The other day, I was on the huffingtonpost website trying to get my fill of GOP humor, when I found a couple of articles/videos talking about gender neutrality. We had talked a little about them in class, and it was a topic that I found incredibly interesting. (A few years ago, I was in an English class that focused entirely on the works of Ursula K. Le guin. One of her books that we read was titled "The Left Hand of Darkness." This book told the story of a world where people did not define themselves by their gender (at least depending on what time of the month it was), because they were able to switch back and forth between the two. In a world of androgyny, the singular gendered person is alien. "The Left Hand of Darkness" really left an impression on me, and I have since been interested in the subject of androgyny.)

The video that I found was a Fox news report about a preschool in Stockholm that was neither for girls nor boys. It was for 'friends' only. This school was completely gender neutral. Despite the Fox news reporters uncomfortably wriggling in their seats over the concept of such an experiment, it was really informative. But I bring this up not for its content, but for the reaction it elicited from my roommate (I'm not sure if it matters but for the sake of full disclosure, my roommate is gay). I didn't realize that he had been standing behind me while I was watching the report, but when it was over, I turned and saw him there, looking pretty hesitant. He said he wasn't sure he would ever want to put his children through something like that--having them go without gender for the first six, or so, years of their lives.

I tried to explain what the reasoning behind it would be--it would eradicate gender roles--the ones that told him all throughout his own childhood that his love for musicals should not be equal to his love for sports (even though they still are), it would help one realize their identity from a truly personal level, rather than a prescribed level. The benefits, in my opinion, were endless. But he still seemed hesitant. When I asked him why this made him so uncomfortable, he said "well I wouldn't want my kid to be the only one without a sex growing up! That wouldn't get rid of their isolation, that would ensure it."

"But what if it were an entire school that did it? What if your kid wasn't alone in this?" I responded.

"Oh well then that's totally fine." He said, seeming much more comfortable with the whole notion, and then walked away to go watch videos on Youtube.

I sat there thinking for a few minutes after he left about how much easier it is for anyone to do...well anything, if they don't think they're alone. The fear of really standing out is enough to comfort people into submission of fitting in. But after a few minutes of thought, I decided to store this moment away for another time. That time came a bit sooner than I thought, though! After reading Simone de Beauvoir's introduction to her book "The Second Sex," I immediately came back to my conversation with my roommate. When Beauvoir started questioning "where did this submission in women come from?" with the answer: "Refusing to be the Other, refusing complicity with man, would mean renouncing all the advantages an alliance with the superior caste confers on them" (10).

Complicity. Being an accomplice to a crime. We are all so bought in to the 'business as usual' model, that anything else, any notion of change, scares us shitless.  And even beyond the fear, there is the general lack of concrete understanding of what change could look like. For example, the woman, who's name I can't currently recall, who decided the solution to feminism was cyborgs, was completely shutdown in the Gubar article we read. We cannot actually visualize such a world, and so we are incapable of understanding it, committing to it, standing behind it, etc.

I'm not trying to say that feminists don't know what their ultimate goal would look like, I'm saying that there isn't one concrete, or a grouping of concrete goals. This is a huge problem, because it divides the feminist community. Because it seems that feminists have been incapable, or at least not done that great of a job, of working together (across the racial, class, religion, sexual orientation, etc. lines), they cannot have a tangible image or chance at success. In my last blog post I talked about the lack of connection people felt to the movement, because it was disjointed. This time, I bring up the same issue but under a different microscope. It's not because it's purely disjointed, but because it seems the there's a refusal to put the pieces together to create a cohesive front from which to attack--and whether this is out of fear, resentment, ignorance, whatever, the point is--feminism is fighting too many battles at once. The movement cannot expect to move forward into a future of equality, if they aren't exemplifying the equality they seek within themselves.

I think that's a strong enough sentence to end on. Check back soon!

A few weeks ago, I was perusing the world of Facebook, as I had nothing better to do during the long days of winter break, when I happened upon a website called 'Feminist Ryan Gosling'. The website featured pictures of Ryan Gosling with accompanying sayings like this one:

The website was originally made for a few students studying feminist theory--they needed a better way to remember the material, and so Feminist Ryan Gosling was born. The reason I'm bringing it up, the reason I made it the title of my blog is because in an interview, the founder, Danielle Henderson, admitted that the greatest challenge facing feminism today was that "...there's a distinct, active movement that tends to get blamed more than it gets praised and there's a distinct amount of people who agree with and trumpet feminist ideals, but aren't actually doing anything in their community. The fact that there's not enough of a connection to a movement is a big problem."

I thought her point was completely valid--and definitely extends beyond the bounds of feminism. Sure, we can spend all of our time complaining about issues, saying that 'this is to blame' or 'that is to blame,' but without actually taking any action--the problems can only grow. Nevertheless, there's a lot more at play here when she points out the lack of connection to the movement. After reading the Susan Gubar article about "What ails feminist criticism?" I was struck by precisely how much of feminism's history has played into that very problem. Gubar talks about the issues some feminists have of needing to make sure every single possible group of woman is included in discussions of equality--for fear of seeming hypocritical, racist, whatever you want to call it.

So by making an emphasis of including everyone, it should seem that there wouldn't be a problem of connection, right? Well, maybe not so much, as Gubar points out. "In keeping with Jouve's stance, not only some faculty but many students these days make obeisance to the necessity of considering (without subordinating) race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation in litanies that often translate into depressingly knee-jerk essays rejecting out-of-hand the speculations of a given literary or theoretical work simply because it neglects to discuss x (fill in the blank--bisexual Anglo-Pakistani mothers; the heterosexual, working-class, Jews-for-Jesus community of Nashville, and so forth). Too often, each text becomes a grist for a mill that proves the same intellectually vapid--though politically appalling--point that racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia reign supreme."

Phew. Sorry about that. It took me a few go-overs on that one to get what she was saying. Basically what Gubar was getting at was that through the emphasis of every possible grouping of woman, we are getting more and more distracted from the purpose we originally sought--equality to men in political, social and economic terms (I know this is a pretty abbreviated definition, but lets go with it for now.). And beyond that we're becoming/became/are a disjointed movement. I suppose a rough comparison would be to that of a dismantled car. While all of the parts are there, and in theory, we can see that its purpose is to propel one to the next destination, it lays useless in its separation. Feminism has all of the right components to be an incredible movement, but it is too disjointed to propel itself forward.

And so, in good full-circle form, that is why I think there isn't enough connection to the movement, like Danielle said. How can we expect people to connect to something that is hardly connected itself?

More on this next time!