Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG0209C" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 19:05:55 +0100 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Angela Barclay Subject: determinisms Comments: To: feministsf@uic.edu Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hello wise cyberfriends: Since the list has been rather quiet lately I thought I'd impose upon you to help me explain something to my students. I'm teaching a course on the social/legal/ethical impacts of information and communication technologies. I recently did a mini-lecture on the difference between technological determinism versus the social construction of technololgy (SCOT) group of theories. (talked about how the linear connection between the stirrup and feudalism is deterministic, while the SCOT model of how the bicycle developed is more multidirectional and realistic). I think they kinda got it but I feel like I should give them more to work with. I was hoping you could help me explain biological determinism. How would you define biological determinism? What are some of its assumptions? Are there other significant determinisms? Thanks, angela -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 22:45:59 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: <20020920005106.IKSG28277.priv-edtnes03-hme0.telusplanet.ne t@[161.184.58.4]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 07:05 PM 9/19/02 +0100, Angela Barclay wrote: >I was hoping you could help me explain biological determinism. How would >you define biological determinism? What are some of its assumptions? Are >there other significant determinisms? Trivially, it's the science of genetics. More controversially, it's the effort to define psychologies or social organizations as being directly caused by our genes, so women are kind, nurturing, "earthy," frivolous, passive and so on because of a mysterious genetic complex located on our X chromosomes. Men, on the other hand, are wise, scientific, aggressive, and (most of all) not female because of the ineffable superiority of the genes carried on the Y chromosome. Another word for this is essentialism. The idea crops up all over, from Homo sapiens being murderous because we are descended from "killer apes," to the inheritability of "criminal tendencies." It's pretty much a term of derision among most scientists but fulfills many popular prejudices and needs so biological determinism springs eternal in the human breast. The Nazis, the KKK, and other "white power" groups are among the most notable of biological determinists, but advocates of lesser inheritability of psychological *tendencies* manage to squeak by in every nook and cranny. A variant of this is "linguistic determinism," otherwise known as the Whorfian Hypothesis, which posits that people's thought processes and/or perceptions are limited (or facilitated) by the vocabulary available in their native language. This is why the French are excitable, Spaniards are romantic, Russians moody, and Germans boring good citizens who like to sing drinking songs at Oktoberfests. And of course, since English contains the greatest number of distinct words in any human language, this also explains why English speakers, for all their lamentable inability to discern silly minute differences in snow particles, are the smartest, most capable people in the world (all in all) and explains (through biological determinism) why this theory is very popular among speakers of English. This theory also lies behind Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeeg, in that the heroine is supposedly able to discern many minute patterns and types of snow because of her Inuit heritage. Indeed, Whorf used supposed Inuit names for snow to illustrate his theory. The problem is that any group of humans who encounter something they're intensely interested in develop a specialized language to describe it, so avid skiers seem hardly less able to distinguish and talk about fine variations in snow than do the Inuit. So Whorf's theory was in part a measure of his own academic ignorance of and disinterest in the snow language of English-speaking skiers rather than a mystical ability facilitated by the Inuit language that white men would never know. Scratch most deterministic theories and you quite often discover crypto-racism or crypto-sexism hiding behind them, even the most "respectable." This is not to say that schizophrenia, for example, has no biological component, but even there the effects of each individual's exact history and current situation affect the expression of this genetic component differently in many individuals, so one cannot predict the course (or even initial appearance) of the disease by mere knowledge of its presence. And it's very clear that some traits that might seem genetic in a common sense way are also just as easily described as learned behaviors. So Skinner taught pigeons to be obsessive/compulsive (or religious, pick your description) by rewarding them randomly in the presence of a disconnected button. Since the pigeon was bored, sooner or later it would peck at the button, and sooner or later a bit of food would drop at the same time as the pigeon pecked the button. Well, pigeons are not quite the fools that people think them and would perform a rational experiment to see if another bit of food would drop if the button were pecked again. Sooner or later the experiment would "succeed." Eureka! a religious pigeon can be developed within a day or so who will quite happily peck the avian equivalent of the rosary all day long confident that the Great Pigeon will provide when it pleases Him as long as His rituals are performed with diligence. The distance between this and "lucky shirts" or gambling "systems" doesn't seem all that large and fatal sidewalk cracks are only a step away. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 07:59:44 -0500 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: "Michael J. Lowrey" Organization: The Working Class Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lee Anne Phillips wrote: > > At 07:05 PM 9/19/02 +0100, Angela Barclay wrote: > >I was hoping you could help me explain biological determinism. How would > >you define biological determinism? What are some of its assumptions? Are > >there other significant determinisms? > > Trivially, it's the science of genetics. More controversially, > it's the effort to define psychologies or social organizations as > being directly caused by our genes, so women are kind, > nurturing, "earthy," frivolous, passive and so on because of a > mysterious genetic complex located on our X chromosomes. > Men, on the other hand, are wise, scientific, aggressive, and > (most of all) not female because of the ineffable superiority > of the genes carried on the Y chromosome. Another word > for this is essentialism. There is a separate form of essentialism, which is the mystical, philosophical and/or religious belief/doctrine/dogma that there is some absolute spiritual polar difference between 'male' and 'female' natures, which transcends mere biology and bodies. A prominent male advocate of this is Robert Jordan, whose "Wheel of Time" universe revolves around this assumption. I have, however, also run into females (some of them feminists) who believe in this just as strongly. > A variant of this is "linguistic determinism," otherwise known > as the Whorfian Hypothesis, which posits that people's thought > processes and/or perceptions are limited (or facilitated) by the > vocabulary available in their native language. > > This is why the French are excitable, Spaniards are romantic, > Russians moody, and Germans boring good citizens who like > to sing drinking songs at Oktoberfests. And of course, since > English contains the greatest number of distinct words in > any human language, this also explains why English speakers, > for all their lamentable inability to discern silly minute differences > in snow particles, are the smartest, most capable people in > the world (all in all) and explains (through biological determinism) > why this theory is very popular among speakers of English. This is a rather unfair caricature of the linguistic relativity hypothesis, a/k/a the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (although the hypothesis, like much of science, is quite vulnerable to misuse by people who don't even understand the science they are misusing). I suggest you check Dr. Elgin's work on the subject: http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/LanguageImperative/index.html http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/LinkBetween.html "Linguist Dan Moonhawk Alford offers the example of a Cheyenne parent who is sitting with a child on his knee when a hall suddenly bounces across the floor. An English-speaking parent would say to the child, "Look! Ball!" The Cheyenne parent, Alford tells us, would say, "Look! Bouncing!".... Both parents are perceiving the same stimulus, with the same sensory equipment. However, the way they express the perception ^× which tells the child what it's important to pay attention to ^× is not the same...." -- Michael J. Lowrey -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 10:03:30 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" , FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU In-Reply-To: <3D8B1BC0.4722B5CA@uwm.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable At 07:59 AM 9/20/02 -0500, Michael J. Lowrey wrote: >There is a separate form of essentialism, which is the >mystical, philosophical and/or religious >belief/doctrine/dogma that there is some absolute spiritual >polar difference between 'male' and 'female' natures, which >transcends mere biology and bodies. A prominent male >advocate of this is Robert Jordan, whose "Wheel of Time" >universe revolves around this assumption. I have, however, >also run into females (some of them feminists) who believe >in this just as strongly. Indeed, I prove this very theory later in this post. Consistency, as they say, is the hobgoblin of little minds. And yes, I'm aware of the Emerson quote. As well as Wilde's. And Huxley's. In fact, the latter is particularly compelling, since his observation that the only truly consistent people are the dead has always encouraged me to resist the temptation. > > A variant of this is "linguistic determinism," otherwise known > > as the Whorfian Hypothesis, which posits that people's thought > > processes and/or perceptions are limited (or facilitated) by the > > vocabulary available in their native language. > > > > This is why the French are excitable, Spaniards are romantic, > > Russians moody, and Germans boring good citizens who like > > to sing drinking songs at Oktoberfests. And of course, since > > English contains the greatest number of distinct words in > > any human language, this also explains why English speakers, > > for all their lamentable inability to discern silly minute differences > > in snow particles, are the smartest, most capable people in > > the world (all in all) and explains (through biological determinism) > > why this theory is very popular among speakers of English. > >This is a rather unfair caricature of the linguistic >relativity hypothesis, a/k/a the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis >(although the hypothesis, like much of science, is quite >vulnerable to misuse by people who don't even understand the >science they are misusing). I suggest you check Dr. Elgin's >work on the subject: >http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/LanguageImperative/index.html >http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/LinkBetween.html I was a linguistics major at UC Berkeley, where I was able to glean a tiny bit of familiarity with both Whorf and Sapir. I agree, however, that it was a caricature, but the irony should have been obvious. Indeed, I would argue that any post in which the word "ineffable" is found ought to be carefully inspected for indications of drollness. You may also recall (from previous posts) that I'm very familiar with Elgin's work, even to the extent of owning both her dictionary and grammar of Ladaan. I've also followed the work of Brown since the late 50s, whose constructed language, Loglan, was intended to help test the Sapir/Whorf theories. It should be noted, however, that Whorf himself was suspicious of his own conjecture, in both the weak and strong forms, and used the English language so skillfully that it is difficult to understand exactly what he actually meant by his theory, so hedged about and contradictory were his statements about it over time. In particular, he noted that the Hopi, who famously have no words for the concepts of past, future, and present, and have been adopted as a sort of New Age exemplar of detached oneness with the quantum universe by people who know no better, are actually shrewd observers of the passing scene and have no difficulty making themselves understood when they find it necessary to actually talk about causality and temporal precedence. Sapir was equally cagey, which leads me to believe that the whole thing was very possibly a wry bit of humor cooked up by the two sly sages, confident that generations of lesser wits would tie themselves up in knots trying to prove or, equally conducive to jocosity, disprove it. Much of what has been written about the subject is simply nonsense, although perhaps not *quite* as silly as imagining that "Latin Lovers" are romantically gifted due to the influence of the Spanish language on their amorous natures. The supposed fact that Russian, for example, has two words for the color that English speakers conceptualize as "blue," was obviously ascertained by a man, since most women know a hundred words for blue, "cerulean," "azure," "teal," and on and on to the point of male nausea, and would not have said anything quite so nutty to begin with. Note that I am fully aware of the ironic contradiction contained in the preceding statements, and humbly admit that many gay men have a color perception and precision color vocabulary that puts most women to shame. Not that there are not wheels within wheels here. The citing of Elgin is also problematic, since she is, at heart, a believer in essentialism in regard to the female nature. Her "Linguist" SF stories are the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis writ large, with the male heads of Houses as clueless as the blustering dad in "Father Knows Best." She goes about it backwards, however, and has her female linguists *invent* a language to fully express their thoughts rather than the other way around, as if women don't do that every day, and as if the act of inventing a language isn't a subtle refutation of Sapir/Whorf. Assuming, that is, that there actually *is* a Sapir/Whorf Hypothesis other than the hint of one drawn attention to in their writings but never truly explicated. So her take seems to be that women have different natures and worldviews and are therefore able to create different languages, not the other way round. This stands linguistic determinism on it's head and elevates biological determinism to criticality, since the strong implication of the Linguist novels is that men are incompetent idiots incapable of running anything but their own visits to the plumbing facilities, and those rather sloppily. Not that I'm not tempted to agree at times... But still... Mathematical languages are being invented daily, and although many mathematicians are notably incoherent in everyday vocal interactions, it cannot be denied that many have English as a native language. Should they not have been unable to conceive the ideas they take the trouble to invent a language for? And remember that most mathematicians are men, who are by definition language poor. Might it be that their fluency and subtle vocabulary are reserved for things they care deeply for, be it Rieman Manifolds and Lie Groups or detailed football statistics for the past twenty years? Perhaps Whorf and Sapir merely took cognizance of the fact that different people are interested in different things, that these enthusiasms are quite often incomprehensible to those who don't share them (Quick! what's a Lie Group?*), and that, in the words of one of our modern poets, people are strange, when you're a stranger. >"Linguist Dan Moonhawk Alford offers the example of a >Cheyenne parent who is sitting with a child on his knee when >a hall suddenly bounces across the floor. An >English-speaking parent would say to the child, "Look! >Ball!" The Cheyenne parent, Alford tells us, would say, >"Look! Bouncing!".... Both parents are perceiving the same >stimulus, with the same sensory equipment. However, the way >they express the perception =97 which tells the child what >it's important to pay attention to =97 is not the same...." Having raised a daughter of my own, I beg to differ here as well. What one says in response to a "hall" bouncing across the floor may vary according to circumstance and what lesson one intends to impart. "Earthquake!" might be appropriate, which I would suggest is just as much a description of process rather than denotative object as is the supposedly process oriented Cheyenne. And certainly I've said, in actual dialog, "Bouncy, bouncy!" every bit as often as "Ball!" in similar situations. Not everyone has a vocabulary and level of interaction quite as stilted as the "Look! Ball!" interjection implies and which reminds me rather forcefully of the Dick and Jane stories they attempted to brainwash me with in grammar school. I here apologize for taking advantage of your typographical error but couldn't resist the opportunity it offered to demolish the theory by a real counterexample. While in "official" grammar books English is contorted into strict verbs, subjects, and objects, the patois of the people is considerably more flexible and not every English sentence actually has an subject. Some sentences are verbs. Some are nouns. "Dork." Some are adverbs. "Truly." Some are not readily classifiable. "'Sup," "Duh." When my daughter grew to her teenage years, I noticed that the expressiveness of grunts, smirks, and raised eyebrows spoke volumes, all without the aid of a single verb. The nuance that could be added by a few monosyllables would require explication in poetry or by spiritual apotheosis, if at all. And yet I had little difficulty understanding what was being said, however surprising that might seem. The strong form of the hypothesis is clearly nutty, since many people make a practice of believing at least six impossible things before breakfast. And even the weak form is highly suspect, since the result, that two people live in different social realities and have wildly different views of the world, may be observed just as easily between, let us say, George W. Bush and Michael Lerner (Tikkun), as between a Hottentot and an Englishman. Yet Bush and Lerner are both purportedly speakers of English, however doubtful the claim of the first mentioned to be a fluent speaker of anything might be. Indeed, I would suggest that the most important differences that can be observed in their worldviews and social realities are more likely due to the fact that one is a smug and pampered cretin and one is not. =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D * Pop Quiz: A Lie Group is: 1. A manifold that is also a group. 2. George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condaleeza Rice 3. Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Raymond Bowen 4. Bernard Ebbers, Scott Sullivan, and David Meyers 5. All of the above. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 08:34:09 +1000 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Alison Croggon Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020920072051.026248c0@www.leeanne.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" I've been thinking about these questions in relation to a paper I've been writing about female mediaeval mystics. I think, without being essentialist, that it is entirely possible to argue that certain female discourses have been generally excluded from official literature. The comments below, from the essay, are probably a little tangential, but they do raise schematically a number of determinisms: In Christian society, the myth of Eve is a dominant symbol in the representation of women and their relation to language. Eve, Dante said in De Vulgari eloquentia, was the institutor of language; she was, after Satan, the first to use language to seduce and mislead, and her tongue was the originator of her sin and of humankind's misfortunes. In Milton's Paradise Lost, Eve addresses the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge as the "best of Fruits", "whose taste ... at first assay / Gave elocution to the mute, and taught / The Tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise". Significantly, in Milton's version the most tempting quality of the fruit is rationality: Eve sees that the Serpent "knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discernes" and, desiring this "intellectual food", she eats the apple, greedily gorging "without restraint". A woman's intellectual curiosity, inseparable from sensual abandon, precipitates the Fall of Mankind, instates the central myth of nostalgia in Western symbology, and is a synonym for disaster. A major expression of this myth has been the traditional proscription of silence for women, a silence posited in relation to women's reputed loquacity. It is important to remember that the language and rationality of men has never held the same dangers as that of women, although of course heretics of both sexes (both within and outside the church) have always been persecuted and murdered. Heretic men chose to speak outside a public arena already prescribed for them; women had no such arena. In Mediaeval France women were not even allowed to testify in court; the only case in which their word was considered reliable was if they had to attest (a word in itself derived from male sexual organs!) which of twins arrived first. "Teach women neither reading nor writing," said the theologian Philippe of Novarre. He was more extreme than many, but nevertheless the untrustworthiness and triviality of women's tongues is a byword: we still, for example, speak of trivial timewasters of either sex as "old women". The Romantics' spin on traditional misogynistic ideologies was their appropriation of feminine qualities, metamorphosed into the ability to give birth and nurture, into the male body of a Genius. The Romantic relationship of Genius to the patriarchal God is clear in Thomas Carlyle's description of the Man of Genius: The most precious gift that Heaven can give to the Earth: a man of 'genius' as we call it; the Soul of a man actually sent down from the skies, with a God's-message to us ... A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown ... We may call him Poet, Prophet, God ..." Male Genius, however, appropriated into itself the feminine qualities of sensitivity and nurturance, even morbidity and hysteria; great artists "gave birth" to their work, gestating them behind their magnificent foreheads. Women's bodies were too fragile to sustain the fiery daemon of Genius without causing harm to themselves; talented women, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were condemned to illness and early death. If by some freak of nature they survived their Genius they were held to be, like George Sand, deviant men. Women's creative impulses were totally fulfilled in childbirth and any woman seeking fulfilment in art was a freak of nature, a perversion. It is not, alas, an idea which has vanished. As recently as 1989, George Steiner was able to ask seriously: Is there in the almost total absence from drama of any major woman writer some formidable hint? Is the biological capacity for procreation, for engendering formed life which is cardinal to woman, in some way, at some level, absolutely primordial to a woman's being, so creative, so fulfilling, as to subvert, as to render comparatively pallid, the begetting of fictive personae which is the matter of drama and of so much representative art? Aside from Steiner's apparent total ignorance of the fact that theatre is the most social of all the arts, and that this might have implications for women's participation in it, he rather traditionally couches male genius as an envy of female procreation (and the creativity of a patriarchal God), and metaphorically assimilates the act of "birth" to the male. This infusion of female potencies into the male corpus was an idea carried forward enthusiastically into modernism through such writers as Nietzsche, although, as we shall see, it is an ancient trope. A typical 20C explication of male and female creativity is Jung's analysis, in which he permits a woman the role of helpmeet, and reserves originatory creativity for men: Just as man brings forth his work as a complete creation out of his inner feminine nature, so the inner masculine side of a women brings forth creative seeds which have the power to fertilise the feminine side of the man. The confusion of the ideas of female and feminine and the almost non-existent interrogation of notions of masculinity in relation to men make this a particularly confused area in post modern thinking, where femininity has sometimes been valorised despite an almost total exclusion of the female in a depressingly familiar way. This appropriation works through a mask of neutrality, an apparent genderlessness which permits the male to stand as the signifier for all humankind and to deny his maleness, putting the burden of sex wholly on women, who are defined continuously by their sexual status. I'd like to orient my discussion by quoting from Maria Black and Rosalind Coward's 1981 essay, Linguistic, social and sexual relations. We do not see the problem [of sexism in language] as one of the suppression of female meanings, nor do we see the solution as simply validating everything produced by women, as the expression of pre-existent feminine values. We see one of the major political problems confronting feminism to be the need to force men to recognise themselves as men. The discursive formation which allows men to represent themselves as non-gendered and to define women constantly according to their sexual status is a discursive formation with very definite effects. It allows men to deny the effect of their gendered subjectivity on women. ... What is available to them is a discourse where gender and sexual identity appears to be absent.... Men are sustained at the centre of the stage precisely because they can be 'people' and do not have to represent their masculinity to themselves. Best A -- Alison Croggon Home page http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/ Masthead Online http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/ -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 19:52:47 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=====================_101257721==_.ALT" --=====================_101257721==_.ALT Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 08:34 AM 9/21/02 +1000, Alison Croggon wrote: >In Christian society, the myth of Eve is a dominant symbol in the >representation of women and their relation to language. Eve, Dante >said in De Vulgari eloquentia, was the institutor of language; she >was, after Satan, the first to use language to seduce and mislead, >and her tongue was the originator of her sin and of humankind's >misfortunes. In Milton's Paradise Lost, Eve addresses the fruit of >the Tree of Knowledge as the "best of Fruits", "whose taste ... at >first assay / Gave elocution to the mute, and taught / The Tongue not >made for Speech to speak thy praise". Significantly, in Milton's >version the most tempting quality of the fruit is rationality: Eve >sees that the Serpent "knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discernes" >and, desiring this "intellectual food", she eats the apple, greedily >gorging "without restraint". A woman's intellectual curiosity, >inseparable from sensual abandon, precipitates the Fall of Mankind, >instates the central myth of nostalgia in Western symbology, and is a >synonym for disaster. Milton is in love with Satan, and his Eve is by far more interesting than the boring good guys in the piece. I strongly suspect that any human being with any sense at all would choose the same, despite the coward's claim that ignorance is bliss. In fact, since Satan has all the best lines in Milton, one could also argue that any angel with gumption and self-respect would have done the same as he did. >A major expression of this myth has been the traditional proscription >of silence for women, a silence posited in relation to women's >reputed loquacity. It is important to remember that the language and >rationality of men has never held the same dangers as that of women, >although of course heretics of both sexes (both within and outside >the church) have always been persecuted and murdered. Heretic men >chose to speak outside a public arena already prescribed for them; >women had no such arena. In Mediaeval France women were not even >allowed to testify in court; the only case in which their word was >considered reliable was if they had to attest (a word in itself >derived from male sexual organs!) which of twins arrived first. >"Teach women neither reading nor writing," said the theologian >Philippe of Novarre. He was more extreme than many, but nevertheless >the untrustworthiness and triviality of women's tongues is a byword: >we still, for example, speak of trivial timewasters of either sex as >"old women". The French law is a very old tradition, since the Talmud proscribes the very same thing with certain limitations. The basic concern in Talmudic reasoning seems to be for the modesty of the woman, since witnesses were expected to be cross-examined closely. But there were many things about which a woman could testify and be believed absolutely, with no possibility of refuting her and therefore no cross-examination. But it's also interesting to note that the early church seized upon some Pauline speeches, notably the one about women being silent in church, by which he surely meant to imply only arguing against or remonstrating against men, since he also says that women were allowed to prophesy and sing in church. He'd be hard pressed to forbid it, since permission is found in Joel 2:28 "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy..." You might be interested in this: http://www.ot-studies.com/Documents/did_eve_fall_or_was_she_pushed.htm >The Romantics' spin on traditional misogynistic ideologies was their >appropriation of feminine qualities, metamorphosed into the ability >to give birth and nurture, into the male body of a Genius. Good point. Male art as couvade. >The >Romantic relationship of Genius to the patriarchal God is clear in >Thomas Carlyle's description of the Man of Genius: > >The most precious gift that Heaven can give to the Earth: a man of >'genius' as we call it; the Soul of a man actually sent down from the >skies, with a God's-message to us ... A messenger he, sent from the >Infinite Unknown ... We may call him Poet, Prophet, God ..." > >Male Genius, however, appropriated into itself the feminine qualities >of sensitivity and nurturance, even morbidity and hysteria; great >artists "gave birth" to their work, gestating them behind their >magnificent foreheads. Women's bodies were too fragile to sustain >the fiery daemon of Genius without causing harm to themselves; >talented women, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were condemned to >illness and early death. If by some freak of nature they survived >their Genius they were held to be, like George Sand, deviant men. Except that many women were actually the artists behind many of their husband's or boyfriend's supposed work. The men only signed the work done by women. There is a large body of work on this subject alone. Examples: Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), Lee Krasner (who originated the style of Jackson Pollack), and so on... >Women's creative impulses were totally fulfilled in childbirth and >any woman seeking fulfilment in art was a freak of nature, a >perversion. It is not, alas, an idea which has vanished. As >recently as 1989, George Steiner was able to ask seriously: > >Is there in the almost total absence from drama of any major woman >writer some formidable hint? Is the biological capacity for >procreation, for engendering formed life which is cardinal to woman, >in some way, at some level, absolutely primordial to a woman's being, >so creative, so fulfilling, as to subvert, as to render comparatively >pallid, the begetting of fictive personae which is the matter of >drama and of so much representative art? The tenth-century German nun Hrotswitha wrote, in Latin, a series of plays in Latin. Mercy Warren was the first female playwright during the Colonial period in America. Her plays about the Revolution were very well received. Aphra Behn is absolutely fascinating, the first professional woman writer in Renaissance England and, for twenty years, the *only* female playwright. She was *very* popular in her day. Before she was an author, she was a spy. Shades of *Jane* Bond! >Aside from Steiner's apparent total ignorance of the fact that >theatre is the most social of all the arts, and that this might have >implications for women's participation in it, he rather traditionally >couches male genius as an envy of female procreation (and the >creativity of a patriarchal God), and metaphorically assimilates the >act of "birth" to the male. This infusion of female potencies into >the male corpus was an idea carried forward enthusiastically into >modernism through such writers as Nietzsche, although, as we shall >see, it is an ancient trope. A typical 20C explication of male and >female creativity is Jung's analysis, in which he permits a woman the >role of helpmeet, and reserves originatory creativity for men: > >Just as man brings forth his work as a complete creation out of his >inner feminine nature, so the inner masculine side of a women brings >forth creative seeds which have the power to fertilise the feminine >side of the man. > >The confusion of the ideas of female and feminine and the almost >non-existent interrogation of notions of masculinity in relation to >men make this a particularly confused area in post modern thinking, >where femininity has sometimes been valorised despite an almost total >exclusion of the female in a depressingly familiar way. This >appropriation works through a mask of neutrality, an apparent >genderlessness which permits the male to stand as the signifier for >all humankind and to deny his maleness, putting the burden of sex >wholly on women, who are defined continuously by their sexual status. >I'd like to orient my discussion by quoting from Maria Black and >Rosalind Coward's 1981 essay, Linguistic, social and sexual relations. > >We do not see the problem [of sexism in language] as one of the >suppression of female meanings, nor do we see the solution as simply >validating everything produced by women, as the expression of >pre-existent feminine values. We see one of the major political >problems confronting feminism to be the need to force men to >recognise themselves as men. The discursive formation which allows >men to represent themselves as non-gendered and to define women >constantly according to their sexual status is a discursive formation >with very definite effects. It allows men to deny the effect of >their gendered subjectivity on women. ... What is available to them >is a discourse where gender and sexual identity appears to be >absent.... Men are sustained at the centre of the stage precisely >because they can be 'people' and do not have to represent their >masculinity to themselves. Hear, hear... -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. --=====================_101257721==_.ALT Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" At 08:34 AM 9/21/02 +1000, Alison Croggon wrote:
In Christian society, the myth of Eve is a dominant symbol in the
representation of women and their relation to language.  Eve, Dante
said in De Vulgari eloquentia, was the institutor of language; she
was, after Satan, the first to use language to seduce and mislead,
and her tongue was the originator of her sin and of humankind's
misfortunes.  In Milton's Paradise Lost, Eve addresses the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge as the "best of Fruits", "whose taste ... at
first assay / Gave elocution to the mute, and taught / The Tongue not
made for Speech to speak thy praise".  Significantly, in Milton's
version the most tempting quality of the fruit is rationality: Eve
sees that the Serpent "knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discernes"
and, desiring this "intellectual food", she eats the apple, greedily
gorging "without restraint".  A woman's intellectual curiosity,
inseparable from sensual abandon, precipitates the Fall of Mankind,
instates the central myth of nostalgia in Western symbology, and is a
synonym for disaster.

Milton is in love with Satan, and his Eve is by far more
interesting than the boring good guys in the piece.
I strongly suspect that any human being with any
sense at all would choose the same, despite the
coward's claim that ignorance is bliss. In fact,
since Satan has all the best lines in Milton, one
could also argue that any angel with gumption
and self-respect would have done the same
as he did.

A major expression of this myth has been the traditional proscription
of silence for women, a silence posited in relation to women's
reputed loquacity.  It is important to remember that the language and
rationality of men has never held the same dangers as that of women,
although of course heretics of both sexes (both within and outside
the church) have always been persecuted and murdered.  Heretic men
chose to speak outside a public arena already prescribed for them;
women had no such arena.   In Mediaeval France women were not even
allowed to testify in court; the only case in which their word was
considered reliable was if they had to attest (a word in itself
derived from male sexual organs!) which of twins arrived first.
"Teach women neither reading nor writing," said the theologian
Philippe of Novarre.  He was more extreme than many, but nevertheless
the untrustworthiness and triviality of women's tongues is a byword:
we still, for example, speak of trivial timewasters of either sex as
"old women".

The French law is a very old tradition, since the Talmud proscribes
the very same thing with certain limitations. The basic concern in
Talmudic reasoning seems to be for the modesty of the woman,
since witnesses were expected to be cross-examined closely.
But there were many things about which a woman could testify
and be believed absolutely, with no possibility of refuting her
and therefore no cross-examination.

But it's also interesting to note that the early church seized
upon some Pauline speeches, notably the one about women
being silent in church, by which he surely meant to imply
only arguing against or remonstrating against men, since
he also says that women were allowed to prophesy and
sing in church. He'd be hard pressed to forbid it, since
permission is found in Joel 2:28

"And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out
my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy..."

You might be interested in this:
http://www.ot-studies.com/Documents/did_eve_fall_or_was_she_pushed.htm

The Romantics' spin on traditional misogynistic ideologies was their
appropriation of feminine qualities, metamorphosed into the ability
to give birth and nurture, into the male body of a Genius.  

Good point. Male art as couvade.

The
Romantic relationship of Genius to the patriarchal God is clear in
Thomas Carlyle's description of the Man of Genius:

The most precious gift that Heaven can give to the Earth: a man of
'genius' as we call it; the Soul of a man actually sent down from the
skies, with a God's-message to us ... A messenger he, sent from the
Infinite Unknown ... We may call him Poet, Prophet, God ..."

Male Genius, however, appropriated into itself the feminine qualities
of sensitivity and nurturance, even morbidity and hysteria; great
artists "gave birth" to their work, gestating them behind their
magnificent foreheads.  Women's bodies were too fragile to sustain
the fiery daemon of Genius without causing harm to themselves;
talented women, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were condemned to
illness and early death.  If by some freak of nature they survived
their Genius they were held to be, like George Sand, deviant men.

Except that many women were actually the artists behind many
of their husband's or boyfriend's supposed work. The men only
signed the work done by women. There is a large body of work
on this subject alone. Examples: Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653),
Lee Krasner (who originated the style of Jackson Pollack), and
so on...

Women's creative impulses were totally fulfilled in childbirth and
any woman seeking fulfilment in art was a freak of nature, a
perversion.  It is not, alas, an idea which has vanished.  As
recently as 1989, George Steiner was able to ask seriously:

Is there in the almost total absence from drama of any major woman
writer some formidable hint?  Is the biological capacity for
procreation, for engendering formed life which is cardinal to woman,
in some way, at some level, absolutely primordial to a woman's being,
so creative, so fulfilling, as to subvert, as to render comparatively
pallid, the begetting of fictive personae which is the matter of
drama and of so much representative art?

The tenth-century German nun Hrotswitha wrote, in Latin, a
series of plays in Latin. Mercy Warren was the first female
playwright during the Colonial period in America. Her plays
about the Revolution were very well received. Aphra Behn
is absolutely fascinating, the first professional woman writer
in Renaissance England and, for twenty years, the *only*
female playwright. She was *very* popular in her day.
Before she was an author, she was a spy. Shades of
*Jane* Bond!

Aside from Steiner's apparent total ignorance of the fact that
theatre is the most social of all the arts, and that this might have
implications for women's participation in it, he rather traditionally
couches male genius as an envy of female procreation (and the
creativity of a patriarchal God), and metaphorically assimilates the
act of "birth" to the male.  This infusion of female potencies into
the male corpus was an idea carried forward enthusiastically into
modernism through such writers as Nietzsche, although, as we shall
see, it is an ancient trope.  A typical 20C explication of male and
female creativity is Jung's analysis, in which he permits a woman the
role of helpmeet, and reserves originatory creativity for men:

Just as man brings forth his work as a complete creation out of his
inner feminine nature, so the inner masculine side of a women brings
forth creative seeds which have the power to fertilise the feminine
side of the man.

The confusion of the ideas of female and feminine and the almost
non-existent interrogation of notions of masculinity in relation to
men make this a particularly confused area in post modern thinking,
where femininity has sometimes been valorised despite an almost total
exclusion of the female in a depressingly familiar way.  This
appropriation works through a mask of neutrality, an apparent
genderlessness which permits the male to stand as the signifier for
all humankind and to deny his maleness, putting the burden of sex
wholly on women, who are defined continuously by their sexual status.
I'd like to orient my discussion by quoting from Maria Black and
Rosalind Coward's 1981 essay, Linguistic, social and sexual relations.

We do not see the problem [of sexism in language] as one of the
suppression of female meanings, nor do we see the solution as simply
validating everything produced by women, as the expression of
pre-existent feminine values.  We see one of the major political
problems confronting feminism to be the need to force men to
recognise themselves as men.  The discursive formation which allows
men to represent themselves as non-gendered and to define women
constantly according to their sexual status is a discursive formation
with very definite effects.  It allows men to deny the effect of
their gendered subjectivity on women.  ... What is available to them
is a discourse where gender and sexual identity appears to be
absent.... Men are sustained at the centre of the stage precisely
because they can be 'people' and do not have to represent their
masculinity to themselves.

Hear, hear...

-------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say:
unsubscribe FEMINISTSF

Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. --=====================_101257721==_.ALT-- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 15:31:10 +1000 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Alison Croggon Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020920162148.0256c1f0@www.leeanne.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Thanks for those comments, Lee Anne - I didn't know about the Talmudic thing. At 7:52 PM -0700 9/20/02, Lee Anne Phillips wrote: >In fact, >since Satan has all the best lines in Milton, one >could also argue that any angel with gumption >and self-respect would have done the same >as he did. Very reminiscent of Blake's argument that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it", like all proper poets, because Satan has all the best lines while God is, er, rather boring... At 7:52 PM -0700 9/20/02, Lee Anne Phillips wrote: >Aphra Behn >is absolutely fascinating, the first professional woman writer >in Renaissance England and, for twenty years, the *only* >female playwright. She was *very* popular in her day. >Before she was an author, she was a spy. Shades of >*Jane* Bond! I've read some of the attacks on Benn, which she responded to with such spirit. An amazing woman! The 16C Mexican poet Sor Juana de la Cruz wrote a number of plays as well, which were part of the reason for her interrogation and subsequent silencing by the Catholic Church. Does she predate Mary Warren? Best Alison -- Alison Croggon Home page http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/ Masthead Online http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/ -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 20:08:02 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 03:31 PM 9/21/02 +1000, you wrote: >Thanks for those comments, Lee Anne - I didn't know about the Talmudic thing. I can go on at length about the Rabbinic idea of womanhood. I'm fuzzier on Christian stuff, but fairly up to date. >I've read some of the attacks on Benn, which she responded to with >such spirit. An amazing woman! The 16C Mexican poet Sor Juana de la >Cruz wrote a number of plays as well, which were part of the reason >for her interrogation and subsequent silencing by the Catholic >Church. Does she predate Mary Warren? I'd guess so, since Warren wrote about the American Revolution, so she had to be alive after 1776. Sor Juana Inez died in 1695. Oddly, I can't find a thing about her on the Web and will have to dredge my memory for the reference. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 13:34:20 +1000 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Alison Croggon Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020921200240.02fa0bf0@www.leeanne.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" At 8:08 PM -0700 9/21/02, Lee Anne Phillips wrote: >I'd guess so, since Warren wrote about the American Revolution, >so she had to be alive after 1776. Sor Juana Inez died in 1695. >Oddly, I can't find a thing about her on the Web and will have >to dredge my memory for the reference. There's an excellent fairly recent biography by Octavio Paz, the name of which temporarily escapes me, and also a translation of her work by Alan Trueblood, A Sor Juana Anthology, with an intro by Paz and a short biography by Trueblood. Paz considers her Mexico's first significant poet. Best A -- Alison Croggon Home page http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/ Masthead Online http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/ -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 21:57:24 -0700 Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" Sender: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature and other media" From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: determinisms Comments: To: Feminist SF/F In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed It's Mary I can't find, drat the luck. Whoops! My mistake. Her name is *Mercy* Warren. I knew that and put it into the original post but lost my mind temporarily. I thought it was odd, not finding anything but Mary Warren from Arthur Miller's The Crucible and her Salem namesake, the only girl to recant among the accusers. So the name was familiar at least, and ran along a prepared groove. Here's a good site about Mercy: http://www.samizdat.com/warren/ http://earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/notable/warrenm/ http://www.english.uiuc.edu/baym/essays/warren.htm http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/zagarri/hist499/students/farish.html At 01:34 PM 9/22/02 +1000, Alison Croggon wrote: >At 8:08 PM -0700 9/21/02, Lee Anne Phillips wrote: >>I'd guess so, since Warren wrote about the American Revolution, >>so she had to be alive after 1776. Sor Juana Inez died in 1695. >>Oddly, I can't find a thing about her on the Web and will have >>to dredge my memory for the reference. > >There's an excellent fairly recent biography by Octavio Paz, the name >of which temporarily escapes me, and also a translation of her work >by Alan Trueblood, A Sor Juana Anthology, with an intro by Paz and a >short biography by Trueblood. Paz considers her Mexico's first >significant poet. I agree. I haven't seen the new biography and will have to look for it. She and Garcia Lorca were the first poets assigned by the stunningly beauteous Srta. Ramirez, of whom I instantly learned by heart every word that escaped from her lips. Perdite, senora, quiero de mi silencio perdon, si lo que ha sido atencion le hace parecer grosero. She had her heart set on marrying a Catholic boy, alas. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@UIC.EDU if there are problems.