The Participation of Bodies in Gender Discourses - Term Paper Example

The Body and Its Representations Thesis and Introduction The purpose of this paper is to respond to a critical question involving the participation of bodies in gender discourses. Where does body feature in gender studies? What role does it play in the contexts of race and human sexuality? To answer these related questions, the paper will, first of all, discuss the scientific aspects of gender, i.e., what gender is from biological perspectives and how it is classified in linguistics. Secondly, the paper will probe into the history of gender studies. Both cultural as well as historical tenets will be addressed before moving onto the current trends worldwide. The primary tool of analysis will be three images illustrating bodily representations of nonconformity to stereotyped gender roles. It may be noted that the notion of nonconformity to accepted behaviour is embedded in cultural digressions from the prototypes of social dogmas and beliefs. Basics of Gender Studies Gender studies occupy an important position in researches aimed at decoding complex cultural signifiers. What body is and how it is represented through sex discriminations feature prominently in linguistics. But gender studies primarily concern the cultural components related to identity, behaviour and association with stereotypical norms of being a male creature or being a female creature. As far the technicalities are concerned, linguistics can be held as a starting point. The Indo-European group of languages accommodates for three basic types of gender based on biological attributes – masculine, feminine and neuter. The first two refer to qualities of being male and female respectively, while the last one is designated to inanimate things. Notably, these three types of gender refer to a preset normative framework that might not be relevant to the purview of this paper. The reason behind this claim is to be unfolded in the ensuing part. Shaping Cultural Identity There are tons of polemic issues associated with such a simple and direct classification of body. These issues are generally culture-specific and are being passed onto as legacies from earlier worldviews to modern scientific understanding of how the body of humans, or that of any other creature for that matter, should be represented. Cultural representations of human body have triggered intense debate in numerous religious vocabularies, particularly in Islam. The very notion of identity formation is grounded on biological determinants of body, i.e., the presence of the X-chromosomes and Y-chromosomes. But this generic approach is not espoused by scholars who share a wider spectrum on the process of identity recognition. Lessons from the Past In Islamic cultures, duality prevails between men and women in terms of their respective assertion of body, mind, character and behaviour. Likewise in Sub-Saharan Africa, female body is viewed as a set of dynamic operators in economic, social, political, moral and cultural spheres (Joseph and Najmabadi 2003:40). Going back to the ancient times one might find that male and female gender attributions used to be reversed as early as the ancient Egyptian civilization or the Mayan civilization. Tattooing was widely in practice in many Asian countries some 4000 years ago (Fedorak 2009:74). Piercing of tongue and genitalia was performed by the people of royal births in ancient South America (Spencer and South 1999), while the Aztecs and the Mayans used to engage in literal blood feasts by cutting off their body parts as part of sacrosanct religious rites (Rush 2005:40). Hence, the apparently modernistic concept of reversal of popular trends by adopting offbeat or bizarre mediums of expressing one’s individuality is in fact rooted in times gone by. Feminist Viewpoint When it comes to defining human body in terms of its biological features, sex is the most basic identifier. The way an individual lives is determined by his/her sexual identity. On the other hand, feminists argue that sex is by no means an obstacle to how gender roles are ascribed to an individual. Sex is inborn whereas gender roles are imposed and hence, cannot be as rigid as a person’s biological self. Gender roles pertaining to feminism may be interpreted as a thread connecting two points – working relations and gender relations (Lauretis 1987:8). But this has a rigid theoretical premise which does not augur well with the unconfined freedom of human imagination. Eminent scholar John Money opines: …sex is what you are biologically; gender is what you become socially; gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness; and gender role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and feminine (Money 1994). Gender Roles Now What is clear from the basic difference between sex and gender is that the former marks the germination of a being while the latter performs the task of transforming that being to an individual. In this sense, gender can be seen as the most crucial factor for building responsible societies where each person is aware of his/her tasks and duties. Needless to mention, gender roles must be flexible and act in a synchronous manner to the morphologies of the society. Since no society is static in its cultural assimilation and development, a person’s role is subject to radical transformation. In today’s world of globalized economy, professional as well as household responsibilities are shared frequently by both parents, as child rearing is no longer a monopoly of mothers just as caregivers’ job can be performed by men as well. More importantly, women in the United States and other developed countries are now appointed in professions that have historically viewed as masculine. For instance, the construction industry in the US has historically been dominated by men. Yet in 2002, 9 percent of the total workforce comprised of women workers (Berik and Bilginsoy 2006). This empirically proves the paradigmatic shift in gender responsibilities in the country. Race and Gender: Rebuttal of Conformism In the context of racial segregation that prevailed in many parts of the globe until very recently, it may be noted that there is a fundamental difference between race and gender. While gender is not discriminatory, race is (Chancer and Watkins 2006:49). In other words, gender nonconformity is born of cultural orientations and not of class distinctions. The pedantic association between gender and sex has nothing to do with racial issues in that the latter does not share any correlation between the traits of masculinity and femininity. While class distinction is rooted in decidedly broader socio-political frameworks, gender identities render a far more subjective sense of belonging. Lester (2002) sums up the concept lucidly: …the only black gay man in a room full of black male heterosexuals may primarily feel isolated because of his sexual orientation; on the other hand, if he is in a room full of white gay men he may feel more racially isolated (10). Thus, it is quite apparent that the contextual grounding of racial discrepancy does not involve gender roles in any way. The ideology of gender has a cultural analogy associated with it, which puts it in stark contrast to the social categorizations of masculinity and femininity. Society divides male and female from biological viewpoints, so that its expectations from both may be fulfilled. On the contrary, it is the culture of personal preferences and orientations that works subliminally beneath a person’s acceptance or denial of a conformist stance. Viewing the Body Gender nonconformists who are guided by a fervent desire to alter their ways of living tend to prefer bizarre physical attributes. They are basically guided by the objective of changing the way society views them. Misanthropes who live on the fringes of society, without much interaction with the bandwagon residing in the core, feel obliged to make experimentations with their external looks. History bears testimony to the fact that the formation of gender identities owes primarily to individual or collective affiliation to certain shapes that represent masculine or feminine attributes. This is very important even if one discusses neuter gender. Time and again it has been observed from commonsense logic that certain objects carry with them some assumed sense of masculinity whereas the others correspond to feminine stereotypes. For instance, a doll is never considered to be a masculine object. Similarly, the body of an aircraft fails to tickle human imagination as a feminine thing. Similarly, major and minor scales in Western classical music are referred to having masculine and feminine features respectively. Again, technical jargons in electronics and mechanics are organically classified in two distinctive parts – masculine and feminine. All these examples go to show how the concept of body is associated with precise gender categories. Interpreting Images The role of body in gender discourses will now be analysed with the help of three images. All three images share resemblance thematically in that they portray different body arts. The first image is taken from performing arts genre. The other two represent the physical aspects of changing gender roles to fit the concept of nonconformity in modern societies. Figure 2. Kichepo Women, Sudan Figure 1. Alvin Ailey’s Revelations (Africanbushbard.com n.d.) (Ballet Magazine 2004) Figure 3. Violet Hair Colour (Zimbio, Inc. 2010) The first image (Figure 1) is a snapshot of Alvin Ailey’s famous spiritual dance drama Revelations. This performance addresses a number of areas that might be of interest for the thesis question. It pioneered the way the black body is culturally signified in modern American performing arts. Moreover, the troupe consisted of both white and black dancers – an event of racial fusion in the 1960s (Lepecki 2004:93). At the same time, the inclusion of the black body symbolizes both historic and cultural continuity of the Afro-American dance traditions within a gestated framework of ‘mythic abstractions’ (Lepecki 2004:94), thereby discarding the concept of the black body as being racially inferior to its white counterpart. The image establishes an aesthetic dimension of universally relatable coefficients of maleness, including dominance through dexterous physical movements, illustration of convex shapes and agility of expressions. The second image (Figure 2), in broader contexts, stands for women solidarity within patriarchal societies. The snapshot frames a woman belonging to the Kichepo, a tribal clan in Sudan. She is putting on a lip plate to detract slave traders from doing any harm to her. What can be ostensibly noticed in the image is that the woman is wearing something unusual not to enhance her physical charm but as a protective gearing. In the context of gender discourses, it is quite well established that gender roles are sometimes attributed to social obligations or as means to live up to certain behavioural patterns so as not to flout the societal conventions. The body here is presented as an extended or protruded version of what can be termed as feminine proactivity to defend her physical entity. From the viewpoint of cultural studies, lip plates literally secure both social safety as well as personal integrity of women. The third image (Figure 3) relates more to the nonconformity theory of individualism than to gender biases. The breezy decades of the 1950s and the 1960s in the United States and Great Britain witnessed radical changes in people’s social outlooks. The post-WWII era saw periods of despondency and uncertainty among the common people in both sides of the Atlantic. Widespread unemployment, economic crisis and generic incertitude about the future made people skeptic about the validity of established principles that used to govern societies earlier. Moreover, seminal modern thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Martin Heidegger advocated the triumph of individualistic thoughts over commonplace generalizations. Epistemological doctrines involving existentialism, nihilism, positivism, and expressionism gradually replaced the idealistic worldviews of the Romantics, triggering a radical change in people’s awareness about their surroundings. Questions of individual freedom and freedom of choice were being asked by the beat generation in the 1960s. The punk culture came to existence soon, marked by a spontaneous defiance of ethical austerity. This backdrop led to the resurgence of primitive customs involving bodily decorations that were once espoused by both men and women. The image is suggestive of a nonconformist stance with regard to unusual hair colouring. It may be noted that most individuals, depending on their ethnic heritage, are biologically gifted with specific hair colours. But changing the natural colour with artificial ones calls for an organic analysis of a number of factors, including individual affiliation to prevalent socio-cultural system, occupational status quo and level of education, and political allegiance. However, it may also be noted that while nonconformity to accepted beliefs is a basic reason behind hair colouring, another factor that also comes into contention is aging. Since the natural process of aging attributes a classified tag to a person’s position in the society, many aged persons prefer to colour their hair to look younger. Conclusion All three images endorse a common concept of body adornment to project a stylized representation of culturally esoteric viewpoints. These viewpoints are widely shared among many proponents of alternative culture around the world. As discussed earlier, ancient civilizations in South America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East witnessed several body-art techniques such as piercing, scarification, plating, belly buttoning, hair and skin colouring and more. Modernistic revival of these customs has led to a paradigmatic shift from collective acceptance of norms to subjective denial of the same, thus underlining numerous moot points regarding the involvement of body in gender studies. List of References Africanbushbard.com (n.d.) available from [24 February 2010] Ballet Magazine (2004) Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre [online] available from [24 February 2010] Berik, G., and Bilginsoy, C. (2006) ‘Still a wedge in the door: women training for the construction trades in the USA.’ International Journal of Manpower 27, (4) 321-341 Chancer, L. S., and Watkins, B. X. (2006) Gender, race, and class: an overview. Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell Fedorak, S. (2009) Pop Culture: The Culture of Everyday Life. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Joseph, S., and Najmabadi, A. (2003) Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures: Family, body, sexuality and health. Leiden, The Netherlands: BRILL Lauretis, T. D. (1987) Technologies of gender: essays on theory, film, and fiction. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press Lepecki, A. (2004) Of the presence of the body: essays on dance and performance theory. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press Lester, T. P. (2002) Gender nonconformity, race, and sexuality: changing the connections. Madison, Wisconsin: Univ of Wisconsin Press Money, John. (1994) The concept of gender identity disorder in childhood and adolescence after 39 years. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 20, 163-177 Rush, J. A. (2005) Spiritual tattoo: a cultural history of tattooing, piercing, scarification, branding, and implants. 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