Feminist perspectives on self

[archytas]

Seyla Benhabib refuses to join poststructuralists in declaring the death of the autonomous, self-reflective individual who is capable of taking responsibility and acting on principle. Although she is committed to viewing people as socially situated, interpersonally bonded, and embodied, she is also committed to the feasibility of rational philosophical justification of universal moral norms (Allan's moral compass). Moreover, she argues that a narrative conception of the self renders the idea of a core self and coherent identity intelligible without suppressing difference and without insulating the self from social relations (a problem I have with personal development approaches). Autobiographical stories can include the many voices within us and the many relationships we have experienced, and these stories are constantly under revision, for they are always being contested by our associates' disparate self-narratives with their divergent versions of events. Nevertheless, these narratives do not collapse into incoherence, and they presuppose a core capacity to describe and reflect on one's experience. For Benhabib, this view of selfhood and reason is indispensable to feminist emancipatory objectives.

This was more or less my approach in teaching on gender issues over many years.  Its great advantages include not needing the incredible complexity of much standard feminist literature and letting people work with their own stories, creative action, having fun with each other and forming their own learning groups, assessment criteria ... whatever.  I'd throw in some biology - not all physical women are XX,  men and women may have the opposite sex's general brain structure-functioning and gender and self as we generally think of them are not supported by much modern biology of the individual.  With luck, my teaching would soon be subverted by actual interests in the class.

What role do we think gender plays in self?  What are the forces that cause this?

[Chris Jenkins]

What an interesting question. 

What role do I think gender plays in myself?

Likely a significant one. My foundational worldview was a sort of theologically inspired stoicism, and there's a large amount of ingrained genderal archetypes built in. "A man is the sum total of his responsibilities", or perhaps Aurelius' "we must endure and toil without complaining" (although that last part didn't stick terribly well). My father was a god fearing military man and my mother a good christian wife. These were clearly defined identities as role models. 

I don't think it defines my world view significantly now, but it certainly provides the framework from which that worldview operates. If nothing else, it becomes a comparative measure, in how my thoughts or feelings stack up against that structure. My romantic, artistic, sensitive parts are all accented by and measured against the stoic mirror I was raised to hold as the ideal. 

I think there's a significant amount of my thought processes that are affected by my hormonal structure, and I've most certainly noticed the general change in my personality and demeanor over time as my overcharged teenage testosterone production settles comfortably into a middle aged rhythm. We're not quite so ready to raise our fists, even figuratively, as we age. The effects on my psychology of my physiology (especially as related to gender) are clear and unmistakable. 

So yeah, I suppose quite a bit. 

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[Gabby]

In the presence of my American Hero ("I am a manly man") I cannot help but think of the monomyth and ask myself where Neil describes the plural perspectives that he announced in the header. The importance of the right narrative in internal as well as external marketing communications has increased a lot, wouldn't you agree?

[Chris Jenkins]

:D Case and point, dear Gabs. My gender and identity are inextricably bound.

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 12:10 AM, Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com> wrote:

In the presence of my American Hero ("I am a manly man") I cannot help but think of the monomyth and ask myself where Neil describes the plural perspectives that he announced in the header. The importance of the right narrative in internal as well as external marketing communications has increased a lot, wouldn't you agree?

[archytas]

Pluralism, that safe refuge of the undergraduate fixation.  It's almost as bad as Chris' 'I'm not gay, honest' position without the opportunity for some playground regression.  I'm not either, I hasten to add, though in the pluralist act, I wish I could have tried harder.  Men are otherwise so much more than women! Something I can say because my big sister never was quick enough to catch me - though having said this, the playground is always present.

So what's one's role in pluralism Ms Thiede?  To do as one is told in the politically correct rule by fiat of the harridan class?  Be the New Man worming his way in as a Gute-Mensch (incidentally Gabbs - you can have a good laugh using google to translate the German tests for such - and this, of course, is why I failed them, honest)

I'm an old man now. It doesn't get any better Chris, unless mind independent substrate works.  We move to sensitivity, perhaps, as a last strategy to pick up what remains of the 'market'!  Feign pluralism to enter a rabbit hole fantasy to listen to Gabby's correct versions of fairy tales and horror pics?  Lie across a puddle to let Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler's feet remain dry, taking the inevitable beating for the act of sexist chivalry?

Is gender really about male and female?  What of our very sensible homosexual friends?  Sensible at least in the sense they aren't going to burn the planet with carbon footprints in religious procreation fetish.  Though they tell me of others I am just not pluralist enough to want to share.  Of course, our all-American boy might be the only thing between women and the the unitary perspective of various cloaks and veils.  They could be emancipated by reading Kristeva in secret there, probably under the supervision of an older wife who has learned men shouldn't be taken literally when they say women are worthless, who thinks they are sowing pillows.

How does pluralism deal with real bigots?  Is Gabby secretly non-pluralist in her accusations?  We are just scum as men, though learn not to take this literally.  Do women really want to develop a reverse of the oppression of history?  Creepy.

On Thursday, February 5, 2015 at 5:17:21 AM UTC, Chris Jenkins wrote:

:D Case and point, dear Gabs. My gender and identity are inextricably bound.

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 12:10 AM, Gabby <gabb...@gmail.com> wrote:

In the presence of my American Hero ("I am a manly man") I cannot help but think of the monomyth and ask myself where Neil describes the plural perspectives that he announced in the header. The importance of the right narrative in internal as well as external marketing communications has increased a lot, wouldn't you agree?

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[archytas]

In actor network theory, the nonhuman object participates in the network, and given the ways Asian women have been rendered as objects of Western fantasy and the playthings of men, one can imagine how they have not only been objectified by technoculture but turned that objectification into an advantage. Xiao Tian is the new general of China’s “hacker babes” smashing patriarchal systems of control and wanted by many security agencies for her online defacements. Posing in coy doll-like positions on her online blog, the teenager’s flirty self-portraits or “selfies” are disarming in their dual connotations of Oriental submissiveness and feminine treachery.

http://adanewmedia.org/2015/01/issue6-bui/

[Chris Jenkins]

*laughing* You've so misread, me Arch, Surprising for you. I'm a 2.5 on the Kinsey Scale, not a 4 pretending to be a 0. 

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[archytas]

I am not one for thinking the lady doeth protest too much in your case Chris, other than in the unending rib.  For all the high talk of consciousness in humans, tiny amounts of DNA and flow of a mother's hormones affect us in important ways.  There are XY females who have 'double DAX' chromosomes.  Without SRY and DAX in normal proportion no testis is formed and there is a default to the female (though these women are sterile).  Eider brothers increase our chances of being gay.

Come to think of it mate, you don't do American exceptionalness very well either!  Must off to spread some pluralising lest Gabby thinks even less of me, or walk the dogs to the pub.  Such difficult choices.

[Chris Jenkins]

I always thought Gabs had chosen an unlikely champion for her American Hero. :D

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[archytas]

I hear Superman and Cap'n America saw her coming.

[Chris Jenkins]

Sounds to me like a textbook case of Truth, Justice, and The American Way®

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[Gabby]

He is walking the dogs to the pub then. Cheers, boys.

[archytas]

Dogs walked, still on the wagon, pub under conversion to Italian restaurant, so spag bol all round.  Had diversity chat with Bulgarian neighbour.  Collected winnings from Labrokes on what Gabby would assess my choice as ...

[archytas]

We are what we are, anima meets animus.  The more the homosocial is eroded the better.

[gabbydott]

Strange how you sounded less privileged and more honest with your criminal neighbours around.

[archytas]

Ja, ja mistress - you know how to hurt a guy.  I checked out the Chinese female baby-face hacker site to catch up with you.  I broke my way in on a promise of 'bag of words' machine deconstruction, but they threw me out on a viral rumour I don't know how to de-tag myself on google.  Not before I had sent them all to Prism, of course.  Interestingly, Chris has reposted the pic (I mean serious article) on plus, and there is now some serious comment on the feminist self, all from men, of course.  Yes, I am happier with my honest, ordinary decent criminals and dogs that can steal walks with one glance of hypnotic eye.  So what is honesty, Berlin-now-style, since the vision of Heidegger gewarting with his Jewish mistress, real-time little woman at home in his own carpentry, thinking of historic saviour based on Greek he didn't translate well from their slave society to the shell-shocked, gassed rent-boy god working on a British secret service plan as your Chancellor fades to Mutti?

My intellect glitters with all the authenticity of cubic zirconium.  Who wrote the intellect in the false history in which we live?  What self is possible for women in it?  One so consuming men cannot be vulnerable for fear of the poison reprimand, unless so guardedly honest behind PR that has us coming out as gay whilst selling i-Phones based on slave labour and environmental destitution?  Just when I realise I must dedicate my life to not being good enough for Gabby (a common control game) a dog arrives, lead in mouth, to take me out with his means of control and my means of his traffic protection.  One Gabby, of course, is worth a thousand Thatchers.  Sorry not to be pluralist enough not to say this.

[gabbydott]

Good. And do not embrace the paradox at this stage! When we come back at this, the spinnings of the earth may have new revelations to offer.

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[archytas]

Indeed, fair well in the meantime.

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