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Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study and academic field devoted to gender identity and gendered representation as central categories of analysis. This field includes women's studies (concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics), men's studies, and LGBT studies.[1] Sometimes, gender studies is offered together with study of sexuality. These disciplines study gender and sexuality in the fields of literature, language, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, cinema, media studies, human development, law, and medicine.[2] It also analyzes race, ethnicity, location, nationality, and disability.[3][4]

Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one".[5] This view proposes that in gender studies, the term "gender" should be used to refer to the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities, not to the state of being male or female in its entirety.[6] However, this view is not held by all gender theorists. Other areas[which?] of gender study closely examine the role that the biological states of being male or female (anatomical, physiological, and genetical explanations of male and female body parts, structure and nature of functions of body organs, genetic carriers etc.) have on social constructs of gender. Specifically, in what way gender roles are defined by biology and how they are defined by cultural trends. The field emerged from a number of different areas: the sociology of the 1950s and later (see Sociology of gender); the theories of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; and the work of feminists such as Judith Butler.

Gender is an important area of study in many disciplines, such as literary theory, drama studies, film theory, performance theory, contemporary art history, anthropology, sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis. These disciplines sometimes differ in their approaches to how and why they study gender. For instance in anthropology, sociology and psychology, gender is often studied as a practice, whereas in cultural studies representations of gender are more often examined. In politics, gender can be viewed as a foundational discourse that political actors employ in order to position themselves on a variety of issues.[7] Gender studies is also a discipline in itself: an interdisciplinary area of study that incorporates methods and approaches from a wide range of disciplines.[8]

Each field came to regard "gender" as a practice, sometimes referred to as something that is performative.[9] Feminist theory of psychoanalysis, articulated mainly by Julia Kristeva[10] (the "semiotic" and "abjection") and Bracha Ettinger[11] (the feminine-prematernal-maternal matrixial Eros of borderlinking and com-passion,[12] "matrixial trans-subjectivity" and the "primal mother-phantasies"), and informed both by Freud, Lacan and the Object relations theory, is very influential in gender studies.

Contents [hide]

1 Influences of gender studies

1.1 Gender studies and psychoanalytic theory

1.1.1 Sigmund Freud

1.1.2 Jacques Lacan

1.1.3 Julia Kristeva

1.1.4 Bracha Ettinger

1.1.5 Mark Blechner

1.2 Literary theory

1.3 Post-modern influence

2 The development of gender theory

2.1 History of gender studies

2.2 Women's studies

2.3 Men's studies

2.4 Judith Butler

3 Responses

4 Other people whose work is associated with gender studies

5 See also

6 References

7 Bibliography

8 External links

Influences of gender studies[edit source | editbeta]

Gender studies and psychoanalytic theory[edit source | editbeta]

Sigmund Freud[edit source | editbeta]

Some feminist critics[who?] have dismissed the work of Sigmund Freud as sexist, because of his view that women are 'mutilated and must learn to accept their lack of a penis' (in Freud's terms a "deformity").[13]

On the other hand, feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin, Jane Gallop, Bracha Ettinger, Shoshana Felman, Griselda Pollock[14] and Jane Flax have argued that psychoanalytic theory is vital to the feminist project and must, like other theoretical traditions, be adapted by women to free it from vestiges of sexism (i.e. being censored). Shulamith Firestone, in "The Dialectic of Sex" calls Freudianism the misguided feminism and discusses how Freudianism is almost completely accurate, with the exception of one crucial detail: everywhere that Freud writes "penis", the word should be replaced with "power".

Jacques Lacan[edit source | editbeta]

Lacan's theory of sexuation organizes femininity and masculinity according to different unconscious structures. Both male and female subjects participate in the "phallic" organization, and the feminine side of sexuation is "supplementary" and not opposite or complementary.[15] Sexuation (sexual situation) — the development of gender-roles and role-play in childhood — breaks down concepts of gender identity as innate or biologically determined. (clarify-refutes?challenges?)[16] Critics like Elizabeth Grosz accuse Jacques Lacan of maintaining a sexist tradition in psychoanalysis.[17] Others, such as Judith Butler, Bracha Ettinger and Jane Gallop have used Lacanian work, though in a critical way, to develop gender theory.[18][19][20]

Julia Kristeva[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva has significantly developed the field of semiotics. In her work on abjection, she structures subjectivity upon the abjection of the mother and argues that the way in which an individual excludes (or abjects) their mother as means of forming an identity is similar to the way in which societies are constructed. She contends that patriarchal cultures, like individuals, have to exclude the maternal and the feminine so that they can come into being.[21]

Bracha Ettinger[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Bracha Ettinger

Bracha Ettinger transformed subjectivity in contemporary psychoanalysis since the early 1990s with the Matrixial[22] feminine-maternal and prematernal Eros[12] of borderlinking (bordureliance), borderspacing (bordurespacement) and co-emergence. The matrixial feminine difference defines a particular gaze[23] and it is a source for trans-subjectivity and transjectivity[24] in both males and females.

Mark Blechner[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Mark Blechner

Mark Blechner expanded psychoanalytic views of sex and gender, calling psychoanalysis "the once and future queer science".[25] He has argued that there is a "gender fetish" in western society, in which the gender of sexual partners is given enormously disproportionate attention over other factors involved in sexual attraction, such as age and social class. He proposes that the words "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" be given prefixes, depending on the dimension that is the same or different between partners.[26] "Age heterosexuality" would indicate an attraction between people of different ages, for example. What is conventionally called "heterosexuality" (attraction between a man and a woman) would be called "gender heterosexuality".

Cultures can have very different norms of maleness and masculinity. Blechner identifies the terror, in Western males, of penetration. Yet in many societies, being gay is defined only by being a male who lets himself be penetrated. Males who penetrate other males are considered masculine and not gay and are not the targets of prejudice.[27] In other cultures, however, receptive fellatio is the norm for early adolescence and seen as a requirement for developing normal manliness.[28]

Literary theory[edit source | editbeta]

Psychoanalytically oriented French feminism focused on visual and literary theory all along. Virginia Woolf's legacy as well as "Adrienne Rich's call for women's revisions of literary texts, and history as well, has galvanized a generation of feminist authors to reply with texts of their own".[29] Griselda Pollock and other femininsts have articulated Myth and Poetry[30] and literature,[30][31][32] from the point of view of gender.

Post-modern influence[edit source | editbeta]

[icon] This section requires expansion. (June 2008)

Main article: post-feminism

The emergence of post-feminism affected gender studies,[16] causing a movement in theories identity away from the concept of fixed or essentialist gender identity, to post-modern[33] fluid or multiple identities.[34]

See Donna Haraway, The Cyborg Manifesto, as an example of post-identity feminism.

More recently, the relation between post-modernism or post-structuralism and masculinity has been considered. Masculinity can be taken as always in movement and never fixed or stable. See Reeser, Masculinities in Theory (2010) for a comprehensive overview of this approach.

The development of gender theory[edit source | editbeta]

History of gender studies[edit source | editbeta]

After the revolution of the universal suffrage of the 20 th Century and the women's liberation movement of the 1970s promoted a revision from the feminists to "actively interrogate" the usual and accepted versions of the History as it was known at the time. New way of looking at history came out of the analysis. This gave birth to the Gender History studies.[35]

Women's studies[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Women's studies

Women's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. It often includes feminist theory, women's history (e.g. a history of women's suffrage) and social history, women's fiction, women's health, feminist psychoanalysis and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences.

Men's studies[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Men's studies

Men's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning men, masculism, gender, and politics. It often includes masculist theory, men's history and social history, men's fiction, men's health, masculist psychoanalysis and the masculist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences. Key theoretical contributions reconciling the relationship between masculist/feminist interpretation of gender studies include Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men[36] by Dr Warren Farrell and James Sterba, and Gendering, Courtship and Pay Equality by Dr Rory Ridley-Duff.[37][38]

Judith Butler[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: Judith Butler

The concept of gender performativity is at the core of Butler's work, notably in Gender Trouble. In Butler’s terms the performance of gender, sex, and sexuality is about power in society.[9] She locates the construction of the "gendered, sexed, desiring subject" in "regulative discourses". A part of Butler's argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of "natural" or coherent gender and sexuality. In her account, gender and heterosexuality are constructed as natural because the opposition of the male and female sexes is perceived as natural in the social imaginary.[9]

Responses[edit source | editbeta]

Historian and theorist Bryan Palmer argues that gender studies current reliance on post-structuralism — with its reification of discourse and avoidance of the structures of oppression and struggles of resistance — obscures the origins, meanings, and consequences of historical events and processes, and he seeks to counter the current gender studies with an argument for the necessity to analyze lived experience and the structures of subordination and power.[39]

Sociologist Helen Lindberg asserted in her Örebro University doctoral dissertation that gender studies has a weakness in that it relies on feminist social theories that are starkly based on ideological foundations and thus provide a coloured picture of society. She also criticized different feminist theories for lacking internal coherence, offering little practicality and having trouble accommodating empirical evidence.[40]

Pope Benedict XVI has denounced some of the gender theories, warning that they blur the distinction between male and female and could thus lead to the "self-destruction" of the human race.[41][42]

Rosi Braidotti has criticized gender studies as: "the take-over of the feminist agenda by studies on masculinity, which results in transferring funding from feminist faculty positions to other kinds of positions. There have been cases...of positions advertised as 'gender studies' being given away to the 'bright boys'. Some of the competitive take-over has to do with gay studies. Of special significance in this discussion is the role of the mainstream publisher Routledge who, in our opinion, is responsible for promoting gender as a way of deradicalizing the feminist agenda, re-marketing masculinity and gay male identity instead."[citation needed] Calvin Thomas countered that, "as Joseph Allen Boone points out, 'many of the men in the academy who are feminism's most supportive 'allies' are gay,'" and that it is "disingenuous" to ignore the ways in which mainstream publishers such as Routledge have promoted feminist theorists.[citation needed]

Harald Eia, a Norwegian documentarian, introduced in 2010 a television show called "Hjernevask" ("Brainwashing") which contrasted cultural determinist models of human behavior with nature-nurture interactionist perspectives. Specially the question of gender, and what is referred to as the gender paradox has provoked controversy, and as a result of Eia's television program, The Nordic Gender Institute (NIKK) was closed by the Norwegian government.[43][44]

Harald Martenstein, provocative columnist in the German Die Zeit magazine, lumps gender researchers together with creationists. For his column, he read the works of Judith Butler and others, conducted interviews with gender researchers, and compares this to advances in psychological research. He concludes that scientific rigor is the antipole of gender research, and that gender studies see natural sciences as their epitome concept of enemy .[45]

Other people whose work is associated with gender studies[edit source | editbeta]

Sara Ahmed

Simone de Beauvoir

Kate Bornstein

Judith Butler

Micha Cárdenas

Bracha Ettinger

Warren Farrell

Michel Foucault

Kristen R. Ghodsee

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Madeleine Grumet