Comments on: Gender codes in daily life

By: Dru

Dru — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:21:51 +0000

…and some people use their freedom to oppress other people. In a responsible way, presumably.

By: Mikhail

Mikhail — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:27:52 +0000

… without passing judgement on the article or the author, I like the conclusion:

“Feminism Past and Present: Ideology, Action, and Reform” – http://www.bu.edu/arion/Paglia%2016-1.html

“… But we must stop seeing everything in life through the narrow lens of gender. If women expect equal treatment in society, they must stop asking for infantilizing special protections. With freedom comes personal responsibility.”

By: J

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:41:27 +0000

I (a woman) once sat in an airplane seat with my knees far enough apart that they went into the other seat’s space and I put my arm on our communal arm rest. Then I didn’t budge for an hour or so. The guy sitting next to me was visibly upset and seemed not to know how to deal with it. He couldn’t/didn’t say anything but it seemed to me that he was made very uncomfortable by my not taking the standard female stance of shrinking to make room for my seatmate. I have to say that I too was made uncomfortable with taking more than my “fair share” of the space – violating my own internal gender behavior norms was weird and hard.

By: noen

noen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:53:46 +0000

Ajay
Wall-E has a man’s name and is voiced by a male actor;

Sure but a name is not sufficient. What I was getting at is gender is a performance. One that is coded in almost everything we do even when we are alone.

By: clew

clew — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:08:59 +0000

The enforcement of Hollywood gender in animated movies drives me up the wall; e.g., the female penguin who had to have eyelashes and a narrow waist and feather-shading—and a little volumetric hint—at mammaries.

On a BIRD. For that matter, a narrow waist in a penguin is probably sign of hideous reproductive unfitness. Poor thing! Feed her up!

Most of the rats in Ratatouille were coded male, which isn’t how they thrive so well in reality.

I didn’t see either of the movies with a lot of bees, but was told that the workers were male in at least one of them…

Or, possibly, we should be interpreting this as slippage between the codes and biology. After all, the NYT recently had an article on the (vanishing) Albanian custom of ‘sworn virgins’ who live as men in an extremely assertive, not to say lethally violent and physically tiring, culture; it’s clearly said that when out of their home town the bio-women were seen as men. They are re-coded. (There’s also a hint that women have to work as hard physically as men anyway, they just don’t get fed as well.)

By: Dru

Dru — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:30:15 +0000

@34: Transgendered persons, either in Czechoslovakia or elsewhere, don’t need a gender neutral pronoun, as they are not gender neutral (unless you delve into genderqueer land where some folk favour the use of ‘zie’, etc… but let’s not go there)

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:37:42 +0000

A few years ago when I was in Egypt the popular show featured a fat man dressed as a woman, and he did Candid Camera-type routines. Women in Egypt are given latitude in matters of manners (if not in more meaningful areas) so the shtick for the guy to be as irritating as possible to some poor sap in a public place until matters came to a head and then an accomplice would walk by and pull off the wig. Those pranked were generally shocked into speechlessness.

By: tps12

tps12 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:06:18 +0000

At Mets games they play a little “Meet the Mets” sing-along video that includes the lines “Bring the kids/Bring the wife.” Cuz wives don’t watch baseball unless they’re brung.

I’m sure the video’s been around for years, but it was still amusing.

By: tom

tom — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:03:24 +0000

in the czech language (and many others i assume) the gendered (engendered?) grammar system directly relates to etiquette. of course, many men would be insulted if you call them a ‘she’, and various things like that. however, it gets confusing when various nouns and such take on genders that mustn’t be mixed up for fear of being rude.

i can imagine it must be extremely difficult for transgendered persons in these societys, or for their friends whom don’t necessarily know how to address them – as far as i know, there is no gender-neutral pronoun.

By: ajay

ajay — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:16:12 +0000

(amended to make quote clearer)

noen: “They are just machines after all, how did Pixar convey gender through messages encoded in the movie? Here are some of my thoughts.
Wall-E is rough and square. He works hard and pack a lunchbox, he’s dirty (physically not sexually). He is also an incurable romantic and obsessively pursues his love interest. His hands are thick and somewhat clumsy. But most important of all, he presents his love with a present. It’s literally a gift of life.
Eve is smooth and round. Her voice is pitched higher and her language skills are better than Wall-E’s. Her temper can be lethal. Her movements are refined and graceful whereas Wall-E is awkward and comical. When she accepts Wall-E’s gift she immediately goes into new state where she is unavailable to Wall-E’s romantic advances.”

I haven’t seen the film yet, and I’m not an expert on analysing literature and gendering and things, so I may be being stupid, but judging by the reviews, you missed out a couple of little clues:

Wall-E has a man’s name and is voiced by a male actor;

Eve has a woman’s name and is voiced by a female actor.

By: ajay

ajay — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:13:59 +0000

noen: They are just machines after all, how did Pixar convey gender through messages encoded in the movie? Here are some of my thoughts.

Wall-E is rough and square. He works hard and pack a lunchbox, he’s dirty (physically not sexually). He is also an incurable romantic and obsessively pursues his love interest. His hands are thick and somewhat clumsy. But most important of all, he presents his love with a present. It’s literally a gift of life.

Eve is smooth and round. Her voice is pitched higher and her language skills are better than Wall-E’s. Her temper can be lethal. Her movements are refined and graceful whereas Wall-E is awkward and comical. When she accepts Wall-E’s gift she immediately goes into new state where she is unavailable to Wall-E’s romantic advances.

I haven’t seen the film yet, and I’m not an expert on analysing literature and gendering and things, so I may be being stupid, but judging by the reviews, you missed out a couple of little clues:

Wall-E has a man’s name and is voiced by a male actor;

Eve has a woman’s name and is voiced by a female actor.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:24:23 +0000

@29, “mothercare” kind of depends – since their core business is the appurtenances of childbearing, which, alas, we gender-heroes of the new-male age have not yet managed to share in its entirety. I’m willing to consider gender-neutral uses for disposable post-partum undergarments, cracked nipple cream and breast-pumps, but I’m not holding my breath…

By: Witt

Witt — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:04:09 +0000

I thought of another one: The prevalence of “mother’s maiden name” as password question for credit cards, etc. Apparently it did not occur to the codemakers that this is not a super-secret password for children who might have their mother’s last name, or have hyphenated mother’s name-father’s name.

By: emma

emma — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:50:31 +0000

I think a gender code diary is a great idea, as it’s the sort of thing I get irritated at but then forget the specifics of quite quickly!

One thing that springs to mind is the baby/children’s goods chain in the UK called “mothercare”. So strangely outdated.

By: Ingrid Robeyns

Ingrid Robeyns — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:41:29 +0000

ajay, I think that in the present context it would come at no cost to state a message to “parents”, or, as is often the case in the Netherlands, to “parents and caretakers”. It doesn’t matter whether there is only one father (which there obviously was, since the person who reported this story was a father) or whether there were more.

messages such as those in this Italian school are not ment to describe a ‘statistical fact, but rather to ‘normalise’, in a normative sense, a situation that is insulting to some (namely to fathers who want to be regarded as equally capable and concerend parents, and to mothers who do not want to be a mother on the public assumption that they will be the primary or only parent).

The study/book I thought I should write is motivated precisly by the fact that (1) many people do not notice these gender codes in public lives and interpersonal communications, and (2) they do not see how these codes provide normative messages to our lives. I appreciate Mikhail’s and ajay’s contributions, yet they also show to me that there is a need for such a book to be written. For those who studied gender studies (whether interdisciplinary or within one discipline), and probably also for most or all sociologists, the content of my post may have been ‘nothing new to report’—yet I think this discussion shows that there is a need to detail the normative effects of such gender codes.