The Gendered Care of the Self

Foucault's discussion of the 'care of the self' has followed the same interesting path from a concern with how we are shaped and constrained by power to how we create our own spaces within the web of power. In his own words, from being 'acted upon' to becoming 'works of arts' of our own making... It's an interesting shift, which seems to me closely related to the whole post-modernist hype emphasizing our own power to act upon our identities, resisting prescribed values and recipes.

What I find really interesting however is the overlap between this scholastic attention to individual power and the neoliberal discourse presenting the individual as all powerful, able to do things and to make things only by virtue of being determined and committed. Think of all those Hollywood movies where the main character succeeds because of her/his determination.

The care of the self, the duty to take care of and to form yourself into a worthy individual becomes an act of will, of determination and of commitment. But it is so rare that we stop and reflect on exactly what are the ideals that we aim for, what are the values informing them, who gets to profit out of those values, and what are the sanctions applied to those who refuse or, for that matter are unable to conform to them.

Someone very close to me has this very nasty habit of reminding me of how I fail to take care of myself. I'm more and more reluctant to use nail polish or hair dye, mostly for health reasons. But in a world of appearances, my refusal to use certain products and do certain things to my body is seen as a failure to take care of myself. I'm no longer properly groomed, as if my colorless nails are not enough. Truth be told, you seldom have any reasons to reflect on the constraining tyranny of 'looking good' when you conform. The act of conforming isn't even perceived as such: you find those shinny, long, red nails so very attractive. As a child, you're fascinated by them; but as a teenager, you learn their sexual power. A power you may start craving for. And you conform. And your nail polish becomes your most pretious ally, helping you climb the social ladder. So what's the big deal?

Try giving it up. Try persuading yourself that your natural nails are just as sexy as your red ones. Try persuading the your partner of that. Just as you have come to terms with it, try facing the your close friends and family. Then, maybe, you'll recognize how powerless we are in the face of the mainstream recipes for taking care of yourself. Moments like this one remind me that Foucault's idea of the care of the self as an empowering act of creation needs more meat to make sense.

Beauty's in the Eyebrow

Beauty is no longer in the eye of the beholder, but in the shape of your eyebrow... But who decides what shape is to be beautiful? And even more, how do we know what shape is beautiful for women and what shape works for men?

- "My doctor", the cosmetician says, "has really really wild eyebrows. No really, like her eyebrows are twisted, so she needs to use gel on them".
- "Really?"
- "Yes. What about your eyebrows", she says, "they are so thin..."
- "Well, that's how they have always grown. " I feel the panic taking control over me... I always thought my eyebrows were perfect. After all, as the story goes, when I was born, the doctor told my mother 'This baby's gonna be an actress, she has perfect eyebrows. Thin and arched as if they were drawn by an artist'
- "Oh, I thought you plucked them," the cosmetician says trying to mend my broken heart.

But the damage is all done. How will I ever look at my eyebrows again without the fear that their thinness does not mean perfection, but in fact, a lack of it?

- "Yeah, my doctor's eyebrows are really twisted," she jumps back to her previous thought. "She inherited them from her dad. But they are not nice for a woman".

So, not too thin, but not too man-like either - and especially not twisted... What to do, what to do? And what makes some eyebrow shapes more manly? I remember reading somewhere an article about Brooke Shields' eyebrows and how she, against all odds, made thick eyebrows beautiful. Against all odds, since Barbie's eyebrows are thin and precise...

Photo credits: dreamglow

Why is he back to Canada after being away for 34 years?

"Why is Michael Ignatieff back to Canada after being away for 34 years?"

The new conservative ad attacks the leader of the Liberals in Canada on the basis of his alleged unpatriotism: he has been away from Canada for 34 years! This means, he doesn't care about and he doesn't know 'Canada' anymore. He's a selfish traveler who has returned for opportunistic reasons, and not because he's a patriot.

In the context of Canada, a country where the official rhetoric is one of multiculturalism and welcoming of immigrants, being away from one's country shouldn't be much of a stigma, right?

Wrong, because the reliance on this trope equating 'being away from the nation-state' to 'not being a patriot' betrays more than the imagined worldviews of conservative constituencies. It betrays a pervasive nationalist trope that permeates, in spite of the official policy of multiculturalism, the particular understanding of what Canada is: a nation-state.

In a recent article about cosmopolitanism in Australia, Calcutt et al. argue:

The cosmopolitan willingness to accommodate otherness is perceived as a betrayal of Australian culture, yet continuing high levels of immigration from diverse sources demand cosmopolitan tolerance [...] It is argued that, from the cosmopolitan perspective, Australian cultural integrity remains the intact and dominant host of smaller, harmless or manageable cultural fragments.

Similarly, the various official discourses about multiculturalism, about respect for diversity and rejection of racism and xenophobia co-exist quite nicely with nationalism: the idea that there is a Canadian nation, characterized by noble values (hey, tolerance, diversity, multiculturalism, social welfare - beat this if you can!), to which the Canadian state belongs. Thus, being a Canadian and feeling proud of it becomes constructed as a positive thing, closing down the intellectual space in which the idea of 'Canadianness' and of a 'nation' can be critically engaged with and deconstructed in terms of both their homogenization (we're all defined by the same metaphysical Canadian essence) and in terms of their problematic ethics (we vs. them ethics).

It is in moments like the Tory ad that these problematic ethics of nationalism emerge: exactly what is wrong with living in several countries? Why is this even raised as an issue which will - allegedly - make people distrust, dislike and ultimately reject the person who has lived 'abroad'?

References:
Calcutt, Woodward, Skrbis (2009) "Conceptualizing Otherness," Journal of Sociology 45(2), 169-186

On Chick Lit, the Feminizing of Stupidity and Gendered Language

Most of the times, English is a gender-neutral language. Yes, it's true you can say 'chairman' or 'chairwoman', thus betraying your gendered-vision of the job market. But for most of the times, one cannot guess if the noun is feminine, masculine or neutral. Take French for instance: la femme ignorante/ l'homme ignorant. The epithet (adjective) changes with the gender of the noun - and in French, like in other Romance languages, the noun is always gendered.

So, when a man wrote the other day in one of these Romance languages: "I'm new here and I do not know the details of this problem, but I'm asking like a 'stupid' one", he used the feminine for the word stupid, and put it in between inverted commas, to emphasize the fact that it should be read in a connotative manner.

But what is the connotation here? That to ask stupid questions is always a female way of dealing with things? Most probably, yes...

The other day, someone else wrote to say he's reading "chick lit!" I was intrigued... what exactly makes literature 'chick'? Could it be because it is about poultry? Probably not... As I was pondering the 'depth of this comment' (*sarcastic tone*), I took out the newspapers and happened to come across an article about the 'feminization of the school curriculum', where 'poor boys' (*sarcasm, again*) are being forced to read those annoying Jane Austin books... Consequently, due to this 'outrageous discrimination' (*sarcasm, again), the boys' grades were going down the drain, so the professor replaced the 'chick lit' with books where the boys can read - in a manly fashion! - about the adventures of a young boy. Go, boys, go!

I wonder if people ever ponder the mangitude of such words, deeds and feelings. If they ever stop to ask themselves: why am I labeling this 'chick lit' or why is stupidity always bound to be a 'female' attribute?

Here's my biased two cents: in most cases, I suspect telling people that using such a language is derogatory, betraying a sexist and patriarchal vision of the world, will only bring a smile and maybe a polite acknowledgment: "Oh, but I didn't mean it in that way". Maybe you didn't, but then again, you did mean exactly in this way and maye not because you 'intended' it, but because that's the only language you're comfortable with, and you don't give it a second thought. But you should.

Democracy and Ageism

The students are discontented with the election result. Most of the people who voted for communism are old people, but old people are dying and there are more young people voting now than before. So the result is definitely not true. It's not logical.

The story behind this comment can be found here. In a nutshell, the comment was made by a student in the Eastern European country of Moldova, where there is growing discontent among the youth against the results of elections. Sympathetic or not to the protesters, it is quite interesting to take a closer look at this argument:

• Democracy: Exactly what is a democracy? Who should have a right to vote, and what happens in cases when there's a tie? The comment above is interesting in undermining the idea of democracy as the rule of the 'many' - when 'many' is no longer one group, but several, what constructs the difference between the voting groups and what legitimizes the rule of one over the others?

• Ageism: just because a voter is older, so s/he may die soon, does this make hir less legitimate to vote? It is interesting how this comment frames the democratic argument within a discriminative discourse against age: those voters who voted for this party are old enough to die soon, but the country belongs to young people, and they would have voted for someone else. I am doubtful that indeed young people have (or would) all voted for one party. But it is interesting how age difference is framed here as an impediment to the realization of the democratic dream.
  

Gender and Blogging

The Gender and Technology blog with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society has posted an interesting note on Arab female bloggers:

And while there are certainly well-known female bloggers discussing issues unique to women, many female bloggers in the Arab world face a unique challenge: to speak out about women’s issues often means going against the grain of family and society.
Still, for those who do, blogging is a potentially liberating experience.

Yet, in spite of this, the post proposes that many Arab female bloggers are getting out of the bloggosphere, mainly because blogging is constructed as a 'masculine' (made me wonder what exactly is meant here by 'masculine' - is it a male practice, like in saying 'men are interested in politics'; or is it a practice shaped by particular values associated with masculinity, like in saying 'men are rational'?). A Libyan blogger adds a new layer of explanation: women who blogged were probably reprimanded by family and friends for doing this, so they either opted out of the bloggosphere or restricted their blogs 'by invitation only'.

There's one argument I often hear: that the bloggosphere - or the internet for that matter - is a safe space. As if the 'safety' is a feature of the space. But it is not. What makes a place safe is not its physical characteristics, but the people and social structures inhabiting it.

First, a blogger is never fully safe - the precise location of your averagely tech-skilled blogger is easy to pinpoint. Furthermore, should the blogger subscribe to the many various services that aggregate your digital traces, the blogger's identity may be inadvertently disclosed. Say you have a Facebook account to keep up with your friends. You list your blog there, thinking it's only them who have access to it. But you forgot to set your privacy settings - and a simple search by either name or blog may bring that info up. There are also things you cannot control: say a friend adds you to her blogroll, but instead of using your blog's name, she uses your real name.

But there's yet another way in which the blog is never fully safe: it has to do with the emotional involvement in building your digital life. In many cases, the comments people post may be supportive, pleasant and educational. Yet, in many other cases - and particularly in the case of posts about gender relations - the comments are stereotyped, destructive and even hateful. If you think you're safe from such comments just because nobody knows who you are, that they won't mean anything just because you're blogging from the comfort of your couch or bedroom, you've probably never blogged. The emotional toll such comments may take on you is almost never discussed by researchers. Maybe because it's deemed as a 'feminine' trait?

I think many of our biases in approaching blogging stem from the fact that we get blindsided by its so-called 'empowering potential'. We forget to ask ourselves exactly whom we want (or think of being) empowered and what are we missing because of this assumption. We also tend to think that blogs will collectively contribute to the advance of democratic, liberal and tolerant values. Again, we forget to question the assumption that if people have the means to express themselves, they will participate in the rational public sphere and reveal themselves as critical thinkers. This assumption is closely connected to that of 'understanding via information': let there be information, which will allegedly reveal the 'truth', and there will be mutual understanding, acceptance and ultimately a redress of oppression. Such assumptions are in great need of more deconstruction, particularly in the social construction of new communication technologies.

Photo credits: bohPhoto

Those hairy feminists...

It seems that everything I'm getting angry about these days relates to gender issues.

The other day for instance, I got mad over a disgusting article in a newspaper in Eastern Europe talking about how feminists are stupid, have a mustache and grow chest hair?!? Do I need to say that the article in question was (allegedly) written by a woman?

Not that I buy into the 'sisterhood' thing, but I find it extremely dangerous that in a country where gender equality was an official state policy, things can change so dramatically against women once equality is no longer publicly heralded (there still are equality of opportunity policies, but nobody - politicians included - truly support it publicly). What does this say about the real mental pictures people hold about 'women'? What does this say about the real shared understandings of what a woman is and where she belongs?

If decades of equality didn't do much to actually change collective gender stereotypes and patriarchal worldviews, exactly what will? (OK, I'm exaggerating a bit: it was a public equality, but not necessarily equality in the private sphere, in the everyday life of households).

But hey, not everything bad happens outside the 'civilized' world (note sarcasm here). As a woman has been killed while jogging in BC, the RCMP representative commented something along these lines: "women have to ensure their safety when they go out jogging in a park"?!?! Excuse me?!?! Again, women have to do something to protect themselves: how about, for a change, society collectively makes an effort to de-legitimize violence against perceived members of a group - be they women, gay, immigrants and so on. How about we live in a society that takes collective responsibility for such gender-motivated (and for that matter, ethnic and race motivated) hate and violence, and ensures that punishment is adequate and that social discussion in the public sphere takes place?

I just finished reading a review of the new movie Polythechique, recreating the massacre of women in Montreal's higher education institution way back in 1989 (incidentally, the same year when communism fell in Eastern Europe, putting an end to the official communist policy of gender equality). I don't think there's anything that can be said here, but then maybe something should be said: what is it that makes some individuals hate the fact that other individuals are to be treated as equals? That they have rights, and that they have the right to say 'no'?

You'd think that after so many years of discussion on gender equality, there will be less and less individuals prone to thinking that men and women are two separate biological entities, defined by their reproductive system and therefore pre-ordained to a given social hierarchy. But I'm looking around and many male friends cannot cope with the reality of an equal female partner. Rationally, they think they're all for equality. But the truth is that they cannot deal with equality. Emotionally, they are not ready for it. They are not ready to be told "no, I'm not gonna sacrifice my life to have a child now" or "no, I'm too busy working, and too tired in the end of the day, so I'm not gonna cook, wash or iron". They are not ready to be told "you have no right to tell me what to do, and if you continue imposing your views on me, I'll dump you".

That's the society we live in: an official policy can accomplish only that much in affecting the everyday life of people. And the irony of it all is that sometimes it's the mothers raising up the boy as the king of the family - and, guaranteed, that boy is gonna grow up emotionally unable to cope with gender equality.

It seems all I do is rant about gender lately. How can I not? I opened the newspaper today, and like everyday in the past week, there's an item there about Michelle Obama's sense of fashion. This one got on my nerves: a cartoon (click here to see it, I'm not sure I can reproduce it here because of damn copyright concerns...) summarizing the collective imaginary of the relation between men and women. I know that a cartoon intends to mock by exaggerating traits - and I think this one does a very good job of showing us what we actually think: clothes are for women, brains are for men... I beg to differ!

Photo credits: nyki_m