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REVIEW

DAY 2- Thursday, May 11: An Introduction To Main Course Themes: The Social Construction of Gender: Challenging the Sex/Gender Binary

DAY 3- Tuesday, May 16: The Social Construction of Gender Continued: Challenging Biological Determinism; An Introduction to Various Feminist Theories & Approaches; The Characteristics of First & Second Wave Feminism

DAY 4- Thursday, May 18: Debates in Various Feminist Theories & Approaches; Characteristics of Third & Fourth Wave Feminism

DAY 5- Tuesday, May 23: The History and Context of Women’s Movements and Various Waves of Feminism in Canada; Gender, Racism, and Racialization

Different Feminist Perspectives & Approaches from First and Second Wave Feminism:

Liberal Feminism First Wave- (late 18^th Century; 19^th Century/ early 20^th Century🡪)
Marxist and Socialist Feminism First Wave- (late 18^th Century; 19^th Century/ early 20^th Century)🡪
Radical Feminism Second Wave (1960s to 1990s) 🡪
Ecofeminism Second Wave (1960s to 1990s) 🡪
Psychoanalytic Feminism (1970s 🡪)

Different Feminist Perspectives & Approaches from Third and Fourth Wave Feminism (1990s to 2012 or present)

Post-Structural Feminism
(Postmodern Feminism is very similar)
Queer Theory (also connects to Post-Structuralism)
Black Feminism
Postcolonial Feminism (also connects to Post-Structuralism)
Indigenous Feminisms
Psychoanalytic Feminism (also connects to Post-Structuralism)

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“Interiorizing the unconscious and the whole psychic life, the very language of psychoanalysis suggests that the drama of the individual unfolds within him…But a life is a relation to the world, and the individual defines himself by making his own choices through the world about him.” (Simone de Beauvoir, 1989, p. 75)

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THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FEMINISM

Screening: “Psychoanalysis and Feminism” by PHILO-notes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Ck7FofXr8

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KEY QUESTIONS

Is one born or does one become a woman?
In what ways is psychoanalysis viewed as helpful or harmful to the feminist cause?
Can the subject subvert the very thing that has animated its subjectivity?

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Psychoanalysis is a theoretical framework, a clinical therapeutic method and a school of thought in psychology that proposes both an explanation and a solution for maladaptive behaviours and mental disorders.

Psychoanalysis aims to explain psychological development through the foundational concept that humans have innate, unconscious instincts and drives that are affected through processes of socialization. �
Freud contended that mental problems arise when repressed, infantile desires find maladaptive forms of expression in later life.

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SEXUAL DIFFERENCE

Some feminists have viewed psychoanalysis as an important framework through which to understand how gender and sexual difference are constructed in the unconscious, while others have condemned psychoanalysis as a tool of the patriarchy that enforces oppressive relations between the sexes and imposes localized, bourgeois values and norms on to the rest of society.

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Second wave feminism was marked by a push for social and systemic change through the recognition of womanhood as a category of social experience and a site of oppression.

The idea that women shared common experiences of oppression under patriarchal domination underscored feminist theoretical positions during this time.

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IS ONE BORN OR DOES ONE BECOME A WOMAN?

Early female psychoanalysts like Karen Horney (1932, 1933) and Helene Deutsch (1925, 1943, 1945) theorized womanhood as essentially different from but equal to manhood.

As feminist ideals shifted to account for the differences between women along the lines of race, class, gender identity and sexuality, bio-essentialist theories of gender and sexuality were interrogated by social constructivist logics

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THE ESSENTIAL WOMAN

“Most of Karen Horney’s important references to the social subordination of women are rendered pointless by this implicit and explicit search for the essential woman…there is nothing neither true nor fake but thinking makes it so, and if patriarchal thought is dominant then femininity will reflect that system: 'nature' is not exempt from its representation in mental life” (Juliet Mitchell, 1975, p. 128).

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The tremendous advance accomplished by psychoanalysis over psychophysiology lies in the view that no factor becomes involved in the psychic life without having taken on human significance; it is not the body-object described by biologists that actually exists, but the body as lived in by the subject. Woman is a female to the extent that she feels herself as such…It is not nature that defines woman; it is she who defines herself by dealing with nature on her own account in her emotional life. (Simone de Beauvoir, 1949, p. 65)

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Patriarchal violence is imbricated with heterosexist, white supremacist, colonial and capitalist violence, and womanhood has many expressions at intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality.

Colonial capitalist patriarchy created and enforced the gender binary along bio-essentialist lines.

To weaponize a binary understanding of gender against women who are different from you is to collude with these oppressive forces.

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is the gender binary biologically true?

This is the wrong question to ask. Instead, ask:

What is at stake for me in accepting that it is not? Does the idea that trans people exist, or that not all women have vaginas, threaten your sense of identity, or understanding of the world?

Sit with that uncertainty and process it so that you don’t project it onto people who are more marginalized than you.

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HOW IS PSYCHOANALYSIS HELPFUL AND/OR HARMFUL TO FEMINISM?�

Freud’s theory contended that culture informs psychology, and distinguishes between biological and social factors, while Jones and Horney argued that one’s biological gender determines their psychology.

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JULIET MITCHELL VS. RADICAL FEMINISM

Radical feminists like Germaine Greer, Shulamith Firestone and Kate Millett were among those who saw psychoanalysis as part of a system of patriarchal domination that contributes to women’s oppression in the ways that it assumes women’s natural inferiority, and asserts sexist beliefs as scientific truths.

In Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Juliet Mitchell argues against these positions, asserting that any “rejection of psychoanalysis and Freud’s work is fatal for feminism” (Mitchell, 1974, p. xv).

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Juliet Mitchell sees psychoanalysis as a tool through which patriarchal domination can be deconstructed, while her antagonists view psychoanalysis as a discursive conduit that is a product of patriarchal domination, and that serves to uphold and maintain it.

Mitchell argues that psychoanalysis is a useful framework through which to understand and interrogate the role of the unconscious in sexual difference .

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CAN THE SUBJECT SUBVERT THAT WHICH ANIMATES ITS SUBJECTIVITY? �

What is the role of psychoanalysis in the question of the relationship between language and subjectivity?

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Can feminism ever overcome patriarchal rule, or will it adapt to accept reform that may alter, but will never dismantle the patriarchal system?

Julia Kristeva: “At the moment, this is all there is, and that's not bad. But will there be more? A different relationship of the subject to discourse, to power? Will the eternal frustration of the hysteric in relation to discourse oblige the latter to reconstruct itself? Will it give rise to unrest in everybody, male or female? Or will it remain a cry outside time, like the great mass movements that break up the old system, but have no problem in submitting to the demands of order, as long as it is a new order?” (Moi, 1986)

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GENDER PERFORMATIVITY

Judith Butler’s Theory of Gender Performativity takes up the question of the subject’s relationship to discursive power by positing the idea that gender is a discursive script through which people become gendered subjects.

We are not only subjected to the social concept of binary gender as we develop, but we are born into these gendered scripts to the extent that they become deeply entangled with our identities and materialities, and shape our embodiment.

This theory positions gender as a socially constructed, albeit largely unconscious, performance.

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In the theory of gender performativity, Butler contends that one becomes a woman through discourse and its social and psychic reiteration, which differs from Beauvoir, who argues that one becomes a woman through her choices.

This highlights a key difference between Postmodern Feminism and Liberal Feminism

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Ideas like those of Butler, Beauvoir and Kristeva prompt us to question the extent to which our identities are authentic, natural and autonomous.

Is there any part of your identity that is not informed by culture?

How can we overcome or dismantle the oppressive structures that influence our identities if our identities are born of these very structures?

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FOR DISCUSSION

Some have suggested that feminism requires the denunciation of all associations to the ‘trappings’ of femininity, as dictated by patriarchal, binary gender norms.

This idea implies that wearing feminine clothing or wearing high heels is a collusion with your own oppression (objectifying oneself)

However, in a patriarchal system, femininity is positioned in opposition to masculinity, as less important, less valuable and less serious. Does denouncing femininity reproduce patriarchal violence?

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CAN A FEMINIST WEAR PINK?

Do you think it is feminist to denounce traditional expressions of femininity?

Or is it feminist to embrace that which as been undervalued and degraded under patriarchy?

Do you think expressions of femininity can be a form of feminist resistance?

Do cultural signifiers of femininity (heels, makeup, long nails) always indicate submission to masculinity?

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