Re: Feminism for Men

From: Jack Sargeant (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2007 - 16:04:31 PST


oh yeah, i love it because it's such a source of contention... surely
the sign of a good essay (even if i don't agree with it)..

of course at a risk of being troublesome - i am still smarting from
the banality of chuck's abuse - but perhaps it still resonates
because it's still taught almost uncritically by old academics? i
mean, it was written when i was 4! and it's still taught! personally
i think kaji silverman's male subjectivity at the margins is more of
a fun read (although again i disagree with its analysis in places...)...

regarding the gaze: i find the notion of simply sharing a gaze based
on gender too problematic, i think we filter our watching experience
through our cultural experiences, social experience, sexuality,
gender, and so on, not merely through a fear of castration!

jack

On 19 Jan 2007, at 10:53, Anna Biller wrote:

> I see what you're saying. All the same, it was a fascinating topic
> for her to go into, it was red-hot and it still resonates now. Why
> is that? I completely agree that women may have visual pleasure,
> and also that men may share a similar gaze. But her bringing it up
> made so many people crazy, because there was something to it. As I
> understand it, she went back later and took back some of what she
> said, going back into classic women's melodramas for example, and
> finding pleasure there. I don't think she was against pleasure,
> just that she was missing pleasure that was created for HER, and
> not pleasure created for someone else that she was also allowed to
> enjoy as a bystander or a masochist.
>
> On Jan 18, 2007, at 3:12 PM, Jack Sargeant wrote:
>
>> sorry, my point was that this theory uses psychoanalysis, which
>> posits presence of the phallus / vagina as castration and active /
>> passive as real internal constructs (not social), i don't believe
>> in psychoanalysis (although i enjoy reading Freud). when mulvey
>> talks about men watching films she talks about castration and
>> sadism and vouyerism and so on, not about the kind of political
>> situation where men have more access to political power (which, i
>> agree they do and yes i think that's wrong).
>>
>> mulvey - to my knowledge - wasn't writing about the social-
>> political culture that i think you are (below), rather i think she
>> was writing about watching movies (i don't mean that to sound
>> sarcastic, i mean, literally i don't think she thought beyond that
>> into say abortion rights or whatever which i remember being a big
>> deal in 70s UK socialist feminism). now, to my way of thinking,
>> contra mulvey, women may also have visual pleasure, men may not
>> all share a similar gaze. moreover, why was she so against pleasure?
>>
>> jack
>>
>>
>>>
>>> In the 70's, much more than now, men really were the aggressors
>>> and the lawmakers. It wasn't women feeling sorry for themselves
>>> or trying to create a false duality of active/ passive in their
>>> own minds or fantasies, it was a reality. It was such a time of
>>> women as playthings, and this really depressed some women.
>>> Nowadays there isn't this pressure on women to be sex objects,
>>> partly because of the work done by the 70's feminists. So I've
>>> noticed that young girls today are very fully sexualized for
>>> themselves, they flirt and feel sexy and are outrageous, and they
>>> don't feel threatened or subordinated by it but empowered. If
>>> anything it intimidates the men! But it was not like that at all
>>> in the 70's, and many women felt like they were drowning,
>>> drowning, and they wanted to scream and flail and accuse and be
>>> aggressive themselves to show how ugly it was. And I do think it
>>> worked.
>>>
>>
>>
>> __________________________________________________________________
>> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.