements accompanied by any reasoning. If they were, it would be either admission of one's tunnel-vision ("It's rubbish because it forces me to revise my views, which I do not want to do"); or admission of ignorance ("...because I don't know much about this topic"), which would automatically invalidate the original statement, for one cannot label any topic "rubbish" if one is ignorant of it. This kind of reaction is similar to those of parents who are afraid of confessing their children (and themselves) that they are wrong. The following fictitious dialogue exemplifies this:
Child: How about keeping a polecat?
Parent: I won't tolerate those stinking rats in the house.
Child: But polecats aren't smelly. Everybody knows they're tidy and intelligent.
Parent: Stop talking about it! You're making me angry!
The way in which the parent in the above exchange refuses any further discussion apparently never fails to work and is frequently applied in terms of all sorts of "embarrassing" topics. To convince the parent or those who say (1) of the fact that they are wrong would probably turn out to be a futile attempt and would result in even stronger rejection and anger.
But (1) is not the only way. (2), for instance, implies that although the speaker may accept the existance of feminism, s/he can deny its merits by denigrating its importance. What (2) actually means is something like "OK. There is such a movement but it can't be serious and therefore it should not be taken seriously". (2) also implies that there are only female feminists. This proposition is obviously wrong. Moreover, in (2) there is a typical element of condescending "permission" suggesting that it is men who allow women to take part in special activities the goals of which can only be amusement and never anything serious.
(3) is certainly the most far-fetched statement. Yet instead of immediately declaring that it is false, let us try and examine its components in order to find out what is behind them.
The basic premise upon which (3) rests - apart from the recurring and indisputably erroneous idea that it is only females who may become feminists - is that there is something wrong with women who are not entirely satisfied with the world as it is and, what is more, they go as far as to express their discontent. The postulate of Voltaire's ironic novel, "ours is the best of all worlds" seem to linger on, even though most of us do not think of it as ironic - unfortunately. So the commonly shared assumption is that our world is more or less perfect.
If anyone comes along and points at some flaws in society or just dares to propound new alternatives saying that our way of life is not the only one and perhaps not even an ideal one, if anyone attempts to make us revise our deeply planted views to which we adhere so firmly, well, then what this person is doing is committing suicide. Men who still do it will be called "artists", but women are not that lucky. Should a female complain about the world and especially about males, people will think (since ours is a perfect world and hence she should have no problems at all) that she has some other problems and this is why her dissatisfaction. So it will automatically be taken for granted that she has some other ulterior reasons for her discomfort. Now, what can these reasons be? First of all, she can be ill. She can also be homosexual and consequently dislike men, her rivals. She may be frigid. Or she finds men and "male-dominated" society wrong because males do not like her as much as she want them to, perhaps because she is unattractive. So she puts the blame on males and, as it were, wants to take revenge on them, poor and innocent men. So it goes. But even if she is attractive and does not happen to be homosexual, she cannot be right about men; she must have some other reason why she is so upset and wants change. Maybe she is bored. Maybe she has problems at work. Maybe she is not very intelligent and wants to make up for it by posing as a revolutionist. Whichever be the case, she is furious and has to channel her frustration and anger. Hence the "evaluation" in (3).
And hence feminism.
The Act
From a certain point of view, life is a play. The process of becoming an adult seems to include mastering some basic gender roles. People enjoy playing the roles assigned to them, but apparently very few of us know we are actresses and actors. We behave as we think we are expected to behave. We think as we think we are expected to think. Playing games can be fun so it is not the roles themselves that may cause problems but rather the very realisation that they are just roles.
Some roles are traditionally assigned to females and others are assigned to males. Boys want to be men and girls want to be women. Boys learn what they should look like and how they should behave and girls learn their own set of roles too. And they can hardly wait for the curtains to rise. Then at long last boys can prove they are strong, brave, clever and aggressive and girls can show they are fragile, silly, weak, and seductive. And no deviation please!
Those beloved misconcepts
Gender roles, and various assumptions stemming from them, have left traces on nearly all facets of our society and culture. In magazines for the young, for instance, adolescent people are advised on how to set up a new relationship: it is suggested that females should give indirect signs of affection to the male target but they must not on any accounts seem active. In other words, it is crucial to keep up the pretence of males being active and females being passive. "Just make him believe it was him who picked you and conquered your heart" as it is often counselled. Another piece of advice for females: "Make him believe you are weak and fragile and that you need his protection". All this is tantamount to saying "Just make him feel superior". Many women - and consequently men too - surmise males need evidence of their masculinity, viz. their strength, superiority, ultimate control over a relationship, and aggression.
Males, on the other hand, also share some misconcepts about the other sex. The ideal woman is similar to fashion in that both of them are prescribed rather than described.
One good example is the size of breasts. Men contend that the size of breasts is proportionate to femininity and eroticism. Even young boys adopt this male assumption and often pass remarks on sizes, causing some girls to envy those who are better endowed. If a male loves a female who has small breasts, he is likely to receive comments from other males such as "Can't you see she's got no breasts?!" or "What the hell do you see in her?". Statements such as "Actually she hasn't got big breasts but I love her" are often heard from males. I wonder what they are apologising for.
Nasty genes
The feminist literature makes frequent mentions of two different worlds in which males and females are brought up. Although there is no barbed wire to separate the two sexes, the segregation is quite evident. When a baby is born, the very first question people usually ask is whether it is a he or a she. Parents will go to any lengths to indicate sex on their babies, ie. girls are given skirts and earrings while boys get trousers. Girls are given dolls and boys get guns. Just for starters...
Theories which purport that females and males have different mental abilities and psyche, even if this proposition can be justified statistically, do not take into consideration the highly institutionalised segregation of sexes in society. Of course it is more convenient to put the blame on the genes than to blame our own society (ie ourselves). The genes are not us. And since the gene theory sounds very scientific and convincing, we can stop at this point and start spreading the word: ours is the best of all worlds...
Changing the Wor(l)d
Today many people know and accept that women were suppressed and discriminated in many fields. Some say this unequality does not exists now. Yet statements such as (1), (2), and (3) above prove the opposite, viz. women may be right in complaining about their inferior status. However, solutions are by no means easy to find, especially because even making a diagnosis seems to border on impossibility, let alone constructive ways to cure the problem. People are still arguing whether or not women are really at a disadvantage over men in our modern society and if so, to what extent the disparity exists. I wonder if an official verdict will ever be made.
It is also in the literature that first we must change our language in order to change our views (the world). Here again we find the covert objective to take the easy way out, viz. it is the easiest to exclude some words from our dictionary and change or adopt others. No doubt this is useful and may create a feeling of male-female equality in language, but would it really change our thinking and judgement? So the ultimate question is the classic "the chicken and the egg" one: is language a mould with which to give a shape to the world, and in this sense language is a cause, or is it a symptom that reflects society? Or both?
So very much depends on the point of view one takes. A person wearing clothes can be called "a dressed-up person" or "a naked person in clothes". But the point of view we tend to take when it comes to judging ourselves is usually such that we can be sure we are on the right side and if there is any problem, it is always some other people who are to blame. We credulously believe ourselves and our own judgements. Doubt is thought to be a defect of the mind.
Nevertheless, it may be the only tool that can help us see the problems so that we can solve them and create something better, something of which we can really be proud.
The very first step towards wisdom is uncertainty.
No doubt about it.
Bibliographical notes
(Some of the ideas presented in this essay originate in seminars held by Antonia Burrows at ELTE BTK DELL [1994] and written material as follows:
Spender, Dale Man Made Language.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
Russ, Joana How to Suppress Women's Writing.
London: The Women's Press, 1984.
Miller--Swift Words and Women.
London: Penguin Books 1976.