Gender

GENDER

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm


The distinction between the sexes is significant in
Jacques Lacan's theory, though not in the same way it is in
Freud's. This is what Lacan talks about in "The Agency
of the Letter in the Unconscious," on p. 186. He has
two drawings there. One is of the word "Tree" over a
picture of a tree (187)--the basic Saussurean concept, of
signifier (word) over signified (object). Then he has
another drawing, of two identical doors (the
signifieds) (188). But over each door is a different word:
one says "Ladies" and the other says "Gentlemen."
Lacan explains, on p. 191:


"A train arrives at a station. A little boy and a
little girl, brother and sister, are seated in a
compartment face to face next to the window through
which the buildings along the station platform can be
seen passing as the train pulls to a stop. 'Look,'
says the brother, 'We're at Ladies!' 'Idiot!' replies
his sister, 'Can't you see we're at Gentlemen.'"


This anecdote shows how boys and girls enter the
Symbolic order, the structure of language,
differently.

In Lacan's view, each child can only see the signifier
of the other gender; each child constructs its world
view, its understanding of the relation between sfr
and sfd in naming locations, as the consequence of
seeing an "other." As Lacan puts it (742), "For these
children, Ladies and Gentlemen will be henceforth two
countries toward which each of their souls will strive
on divergent wings..."

Each child, each gender, has a
particular position within the Symbolic order; from
that position, each gender can only see (or signify) the
otherness of the other sex. You might take Lacan's
drawing of the two doors literally: these are the
doors, with their gender distinctions, through which
each child must pass in order to enter into the
Symbolic realm.

Men and clothing and gender difference

(Joan Riviere Femininity as Masquerade
Gender Trouble Judith Butler)

Story of Narcissus and Echo (ad of Echo cologne)

The new man of the 90s. well groomed. Into himself.
A sex object. And loving it.

Today’s metrosexual

Selling health and beauty aid products w/out challenging assumptions of masculinity and legimitzing male on male looking.

Plural masculinities
--defined by era
-class
-race
-age
middle class masculinity vs. working class.
In terms of clothing, speech, movement

Masculinity is a necessary fiction. A story that gets retold. That relies on its opposite femininity for organization (its other)

Assertive power versus self-absorption vs. passive sexualization

Styles of the new man

Street style—related to color, light black male (in England)
Tough, but indulgent

Italian American
White but dark complected. Adorned, unshaven, well-dressed gangster

Conservative Englishness (in American terms POlO-y

Tommy Hilfinger attempt was to related street style with Conservative style





VISUAL PLEASURE—

Mulvey etc.

Subjectivization

Being looked at as defining self

Desire to look

Desire to be looked at (w/desire)


Identification—desire to be(come) the other person. (replacing person—hint at violence in such a construction)
Vs. desire to have the person—object choice—as sexual yearning

Scopophilia—pleasure (sexual) in looking

Narcissism—relectance to “graduate” to object choice, reversion to (image) of the self

Spectatorship—techniques of looking