b o d i e s

While reading Jamieson’s perfectly-written text, which encapsulates the greater part of what I feel and think about women, writing, rationality, and the public discourse, I kept hearing Andrea Nye from Words of Power and the Power of Words in my head.  She writes:

"I believe all human communication, including logic, is motivated…people when they speak or write always want something and hope for something with passion and concern, even when part of that passion and concern is to deny it…The discussion of a man in authority with a woman who sets herself up to refute his pronouncements is always on his terms, and likely to end up only in one way: with the reaffirmation of his power." (Nye 442-443)

The most insidious system of power is rarely brazen, blasting, or ruling by the sword, but rather the

one that doesn’t call its own name, and instead masquerades around as normality and universality.  Traditionalist men created a construct of public discourse which did not explicitly exclude women from entering the debate, and therefore could not be immediately recognized as bias and sexist.  Yet, to participate in “manly” speech, the highest regarded and expected form of discourse, women needed to deny their femininity, and ultimately, humanity.  To participate in the “manly” conversation, one needed to deny their feelings, their intuition, their desire for intimacy, relationships, and peace.  Some women overcame, pushed their way into a system designed to exclude and oust their presence, but all their “success” accomplished was reinforcing the system that existed to subvert them. 

Handbags, anyone?

People like to say that sexism is a “thing of the past,” that women have equal rights now, and can pursue any job or career without barriers.  I have even heard the argument that men are reverse-biased, that prejudice has been turned upon the man, and women “get away” with too much.  Those arguments notwithstanding, we need to recognize that the very basis of western thought and public discourse, “rationalism,” still exists on man’s territory, and we play by his rules.  If I can say anything without frustration, it will be regarding the power of narrative.  Jamieson opens a door, considering new technology (media) as an opportunity for women to alter the disadvantages of “professional discourse,” through the narrative style with which they have become familiar.  Video shows the relationship between a subject and their space, shows imperfections, shows bodies rather than just minds.  At our core, we are storytelling creatures; television and video offer outlets for this form to emerge.  I had never considered the implications of new technology on gender roles, and her discussion of television has me now considering how the surge in multiple media will continue to affect our constructions of gendered and power-driven language.

“Before they can bring centuries of acculturation to television, women must overcome their socially reinforced fear of public speech; they must then abandon the “manly” style they adopted in order to deliver socially acceptable public discourse.” (Jamieson, 808)

Sometimes, oftentimes, I have a hard time sticking up for myself when doing so will let someone else down.  I have felt too many heavy-set footprints from letting people walk over me, but still have a hard time recognizing how to stop it.  Jamieson offers the idea that women are socially trained to be submissive, letting others assert their aggressive tendencies, while we remain passive, because to speak up or speak out would be “bitchy,” “dominant,” “impulsive,” “improper,” and a whole slew of words which all mean “not gentle.”  Sociologically, women are less likely to negotiate higher pay grades, because a men bartering for higher salaries they are seen as assertive, but when women negotiate they are considered pushy or smug.  At its core, negotiation is negotiation, but we interpret it differently depending on sex.  Yet, the idea that a willingness to be trodden upon is trained means it is not innate, not “natural,” and can be untrained.

Wysocki does some incredible work.  This:

“We can create aesthetic experiences…for each other where we use the expected social constructions of form just enough to hold onto what audiences expect, but where we can then also make visible the limitation of the forms we have been asked to grow into but, if we are to be safe and fully respected, cannot.” (Wysocki 172)

This is genius.  Wysocki is not saying, “Death to all images! Death to all text!”  But rather encourages us to turn the conventions on themselves.  Rather than blind reinforcement of preexisting power, we can follow cultural expectations and restrictions for images and writing just enough to be accepted into the discourse, but push, bend, and resist the rules enough to create self-reflective writing and images which call their own cultural assumptions and strictures out.  We can reveal the limitations of the form while still working within that form, and it might be the most powerful demonstration of all.

Her consideration of Kant’s argument regarding universality makes absolute sense in today’s culture.  Society has constructed the “perfect” ameliorated female body type, to have access to a universal principle of “female beauty.”  But when we seek out the actual relationship, the site of interaction, the day-to-day peculiarities and specificities of the female form, it is far less universal.  I have freckles, round hips, cellulite in places I rarely look.  My skin sheds itself, my hairs escape while also insisting on tangling, getting dirty, drying out.  My stomach is not flat, my teeth sit in a uniquely not-straight configuration, I have dimples on my lower back and scars from chicken pox.  My hips and thighs have coursing stretch marks whose texture remind me of a topographical map, telling the story of my growth.  My body is a collection of perfect specifications, my body has been through everything I have, and tells a story my brain cannot.

But what lies the next level down?  Wysocki writes, “This desire for abstract formality we have

learned…separates us from our histories and places, and hence from each other” (Wysocki 169).  I want to venture that our fear of intimacy pushes us into discourses that allow isolation.  We live in a culture that asks us not to be bodies—to make our bodies be nothing more than vehicles to tote our brains around.  What is so terrifying about being human?  The fallibility?  Were Aristotle, Plato, Kant, etc. dreadfully fearful of their innate weaknesses?  Principles and abstractions allow us to shirk particulars; the concept (rather than the person) cannot be broken.  Is it so violating to recognize that, in the end, we are all decomposing bodies, falling apart at the seams, slowly, minute by minute?  You might see me as a student who speaks up in discussion, or always writes lengthy blogs with multisyllabic words.  Maybe you see me as intelligent, funny, or intense.  Which could be true, but also, underneath all this academic prose, maybe I am a tired woman.  Maybe an ex is making my life hard, maybe I have sore arms because I have not lifted in months and just started and it hurts like hell, maybe I am lonely, or hungry, or maybe today is the best day I have had in a long time.  Maybe they are all true, simultaneously.  I guess what I am trying to say is, academic discourse could attain so much more were we honest with ourselves and others.

Universalities and generalities are boring, and only support the powers that be.  We need to show, through our compositions and our self presentations, “the particular and the messy” (168).  

Also, if you have a bit, check out Emma Watson's killer speech on feminism: