Language: the Technology of Gendering Ourselves

Our relationship with the technology of language

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Over the past few weeks in class I’ve noticed that most of our discussions have centered on the use of language. The class that I’m specifically thinking about was where we were given the task of assigning a genre to the novel A Handmaid’s Tale. At the end of class we concluded that assigning a genre novel made us think of the novel differently. Applying this concept to gender, I questioned whether the structure of the current language we use to discuss gender, the technology of language, is our dictation of gender or gender dictating ourselves. It seemed to me that rather then us defining these categories, female, male, transgender, etc, they were dictating how we must act in order to use them to define ourselves. To use an analogy, it seems as though rather than making the clothes fit us, we are re-making ourselves to fit the clothes.

For example, I imagine when the creators of Watchmen thought of female superhero characters for the novel they looked to past representations of female superheroes. From these characters they derived how Ms. Jupiter should behave and what she should look like. They molded the character around the prescribed script for the words “female superheroes”. The allowed the word “female” to gender the word “superhero”, rather than taking the opportunity to redefine this concept.

Wonder Woman -> Jean Grey of X-Men ->Silk Spectre

By doing this instead of creating female superheroes, they create super women, not to be confused with superwomen. The difference here is that super women are hyperboles of femininity.

In a way, because the precedent had been set as to what a female superhero should be, these characters can only gain legitimacy has characters female superheroes by perpetuating these exaggerations of representation. This can be similarly applied to the female bodybuilders that I wrote about in my last paper that must employ exaggerated representations of femininity in order to legitimize their use of the word “female” in identifying as bodybuilders.

Female Bodybuilders 1 Female Bodybuilders 2

Rather than being bodybuilders who just happen to be female, they allow the word “female” to gender their bodybuilding.

This is where the conflict arises many times when we try to think about our relationship with gender and technology. Because the connotation and history of these words have been engrained in us, we find ourselves molding our thinking to fit the language. Rethinking what exactly these words, woman, man, masculine, feminine, etc, mean and the weight they hold in our speculations about gender should be where we take this technology. Simply put, we should be reforming the technology of language to fit our experience. We should be making the clothes fit us.

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One Response

Laura Blankenship permalink*

April 7, 2009

It might be interesting just to focus on the superheroes as that seems the most intriguing idea, the distinction between super women and superwomen. There’s a lot of language around this idea that might be interesting to explore—super mom, super woman as someone who does it all or has it all, super model—what do these mean and why are they only used for women? Superman is a hero, but not superwoman. What are our expectations of these superwomen? You suggest that it’s to look super feminine. That, to me is an intriguing idea that could be pursued further.

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A multi-disciplinary course taught by Anne Dalke and Laura Blankenship

Language: the Technology of Gendering Ourselves

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