Now that I have decided to “summarize” these books I have been reading and I look towards what yesterday appeared to be a very small amount of research, I feel overwhelmed. Do I just provide you with quotes? Do I provide you with my reactions to said quotes? Do I try to integrate these quotes into a paper? (What do I write the paper on? Have you ever tried to write a paper without a prompt? Let me tell you that it is hard.)
So here’s to trying to figure something out!
Jelisaveta Blagojevic argues that notions of gender are understood in a way that cross other differences (such as race or class) (Blagojevic, 11). Due to the fact that gender crosses so many different boundaries, Blagojevic continues her argument by stating that to classify gender into one discipline, such as women’s studies, is false. Besides the fact that gender crosses many boundaries, “gender” is also a dynamic concept and the ideas are constantly changing. Rada Ivekovis supports Blagovevic by stating that “the sex or gender dimension is…a social, economic, political, [and] symbolic order which means that is it a hierarchically constructed” (Ivekovis, 43). Since the notion of gender is both a social notion and a political argument, Ivekovis argues that by those definitions it is hierarchically constructed, with the male gender above the female gender (or any other gender that may exist). The differences between the sexes (of male and female) was the first “globally accepted [order] in a patriarchal regime [that was] subsequently made into a complicit instrument for the maintenance of all other known hierarchies and orders” (Ivekovis, 46).**
It is also important to note, and often forgotten or just not noticed, that ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ or anything really is “accessible to us only through culture, as already mediated, and thus as already gendered” (Ivekovis, 45). Culture is already gendered, or often becomes gendered as we consume it though advertising or walking down a street. A question can be raised where do we draw the line (further, DO we need to draw a line?) between biological sex (such as in the DNA) and social gender? Ivekois argues that the line is not important, but what is important is to acknowledge the differences between the definitions and their possible applications. If we draw the line socially between biological sexes, what do we (society) do with people who so strongly identify with the gender that not match their biological sex? Where are they to fit into our social discourse? Where are they to go to the bathroom? Which side would they be on when we split into boys vs. girls in the playground? Most often they are forced to join in with their biological commonly accepted sex of male or female (in the western world), no matter the emotional or psychological consequences. If we draw the line based on what these individuals choose to identify themselves as we (as society) would have to address all of the above issues as well as many more. Why do we delineate the roughly 6.97 billion people into only two categories? What happens with the established hierarchy between male and female if we acknowledge that gender/sex is not predetermined by random happenstance in the reproductive cycle?
The world would have to change. And that scares many people.
*In fact it could be noted that all examples of identity in fact cross all other boundaries and to specify that one form of your identity cross any other more so than the other form is far to simplistic an outlook on a complex issue.
**I acknowledge that this is a western feminist perspective and is not seen in many other cultures as the basis of society or even other hierarchies. While this particular subject is far to vast for me to cover at this time and in this research, I wish to acknowledge that I recognize the problems with this quote and others like it.
Jelisaveta Blagojevic, “Introduction,” in Gender & identity: Theories from &/or on South East Europe, ed by Jelisaveta Blagojevic, Katerina Kolozova, Svetlana Slapsak. (Belgrade Women’s Studies & Gender Research/Athena, 2006).
Rada Ivekovic, “The Fiction of Gender Constructing the Fiction of Nation: On How Fictions are Normative and Norms Produce Exceptions,” in Gender & identity: Theories from &/or on South East Europe, ed by Jelisaveta Blagojevic, Katerina Kolozova, Svetlana Slapsak, 43-65. (Belgrade Women’s Studies & Gender Research/Athena, 2006).
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