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June 03, 2004

On Women, Macs and Microsoft … Further Discussion Part Two

Follow-up to On Women, Macs and Microsoft … Further Discussion Part One from The Pale Cast of Thought

Further, stating that "reading gender into it is a reflection on the reader, not the author: the text itself is innocent of such crimes" points to an assumed logocentric viewpoint. This viewpoint (in relation to writing) is one which relies on authorial intent as a sort of supreme or "true" meaning of the text. The text itself IS guilty of such crimes. One does not go about "reading gender into" anti-feminist texts, the same way that one does not go about reading racism into racist jokes.

You state, "As I said elsewhere, the original audience for that post was a woman. She got the joke. It would, perhaps, help that said recipient was a lesbian, and thus my perspective (of relationships with women) was aligned with hers." AND that "the "psycho ex" comes from several of the author‘s own relationships, and he challenges anyone to assert they didn‘t happen, or to assert that they couldn‘t happen to members of any gender." Speaking of yourself in the third person is always suspicious :-) but what the author intended to express is in fact meaningless. Once a text (be that a novel, a poem, a written statement, a painting, a play, a song, a photograph etc.) reaches an audience, the author has no control over what meaning is being made of the piece he or she has produced. The multiplicity of readings and the plurality of meaning are the very reasons anyone ever studies literature. The fact that different sections of the population will note different perspectives and point out different failings or successes of a piece is the "fun" of the whole exercise.

It may very well be that "the original audience for that post was a woman. She got the joke," but the search for origins is pointless in terms of what a text means or "says" to different people. It makes no difference what either the authorial intent was or who the original audience was meant to be. In fact, there is really no need for you as the author to defend your piece of writing at all. Part of being a writer who publishes (or posts) texts for the wider public to read is coming to terms with the fact that others will critique your writings and make different points about them. What a text "means" cannot be controlled or dictated by the author. (See Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author" for more on this topic…)

Third, I will not further defend my commentary on assigning feminine attributes to owned machinery. I have made my argument already and it is very clear. For you to assert that "Men do this because they personalise their ships, cars and computers, developing relationships with them that bypass ownership" is frankly, much more information than I need to know and draws mental pictures I'd rather avoid :-)

Lastly (phew)...I take issue with your tendency (and that of others) to refer to "feminists" as being part of some sort of homogeneous group with a consensus of opinion. The reality is quite different. I and many, many other academic feminists certainly would not agree that "This standard, of course, is never applied to feminist comedy. Mysandrony is just payback" as you say (did you mean "misandry?"). I think you need to do some reading within feminist critical theory or gender studies in general if this is really what you think.

Joanna Jameson : 03 Jun 2004 13:17 | Tags: Critical Theory | Comments (4) | Close comments | Report a problem

On Women, Macs and Microsoft … Further Discussion Part One

Follow-up to About Women, Macs and Microsoft….an answer from The Pale Cast of Thought

This entry is in response to Charles Miller's comments to my entry About Women, Macs and Microsoft...an answer, which was my critique of a piece of text he wrote that was quoted in Chris May's entry Why Everyone Should Have a Mac. It is in two parts due to character limit on entries.

Oh where to begin…

I guess I'll start at the beginning and point out that anything which is constructed may be deconstructed, that is it may be taken apart in order to expose its inherent assumptions or to make visible gaps in the ideology from which the piece arises. Deconstruction is employed to look more closely at what texts (in all their forms) purport to "actually mean or represent" (to paraphrase Miller). (See Jacques Derrida's writings for further info.)

That the piece is meant to be humorous, or a joke and not to be "taken seriously on any level" is no defense of what IS a sexist piece. This is the very same argument that used to be made in defense of racist jokes (I am in no way implying that Charles Miller would condone racist jokes). The process of logic is the same. For example, if one were to replace all the feminine attributes in the metaphor with racial ones and in doing so, set up a binary of negative and positive which implies that one race is preferable (by assigning say, African attributes to Microsoft and European attributes to Apple), then the metaphor would certainly be deemed racist.

Second, I take issue with your statement that the "... core was quite simply non-gendered." I will discuss why the piece has no "core" in a moment but I certainly disagree with saying it was non-gendered. Of course it was gendered or else the "joke" would not have worked. Its very gendered-ness was the basis for the whole metaphor.

You state, "As I said elsewhere, the original audience for that post was a woman. She got the joke. It would, perhaps, help that said recipient was a lesbian, and thus my perspective (of relationships with women) was aligned with hers." AND that "the "psycho ex" comes from several of the author‘s own relationships, and he challenges anyone to assert they didn‘t happen, or to assert that they couldn‘t happen to members of any gender." Speaking of yourself in the third person is always suspicious :-) but what the author intended to express is in fact meaningless. Once a text (be that a novel, a poem, a written statement, a painting, a play, a song, a photograph etc.) reaches an audience, the author has no control over what meaning is being made of the piece he or she has produced. The multiplicity of readings and the plurality of meaning are the very reasons anyone ever studies literature. The fact that different sections of the population will note different perspectives and point out different failings or successes of a piece is the "fun" of the whole exercise.

May 28, 2004

About Women, Macs and Microsoft….an answer

Writing about Why everyone should have a Mac from Secret Plans and Clever Tricks

I stand by all three assertions.

"[rolls eyes]" "wooly-minded" – Silly girl, what are you talking about?

"Slightly anti-feminist" refers more to the piece's effect as a whole rather than any of its "bits," even though this text clearly dismembers the female form and assigns its different "bits" as attributes of the machine (definitions of hardware and software aside). Face, "wide" mouth, heart, posture all combine to form the dirty little "act" that implicates both the writer and reader in a sort of cybernetic voyeurism. The female form is laid over both Microsoft and Apple which serve as examples of two impossible feminine archetypes, that of the whore and the angel. One is "cheap" and "painted" while the other is a "lover" who "wants you to be happy." Both are definitions of female subservience and servitude. The third feminine archetype of the monster is clearly represented by Linux as the "psycho ex." Why does this matter? It matters because all three are negative definitions of femininity against which all women are measured and assessed in a patriarchal society.
To answer your second larger question, yes, (in relation to this example and others like it) I am asserting that when someone anthropomorphises an object that they implicitly (or explicitly as here) reverse the relationship and objectify the person/people to whom the comparison is being made. It has long been observed that machines like computers, cars, boats, motorcycles etc. have been assigned feminine qualities and been likened to the female form in order to appeal to the male market's (hetero)sexual ego. The fact that machines are marketed in a way as to suggest that they are feminine and exist to give pleasure to and be "owned" or "bought" by men is not a new critical perspective.

An "elegant metaphor" this piece of text is not. Frankly, "anti-feminist" was a polite, understated description of a piece of text which embodies everything many women strive to eradicate from modern gender relations.

A good book to have a look at is The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader by Gill Kirkup et al., which has a few good cultural articles about Blade Runner (in my all-time-top-ten list of films ever made list) and the Alien series. Cracking book.