Sexism, Identity and the Subterfuge
The term sexist, modelled on the term racist, appeared in a 1965 speech given by American academic Pauline M. Leet.[i]In 1968, Caroline Bird explicitly referred to sexism as an imbalance of power between men and women, resting on value-laden judgements of sexual differentiation.[ii] As a result of such judgements, other social undercurrents and behaviours arise that, in turn, perpetuate sexist attitudes. The practices of out-sexing sexism, first identified by Joan Rivière in the early twentieth century, to which Bird refers, are the subterfuges women are compelled to employ to overcome certain social, cultural and professional prejudices borne out of institutionalised sexual differentiation.[iii] These subterfuges take on many forms: playing down one’s intelligence at work so that a male colleague does not feel threatened; feigning helplessness to guide an outcome to a desired result; or using sexist arguments to sidestep bias. It is a form of negotiation.
Subterfuge
Rivière referred to the variability of feminine identity in a specific context and in response to Freud’s, and later Ernest Jones’s,[iv] intimation of woman as a ‘failed’ man.[v] The woman to whom Rivière refers, based on her studies of professional and intellectual women and Jones’s casework, is not ‘mainly’ heterosexual. She is an ‘overtly masculine type of woman,’ who is at the same time seemingly apt in fulfilling ‘every criterion of feminine development.’ However, hinting at the instability of said subject, Rivière suggests that female identity is the mimicry of a ‘castrated woman,’ that is, her aptitude of womanliness is a form of mimicry. She must dissimulate a fundamental masculinity, a ‘compulsion’ driven by anxiety over the potential reaction to her self from authority figures, understood to be male. Rivière attempts to understand whether this masquerade is a conscientious betrayal of her ability and considers whether or not it is reflective of the ‘essential nature of fully developed femininity,’ and, therefore, whether or not they (authentic and simulated versions of femininity) are the ‘same thing.’[vi] In other words, women exaggerate their womanliness as a defence against the masculine elements inherent in their being and become prone to anxiety as a result of this instability. This anxiety provokes compulsive behaviours: either a reversal or denial of her intellectual capacity or ability to perform a ‘masculine’ task; seeking male attention by engaging in ‘coquettish’ behaviour; or generally trying to appear artless. This compulsion is the masquerade.
In contemporary terms, this definition of sexism may not always address the historical imbalances of power between individuals and/or social groups that have, traditionally, placed certain demographics of men in a privileged position in relation to women.[vii] Sexism is defined as discrimination based on gender, and the stereotypes, attitudes and practices that fuel this discrimination.[viii] This project does not claim that all women everywhere experience sexism, either insidious or violent; that there are no gradations to the scope and severity that sexism or any of its manifestations exhibit; that it is only women who are marginalised and vulnerable; or that women are not complicit in the systems that drive sexist practices. Rather, the focus is on the micro-dynamics of power that are enacted disproportionately against women. For the purposes of this project, this is what I mean by sexism.[ix]
Identity
Sexuality is not the cause of being-in-the-world, but an effect, and is not understood as the reflex response to situations because these are not ‘mechanical,’ and the body is not a processing machine, but embodied consciousness.[x] Merleau-Ponty argues that sexual life is not just a reflection of existence.[xi] A ‘ruinous sexuality’ is concomitant with an ‘effective’ life – even life on the political and ideological level – because ‘sexual life’ indicates our being in the world. In phenomenology, the first ontological dimension is the body that exists for-itself. The second dimension is the body that exists as the object of knowledge and that can be instrumentalised by others. Our encounter with others signals our awareness of the third ontological dimension of bodies: our awareness that I exist as I am known by the other.[xii] For Sartre, this awareness signals conflict that can be manifested as a fear, or humiliation, of being known, judged or manipulated by the other, who is conceived in opposition to our freedom. Merleau-Ponty, on the other hand, offers us the notion of being and being-for-others as a unique and complete way of experiencing ourselves and others. Think of two yolks housed in one egg, or two soap bubbles stuck together on one side, each with its own space, but bound to the other.
References and Additional Reading
[i] ‘When you argue…that since fewer women write good poetry this justifies their total exclusion, you are taking a position analogous to that of the racist — I might call you in this case a “sexist.” Both the racist and the sexist are acting as if all that has happened had never happened, and both of them are making decisions and coming to conclusions about someone’s value by referring to factors which are in both cases irrelevant.’ Pauline Leet, ‘Women and the Undergraduate,’ (Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania, 1965) in Fred R. Shapiro, ‘Historical Notes on the Vocabulary of the Women’s Movement,’ American Speech, 60:1 (1985), pp. 3-16.
[ii] The term sexism appeared in print in 1968 in the introduction to Born Female: The high cost of keeping women down (New York: D. McKay Co., 1968) by Caroline Bird, a book that is widely held to have launched the Women’s Liberation Movement in the United States. Bird argued sexism does not make ‘sense in a world of equal opportunities.’ In Mary Kosut, ed., Encyclopedia of Gender in Media (Los Angeles: Sage, 2012). <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sexist&allowed_in_frame=0> [ 9 September 2014]
[iii] Rivière, Joan. ‘Womanliness as a Masquerade,’ International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10 (1929), pp. 303-313
<http://mariabuszek.com/mariabuszek/kcai/DadaSurrealism/DadaSurrReadings/RiviereMask.pdf> [ 14 March 2017], along with ‘Jealousy as a mechanism of defence,’ International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 13 (1932), pp. 414-424.
[iv] Alfred Ernest Jones, Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst, Freud’s biographer. See R. Andrew Paskauskas, ed., The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones (1908-1939) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
[v] Freud proposed that the trajectories of male and female psychosexual development mirrored one another, until girls ‘failed’ to be boys due to the ‘destiny’ of their anatomy. This ‘destiny of the anatomy’ is defined by the observable differences in each sex’s genitalia, a destiny that for girls prescribed humiliation, anger and jealousy at this ‘failure.’ Taken from Freud’s 1912 essay ‘On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,’ where he argues that bodily sexual differences have psychological consequences. See Alan Soble, ed., Sex from Plato to Paglia: A Philosophical Encyclopaedia, Volume. 2, M-Z (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press: 2006) pp. 887-888.
[vi] Rivière,1929
[vii] On the issue of complicity: sexism is not the same as gender-based prejudiced. Gender-based prejudice refers to power in the sense of denying rights to another by working within a framework of advantage or privilege. Men can experience gender-based prejudice but not sexism, as it is argued that the androcentric nature of the world imparts men, as a universal demographic, with privilege. Under this definition, a woman can be sexist if she is working within the framework of advantage. ‘Sexism is judging people by their sex when sex doesn’t matter…Women are sexists as often as men.’ Caroline Bird (1968) Born Female: The High Cost of Keeping Women Down (London: Longman Publishing Group, 1978)
[viii] ‘sexism,’ OxfordDictionaries.com, <http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sexism> [ 16 September 2014]
[ix] Feminism represents a plurality of thoughts and movements, many of which are presented in this chapter. Not all forms of feminism can be concerned with all topics at all times. Given the limitations here, and the focus on the phenomenology of the body, I have chosen not to disperse the collectivity represented by feminism.
[x] Merleau-Ponty, 1945:240 says humans are convinced that sight (visual perception), is “really” all about light waves hitting the occipital lobe in the brain. This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate way to describe vision from within a certain perspective. If we only focus upon chemical, neurological processes, we miss the way in which the experience and meaning of the world unfolds for us. Human experience is the result of a unique relation between the embodied subject and that which shows itself to him/her at every instant.
[xi] Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy on embodied subjectivity, if read from a non-foundationalist perspective, indicates there is scope for understanding its historical and cultural situatedness and the consequences for subjectivity and inter-subjectivity if the body is always a lived body. How is the world illuminated, or revealed to us? In ‘The Body as a Sexed Being’ Phenomenology of Perception (1945, pp. 157-178), he discusses existential sexual schema, and how these can relate sexuality to body image and how beings are in the lived world. Sexual life cannot be circumscribed as a separate causality proper to an ‘organic apparatus,’ but neither is existence entirely understood through sexual life. Sexual life reiterates existence but it is not a mere reflection of it, because our being-in-the-world cannot be divorced from sexual life: ‘There is no outstripping of sexuality any more than there is sexuality enclosed within itself. No one is saved and no one is totally lost.’ (1945, p. 159).
[xii] Sartre, 1943
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956)
