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The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality
In this book a leading theorist on sex and gender discusses how hidden assumptions embedded in our cultural discourses, social institutions, and individual psyches perpetuate male power and oppress women and sexual minorities. Sandra Lipsitz Bem argues that these assumptions, which she calls the lenses of gender, shape not only perceptions of social reality but also the more material things―like unequal pay and inadequate daycare―that constitute social reality itself. Her penetrating and articulate examination of these hidden cultural lenses enables us to look at them rather than through them and to better understand recent debates on gender and sexuality.
According to Bem, the first lens, androcentrism (male-centeredness), defines males and male experience as a standard or norm and females and female experience as a deviation from that norm. The second lens, gender polarization, superimposes male-female differences on virtually every aspect of human experience, from modes of dress and social roles to ways of expressing emotion and sexual desire. The third lens, biological essentialism, rationalizes and legitimizes the other two lenses by treating them as the inevitable consequences of the intrinsic biological natures of women and men.
After illustrating the pervasiveness of these three lenses in both historical and contemporary discourses of Western culture, Bem presents her own theory of how the individual either acquires cultural gender lenses and constructs a conventional gender identity or resists cultural lenses and constructs a gender-subversive identity. She contends that we must reframe the debate on sexual inequality so that it focuses not on the differences between men and women but on how male-centered discourses and institutions transform male-female difference into female disadvantage.
According to Bem, the first lens, androcentrism (male-centeredness), defines males and male experience as a standard or norm and females and female experience as a deviation from that norm. The second lens, gender polarization, superimposes male-female differences on virtually every aspect of human experience, from modes of dress and social roles to ways of expressing emotion and sexual desire. The third lens, biological essentialism, rationalizes and legitimizes the other two lenses by treating them as the inevitable consequences of the intrinsic biological natures of women and men.
After illustrating the pervasiveness of these three lenses in both historical and contemporary discourses of Western culture, Bem presents her own theory of how the individual either acquires cultural gender lenses and constructs a conventional gender identity or resists cultural lenses and constructs a gender-subversive identity. She contends that we must reframe the debate on sexual inequality so that it focuses not on the differences between men and women but on how male-centered discourses and institutions transform male-female difference into female disadvantage.
256 pages, Paperback
First published February 24, 1993
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About the author
Sandra Lipsitz Bem
4 books5 followersSandra Ruth Lipsitz Bem was an American psychologist known for her works in androgyny and gender studies. Her pioneering work on gender roles, gender polarization and gender stereotypes led directly to more equal employment opportunities for women in the United States.
Bem and her husband Daryl Bem took the public by storm with their revolutionary concept of egalitarian marriage. The husband-wife team became highly demanded as speakers on the negative impacts of sex role stereotypes on individuals and society. At the time, there was a lack of empirical evidence to support their assertions because this was uncharted territory, and so Sandra Bem became very interested and determined to gather data that would support the detrimental and limiting effects of traditional sex roles.
Sandra Bem received many awards for her research. Her first was the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career contribution to Psychology in 1976. In 1977 she was awarded the Distinguished Publication Award of the Association of Women in Psychology and in 1980 she received the Young Scholar Award of the American Association of University Women (Makosky, 1990). In 1995, she was selected as an “Eminent Woman in Psychology” by the Divisions of General Psychology and History of Psychology of the American Psychological Association. Critics of Bem's work generally argued against the political nature of her theories and her objectivity in the material which she studied.
In 2010 Bem was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and, four years after diagnosis and after pursuing experimental treatments, she followed through with her plan to die by suicide at her home in Ithaca on May 20, 2014.[3][15] Her husband, Daryl, was present with her when she died.
Bem and her husband Daryl Bem took the public by storm with their revolutionary concept of egalitarian marriage. The husband-wife team became highly demanded as speakers on the negative impacts of sex role stereotypes on individuals and society. At the time, there was a lack of empirical evidence to support their assertions because this was uncharted territory, and so Sandra Bem became very interested and determined to gather data that would support the detrimental and limiting effects of traditional sex roles.
Sandra Bem received many awards for her research. Her first was the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career contribution to Psychology in 1976. In 1977 she was awarded the Distinguished Publication Award of the Association of Women in Psychology and in 1980 she received the Young Scholar Award of the American Association of University Women (Makosky, 1990). In 1995, she was selected as an “Eminent Woman in Psychology” by the Divisions of General Psychology and History of Psychology of the American Psychological Association. Critics of Bem's work generally argued against the political nature of her theories and her objectivity in the material which she studied.
In 2010 Bem was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and, four years after diagnosis and after pursuing experimental treatments, she followed through with her plan to die by suicide at her home in Ithaca on May 20, 2014.[3][15] Her husband, Daryl, was present with her when she died.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 25, 2016
Hmmm...
This is the first reading for my Social Psychology of Gender class. I feel like I already knew to a large extent most of what she's positing - it's just her framework that's newish to me. I mostly agree with her, but there are some glaring omissions and some frustrating biases. As far as I can tell, she's referenced ONE feminist of color throughout the whole book. And a big, giant, glaring red flag went up for me when she referenced Janice Raymond, a well-known anti-trans radical feminist. Ugh. The book was also written 20 years ago, and I think that concepts of gender have really exploded in that time. But I still feel like that's no excuse for her treatment of trans folk in the book as merely a psychologically interesting thought experiment.
In my class, there are several people who've never really thought about feminism before and I wish that this wasn't their first introduction. It's way too lofty and intellectual and coming from a white, middle-class approach.
That said, I do appreciate her 3 main lenses of gender model: androcentrism, biological essentialism and gender polarity. I think they are useful concepts for thinking about the way gender is structured in our culture.
This is the first reading for my Social Psychology of Gender class. I feel like I already knew to a large extent most of what she's positing - it's just her framework that's newish to me. I mostly agree with her, but there are some glaring omissions and some frustrating biases. As far as I can tell, she's referenced ONE feminist of color throughout the whole book. And a big, giant, glaring red flag went up for me when she referenced Janice Raymond, a well-known anti-trans radical feminist. Ugh. The book was also written 20 years ago, and I think that concepts of gender have really exploded in that time. But I still feel like that's no excuse for her treatment of trans folk in the book as merely a psychologically interesting thought experiment.
In my class, there are several people who've never really thought about feminism before and I wish that this wasn't their first introduction. It's way too lofty and intellectual and coming from a white, middle-class approach.
That said, I do appreciate her 3 main lenses of gender model: androcentrism, biological essentialism and gender polarity. I think they are useful concepts for thinking about the way gender is structured in our culture.
March 31, 2011
I read this book in 1992 at the recommendation of one of her relatives, a man with whom I worked at a local clinic. This book is among those titles I consider life-changing (and I had already read a number of books and research reports related to gender studies in college). It absolutely awakened me to the ways by which gender is socially assigned, developed and reinforced. I cannot recommend this book enough.
April 10, 2017
The subtitle of this book is “transforming the debate on sexual inequality”, but the author spends most of the book engaged in more of a pre-historical blog post than a serious discussion; and that’s too bad, because her basic idea of a Simone de Beauvoirian theory that gender roles, while informed by biology, are far more the result of culture; further, that gender roles themselves run along a continuum rather than a dichotomy; and further yet, that we can choose to view the world outside of the lenses of gender, are potentially very important.
Her basic theories uncovered a blatant weakness in much of early psychiatry and trait testing: an assumption that gender is bipolar, along a single line, even though the testing mechanisms used almost from the beginning of the field show that masculinity and femininity (assuming for the moment that they were valid measurements to begin with) can exist simultaneously in the same individual. Later, she expanded on this with her “lenses of gender” idea that for many things we are applying a gender-based lens to traits and actions that aren’t necessarily gender-based at all.
Her road to a psychological Damascus appears to follow the path similarly followed by Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical Damascus, that of being outside of traditional manhood or womanhood, but instead being a sort of third way not between them but regardless of them.
I was originally introduced to many of these concepts studying psychology at Cornell University, where the author taught previous to and during the writing of this book. While she started writing it a few years after I graduated, the concepts of androgyny and the lenses of gender were part of her course on the psychology of sex roles.
Unfortunately, she spends a large portion of her book arguing against the biology, even though she later argues in favor of accommodating it, part of the book arguing (successfully) that scientists can’t be trusted when they use their theories to take part in public policy debates, and the rest of the book arguing in favor of using her theory to argue for specific public policies, moving from desired results to theory, instead of the other way around.
In the first chapter, she goes into detail about how scientists, when researching for the purpose of affecting public policy, almost always pervert science away from the scientific method. Whether it’s the inferiority of blacks, the progressively lower IQ of succeeding waves of immigrants, or the biological dangers of educating women, a consensus of scientists cannot be trusted when those scientists are serving the greater purpose of promoting a desired government policy.
She uses no political labels except when she uses them incorrectly (promoting the myth of social Darwinism, for example), but makes a compelling case for keeping progressivism out of politics completely.
When she reaches modern science, it becomes unclear whether she’s complaining that evolutionary biologists are performing poor science, or whether they’re performing good science whose implications she disagrees with and thus should be criticized for that reason. Her main argument is that with technological advancement, we can transcend any ideas about gender that are based in biology. Once we needed to search for food constantly; now we store it and rarely go hungry. Once we easily died from infection even in non-fatal injuries; now we take pills and ointments to survive infection safely. Once, lacking wings, we were unable to fly; now we routinely hop into an airplane and soar among the clouds.
All of this is true, but none of it transcends biology. Even with all of our food abundance, we still grow up seeing unfamiliar things through the lenses of edibility, and much of our life is centered around the storing of food for future use. Our minds are even more infectocentric now than they were before we had antibiotics: even the most trivial of cuts must now be treated with rubbing alcohol or neosporin immediately, forgoing all other activities until the ritual is performed. And our sojourns through the air are filled with forced reminders that we are land-bound creatures who must act to save ourselves first the moment we experience any loss of pressure or water landing.
These technological advances do not negate our biology, nor even let us ignore it.
She is absolutely right that the limitations of biology can be easily transcended through technology. But they do not change reality. Certainly some sociobiologists have overstated the role of genetics in gender differences; just as certainly, anyone who says they don’t exist at all is even more guilty of scientific hedonism.
The big problem with this book is that it is marred by another polarization that is at least as strong in the author as gender polarization, and that which requires she look at the world through a schematic lens that filters out any way of looking at the world that involves trade-offs, compromise, or consequences.
Her solution for the difficulty of both having and raising a child and holding a full-time job is to (a) require paid pregnancy leave from all employers, (b) require universal child care, (c) pay child care workers several times what they currently make, because child care quality is low, and through her lens, the way to make quality higher is to throw more money at the problem, and (d) require flexible work schedules so that instead of hiring one person for a forty-hour week, employers would need to hire two or more people to do that forty hours of work, allowing women to work around the constraints of childcare.
What she does not discuss are the consequences of these solutions, which would include that the price of everything rises so much that no one could afford to work less than forty hours a week anyway.
Similarly, she includes in the androcentrism of modern society that self-defense law requires an immediate threat of danger. You can’t get out of a murder rap because your target beat you up yesterday and is likely to beat you up tomorrow, as an excuse for killing them today. This, she writes, discriminates against battered women, and so the immediacy requirement of self-defense law should be removed.
She provides no discussion of what this does to the thin veneer of civility that outlawing revenge and clan warfare has provided society.
She writes earlier in the book that the androcentrism of our culture privileges the individual (which is a masculine perspective) over the group (which is a feminine perspective), but both of her solutions would mean greater problems for society as a whole as well as for individuals within society. More precisely, every change is a trade-off of good and bad consequences, and there is no sense in this book that she recognizes that. This is most obvious when she attempts to remove gender from the equation by looking at another analogy, that of our culture’s “tall-centered social structure”:
The moral of the story is that she has no idea what other changes would occur in a society of short people, nor of why ladders need to be heavy in the first place. Ladders and hoses are heavy because they are a compromise between the ability to save lives (hold weight) and the ability of firefighters to use the equipment. If we could mandate stronger firefighters we could use heavier ladders and hoses and save more lives. Heavier hoses could deliver more water at higher pressure and be able to move further into the fire without damage. Heavier ladders could hold more firefighters, as well as firefighters with heavier protective suits and heavier equipment that would make them more effective at stopping fires and saving lives.
As our technology advances, we will in fact get ladders and hoses that are some combination of stronger and lighter. But mandating that now would mean more devastating fires and more lives lost. Her hypothetical society of short people would have different compromises to make, because they would most likely have shorter buildings and lighter people, but that compromise would still be there. Assuming that the physics of fire, of water as a fire-fighting tool, or of breaking into burning buildings doesn’t change in her hypothetical short society, fires would likely be more devastating, and cause a greater loss of lives than in our current society, because their trade-offs would necessarily have to favor lower-strength firefighters.
Similar trade-offs exist in her other solutions. It may be that the benefits of her policies are worth the costs, but she provides no sense of what they are, that she knows they exist, nor that alternative policies might also exist. They are, in her terminology, made invisible by her own political lenses.
For example, one of the major reasons that two people can’t choose to share the same work and each work fewer hours is that the regulatory costs for hiring employees go far beyond their hourly wage. Hiring two people to perform forty hours of work costs much more than hiring one person to perform the same work. The more we can reduce the regulatory costs of hiring individual workers so that the cost of hiring shared workers approximates the cost of hiring one worker to perform the same work, the greater the ability of employers to provide such flexible worksharing opportunities to employees.
Reducing government bureaucracy, because it benefits the group more than the individual, would seem to count as a feminine perspective. But the author’s political schema overpowers that.
Her basic theories uncovered a blatant weakness in much of early psychiatry and trait testing: an assumption that gender is bipolar, along a single line, even though the testing mechanisms used almost from the beginning of the field show that masculinity and femininity (assuming for the moment that they were valid measurements to begin with) can exist simultaneously in the same individual. Later, she expanded on this with her “lenses of gender” idea that for many things we are applying a gender-based lens to traits and actions that aren’t necessarily gender-based at all.
Her road to a psychological Damascus appears to follow the path similarly followed by Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical Damascus, that of being outside of traditional manhood or womanhood, but instead being a sort of third way not between them but regardless of them.
I was originally introduced to many of these concepts studying psychology at Cornell University, where the author taught previous to and during the writing of this book. While she started writing it a few years after I graduated, the concepts of androgyny and the lenses of gender were part of her course on the psychology of sex roles.
Unfortunately, she spends a large portion of her book arguing against the biology, even though she later argues in favor of accommodating it, part of the book arguing (successfully) that scientists can’t be trusted when they use their theories to take part in public policy debates, and the rest of the book arguing in favor of using her theory to argue for specific public policies, moving from desired results to theory, instead of the other way around.
In the first chapter, she goes into detail about how scientists, when researching for the purpose of affecting public policy, almost always pervert science away from the scientific method. Whether it’s the inferiority of blacks, the progressively lower IQ of succeeding waves of immigrants, or the biological dangers of educating women, a consensus of scientists cannot be trusted when those scientists are serving the greater purpose of promoting a desired government policy.
She uses no political labels except when she uses them incorrectly (promoting the myth of social Darwinism, for example), but makes a compelling case for keeping progressivism out of politics completely.
When she reaches modern science, it becomes unclear whether she’s complaining that evolutionary biologists are performing poor science, or whether they’re performing good science whose implications she disagrees with and thus should be criticized for that reason. Her main argument is that with technological advancement, we can transcend any ideas about gender that are based in biology. Once we needed to search for food constantly; now we store it and rarely go hungry. Once we easily died from infection even in non-fatal injuries; now we take pills and ointments to survive infection safely. Once, lacking wings, we were unable to fly; now we routinely hop into an airplane and soar among the clouds.
All of this is true, but none of it transcends biology. Even with all of our food abundance, we still grow up seeing unfamiliar things through the lenses of edibility, and much of our life is centered around the storing of food for future use. Our minds are even more infectocentric now than they were before we had antibiotics: even the most trivial of cuts must now be treated with rubbing alcohol or neosporin immediately, forgoing all other activities until the ritual is performed. And our sojourns through the air are filled with forced reminders that we are land-bound creatures who must act to save ourselves first the moment we experience any loss of pressure or water landing.
These technological advances do not negate our biology, nor even let us ignore it.
She is absolutely right that the limitations of biology can be easily transcended through technology. But they do not change reality. Certainly some sociobiologists have overstated the role of genetics in gender differences; just as certainly, anyone who says they don’t exist at all is even more guilty of scientific hedonism.
The big problem with this book is that it is marred by another polarization that is at least as strong in the author as gender polarization, and that which requires she look at the world through a schematic lens that filters out any way of looking at the world that involves trade-offs, compromise, or consequences.
Her solution for the difficulty of both having and raising a child and holding a full-time job is to (a) require paid pregnancy leave from all employers, (b) require universal child care, (c) pay child care workers several times what they currently make, because child care quality is low, and through her lens, the way to make quality higher is to throw more money at the problem, and (d) require flexible work schedules so that instead of hiring one person for a forty-hour week, employers would need to hire two or more people to do that forty hours of work, allowing women to work around the constraints of childcare.
What she does not discuss are the consequences of these solutions, which would include that the price of everything rises so much that no one could afford to work less than forty hours a week anyway.
Similarly, she includes in the androcentrism of modern society that self-defense law requires an immediate threat of danger. You can’t get out of a murder rap because your target beat you up yesterday and is likely to beat you up tomorrow, as an excuse for killing them today. This, she writes, discriminates against battered women, and so the immediacy requirement of self-defense law should be removed.
She provides no discussion of what this does to the thin veneer of civility that outlawing revenge and clan warfare has provided society.
She writes earlier in the book that the androcentrism of our culture privileges the individual (which is a masculine perspective) over the group (which is a feminine perspective), but both of her solutions would mean greater problems for society as a whole as well as for individuals within society. More precisely, every change is a trade-off of good and bad consequences, and there is no sense in this book that she recognizes that. This is most obvious when she attempts to remove gender from the equation by looking at another analogy, that of our culture’s “tall-centered social structure”:
Imagine a community of short people like myself. Given the argument sometimes made in U.S. society that short people cannot be firefighters because they are neither tall enough nor strong enough to do the job, the question arises: Would all the houses in this community of short people eventually burn down? Well, yes, if we short people had to use the heavy ladders and hoses designed by and for tall people. But no, if we (being as smart as short people are) could instead construct lighter ladders and hoses that both tall and short people could use. The moral here should be obvious: shortness isn’t the problem; the problem lies in forcing short people to function in a tall-centered social structure.
The moral of the story is that she has no idea what other changes would occur in a society of short people, nor of why ladders need to be heavy in the first place. Ladders and hoses are heavy because they are a compromise between the ability to save lives (hold weight) and the ability of firefighters to use the equipment. If we could mandate stronger firefighters we could use heavier ladders and hoses and save more lives. Heavier hoses could deliver more water at higher pressure and be able to move further into the fire without damage. Heavier ladders could hold more firefighters, as well as firefighters with heavier protective suits and heavier equipment that would make them more effective at stopping fires and saving lives.
As our technology advances, we will in fact get ladders and hoses that are some combination of stronger and lighter. But mandating that now would mean more devastating fires and more lives lost. Her hypothetical society of short people would have different compromises to make, because they would most likely have shorter buildings and lighter people, but that compromise would still be there. Assuming that the physics of fire, of water as a fire-fighting tool, or of breaking into burning buildings doesn’t change in her hypothetical short society, fires would likely be more devastating, and cause a greater loss of lives than in our current society, because their trade-offs would necessarily have to favor lower-strength firefighters.
Similar trade-offs exist in her other solutions. It may be that the benefits of her policies are worth the costs, but she provides no sense of what they are, that she knows they exist, nor that alternative policies might also exist. They are, in her terminology, made invisible by her own political lenses.
For example, one of the major reasons that two people can’t choose to share the same work and each work fewer hours is that the regulatory costs for hiring employees go far beyond their hourly wage. Hiring two people to perform forty hours of work costs much more than hiring one person to perform the same work. The more we can reduce the regulatory costs of hiring individual workers so that the cost of hiring shared workers approximates the cost of hiring one worker to perform the same work, the greater the ability of employers to provide such flexible worksharing opportunities to employees.
Reducing government bureaucracy, because it benefits the group more than the individual, would seem to count as a feminine perspective. But the author’s political schema overpowers that.
June 19, 2013
Being as I am, fundamentalist Christian, I approached this topic--and ultimately left the topic--with a great deal of cognitive dissonance. Not that that is a bad thing. I firmly believe that the worst intellectual evil one can perpetrate is to walk away from those things that create cognitive dissonance, clenching the eyes and refusing to entertain any opposing point of view. I remain fundamentalist Christian by choice, yet am quite aware of the overwhelming tendency of humans to deal with cognitive dissonance along one of four major paradigms. I think I am trying the 5th paradigm--actively acknowledging the state of dissonance and embracing the opportunity to refrain from minimizing the disequilibrium. I fully intend to come to the end of my life not knowing what I think about this subject. Some will say that this stance will cause me to remain part of the problem. I think not. I think rather this stance will cause me to be more cautious, more thoughtful, more deliberate as I engage in informed debate and intentional living.
June 13, 2012
this book was well thought out, well planned, well researched and well executed. instead of looking at male/female relations through the lenses of androcentrism, gender polarization, and patriarchy, this author set out (and succeeded) at looking at the lenses of androcentrism, gender polarization and patriarchy themselves. while this book was a little slow, it is a very important read for anyone looking at gender relations.
July 16, 2012
An excellent text on gender issues.
February 16, 2021
Труд Сандры Липсиц был читан-до в ближайший четверг (тот, что ещё только предстоит - ближе, однако не даром ведь прошло время в глаголе на "б" использовалось), таким образом, сохранившиеся впечатления, сколь позитивные следствия ни были бы обнаружены - обратились чередой газетных заголовков ко вторнику (будущему для четверга, названного "ближайшим"). Спасает разве что (вредная) привычка подчёркивать любой заинтересовавший оборот - карандашом либо курсором.
Время позволяет коснуться несравненно малого числа пометок, сугубо в рамках вступительных и заключительных глав; тема требует разработки, а не пустого рецензирования - к тому же, одно только название, не имеющей отношения к данному труду, книги привело ум в состояние художника, делающего необратимый набросок на полотне, одно прикосновение к которому стоило бы ему, в случае внезапного сомнения или устроившей западню на пути следования лени, головы.
Сандра Бем указывает, что нам необходимо научится смотреть не сквозь, а на линзы гендера. Для поверхностного понимания, чем оные являются, достаточно просто перечислить разновидности: андроцентризм (акцентуация мужского опыта), поляризация (культурное обязательство), био-эссенциализм (наследственность и органичность).
Однако взгляд на линзу не позволяет ли нам видеть, скажем, nothing but lenses? Иначе говоря, не теряется ли способность, по мере отслеживания швов в кукольном мире, воспринимать что-либо, кроме этих самых швов? К примеру, кукловоды, зрители, наполненность зала, специфика освещения, инвентарь, цена присутствия на спектакле, местоположение театра, репертуар - остаются результатом домысла.
Опыт диссоциации в этом случае может оказаться полезным, но речь всё-таки не о средствах, при помощи которых можно было бы деятельность линзы отследить (к слову, наделение этих самых "приборов" собственным, пусть даже искусственным, однако пущенным на самотёк, интеллектом открывает новую грань в теории).
С трудом однако, подвергается анализу одно из последних предложений в главе "На пути к утопии", именно: соотнесение понятий "человека" и "мужчины\женщины" - суть в том, что искажаемое толкование предполагает существование некоего "нечеловека", умозрительный эксперимент о коем может провести каждый, в то время как "женщина\мужчина" являются в принципе культурными установками (то бишь тот же эксперимент в отношении их не вышел бы за рамки трюизмов - в то же время, это суждение может оказаться результатом "вооружённого линзами" зрения).
Возможно (лампочка Эдисона-Ильича над головой), что Сандра Бем как раз-таки указывает на культурную ограниченность понятия "человек", в контексте чего разрешается и связь его с гендерною ролью.
Об ограничении человеческого потенциала (что неоспоримо):
- гендерная поляризация расширяет понимание феминности\маскулинности с таким рвением, что сами эти понятия вступают в конфликт со сходными интересами биологического эссенциализма (иначе говоря, половая принадлежность оказывается менее значительным показателем относительно личности, нежели поле и характер её деятельности);
- следующая из вышеозначенного карикатурность социального облика отдельных гендеров, а как следствие - пародийность системы социальных отношений (учитывая необоримость жажды масс к подражанию - пародия "перерастает саму себя", обращаясь в pastiche), рождающей желание не высмеять, обратившись к обществу с сатирой (в пустой надежде на вразумление), но разрушить, и общественность в данном контексте приобретает юридическое право именоваться "страдающей" от давления, оказываемого как со стороны тех, кто реконструирует линзы, так и тех, кто целенаправленно подрывает работу последних.
"На пути к нейтральности" затрагивает немаловажный момент: феминистское движение должно давать себе отчёт в том, в отношении представительниц какой культуры ею применяются те или иные, раскрывающие глаза на истинное положение вещей, придающие сил действовать вне соответствия с традиционной для их социальной реальности системой ценностей, меры; проще говоря, "гребёнка" не работает как для многовековой, вдохновившей орды чрезвычайно просвещённых умов, цивилизованности, так и для стихийно возникающего радикального движения - и то и другое рано или поздно подводит к стагнации в сфере интересов, ресурсов, задач.
Подводя итого тому, что не имело перед собой чётко поставленной задачи, возникает желание посетовать, например, что со времени публикации (2004) такие базовые вещи, как уравновешивание в глазах "республиканцев" (и законодательно, поскольку республиканцы ничего другого не разумеют) взглядов на службу в армии (наличие каковой в принципе должно быть пересмотрено, учитывая, как минимум, распространённость наёмных группировок, зачинателей "революций" XXI века) и процесс воспитания детей - не произошло.
Текущее же, пандемизированное, положение, по неизвестной причине, не рассматривается как возможность для пересмотра гендерных надстроек, но - экономических; можно предположить, что Great Reset, буде он "случится", приведёт к трансформации линз, созданию усовершенствованных копий, позволяющих смотреть на линзы гендера сквозь линзы прогресса, не говоря уже о линзах нескончаемой революции (насколько актуален пример Кубы, это вопрос).
Время позволяет коснуться несравненно малого числа пометок, сугубо в рамках вступительных и заключительных глав; тема требует разработки, а не пустого рецензирования - к тому же, одно только название, не имеющей отношения к данному труду, книги привело ум в состояние художника, делающего необратимый набросок на полотне, одно прикосновение к которому стоило бы ему, в случае внезапного сомнения или устроившей западню на пути следования лени, головы.
Сандра Бем указывает, что нам необходимо научится смотреть не сквозь, а на линзы гендера. Для поверхностного понимания, чем оные являются, достаточно просто перечислить разновидности: андроцентризм (акцентуация мужского опыта), поляризация (культурное обязательство), био-эссенциализм (наследственность и органичность).
Однако взгляд на линзу не позволяет ли нам видеть, скажем, nothing but lenses? Иначе говоря, не теряется ли способность, по мере отслеживания швов в кукольном мире, воспринимать что-либо, кроме этих самых швов? К примеру, кукловоды, зрители, наполненность зала, специфика освещения, инвентарь, цена присутствия на спектакле, местоположение театра, репертуар - остаются результатом домысла.
Опыт диссоциации в этом случае может оказаться полезным, но речь всё-таки не о средствах, при помощи которых можно было бы деятельность линзы отследить (к слову, наделение этих самых "приборов" собственным, пусть даже искусственным, однако пущенным на самотёк, интеллектом открывает новую грань в теории).
С трудом однако, подвергается анализу одно из последних предложений в главе "На пути к утопии", именно: соотнесение понятий "человека" и "мужчины\женщины" - суть в том, что искажаемое толкование предполагает существование некоего "нечеловека", умозрительный эксперимент о коем может провести каждый, в то время как "женщина\мужчина" являются в принципе культурными установками (то бишь тот же эксперимент в отношении их не вышел бы за рамки трюизмов - в то же время, это суждение может оказаться результатом "вооружённого линзами" зрения).
Возможно (лампочка Эдисона-Ильича над головой), что Сандра Бем как раз-таки указывает на культурную ограниченность понятия "человек", в контексте чего разрешается и связь его с гендерною ролью.
Об ограничении человеческого потенциала (что неоспоримо):
- гендерная поляризация расширяет понимание феминности\маскулинности с таким рвением, что сами эти понятия вступают в конфликт со сходными интересами биологического эссенциализма (иначе говоря, половая принадлежность оказывается менее значительным показателем относительно личности, нежели поле и характер её деятельности);
- следующая из вышеозначенного карикатурность социального облика отдельных гендеров, а как следствие - пародийность системы социальных отношений (учитывая необоримость жажды масс к подражанию - пародия "перерастает саму себя", обращаясь в pastiche), рождающей желание не высмеять, обратившись к обществу с сатирой (в пустой надежде на вразумление), но разрушить, и общественность в данном контексте приобретает юридическое право именоваться "страдающей" от давления, оказываемого как со стороны тех, кто реконструирует линзы, так и тех, кто целенаправленно подрывает работу последних.
"На пути к нейтральности" затрагивает немаловажный момент: феминистское движение должно давать себе отчёт в том, в отношении представительниц какой культуры ею применяются те или иные, раскрывающие глаза на истинное положение вещей, придающие сил действовать вне соответствия с традиционной для их социальной реальности системой ценностей, меры; проще говоря, "гребёнка" не работает как для многовековой, вдохновившей орды чрезвычайно просвещённых умов, цивилизованности, так и для стихийно возникающего радикального движения - и то и другое рано или поздно подводит к стагнации в сфере интересов, ресурсов, задач.
Подводя итого тому, что не имело перед собой чётко поставленной задачи, возникает желание посетовать, например, что со времени публикации (2004) такие базовые вещи, как уравновешивание в глазах "республиканцев" (и законодательно, поскольку республиканцы ничего другого не разумеют) взглядов на службу в армии (наличие каковой в принципе должно быть пересмотрено, учитывая, как минимум, распространённость наёмных группировок, зачинателей "революций" XXI века) и процесс воспитания детей - не произошло.
Текущее же, пандемизированное, положение, по неизвестной причине, не рассматривается как возможность для пересмотра гендерных надстроек, но - экономических; можно предположить, что Great Reset, буде он "случится", приведёт к трансформации линз, созданию усовершенствованных копий, позволяющих смотреть на линзы гендера сквозь линзы прогресса, не говоря уже о линзах нескончаемой революции (насколько актуален пример Кубы, это вопрос).
September 8, 2008
The subtitle says it all...
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