Sponging away patriarchy

My students and I these past two weeks have been exploring language and gender. We have considered how women and men might use language differently (conclusion: any differences there are are slight), and how language represents gender (see this fascinating though unsurprising, and ultimately disturbing look at the words books have most frequently used to describe women and men over the last century). We studied Lois Tyson’s introduction to feminist literary criticism, chapter four in her Critical Theory Today, and, in my mostly female class, had a rousing discussion of gendered clothing, the ways western women’s clothing’s lack of pockets necessitates the use of a handbag, which effectively takes one hand out of play, not unlike high heels, corsets, or tight clothes, all of which restrict women’s use of their own bodies (most of the female students in my class indeed sported no pockets; one of the male students counted: he had seven).

We writers must consider gender in our work, including the ways gender affects what we write, what people expect that we should write, and also the way we represent gender in our texts. If we are going to move towards a fully egalitarian society, writers have a responsibility to avoid perpetuating patriarchal and other discriminatory ideologies in our work. As we explored with the literature of the climate crisis last week, writers can help us imagine a new possible.

I was struck yesterday when I read Brit Marling’s piece in the New York Times: “I Don’t Want to Be the Strong Female Lead.” Marling, whose self-co-written and acted speculative drama The OA I encountered first last fall, writes about the challenges women face in obtaining significant speaking roles that don’t blindly parrot stereotypes. But, she says, when she did move beyond these often bit parts, she found herself in the role of the “Strong Female Lead,” an improvement for sure, yet not as clearly one as she had at first thought. Lifting women up in film, Marling argues, often implies women acting out traditional male roles, leaving any real trace of femininity behind. The kind of strength these films portray, Marling says, is still male strength. It is ultimately to viewers a case of “Give me a man but in the body of a woman I still want to see naked.”

Marling goes on to explore what it would truly mean to see traditional feminine characteristics as deeply strong. The notion of female weakness is such a culturally embedded one that the lifting up of such qualities as empathy, kindness, listening–it can feel awkward to do so, some act of rebellion. How foolish of us all. “Sometimes I get a feeling of what she could be like,” Marling says: “A truly free woman. But when I try to fit her into the hero’s journey she recedes from the picture like a mirage.” Our culture is still trying to figure out new narratives. We are steeped in action, physical strength, binary opposition. It’s time for something new.

Lois Tyson, whose introduction to feminist literary theory I mentioned above, writes about this issue. She says,

For women’s acquisition of power within the existing sociopolitical system would not adequately change the system. Indeed, the result would be that women would become more like patriarchal men because they would learn to think as patriarchal men have been trained to think.

Tyson’s answer, then, is the need for what she calls “a new, feminine language,” an écriture féminine or feminine writing to remove patriarchal oppression. Écriture féminine, she continues,

is fluidly organized and freely associative. It resists patriarchal modes of thinking and writing, which generally require prescribed, “correct” methods of organization, rationalist rules of logic (logic that stays “above the neck,” relying on narrow definitions of cognitive experience and discrediting many kinds of emotional and intuitive experience), and linear reasoning (x precedes y, which precedes z).

I think of my own work, peopled certainly by characters of diverse gender who show strength in diverse ways. I think of the climax of my novel. It involves a lot of physical strength. It also involves empathy. I guess I feel good about this. Yet I think of a quotation by US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “when I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the supreme court] and I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”

What is this écriture féminine? I want to read some. I want to learn from it. I want to resist these power structures where I can, where I spew them forth knowing and unknowing, where they harm me and others, everyone. I want to represent my characters beyond a gender binary. I want to represent strength beyond the traditionally masculine.

There’s a catchphrase: smash the patriarchy. It’s lovely in its way, yet is this slogan itself not steeped in the language of physical strength? For the title of this post, and I’m not certain how effective it is, I’m replacing “smash” with “sponge.” To sponge something away, little by little, carefully, delicately, working into the crevices and not just attacking the enormous, visible, smashable structure. Sponges are the stereotypical feminine. They are for cleaning. They are soft. Sponges aren’t considered strong, but I think they should be.

As a gay man, my relationship to feminism is a multifaceted one. Although as a man I absolutely reap the privileges of maleness, I also come up against the stark patriarchy in gay culture, which privileges queer men who act in traditionally masculine ways, which I generally don’t. My goal, then, is to both be an ally to women in any ways I can, and also to seek in feminism strength for myself. Feminism is so often maligned in the present world, cast as a man-hating tirade and not a search for true, equal human recognition. I am a feminist, and I hope the gains feminists have made the the last centuries and decades keep on blooming. I think of Sylvia Plath’s “Mushrooms.”

This is a call. Let’s see what we as writers can all do. What are your favorite feminist texts? What do you do to wash patriarchy away, in yourself, in your writing, in your community? Let’s share.

With love,
Jimmy