My KFA talk: Basic Gender Theory and Why You Should Care

[rax]

So my goal in giving this talk was to get through a coherent arc explaining gender theory and why you should care in 12 minutes and then have time for discussion. (KFA time slots are 20 minutes long.) I left out roughly a zillion things, which is OK, because that was sort of the point; I also think I actually did a good job, and got people thinking, and sparked interesting discussion, and hopefully encouraged people to do some further reading and/or conversing.

In giving the talk, I set myself the challenge of not using the words "discourse," "problematic," or "deconstruct." Obviously (or at least obviously if you talk to me a lot) this is not because I think those words have no value; I find them important in how I understand the world around me and if anything overuse them. Arguably, though, theorists and genderheads as a whole if anything overuse them, and it's something people have explicitly said turns them off to thinking about theory at all, and so I figured in a basic brief talk, I should avoid them. Another word I've been told is a major turn-off, although I didn't explicitly set out not to use it in this talk, is "oppression;" I've as a result been trying to think twice before using it. Unlike the others, which generally have less loaded (if also less usefully loaded) synonyms, not using "oppression" makes me nervous for calling-a-spade-a-spade issues. I'm torn, and I figure "thinking about it" is the right place for now.

You can watch the presentation video by clicking on this link. I'd embed it but I'm pretty sure LJ won't let me do that due to the recent security issue; just in case, here it is:

Gender Theory and Why You Should Care from maymay on Vimeo.

I'd really love to know what people think. I'd especially love to hear from people about what you think the most important things missing are; I have some thoughts but I want to hear other perspectives before I share them all. A bit of explanation (not that it necessarily negates potential criticism) --- I wasn't sure how to introduce myself because I wanted to avoid using identity labels but also wanted to express that it was worth spending twenty minutes listening to me talk about this topic. In general (and I blame circuit_four in part for this, as well as the whole ##crawl-offtopic gang) I've been trying to hold both "identity affiliations are powerful" and "identity affiliations reinforce things I don't like" in my head at the same time lately. It takes a lot of energy, but they do interesting things when put in the same place; I think that the end of this talk is one of them. If you have suggestions for things I should go read by other people who have been holding those ideas in their head together for much longer than I have, I'd love them; in particular I recently read Covering by Kenji Yoshino (Amazon link) and while he doesn't focus on that duality, he does touch on it. Really, though, that book should be its own post...

Anyway, I'd love criticism, and I'm also in a mood where I could really go for any praise you've got lying around, too. :)

Comments

[tasha18.livejournal.com]

I definitely don't know enough about gender theory to coment on what you left out, but I enjoyed your presentation and thought your delivery was clear, informative and engaging. I was actually thinking about these kinds of things last week in my family therapy class because this girl mentioned wanting to do a paper on gender reassignment surgery . She seemed to be in favor of the standard of care that said you had to have two letters from a psychotherapist before you could go through the surgery. Again, I don't know enough about this issue, but immediately I started thinking about whether imposing those requirements was an example of the medical community exercising authority over people's lives when they shouldn't. I also related to your discussion of how group membership is tied up with normalization; as I mentioned to you, part of why I feel abnormal as a blind person is because I don't fit into the typical blind box. When sighted people don't get you, and blind people judge you, you're kind of screwed. Anyway, thanks for posting this.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I am of the opinion that yes, those requirements are an example of the medical community exercising authority where it shouldn't. It's difficult, because I can understand why one would not want to provide gender reassignment surgery to someone just for showing up at the door with $20K and asking (or, in a world where insurance covered transition expenses, just for asking); the current system, though, is really broken for people who identify outside of gender binaries and even for people who are more "traditionally trans" can impose a bunch of hardships. I guess for me it comes down to: Why does a therapist who read a couple of books know better than me what I'd like in my pants? :)

The best argument in favor of letters I've heard is "it's important to make sure the person is capable of making that sort of decision." This still places so much power in the hands of someone else though... I don't know.

Also as an aside the name "Gender reassignment surgery" always confuses me (although I think it is in fact the current term in use). It sounds like something that should be done by a neurosurgeon, an acting coach, and a priest. (Walk into a bar....)

[bossgoji.livejournal.com]

I am once again struck by how staggeringly dumb this all makes me feel.

[sprrwhwk.livejournal.com]

It's a good talk. The introduction seemed like an effective ice-breaker. :-) I never got around to Foucalt when I took the sexuality and gender identity class, and this suggests I should at least read the first bit before I sell my copy.

If we can't make enough categories for everybody to feel comfortable... what do we do?

[rax.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what we do. I think people brains are wired to categorize. I think there are a zillion positive uses for this wiring. Lately I've been trying to see if it's possible just to not quite as much categorize myself. I'd love to hear more answers to this question.

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

I really don't know what to make of this. It's like fish discussing water.

[scwizard.livejournal.com]

Good talk, a very nice introduction. It makes me want to read about the subject more.

[scwizard.livejournal.com]

Do you think that employers should be allowed to fire people for how they present themselves?

If you think of a job like a waiter, a waiter can certainly be fired for presenting himself as a slob, in terms of hairstyle and clothes, because it makes the customers uncomfortable. So why shouldn't a employer be allowed to fire a waiter for presenting himself as "gay"? After all it makes (some of) the customers uncomfortable.

Can you think of a reason better than "he can't help the fact that he presents himself as gay"?

[probabilistic.livejournal.com]

So tell us, what DOES come after polyamorous marriage? :-P

[scwizard.livejournal.com]

Well I've heard some right wing folks say that at this rate eventually people will be able to marry minors and animals.

However I don't think that's true, considering that neither minors nor animals can sign contracts.

[rax.livejournal.com]

In general? I don't know yet. :) Specifically to marriage? Ideally a breakdown into more specific and flexible contracts, but more likely I expect some sort of way of constructing semi-arbitrary family groups with overlaps between marriages.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Robo-fuckers. *grin*

[scwizard.livejournal.com]

I know that some otaku would like to be able to marry fictional characters...

[q10.livejournal.com]

this is one of the more accessible general audience presentations of ‘ ____ theory’ that i've seen ever. i'm sure you miss some things, and there are little stylistic details, but overall it's pretty awesome.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Nifty! I laughed at the presentation even without the benefit of audience synchrony, particularly at the first line and the "not in my cat ears, but in my brain" line. For praise: You do seem to have a very good speaking voice, the presentation flowed smoothly without awkward pauses, you have a laudable lack of verbal tics ("um", "like", "you know"...), and as far as I could tell the audience remained engaged throughout.

The main criticism coming to mind is that there was a bit too much name-dropping, when instead you could have given the most significant concepts without citing their originators. Doing so would be deeply unfair in an academic context, but this wasn't such a context. I don't know for sure, but I do think that giving such references during a presentation disrupts its flow and makes it seem less accessible.

In giving the talk, I set myself the challenge of not using the words "discourse," "problematic," or "deconstruct."

Here's a standard I often apply to myself: If I cannot rephrase a point using different terminology, then I do not understand the point well enough to argue it. There are contexts in which this standard fails (what else am I going to call wave number, or angular frequency?), but these are always the contexts of professional discourse. (Heh.) The standard is a useful counterbalance to the tendency to rely too heavily on technical terms.

"Oppression" is a different case than the other words. It's no longer a case of when it's appropriate to use specialized language, but a case of whether or not it will be perceived as an exaggeration.

"Wait 'til you see what we do after that!"

...Marriage to a corporation! They count as people, after all. And mergers might as well be marriages, already. :P

[rax.livejournal.com]

Oh wow marriage to a corporation that's totally what comes next, you're right.

As far as the name-dropping goes... I think you're right. I just couldn't bring myself to not cite my sources; it feels dirty-plagiaristic, and it doesn't give people the tools to go look things up. But it's possible that it would be better to just hand out little strips of paper with book citations at the end saying "If you would like to read more about these ideas, here are the texts I used to assemble these ideas" and leave it at that. I may try that at some point in the future. Thank you for calling it to my attention. :)

(Actually, even in an academic context, when I gave the talk at MIT and pulled out printed papers and started citing them directly, everyone was sort of surprised; when I cited one of Roberts's footnotes, she said "Even my mother doesn't read those!" So maybe I am overcorrecting in one direction.)

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

Oh, and, thanks for wearing the cat ears during the presentation. That made my day. :)

[rax.livejournal.com]

Given the ability to, how could I not? =^.^= It's always fun to have an excuse to have cat ears.

[iainuki.livejournal.com]

In giving the talk, I set myself the challenge of not using the words "discourse," "problematic," or "deconstruct."

I think this is a great exercise. I use those words myself some, but they always make me nervous because aside from their denotations they carry some unuseful connotations.

I liked your presentation, but then I would. I suspect we will always differ on Foucault, though :).

[blushingflower.livejournal.com]

That was really interesting.

I was a little concerned when you brought up Foucalt that maybe you were being a little too academic, but it seems that your audience knew what you were on about. I'm not familiar with the demographics of who attends Kink For All, I know that the DC BDSM community tends to be fairly well-educated but not necessarily in terms of things like social theory, so alienating the audience is of course a concern when having these conversations.

I really don't think that 20 minutes is any where near enough time to have anything close to a good discussion about this topic, or even a really thorough introduction. But I think that given the time constraints you did a pretty good job of staying on topic and being interesting. I'm not sure that you actually answered the question of why I should care about gender theory, but I'm also not sure that anyone in the room didn't already care about gender theory at least a little bit.

The transition from "a person who does X" to "an X-ual" is a really interesting one, and on the one hand my first thought was "so I'm a bad person instead of a person who does bad things, and the former is far less redeemable than the latter" but then the idea that it's an immutable identity becomes interesting. And also gets into "love the sinner, hate the sin" and certain churches' teachings that it's ok to be gay, it's just not ok to have gay sex, which is highly problematic. And as a queer, kinky, poly person, I want the right to act on those desires/identities, not merely to have them.

And you're right you can't legislate (which is the word you want instead of "legalize") people's attitudes. You can say "you have to give transpeople jobs and places to pee", you can't say "you aren't allowed to stare at a transwoman on the Metro".

What are we going to do once we get plural marriage?

[eredien]

I'm not sure that you actually answered the question of why I should care about gender theory.

If I had one critique of your talk, it would be that you might want to concentrate on this a little bit more next time.

I am not sure if I agree that citing people's names in your talk is a turnoff for your audience and/or disrupts the flow of the talk, but I'm an academic; of course I would already have processes in my head for having that be a "normal" thing. But that seems to be a concern that a lot of others are having so you may want to address it. I think the "sheet of paper with references" is a good idea.

And as a queer, kinky, poly person, I want the right to act on those desires/identities, not merely to have them.

I totally suggest you read "Covering," if you haven't already. It talks about how the courts are generally interpreting this idea of "the right to take action based on identity" vs. "the right to have an identity."

Do you think KinkForAll audiences are specifically interested in BDSM? Why?

[maymaym.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with the demographics of who attends Kink For All, I know that the DC BDSM community tends to be fairly well-educated but not necessarily in terms of things like social theory, so alienating the audience is of course a concern when having these conversations.

BDSM could certainly be discussed at KinkForAll events, but can you tell me why you'd be concerned about alienating an audience? You make a reference specifically to the DC BDSM community. Do you believe the BDSM community is the audience that would be present at a KinkForAll event, as opposed to, say, a group of gender studies student who like to think about sexuality but not engage in BDSM activities?

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

This was a neat presentation and a very cool comments thread. Brainmeats are still slowly absorbing the actual content.

[bookofjude.livejournal.com]

That was great! First of all, I have to agree with the other commenter up there who said you have a great speaking voice. You do! It's really nice to listen to.

I have to agree that 'intrinsic' or 'immutable' sexuality certainly isn't the way to look at it--neither is 'born with it' or 'decided to do it', because really, why does it matter? If someone suddenly decided they wanted to be gay, I don't think there should be anything to stop them, nor should gender discrimination laws suddenly not apply to them. Likewise, were this a cyberpunk novel, I don't think that racial discrimination laws shouldn't apply to someone just because they used cybernetics to change their skin colour.

I'll need to re-watch later, though, when my Internet isn't running slow and making it buffer every ten or so seconds.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I agree that none of the "born with it," "decided to do it," &c. models are perfect, if only because different people could get to the same place different ways and the path (usually, I'm not comfortable saying always without thinking really hard about it) shouldn't matter.