Mrs. Bosch
English 12 AP Literature
10 December 2008
Gender Studies/ Queer Theories
The Following is a list of terms needed to understand the sequential information. The three sisters: the three sisters are used in the context of three styles, or lenses, at which people will read, write, at look at a work. They include Women's Studies, Feminist Criticism, and the youngest of the three sister terms is Gender Studies. Women’s studies were born in the 1970s and took its momentum from the larger women’s movement afoot at that time. Feminist criticism tended to be more oriented toward the past than women’s studies, and offered theoretically engaged scholars a coherent, interdisciplinary discourse. Gender studies, the most recent development, takes in not only scholarship concerned with the experiences and utterances of women (paradigmatic subalterns in virtually every culture), but also scholarshipconcerned with broader issues of gender difference, especially gay/queer studiesand what is now often called ‘men’s studies’ or ‘studies of masculinity’. Feminist: are often associated with the women’s rights movements and the economic and sociological equality of the sexes. Binary: means something based of or on two parts. Gender Identity: psychological identification with either of the two main sexes. Gender Role: social conformity with expectations of either of the two main sexes. Erotic preference: gynophilia, androphilia, bisexuality, asexuality and various paraphilias.
Gender studies and Queer theories explore issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized populations (woman as other) in literature and culture. Gender comprises a range of differences between men and women, extending from the biological to the social. Biologically, the male gender is defined by reference to the presence of a Y-chromosome, and its absence in the female gender. However, there is debate as to the extent that the biological difference has or necessitates differences in gender roles in society and on gender identity, which has been defined as "an individual's self-conception as being male or female, as distinguished from actual biological sex." Historically, feminism has posited that many gender roles are socially constructed, and lack a clear biological explanation, but find their explanation in unequal (male/female) economic power and other power relations.
In the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the above mentioned points are made abundantly clear. Women fit into very few roles in Frankenstein; the loving, the sensitive, the sacrificial mother, the innocent child, and the confused and abandoned lover. Women are usually passive except at moments of extreme action when they demand the actions of the men around them. In reference to his mother, he says that his father “came as a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care” (Shelley; pg. 118). Victors’ mother even on her death bed is described as the loving and passive mother begging Elizabeth and Victor to wed. “My firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union” (pg. 28). As Victor masters and progresses through his college education we see the domineering male figure arise with in him, “I saw how the fine frame of man was degraded and wasted” (pg. 38). “I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” (pg. 38).
When one studies gender issues and Gender Roles, it will soon be realized that there is a murky grey area among these issues. Issues arise in gender orientation, natural genetic mutations, and in identities. People whose gender identity feels incongruent with their biological sex may refer to themselves transgender or transsexual. A wide variety of phenomena have characteristics termed gender, such as hermaphrodites, dwarfism, and so on.
Queer theory is a field of gender studies that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of gay and lesbian studies and feminist studies. Queer theory builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender is part of the essential self and upon gay/lesbian studies' close examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities. Whereas gay/lesbian studies focused its inquiries into "natural" and "unnatural" behavior with respect to homosexual behavior, queer theory expands its focus to encompass any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls into normative and deviant categories. While it is true that most believe that Queer theory only focuses on gay and lesbian aspects and influence on literature, it also focuses on issues of orientation and gender roles. Some argue that queer theory is a by-product of third-wave feminism, while others claim that it is a result of the valuation of postmodern minoritizing, that is, the idea that the smallest constituent must have a voice and identity equivalent to all others. Queer theory's main project is exploring the categorizations of gender and sexuality.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein explores the many aspects of this theory. Why is victor so horrified all of the sudden that his creation is hideous and grotesque? Why did he shape in the male gender as opposed to the female gender? All these questions explore the gender and queer theories of the 1970’s. “No mortal could support the horror of that countenance.” (pg. 44). “I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as Dante could not have conceived” (pg. 44). These quotes demonstrate the very tip of the metaphorical iceberg that these questions about gender and sexual orientation pose.
Unlike sex, which is a biological concept, gender is a social construct specifying the socially and culturally prescribed roles that men and women are to follow. According to Gerda Lerner in The Creation of Patriarchy, gender is the "costume, a mask, a straitjacket in which men and women dance their unequal dance" (p.238). As Alan Wolfe observed in "The Gender Question" (The New Republic, June 6:27-34), "of all the ways that one group has systematically mistreated another, none is more deeply rooted than the way men have subordinated women. All other discriminations pale by contrast."
Works Cited
Bowers, Toni. "Gender Studies and Eighteenth-Century British." 2007 10 Dec 2008
"Gender Studies and Queer Theory (1970s-present)." The Owl at Perdue.com 10 Dec 2008
Lerner, Gerda. "The Creation of Patriarchy." The Creation of Patriarchy 10 Dec 2008
Mead, Margrett. "GENDER AND SOCIETY." GENDER AND SOCIETY 10 Dec 2008
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Bantam Books, 1967.
