SOMETHING NEW

[bookgazing]

Over at Torque Control Nic (of the ever joyous Eve’s Alexandria) has a post about feminism in Gwyneth Jones sci-fi novel ‘Life’. The quote below gets all my cogs spinning:

‘I don’t want to be liberated, I want to be a monster. He didn’t get it. No one ever got it, and Ramone could have straightened them out by saying nobody is born a woman and that what she hated was the way she COULD NOT ESCAPE from the role of second-class person. No woman could, the only escape was to become SOMETHING NEW that had never existed before.’

and I was hoping we could talk around the ideas in this quote a little bit (come on, it’ll be more fun than it sounds *puppy dog eyes*). 

First I wonder, how could (edit: cis-gender women) become ‘SOMETHING NEW’, in the middle of a pre-existing world full of pre-conceptions about gender and behaviour?

Then, I’d love to know if you think this new state of existence is even what feminists should be aiming for. Are some current feminist goals (achieving respect for things that are traditionally female and respect for women who don’t want to be traditionally female) more important? Is it important to work towards both traditional feminism and the ‘new paradigm’ that Nic mentions in her review?

And do you think the idea of existing, without being being examined as a product of gender at all (in a negative, or positive way) is desirable for (edit:cis-gender) women?

Chuck your words at me if you’re interested.

Edit: Please note that I am specifically asking these questions about cis-gender women, because I don't have the knowledge to ask how this quote might apply to trans-gender women.

Comments

[cypher]

Hmm. I think the questions raised by that quote are interesting -- can we rehabilitate an existing, disadvantaged gender role, or do we need to scrap the system and start over? If the latter really would help, how on earth would one do it?

But I'm also a little uncomfortable with your last paragraph, which seems to imply that living outside the gender binary is a hypothetical option with its merits open to debate, rather than something a lot of people are struggling to do now in the face of constant assumptions that we don't exist.

[bookgazing]

This post is unfortunately very cis-gender focused, because I don't have the knowledge to make it inclusive of trans-gender identity and I probably didn't take enough time to think through the full range of people I'd be addressing when speaking to women. My last point is really meant to be more about whether cis-gender women would find scrapping the system of identity based on female identity desirable for themselves, not whether existing outside of the binary is possible, but I can see I've both worded it badly and asked a question in a way that excludes. I'll try to ammend tomorrow (and make the edits clear as edits), but any suggestions on how to make this post more inclusive would be greatly welcomed.

[cypher]

Hmm, well, if you are only speaking to women, then this post isn't for me in the first place (though I do believe that feminist conversations are valuable for people of all genders, I also acknowledge that there's a need for female-only spaces as one of the parts of the whole). If the discussion you want to have here is whether the concepts in that quote could be useful for cis women in particular, then perhaps all you need to do is make it more clear that they are the audience you want to engage?

[krait]

Well, it certainly seems to tie in pretty well with my recurrent fantasy (set in a future where biosculpting is commonplace and safe) of building a body to my own specifications... That body is definitely not traditionally female.

For the most part, though, I pretty much consider that I am female (I may not like it, but it's a fact, like being short or having bad teeth, and the only thing I like about the alternative is the privilege it comes with -- I don't want to be male as a thing in itself), and try to live with it by arguing my way into 'traditionally male' alignments and planning to be sterilised as soon as I can afford it.

No idea how to become something new when women are less a single category than they are the leftovers: socially, "woman" is Not-Man, the Other, so I can't imagine how they could become a new thing in themselves. (Consider "queer", "sissy", and other derogatory terms -- femininity is the quality of not being The Things That Define Manhood, even when physically male. ) Without finding an independent definition, whatever we become is just another word for Not-Man; it will hold no greater respect than "woman" does until someone figures out how to make it something other than a catch-all for leftovers.

[bookgazing]

' "woman" is Not-Man, the Other, so I can't imagine how they could become a new thing in themselves. '

I think this is where I come unstuck with the idea of something new as well. Sure if we could wipe away all the history and push our own version of how society should work into the new blank society it'd be possible. People could construct themselves on different terms. Without that I don't see a way to strip 'woman' away from gendered assumptions. I was kind of hoping I wasn't thinking revolutionary enough and someone would have a progress path.