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

[scwizard.livejournal.com]

That's not a very clear bright line. Take for instance clothes, some religious groups require people to dress a certain way (iirc), so do you believe that if should be illegal to fire someone for dressing a certain way, but not if they're doing it for religious reasons. Or should companies not be allowed to enforce dress codes, or is dressing a certain way expressing yourself too strongly, and thus companies should be allowed to enforce dress codes in all cases.

As for the second paragraph, it certainly sounds like a good reason to me, but legally how do we distinguish between mannerisms that we can legitimately be made uncomfortable by, and ones that we can't?

[rax.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's not a very clear bright line; I do think it's better than "intrinsic" versus "extrinsic" which is the current standard as I understand it. Ideally I think that the level of dress code and level of enforcement should depend on the necessity of the dress code and the necessity of specificity; those are easy words to say and hard to actually pin down.

I'm going to have to plead "not actually a lawyer" on this one, but I'd definitely recommend Kenji Yoshino's work if you're interested in more on this. That's where I'm crudely distilling most of my arguments here from.

[friode.livejournal.com]

Dress codes also have interesting interactions with accommodating people with faceblindness (which is a hidden disability), which as far as I know is something that hasn't yet been explored sufficiently by society.