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The second wave of feminism engaged in the dialogue of what constituted gender. This was a reaction against the counter-revolution of the 1950s, which held a hegemonic grip in the form of mass consumer culture, and the McCarthy era's emphasis on security. These factors combined to emblamise the home and the mother as symbols of stability and dictated the issue of gender. This experience is what feminism focused on. As Betty Friedan explored, the experience of housewife and mother was hollow at the core. Each suburban wife struggled with this problem alone, Friedan postulated, not daring to ask if her situation in life was all she could hope for. "The problem", states Friedan, "Lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women". The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, gives early commentary on the unspoken, repressed experience of being a woman in an era that saw a cold war being ideologically manipulated to reinforce domestic security. Women were respected as a mother, taught to pity women who would reject this. If a woman had a problem in this age, she must believe it was with herself.
Friedan argues that the theories of Sigmund Freud gave insidious 'scientific' credence to the conservative ideology on gender. The work of Freud has had extreme receptions by feminists. The image of him ranges from an arch-patriarch, chaining women to the level of anatomy, to a pioneer in divorcing sex and gender, and professing the biological family as the originator of repression and neurosis. Freud's work originates from Vienna in the 1880's. It has been documented that the culture here was similar to the cult of true womanhood. As in American, this cult sort women to remain in the domestic sphere. Friedan argues that Freud's work is a product of this ideology, though some see Freud as working in a totally new field of knowledge, divorced from the prejudice of contemporary discourse.
Working under Charrot, Freud's preliminary work was concerned with hysteria. Charrot's techniques in studying hysteria in women was through photography, studying them as objects. Freud changes this by giving the patient a voice. Though this origin of psychoanalysis is questioned for its counter-transference on the part of the analyst, Freud declares "We are not in a position to force anything on the patient about the things of which he is ostensibly ignorant or to influence the products of the analysis by arousing an expectation". This is from 1895's Studies on Hysteria. Co-authored by Breuer, Freud's blueprint for psychoanalysis is apparent. He begins by seeing childhood as the origin of neurosis. Here also is the relation of psychoanalysis to language, seeing it as both revealing symptoms and producing the cure. Throughout the study we see attempts by Freud to redefine hysteria. Freud believes the worst and most contradictory things come under the label of hysteria, but stresses that among hysterics, people of great intellect and character are grouped. Freud continues his redefinition of hysteria by rejecting Charrcot's investigations, by stating "I regard the linking of hysteria with the topic of sexuality as a sort of insult"
Despite these positive intentions, tensions between Freud's theory and practise become apparent in his case study of Miss Lucy R. Miss R. is suffering from the hysterical symptom of the smell of burnt cake, which Freud traces to a rejection of affection by the father of the children she governs. Freud concludes "The patient was an over-mature girl with a need to be loved, whose affections had been too hastily aroused through a misunderstanding". This 'over mature girl' was 30 years old. This blatantly patriarchal attitude is coupled with a comment in the case study referring to his 'pressure technique', whereby he asks the patient what they see when he removes his hand from their forehead. Freud states "If patients answered 'I see nothing' or 'nothing has occurred to me', I could dismiss this as an impossibility". Here, Freud's attitude as imposition of meaning is apparent.
Though Studies on Hysteria provides a good foundation for the conflicts within Freudian theory, the most contested work is on gender and sexuality. Both these factors are determined by the Oedipal complex, focusing on the phallic stage of approximately 3 to 5 years old. Here the phallus, which is the penis for boys and the clitoris for girls, is the object of pleasure. The theory is based on the comparison of the penis to the clitoris and the child's reaction. This results in recognition of the girls castration. This leads to the castration complex in the boy, who believes the castration to be punishment for his increasing desire towards the mother. In fear of the jealousy of the father, identified as the castrater, he represses this desire. This leads to identification with the father, and internalisation of masculine characteristics. These factors of repression and identification lead to the development of the boys super-ego.
As Freud states in Femininity, "The development of a little girl into a normal woman is more difficult and more complicated" The girl recognises her castration and falls victim to 'penis envy'. As Freud states in Female Sexuality, "She acknowledges the fact of her castration, and with it too, the superiority of the male and her own inferiority". The girl blames her mother for her castration, and supplements a baby for the unattainable penis. The girl now desires the father to give her a baby, but realising this will mean the loss of love from her mother, as the primary object of desire, represses the desire for her father and identifies with the mother.
Within Femininity and Female Sexuality Freud stresses that gender is not a characteristic of anatomy and that we should not underestimate social customs. Freud states "Psychoanalysis does not try to describe what a woman is ... but sets about inquiring how she comes into being"
Like many second wave feminists, Kate Millett, in Sexual Politics identifies Freud as the voice of patriarchal conservatism. She states "The counter-revolutionary period never employed a more withering or destructive weapon against feminist insurgence than the Freudian accusation of penis envy". Millett believes that women are not envious of the penis, but the phallus as a symbol of social pretensions. She sees Freudianism as arresting gender to the level of biology, as Freudian theory is interpreted to mean that gender is a direct product of recognition of the penis, therefore gender characteristics are biologically predetermined by its presence. Millett believes psychosexual personality is a product of socialisation. This is through the biological family, as "Patriarchy's chief institution". The family is responsible for gender as inheritance, rather than an individuals realisation of their full potential. Because of this, women are aligned with what is passive, due to castration, and defined as lacking.
Juliet Mitchell contributes to a feminist reworking of Freud. In her assessment of Millett's reading of Freud, she argues Millett "Proposes that Freud invented psychoanalysis precisely so as to avoid acknowledging social reality". Millett believed that Freud came so close to declaring the biological conditioning inherent in the nuclear family as the reason for neurosis and gender distinctions that it is "An irony nearly tragic" that his popularisers used Freud to solidify conservative ideology. Mitchell agrees that the popularisers must answer to that charge, but believes Freud observes the patriarchal order as defining what is truly neurotic as normality. Even "'Normal' sexuality itself assumed its form only as it travelled over a long and tortuous path". Mitchell postulates that psychoanalysis from its very conception is one of the few scientific disciplines that exercised no discrimination against women. She also argues that behind most feminist criticism, there is not a refusal of Freud's concepts, rather their application.
Critics of Freud see the negativity of defining women in terms of castration. This consideration of woman articulated in terms of lack is extended in post-structural feminism. Toril Moi extends this from psychoanalysis, writing "Whether woman is thought of as a whole or as a hole, she is perceived as lacking in philosophy, that is to say, as irrational." In this relationship with reason, the phallus is aligned with logos. The term phallogocentrism describes this relationship of the phallus to logos, arguing patriarchal discourse creates a division between reason and non-reason. Here the phallus is reason, positioning its other as non-reason. This penetrates all discourse. This binary distinction becomes gendered, and binary distinction is hierarchalized. Man is in terms of presence, and woman is absence, lacking the phallus. Because of this distinction, it is argued that Freud's extension of the field of knowledge is an attempt to define the side of the other and therefore control it. Moi states "Psychoanalysis runs the risk of obliterating the language of the irrational and the unconscious". To counter act this, feminism, Moi argues, needs a theory which values the side of the other.
Jacques Derrida's deconstruction is the theoretical attempt to articulate the contradictions of logocentrism. What determines the presence of reason in logocentrism is the transcendental signified. The transcendental signified is the centre to a structure of discourse, which functions to limit the play of meaning by authorising a discourse. Derrida defies the transcendental signified by the reality of differance. In language a signifier, typically a speech sound, but can be anything that implies meaning, never connects to that which it refers, a signified, or concept. Derrida argues that the signified is subject to differance - difference and deferral. Because a signified is only determined by differing from what it is not, meaning is not present to it, and is deferred, through a trace of differance, divorcing presence and meaning indefinitely. In psychoanalysis, the phallus is the transcendental signified. This, Peggy Kamuf writes, gives "The privilege according to the phallus as the mark of presence". This positions women, through absence, as the phalluses other.
Deconstruction's reception with feminism is wide and widely ambivalent. Despite this, Derrida provides a theoretical basis for the gendering of binary oppositions, as in active/passive. This is through a necessity to repress the other in favour of the logos, as the other denies logocentric notions of presence and meaning. In Choreographs, an interview with Derrida, Christie V. McDonald draws attention to the feminist implications of binary deconstruction in Derrida's Positions. Here, Derrida believes there are two phases to deconstruction. Before the obliteration of binary, there must be a reversal of opposition. As McDonald states "In the first phase a reversal was to take place in which the opposed term would be inverted. Thus woman, as a previously subordinate term might become the dominant one in relation to man". As this only repeats the traditional scheme, it is replaced with the forging of new concepts simultaneously.
Derrida is relatively silent on the subject of gender despite the implications. An articulator of deconstruction in terms of feminism is Helene Cixous. As Derrida writes, Cixous "Knows how to make it (language) say what it keeps in reverse, which in the process also makes it come out of its reverse". In Sorties, Cixous expounds this relationship between woman and otherness, inherent to psychoanalysis as a phallogocentric discourse. The reality of gender division is "Always the same metaphor: we follow it, it carries us, beneath all its figures, whenever discourse is organised". In sexual differance, she continues the criticism of gendering activity/passivity. Because binary organization is hierarchical, all concepts are organised subject to man. A fundamental deconstructive belief is that "Thought has always worked through opposition". Because of this the woman is passive or she does not exist. This is because "What is left of her is unthinkable, unthought". Unthought in terms of logocentric reason, as woman is positioned as other.
Cixous states the transcendental signified is masculinised, the father or the phallus, as two in the same. Cixous states "If we consult literary history, it is the same story. It all comes back to man - to his torment, his desire to be (at) the origin. Back to the father." Her project is to deconstruct this transcendental signified, to allow the free play of sexual difference.
Cixous is optimistic of this project. Her writings are infused with the optimism that Derrida lacks. Cixous articulates the problems of logocentric discourse, as Morag Shiach in A Politics of Writing comments, she "Does not amount simply to an argument against dualism but rather to a political and philosophical rejection of the dialectical relation between each of these 'couples', which privilege one term of opposition". This privilege is violent repression and is intrinsically masculine. Cixous proposes women's writing as a needed antidote. As woman is other, this is an advantage to overcome phallogocentrism. As is excepted, logocentrism cannot be overcome on the side of reason or presence, as it is what defines reason and presence. Rather, woman, on the side of the other, can articulate the deconstruction of the logos. Ecrtiture feminine is the model for women's writing, which Cixous sees as able to counter act phallogocentrism, as it celebrates the plurality of women's experience. Women's sexuality, Cixous argues, is multiple, countering the monologism of phallogocentric discourse. Ecriture feminine is also based on the rhythmic qualities of the mother's body. As Susan Sellers comments, Cixous "Sees in women's writing the potential to circumvent and reformulate existing structures through the inclusion of other experience".
Helene Cixous proposes a theoretical basis for the deconstruction of the gender binary. This is also a concern of areas of radical feminism, in that, theoretically, androgyny is the result of gender deconstruction. A socialist Utopia is this realised androgyny in the work of Shulasmith Firestone. Firestone's awareness grew out of the new left's concerns with the inner conflicts of America. This focused on the marginal groups of society. Firestone went on to commit herself fully to women as a marginalized group, as this is was sometimes overlooked in the socialist movement. Firestone's dialogue with Marxism is apparent throughout her work. In The Dialectic of Sex she proposed to make up for this oversight by developing a feminist theory of historical materialism. Firestone saw the original division of labour between man and woman. This is because of biology. She sees the family as the primary economic unit of capitalism, because its ethic is reproduced in the structuring of the family. As Rosemary Tong writes "Because Firestone believed the roots of women's oppression are biological, she concluded that women's liberation requires a biological revolution". Firestone's biological revolution would be made possible through technology. This technology would liberate women from the oppression of birth, as children would be reproduced detached from parents. This would break up the family and a socialist revolution would ensue, as without the family both capitalism and the oppression of women would collapse. This also breaks the dependency of children on the mother. This gives a practical solution to the enigma of deconstructing gender, as after this revolution, sexuality and gender becomes liberated. As the biological family is the origin of the Oedipal complex, and the Oedipal complex both designates gender and represses sexuality, the destruction of the family would allow reversion to a pre-oedipal stage of androgyny and polymorphous perversity. As Tong writes "The categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality will be abandoned; and institutionalized sexual intercourse, in which male and female each play a well defined role, will disappear".
These factors are summarised by Firestone's four revolutionary demands. Firstly, Firestone calls for the freeing of women from the tyranny of reproduction. As well as the technology that will make this possible, Firestone argues that the child rearing role should be diffused into the entire community, to men as well as women. Firestone acknowledges that the fear of artificial reproduction is somewhat justified, that its current direction is under the control of scientists, few being women, possibly none being feminist. But, as Firestone states "We are speculating about post-revolutionary systems". Firestone's second demand is "The political autonomy, based on economic independence of both women and children". In addition to the radical system of reproduction, economic independence would seek to fully integrate women and children into the workforce. In Firestone's cybernetic communism, labour is divorced from wages, therefore people make their contribution to society through pure interest. The third demand is "The complete integration of women and children into society". To do this, all institutions that segregate sex, or deny children the equality with adults, must be destroyed. Firestone cites school as such an institution. Learning would become practical, experience would be favoured over abstracted teaching. Firestone's final demand is for "The sexual freedom of all women and children". She sees this as a result of the cybernetic revolution, as child sexuality would no longer be repressed as by an incest taboo.
Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time depicts a utopia very closely based on Firestone's blueprint. Critics believe this humanises the theory, as we observe its reality through the eyes of Connie Ramos, displaced from contemporary society and a stranger in the unfamiliar feminist utopia.
The utopian novel as a form gives an implicit rejection of contemporary society, as it is defamiliarized by juxtaposition with utopia. Tom Moylan in Demand the impossible., believed the forming of the critical utopia as a genre in the 1970's saved the utopian form. This is "Critical in the Enlightenment sense of critique - that is expressions of oppositional thought, unveiling, debunking". The utopian form revealing repressed thought is criticism, as it resists the closure of ideology, being an expression of otherness of contemporary society. The utopian novel's manifesto of otherness is a form of binary deconstruction in itself, as it blurs the distinction between reality and the imaginary through fantasy. Woman on the Edge of Time was published in 1976, America's bicentinery. This is an era, as Moylan writes "Utopia has been absorbed into the affirmative ideologies of the totalizing systems of Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the corporate United States". Disneyland models itself on utopia. By redefining the utopian form, Piercy provides a distinct criticism of a country whose ideology terms its corporate culture utopia.
The form, then, is of paramount importance in understanding the criticism. The content, in the depiction of Mattapoisett, is very close to Firestone's four demands. Here the technology has been achieved to liberate women from child birth. Children are reproduced by machine. Luciente explains the reason for this "It was part of women's long revolution. When we were breaking all the old hierarchies". As is explained, to achieve true equality, women must also give up what power they have. The children are reared by three 'mothers', which include men, corresponding to Firestone's demand for communal child care. The three parents also help to break nuclear bonding. Children are not raised to be dependent on the mother. Innocente's rites of passage are depicted. She goes into the wilderness for a weak, and on return, chooses her own name. When she returns her three mothers can not speak to her for three months. All factors contribute to abolishing dependency. Connie feels this to be betrayal. She sees the equality as dissolved identity: "These women thought they had won, but they had abandoned to men the last refuge of woman".
The disillusionment Connie feels in the giving up of childbirth is eroded by the constant bombardment of cruelty towards women in her culture. Physical cruelty, both criminal and institutionalized are well documented, and go toward a rejection of contemporary society. Both Connie and her mother have had hysterectomies. Of Connie's mother, Piercy writes "They took her womb in the hospital. Afterwards that was a curse Jesus threw in her face: no longer a woman. An empty shell". Physical cruelty is directed towards Dolly, whose second husband "Was El Muro, who had raped her and then beaten her because she could not lie and say she had enjoyed it".
The opening chapter combines physical and institutionalized cruelty towards women. Geraldo, who "Made Dolly work as a prostitute, selling her body to all the dirty men in the city", has beat Dolly for refusing to abort her baby. In the opening scene there is a deliberate working of language that aligns men with activity and women with passivity. This passivity is depicted as paralysis, through being dominated. As Geraldo approaches, Connie "Heard heavy steps climbing. Men in a hurry". This activity is also violence, forcing women into submission, as Connie is "Unable to scream, unable to issue a sound from the suddenness of the pain". Connie overcomes this to strike out at Geraldo. Connie's punishment is for becoming active, for attempting to counter-attack.
As Tom Moylan states "Piercy's utopian and dystopian images provide contrasting symbolic resolutions of the contradictions in US society". Whereas Piercy's utopia demonstrates the practise of Firestone's theory, the dystopia is the logical conclusion of the violence of the first scene and the experiences of the hospital. Connie encounters Gilidina 545-921-45-822-KBJ. There are numerous connections between Gilidina's and Connie's worlds. Gilidina is "Younger and her body seemed a cartoon of femininity". Gilidina is hired through contract sex to corporate men. Gilidina is kept on drugs, such as rapture, and is implanted, contributing to her submission to control. Juxtaposing her with Dolly, who is "Bright as a parakeet, sharply dressed in something new with her hair that gaudy red, her sunglasses on, her hands wet with the perspiration of speed", the connection becomes clear. In this dystopia, the 'riches' live for around 200 years, living off the duds who are "Just walking organ banks". This is how the heads of 'Muti's' gain immortality in the future. A Multi "Stands for what is", they are the corporations that own everything.
In the Mattapoisett, people have tried to overcome the inherent sexism in language, by deconstructing gendered personal pronouns. The colloquials also express rich mental experience in the sphere of equality. In the dystopia the same process is used for the opposite effect, Gilidina comments "Its no silc of my ass". Though a brief scene, the dystopia reverses everything the utopians have worked for, leading Connie to realise "That was the other world that might come to be. That was Luciente's war. And she was enlisted in it".
Piercy and Firestone's projects are similar to feminist deconstruction. By exposing phallogocentrism as the root of oppression, post-structuralist feminists seek to deconstruct the hierarchical binary of man/woman. If this is achieved the result would be androgyny in the setting of utopia, as theorised by Firestone and documented by Piercy. There is conflict within feminism, as theory is seen as a typically masculine discourse which alienates women from their experience of their oppression. This is most apparent in the debate over reproduction. As opposed to Firestone's believes, many feminists believe that surrendering reproduction would destroy what power they have. Mary O' Brien in The Politics of Reproduction believes reproduction as the source of oppression could also be the source of liberation. She sees patriarchy as an attempt to compensate for mans alienation from reproduction. She believes this alienation is created by three factors. Firstly, there is spatial and temporal difference, as the growth is within women's bodies. Secondly, the performance of birth furthers the connection between the mothers and the baby's bodies. Thirdly, the mother automatically knows that the child is flesh of her flesh, whereas men's status as parent is dubious. As Rosemarie Tong writes "Because men are aware that their parental status is precarious they reason that to own woman's reproductive labour power is also to own the product(s) of that labour power". Thus, the oppression is not through the reproductive process, but by patriarchies attempt to control this process, as it recognises its power.
O' Brien's work is complimented by Adrienne Rich's Of Womam Born. Rich shows how that all life coming from women inspires both awe and fear in men. The life giving power is followed by the belief that the mother is also the source of death. If woman can give life, she can take it away. Tong writes that "If patriarchy wishes to survive, let alone thrive, it must restrain the power of the mother". This control is seen in obstetrics, replacing the female midwife, with the scientist, in a male dominated discourse. The result is that women have been told how to behave in childbirth, becoming alienated from their bodies. Rich argues that women should worry that these technological advances in reproduction may be used to disempower women.
Androgyny could not be achieved without abandoning biological reproduction. The wider issue here, and concern of the essay, is whether the dissolution of binary distinctions would liberate women. The work of Mary Daly gives a counter voice to the proponents I have discussed. Daly begins in Beyond God the Father, demonstrating God as being the paradigm of patriarchy. God thinks in terms of I/It. This is internalised by men who think of themselves in terms of I, and see women in terms of It. If God is dethroned from consciousness, then the possibility is made for the deconstruction of the I/It, resulting in the breaking down of gender and the forming of an androgynous being. In Daly's writing in Gyn/ecology and Pure Lust, she demonstrates a rethinking, then a rejection of androgyny. She begins by stating that woman cannot exist in patriarchal society. This leads to the rejection of androgyny. Because of the hegemonical control of patriarchy, all that constitutes femininity should be rejected as spurious. Daly continues to state that there are two moralities, the patriarchal and the superior women's morality, beyond patriarchal control. Daly comes to see androgyny as a gynicidal concept. As Tong writes "Androgyny, as Daly articulates it in Pure Lust, means that whatever is female is subsumed or even consumed by whatever is male". Daly sees androgyny, then, as the obliteration of what is female, and woman's divorce from reproduction is a key factor in this. Androgyny is not countering oppresion, it is giving into it. To counter this Daly postulates the image of the 'wild female' as inspiring women to actualise their true potential. The 'wild female' is a rejection of androgyny and a celebration of woman's physicality and sexuality uncontrolled and uncontrollable by patriarchy. This is in contradiction to the project of gender deconstruction.
Throughout feminist debate there is a dialogue with the deconstruction of gender and the experience of otherness. Friedan's 'Problem that has no name', is the experience of women that cannot be articulated in patriarchy discourse. The feminist concept of otherness is a contested issue. Freud is celebrated by giving voice to this other, and demonstrating, through the Oedipus complex, how women are gendered as other through the patriarchal structuring of the family. Freud is also damned for giving scientific credence to gender as biological predestiny, and articulating his view on the side of phallogocentrism. Some theorise the deconstructing of phallogocentrism from the side of otherness as the possibility of dissolving binary distinctions of gender and sexuality. Some stress instead the importance of experience, and reject androgyny as patriarchy consuming the last of women's means to power, biological reproduction. Perhaps the diversity of feminism is exactly what denies its entry into masculine, monologic logocentrism. The internal debates of feminism, in their plurality, go against the logocentric notion of closure, and allow its continuance as a fertile ground for realising feminine experience.