What's Your Standpoint

Since women’s studies strives to include intersectional approaches in all of its work, it was not surprising to read how Edmonds-Cady decided to incorporate both race and gender when using the standpoint approach to understand the different actors in the welfare rights movement in her article “Getting to the grassroots: Feminist Standpoints Within the Welfare Rights Movement”. Her article inspired me to better understand the standpoint of myself in relationship to feminism as well as others in my cohort. I challenge others this week to also think about their standpoint in terms of gender, and race as well as sexuality and class, which I also believe to be important when completing this work. Looking at our own standpoints will allow us to further understand our own work and why we are interested in being part of the feminist movement.

To do this for myself, I will explain where I fall in the class, race, sexuality, gender hierarchy. I am a middle class, white, gay men. I am privileged in terms of class, race, and gender but oppressed in terms of my sexuality. To further complicate matters, I can easily pass as straight and in our heteronormative society, people always assume I have the privileged sexuality. I always think it is interesting when suddenly, I tell someone new in my life that I am gay or they somehow find out and I am suddenly oppressed because they feel that due to my sexuality they can no longer treat me as one of the guys even though in reality nothing has really changed.

Because of my experience feeling oppressed and my belief that binaries of all kinds need to end I am drawn to feminism and its academic discipline women’s studies. I love that women’s studies works towards creating social change. I wish every discipline worked towards this. As much as I believe that every man should be involved in feminism, I understand that there are some particular issues with gay men being involved in feminism.

Gay male culture is not very feminist. Many gay men enjoy porn especially hyper-masculine porn. Because of this some have argued that being gay is being hyper-masculine and is someone who is hyper-masculine truly able to work as a feminist? Also, as men gay men hold the dominant gender status and may then not allow women equal opportunity.  As much as I love the feminist movement it is questions such as these as I continue my studies in women’s studies and feminism. 

Men's Movement

I’ve spent the last week reading about the men’s movement and how it was formed in response to the feminist movement in preparation for the paper I am currently writing. Before doing this reading, I had never heard of the practice of men in the 90s going out into the woods to become reacquainted with nature and other men. In addition, some men’s groups believed that being a man was endangering and men needed to find some way to re-shape their gender so their health and well being was not as threatened. As I am developing this paper, I have decided to include research about the men’s movement since it was formed as a direct result of feminism. I am currently struggling with how to differentiate between components of the men’s movement that are clearly pro-feminist and components of the men’s movement that are anti-feminist. By doing this I believe I will be able to support my argument that men who are pro-feminist are treated as the other among other men. 

Literary Criticism, Discourse and Critique

This week the class readings covered three subjects: the impact of black literary criticism on the feminist movement, the definition of discourse and how the term discourse has been misused, and how the beginnings of feminism can help us critique the events that occurred in the United States after 9/11.

The first article reminded us that in the beginning the academy presumed that all women were white and all persons of color were men. This changed when women of color entered the feminist movement and demanded that they be included as part of the feminist movement. This helped the feminist movement to include everyone and begin to fight all forms of oppressions. As the article discusses this fight for inclusion by women of color spilled over into other disciplines such as literature and allowed for texts to be rediscovered and reinterpreted based on this new group who was able to look at the texts. I believe that processes such as this are always good as it forces disciplines to take a hard look at itself and accept new interpretations of the disciplines core beliefs.  

The second article explored the term discourse and how it has been used and misused in academic literature specifically in the discipline of political science. The article argues that many use discourse as a substitute for looking at ways people argue, instead we should use discourse in order to explore how political figures operate for political purpose. This is important when looking at the political process and trying to ensure that we are examining politicians based on their articulation of feminist goals.

The last article opened with a scene from the beginnings of the feminist movement and the historical academic association’s difficulty with women studying women in history. The author connects this scene with the events after 9/11 by stating that feminist scholars are now able to provide critical interpretations of events and to show how feminist scholars are now able to explore the operations of differences and the workings of power. The author suggests we need to look more critically at the conflict in the Middle East and probe deeper our assumptions of both players in the conflict. We also need to be careful that we do not take at face value analysis that suggests George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan because of women’s issues. She ends her article by calling our attention to the women in black, an independent feminist organization that unites women throughout the word in support of feminist issues. 

The Many Difficulties of Feminist Research

If our job as feminist researchers was not already difficult enough, I believe that this week’s readings further complicated it. I found Halse and Honey’s narrative of how careful they were in being sensitive to their research participant’s needs inspiring. It was shocking to me how much the research board restricted them from putting into place all the protections they wanted to protect their research subjects. I was most inspired when Halse and Honey stated how easy it would have been if they just ignored the questions that troubled them; that their research project only stalled when they tried to create a more morally acceptable description of their population. The question I kept coming back to when reflecting on this article was what would the academy look like if all researchers were as ethically careful as Halse and Honey? I believe the academy would be a steward of social justice and not seen as an institution full of people who colonize knowledge for themselves. In the end, I was disappointed that Halse and Honey compromised on a few key points such as allowing the clinic’s doctors to be involved in the research, I wish they did not have to compromise but I also recognize that some times we just need to complete our research and avoid controversy that would stall us.

            Kirsch offered us a very interesting critique of feminist research and suggested ways we can make it better. I agree that in many instances researchers can get to close to their research subject and then leave them high and dry when the project is over. I always think of the scene in Rent when Mark is filming a homeless woman and the woman tells him that she does not want him to make a name for himself on her. I always think of this scene as an example of bad research where the researcher uses his subject for himself. I believe that as feminists our goal always needs to be improving people’s lives as an outcome of our research. I find Kirsch suggestion of allowing research subjects to comment on research in progress to be quite fascinating and would love to see a study where that was done. I also agreed with the author that we should expose undergrads to research but also believe as she states we need to be careful. When researching we are playing with people’s emotions in some sense and we need to make sure anyone we ask to do that is properly trained.  

I Wish I Could Grow a Penis, If Only For Tonight

Last Thursday, I attended a Simhas Torah Celebration at the local chabad house. For those who do not know Simhas Torah is a celebration of reaching the end of the torah (the five books of mosses, which Jews traditionally read through every year). Since the celebration was at a chabad house, their was a mehitza (a partition separating men from women) which prevented the men and women in attendance from dancing together. The comment referenced in the title was made by a female friend of mine who desired to dance on the men’s side because she saw the men having more fun then the women.

I have been thinking about her comment all week, how I should deal with her critique of Chabad, and how to deal with the third rail in women’s studies, religion. Before I begin, I believe it is necessary to tell the reader that I am a reform Jew: a denomination of Judaism that strongly believes in equality. In Reform Judaism, a mehitza is never used and women are allowed to become rabbis. The person who made the comment is also a reform Jew and is in the process of applying to reform rabbinical school. Both of us only attend events at the local chabad house due to the friendliness of the chabad family, free food, and a desire to engage in some Jewish learning.

Mehitza’s have always bothered me and especially on this night they bothered me even more. I am someone who has always felt alienated by men and much prefers the social company of a women. When I attend my reform synagogue I am always found sitting next to a female friend and spend the service gossiping with her. Even on this simhas torah night I found myself “illegally” dancing on the women’s side because I saw that as my natural place.    

I have spoken to many Jews who are more observant then me about my issues with a mehitza (I of course based the conversation around equity issues and not my desire to gossip with a women during services) and they have told me that the point of the mehitza is to prevent men from distracting other girls. I have found this a lot in Judaism, the need to protect men from the attractiveness of women. Is this a real threat or is this just a way to get Jewish women to buy into this concept of inequity in Judaism. I do not believe women cannot be both religious and feminist, I just believe that one who is both needs to challenge and critique how the religion treats the “other” (in terms of race, gender, sexuality, etc…). I am still trying to figure out how to do this and challenge those more observant then I to see the inequity in some religious traditions. 

Men Researching other Men

When I initially saw on the syllabus the subject of this week’s readings, “interviewing men”, I was initially turned off. My reaction was the same to reactions I’ve had in class along the lines of “if women’s studies wants men they need to stop writing articles from the perspective of women engaging in feminist research”. Recently, however my thinking has shifted due to a comment that was made in class which explained to me the need for these kinds of article. The comment stated that these kinds of articles need to exist because we (women) will need to know how to conduct research of men and we need to learn strategies to understand the power dynamics inherent in those interview spaces. While I believe that thinking is totally valid, the readings this week also validates my thinking that there will be difficulties when I (a man) conduct research on men.

            In Grenz’s article, “Intersections of sex and power in research on prostitution: a female researcher interviewing male heterosexual clients” she states that her female gender helped her in conducting her research and that her subjects would not be comfortable talking to a man about their experience in prostitution. According to Grenz, this occurred due to the men’s homophobia. Her research subject’s thought that since talking about sexual experience can lead to sexual arousal, they had to avoid talking about this subject with a man Grenz also points to being a good listener as a characteristic that is inherently female. This tells me that if I as a man would like to replicate her study or do any research regarding straight men and their sexuality I would have a lot of trouble getting male subjects to open up to me. I as a male researcher would have to develop my own methods to allow me to research this subject matter.

            Taylor and Rupp also point to the advantages they had as lesbian researchers in their exploration of drag culture. This research showed me that as researchers we need to use our gender and sexuality to our advantage when conducting research and finding ways to use our gender and sexuality to our advantage. I believe that strategies I will create when conducting research will have to incorporate both my gender and sexuality. At the same time I believe that it is unfortunate that many straight men have homophobic tendencies that will force me to create strategies when conducting research on them.