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

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

[maymaym.livejournal.com]

So, yeah, pegging might be kinky to your average person (and certainly isn't vanilla). […]your example could be BDSM if the couple in question were engaged in a power-exchange relationship- BDSM can be -and frequently is- loving and tender) And actually lots of the things I do aren't bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism, dominance or submission (though sometimes they're done in a D/s context), but they're definitely still kinky.

I think you bring up a good point here. In trying to tease out what's "kinky" and what's BDSM, your statement makes me ask, if there are things that you do that aren't bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism, dominance, or submission, but they are still kinky, would you say that something that isn't vanilla can be kinky but may not be BDSM? If so, and if vanilla is the opposite of kinky as you imply, then how is it that "kink" and "BDSM" can be identical things? And following from that, would you consider the two terms interchangeable if the concepts they contain, so to speak, are different?

Also, I think that lots of other kink practices don't necessarily lead to people identifying as kinky, or at least to seeking out other kinky people to hang out with. I mean, there are swingers communities, which is sort of a necessity of the practice, and people might see swinging as kinky even if the actual sex is pretty vanilla. But I don't know that there are munches and the like for people who are into X sexual practice (pegging, fisting, watersports, whatever). Which I suppose is part of the whole point of KinkForAll...

Yeah, I think that's certainly one of the many great things about a KinkForAll event, and also a very succinct explanation of what you can use a KinkForAll event for. I'm not sure it's the whole point, but it can be part of the point, if you want to make it that. :)

Since KinkForAll is an event that you get to bring what you want to, in terms of topics to discuss or presentations to give or even books to give away (there was a small free book swap at KinkForAll New York City 2, which was cool), do you think your experience of the event would be different if you understood "kink" solely to mean power exchange? If so, how would your experience be different if you thought of "kink" differently?

And thank you (and rax and everyone else for making me think about these questions.

Yeah, this was a fantastic post, and I second this thanks. I really enjoyed your presentation at KFABOS, Rax, and it's inspiring to see how much awesome discussion it's spawned here!