Midterm 1 Review

Question 1

3 Feminisms

Answer 1

▪ feminism: a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression (bell hooks)
▪ feminism: a social justice movement for gender equity and human liberation (Baumgartner and Richards)
▪ feminism: “at its core includes both theory and practice to end sexism and other systems of oppression, is rooted in social justice, and demands social change” (Bromley)

Question 2

WGS as an Epistemological Project

Answer 2

(Epistemology: investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion): Experiences of women and girls have not been systematically addressed in other scholarly disciplines – why have women been excluded from knowledge/being creators of knowledge?

Question 3

Socially Acceptable Manhood/Womanhood

Answer 3

Not encoded in our genes, comes from the stories that our cultures tell us about what is acceptable/normal and what’s not

Question 4

Social Justice Movements (Bromley)

Answer 4

Peace movement, Civil rights, Indian/Native Rights, Gay/Lesbian Rights

Question 5

Achievement of Women’s Movement

Answer 5

Pay equity, recognition of unpaid work as real work, affirmative action policies, freedom from workplace sexual harassment, criminalizing rape in marriage, women’s rights to education & shared responsibility for parenting

Question 6

Dualism

Answer 6

1. ) Mutually Exclusive
2. ) Oppositional
3. ) Hierarchical

Question 7

Relationship between Representation and Lived Experience

Answer 7

What do these “largely imagine” Indians have to do with the lived experience of Indian women, how does the narrative of the fantasy princess hold up/relate?

Question 8

Social Pathology (Bordo)

Answer 8

Refers to both aspects of social structures & behaviours and values attributed to particular social categories – role cultural images play in women’s problems with body image.

Question 9

Narrative and Counter-Narrative (Valaskakis)

Answer 9

Narrative have been voiced by others (ex: Indian Princess), essentially the representation of Indians while counter narrative is their own telling or the opposite of the narrative (lived experience) based more off historical fact and personal account,

Question 10

Social Imaginary

Answer 10

Our understanding of society is not only based off truths but how we imagine things to be, ex.: John Smith’s is an imagined story of how he perceived things to happen. Pocohontas’s social imaginary is monolithic, a representation rooted in ambiguous, sexualized fantasies that appropriate & reconstruct her indian identity. (Her real story is erased and romanticized by John Smith)

Question 11

Language as a Representational System

Answer 11

Language is a very important toolbar in communications, it reproduces ideas about gender and shapes how we think and define ourselves. Language is usually patriarchal: Men > Women.

Question 12

Richardson’s 6 Propositions

Answer 12

1. ) In rules of Language, women are not autonomous, they are tied to and dependent on men as seen through the pseudogeneric man that “man” or “he” represents humanity when really it just represents men
2. ) Use of pronouns to represent/tied to characteristics and professions such as nurses, teachers as she and doctors and engineers as he
3. ) Many more sexual terms to reference women (multiple synonyms for prostitute) than there is men because women are more sexually referenced
4. ) Women are defined by their relationship to men and men by their relationship to the world
5. ) Use of neutral words & how they gain negative connotations when referencing women (pejoration) but regain neutrality to reference men (amelioration)
6. ) Women are seen as immature/incompetent with the widespread use of girl, when boy is only used to talk down to someone

Question 13

Pseudo generic Man

Answer 13

Appears to be generic but isn’t actually: he/man used as a generic term for humanity when it is actually interpreted by most as referring only to men.

Question 14

Pejoration

Answer 14

The acquiring of obscene or debased connotation (Richardson)

Question 15

Amelioration

Answer 15

The re acquiring of a neutral or positive connotation (Richardson)

Question 16

Gender as Polar (Feinberg)

Answer 16

Feminine & Masculine are two polar opposites, you can only be one or the other

Question 17

Gender as Circular (Feinberg)

Answer 17

A spectrum; women & men can vary from feminine to androgynous to masculine forming a circle. A circle has room to explore, offers freedom for movement if you wish

Question 18

Mainstream Gender Theory (Feinberg)

Answer 18

The ‘gender theory’ I learned in school and at home, in books and at the movies was very simple: There are men and women, men are masculine and women are feminine, end of story.

Question 19

Gender Freedom

Answer 19

The right of each individual to express their gender in any way they choose whether feminine, masculine, androgynous or any point on the spectrum between.

Question 20

Sperm/Egg Metaphors

Answer 20

1. ) Egg is large and passive, sperm is small, streamlined and active
2. ) Egg as sleeping beauty
3. ) Sperm as the key and Egg like the keyhole and Sperm is inserted into the egg like we were created for that

Question 21

Heterosexual Matrix

Answer 21

an interpretive system that ties together sex, gender and sexuality

Question 22

Compulsory Heterosexuality

Answer 22

refers to the ways that, within heteronormative contexts, opposite-sex sexual activity and attraction is promoted, encouraged, and enforced. Feminist scholars including Adrienne Rich and Judith Butler argue that heterosexuality issocially constructed. The heterosexual matrix is a cultural apparatus that maintains compulsory heterosexuality.

Question 23

Biological Determinism

Answer 23

femininity and masculinity (that is, gender) are products of nature (that is, biology), also called essentialism
Model doesn’t have room for change, suggests that differences between men/women are natural, unchanging and normal

Question 24

“One is not born but rather becomes a woman”

Answer 24

Simone de Beauvoir: femininity does not arise from differences in bio/psych intellect but is a construction of civilization.
→ Biology does not determine what makes a woman a woman, she learns her role
Heteronormativity

Question 25

Total Situation of Art Making

Answer 25

Art is made regarding the development of the artist and in the nature and quality of the work of art itself & how it occurs in a social situation. These are integral elements of social structure mediated and determined by specific and definable social institutions (art academies, systems of patronage, mythologies of the divine creator.)

Question 26

Institutional Exclusions

Answer 26

Expectations of women & aristocrats left them no time to devote themselves to art, there were less opportunities and training/experience for women. Art is a “social institution” in order to be great at art society must provide equal opportunities, it was/is institutionally impossible for women to be great artists, the fault is society’s not womens.

Question 27

Critique of the Notion of Genius

Answer 27

all these famous artists for the “rubric” of what is considered to be great art, Genius is thought of as an atemporal and mysterious power somehow embedded in great art, it is thought of innate and present at birth. Studies of children (like Piaget) show genius as a dynamic activity built up from birth that makes it appear innate but it is not. Scholars must abandon the idea that genius is innate or necessary for creation of art. (Nochlin)

Question 28

Ideal/Presumed Spectator

Answer 28

MALE – image of women designed to flatter men

Question 29

Subject of Vision

Answer 29

Spectator is always assumed to be a man (whose perspective we are looking at)

Question 30

Object of Vision

Answer 30

Women portrayed as passive objects as sights to be looked at. Constructs a relationship between the man and women(as well as relationships of women to themselves: The woman’s self being split into two as she watches herself and survey herself continually) as surveyor of oneself becomes male and the surveyed women

Question 31

Male Gaze

Answer 31

film and other visual structure is around presumed male heterosexual viewer

Question 32

Distinction between Naked & Nude

Answer 32

To be Naked is to to just your own body without clothes. to be nude is for someone else or for someone watching you, it is a way of seeing that the painting achieves, body must be seen as an object to be nude

Question 33

Goddess Symbolism

Answer 33

1. ) Affirms legitimacy of female power as beneficent and independent
2. ) affirms the female body and its cycles
3. ) affirms females will
4. ) affirms women’s bond and heritage

Question 34

Gender in Religion

Answer 34

beliefs, practices, language (these are the three main ways we talk about religions and tell stories about gender) God is a man who transcends Earth and body, he is associated with divineness and is central reinforcing mens superiority.