The Gender Playbook: Recent Episodes
eskins-thieme
Childhood friends read and analyze literature, manifestos, and texts by women and gender minorities in service of a socialist mission.
In this episode, Savannah and K. discuss the 12th chapter of Angela Davis' book Women, Race, and Class. Additionally, K. brings in knowledge accrued through reading Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts. The pace of American eugenics is comparable to that of the Nazis; we discuss various American-specific policies that affect reproduction attitudes in marginalized groups. From Norplant to sterilization to the question of waiting times before vasectomies, we inspect why sterilizing women rather than men was considered "good" policy. We delve a bit into Margaret Sanger's shifts in thinking -- from a perspective of voluntary motherhood to one of purifying the population through advocating birth control particularly among the poor. And as always, we go on a lot of tangents.
In this episode, you'll find K. and Savannah discussing the concerns and interpretations of the book Females by two trans women, McKenzie Wark and Kay Gabriel. Touching on Wark's concept of gender "technics" as well as Gabriel's concerns about the political implications of Chu's work, Sav and K. continue to navigate the Females text. Valerie Solanas plays her usual role in our discussions of Chu's work.
McKenzie Wark "Commitment to the Bit" -- https://publicseminar.org/essays/commitment-to-the-bit/
Kay Gabriel "The Limits of the Bit" -- https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-limits-of-the-bit/
Plus we discuss ~circlusion~ : http://www.maskmagazine.com/the-mommy-issue/sex/circlusion
Andrea Long-Chu's Femalesbegins with the contentious claim: "Everyone is female." The second part of her thesis may be even more contentious: "everyone hates it." Chu picks up the thread of her earlier work "On Liking Women" with her constant companion Valerie Solanas -- writer of the SCUM Manifesto. Tweeting was a part of Chu's writing process and you can tell: she enjoys a pithy turnaround. Yet, the range of topics she covers are serious and far-reaching. Femaleness becomes no longer a biological or social class, but rather an ontological condition no one can escape.
"The truth is, you are not the central transit hub for meaning about yourself, and you probably don't even have the right to be. You do not get to consent to yourself, even if you might deserve the chance. You do not get to consent to yourself -- a definition of femaleness." (pg. 38)
With this psychical definition in tow, Chu charts territory from sissy porn to the Atlantic slave trade to subreddits committed to tips for picking up women to a female comedian eating pages of Infinite Jest. K. and Sav join her on this journey, each taking away both awe and slight horror at times. They discuss subjugation and domination, gender as objectification, Solanas' ideal defeminized world and more.
Is everyone female?
Sav and K. talk about the 13th chapter of Angela Davis's Women, Race & Class, "The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-class Perspective" in addition to Gabrielle Meagher's article, "Is it Wrong to Pay for Housework?" These readings helped round out our prior discussions of housework as women's work and how that has impacted the work conditions of house cleaners. In the market, housework is still predominantly done by women, especially of the lower class and women of color. Often, this sector of the economy is not regulated in the same ways as work that takes place in the public sphere; additionally, many people who clean houses do not receive benefits, as their employer may not be a central agency but divided across multiple households. Thus, gender and class are foci for our conversation. The tension between freedom for some women (from childcare, housework, the home) at the expense of others who do that work for them remains a major theme in this discussion -- as it was in Audre Lorde's "Master's Tools." We always ask "which women?" when progress for women has supposedly been made. However, Meagher's article ultimately advocates for paying for housework, while addressing major arguments feminists have made to the contrary. Davis' piece asks us to consider the possibility of mechanized house cleaning (Roomba) that would free the working class from that additional duty. K. suggests "clean up after yourself" as some moral or ethical principle; Sav talks about poop. And, as usual, we digress to absurd considerations, such as our essence as worms and whether we like having bodies. Enjoy! Meagher's article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3810750?seq=1
Sav and K. discuss Andrea Long-Chu's "On Liking Women" and her fascination with Valerie Solanas and the S.C.U.M. Manifesto. This includes some of her ideas about gender and desire, phrased skillfully; Long-Chu's personal experiences grant a special meaning to her discussion of Solanas and the mission of taking men out of the world.
They briefly cite statistics on trans youth, found here: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/trans_stats.pdf
Sav and K. discuss the political insights they've gleaned from one of Audre Lorde's most famous essays, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." Along the way, they discuss political alliance between feminists across racial lines, the fundamental lack of consideration of class at many feminist conferences Lorde attended, and the need for self-transformation in order to change the world.
In this episode, K. and Savannah deep dive into two brief essays by Audre Lorde in the 2017 Penguin collection of her work titled The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. The titular essay will be the topic of our next episode, but these were a great read! We discuss Audre's ideas about the feminine as a source of creative power, the power of the erotic, and the colonial influence on our conceptions of freedom. In her view, poetry has allowed women of color to survive and is a place of possibility through which we can craft a new world.
"Dream births concept. Feeling births idea. Knowledge births (therefore precedes) understanding." -- from "Poetry is not a Luxury", Audre Lorde
During this episode, we discuss Plato's view on the need to unite philosophical inquiry with the love of boys; Savannah gets poetic and elucidates the power of naming; we appreciate the political power of poetry. Audre Lorde provides us with rich food for thought and we contemplate Lorde's explication of European vs. Non-European consciousness.
"The white father says 'I think, therefore I am.' The Black mother says 'I feel, therefore I can be free.'" -- "Poetry is not a Luxury"
What are the unique possibilities women contain?
Savannah and K. finally wrap things up with Shulamith Firestone's Dialectic of Sex.
Just how screwed are we (ecologically, politically, socially, and economically)? Why have communal living communities/ socialist states failed (in Shulie's opinion)? Relatedly, how can they succeed (hint: it has to do with women)? What is natural -- and does Shulie have a consistent definition? Why do 86% of women get married (2020 stat)? Is marriage rotten at the core? Is family the main source of inequity? How creepy are genetics? Will cybernetics save us?
Sav: "Patriarchy drives so many of the things driving us towards extinction"
K.'s final analysis: Shulie is not queer enough for me!
In this episode, K and Savannah discuss the last chapter of Dialectic of Sex, "Feminism and Ecology." Of course we discuss climate change and the balance Shulie wants to restore between (wo)man and nature. We try to finally pinpoint when maturity begins and Savannah gives a helpful analogy about baldness. K tells a strange story about 1984.
"Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their on point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth." (Simone de Beauvoir) + "Not only were the arts and humanities corrupted by sex duality, but modern science has been determined by it. And moreover culture reflects this polarity in its very organization."
Another twofer episode.
In Chapter 8, (Male) Culture, Shulamith Firestone argues that women are restricted from participating in and creating culture due to sex class, and that when they have participated in culture, they were required to do so on male terms. Why is the nude female? How can women competing in a male cultural game create art that both receives acclaim and is authentic to their experiences? Why are some men so deeply unable to write female characters? Wouldn't a more complete awareness of how reality, culture, and perception are distorted by one's gender create better art?
In Chapter 9, Dialectics of Cultural History, Shulie argues that culture (in the west) has two modes: the Aesthetic Mode, and the Technological Mode. Why have art and science become incomprehensible to each other? If culture is "realizing the possible within the conceivable," then do art, music, philosophy, theology not attempt to achieve in the provinces of the imagination the same goals that the scientific method and the materialist approach attempt to achieve in mastering nature through the complete understanding of its mechanics? Shulie argues that since the end of the Renaissance and the beginnings of the Enlightenment, the Aesthetic Response (dominant throughout the Medieval Era) corresponds with "female" behavior, and the Technological Response (the current dominant mode) with "male" behavior. But the promise of achieving transcendence through either mode is false; science has created monsters and the horrors of war, and art is too cloistered and nostalgic to be taken seriously these days. So will we transcend this bifurcated culture itself?
Savannah and K. discuss Shulie's take on the system of love and romance and its effects on women.
In this episode, K and Savannah delve into the disturbing view of race that Shulie displays in her fifth chapter of the Dialectic of Sex, entitled
"Racism is the Sexism of the Family of Man" -- and it is as much of a doozy as the title implies. How is the sex/gender role of women already white-washed? How is whiteness implicated in femininity? Why do feminist goals differ across race and class? We stumble through, with an understanding in the end that we must pursue more literature on these topics, as Shulie's account is insufficient and racist.
EDITS: K totally says the wrong stats here -- 1/2 of native women have been sexually assaulted, and 1/3 have been raped, and 88% of the perpetrators are non-native men. source: https://indianlaw.org/issue/ending-violence-against-native-women
K. and Savannah explore Shulamith "Shulie" Firestone's fourth chapter in her feminist manifesto Dialectic of Sex, which delves into .Shulie's arguments against separation of children from adult life in the phase we refer to as "childhood." Education itself becomes a conspirator in the suppression of female intellectual potential -- something Shulie is loath to allow go unnoticed. Should our oppression be taken with a smile? How would Shulie's suggested "smile boycott" turn out? We discuss the very notion of genius/prodigy. Shulie's racist views begin to emerge in nascent form in this chapter but chapter 5 is where they really steal the show.
K and Sav cover a fundamental piece of Shulamith Firestone's analysis of sex class as established by Sigmund Freud. The Mother, The Father, the Son, and the Daughter. The Incest Taboo. The root of patriarchy. And so on.
Savannah and K. discuss the second chapter of Shulamith "Shulie" Firestone's Dialectic of Sex, in which Shulie gives her (very white-centric) account of the history of American Feminism (from 1840ish-1970). What does Shulie think about the suffragettes? Does Shulie like The Left? Does Savannah like moderates? What does K. really think about Warren G. Harding? Do we hate men? All questions will be answered.
This is the first episode in our Shulamith ("Shulie") Firestone series, in which we take on The Dialectic of Sex chapter by chapter -- in all its glory and controversy. Below is the strange figure/graph/chart (not sure what to call it) that we refer to in this episode.