Shikriti: Hello and welcome to this NPTEL
course of Feminist Writings.
My name is Shikriti Shannal, I am a PhD scholar
in the department of Humanities & Social Sciences
of IIT Madras.
Mohit: Hello, my name is Mohit Sharma, I am
a PhD scholar in the Department of Humanities
& Social Sciences, IIT Madras.
Shikriti: In today's discussion, we are going
to talk about feminism as a movement and criticism
and theory.
Mohit: And we'll take a feminist text which
Dr. Parui has already taken up in class and
we'll discuss them at some length.
Let us define 'feminism'.
Feminism is a movement, social, cultural and
political which aims for the equality of sexes
and which opposes discrimination on the basis
of gender.
Shikriti: We could also say that it is a critical
tool or a framework through which we can analyze
various discourses and see how discrimination
operates sexual difference.
Mohit: And how the underlying operation of
women is highlighted and emphasized.
Shikriti: In different discourses of the time
- we can take the social, cultural, political
discourses as well as literature and popular
media.
And we can talk about life in general and
see how discrimination operates at various
levels.
Mohit: And the texts that we'll be discussing,
highlight these political aspects, social
aspects as well as the individual aspects
in which the gender is used as a tool for
oppression.
Shikriti: Yes, of course.
And, so moving on, we can talk about the feminist
movement a little in detail probably.
Mohit: Yes.
Shikriti: So, there are three phases to the
feminist movement.
The first phase, which is known as the Suffrage
Movement, is mostly about acquiring voting
rights for women.
Mohit: Yes, mainly the focus was on voting
rights and education which enabled the women
to acquire a central character in the social
and political sphere in their nation, in their
cultural life.
Shikriti: And acquire citizenship to a certain
level.
And then, we have authors like Virginia Woolf
or Simone de Beauvoir, who extended this idea
of the women's rights from voting rights to
also be in equal footing in the academic sphere
or the workforce.
Mohit: Yes, and that paved the way for the
second wave feminism.
Shikriti: Yes, starting from the 1960s, then
we have this new train of thought where women
come to understand that the oppression lies
at various levels and not just in the basic
rights.
And when the voting rights were acquired,
they became more conscious of the other multiple
levels of oppression that were at work.
Mohit: And also, a lot of the situation which
led to the rise of the second wave was there
because of the landscape and the (())(2:45)
of Europe and America after the 2 world wars.
Shikriti: Yes.
Mohit: The 2 world wars had lead to a rapid
decline in the workforce, the male workforce
in the industry and that led to an introduction
of women and a large number of women contributed
to the economy of their countries.
Shikriti: Right.
Mohit: And they came to the forefront.
Shikriti: They were also exposed to the working
atmosphere and they became more aware of their
rights and they could understand more, they
could challenge more the oppression that was
at play.
Mohit: Yes, and with that liberty, came the
demand for sexual and political rights and
they began to see themselves as a political,
as a sexual citizen and they saw that they
were even more aware of the oppression that
the social systems and the political systems
prevalent were.
Shikriti: Right, I think that women basically
challenged the stereotypes that came with
gender roles - that women were supposed to
do certain work - like they were restricted
to the domestic sphere, they were supposed
to only take care of children and not participate
in the outside world.
So, that is the dichotomy that was created,
that tension.
Mohit: Yes, and this question was taken up
by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique,
and she called this the problem with no name.
And she says that after world war 2, the American
soldier and the males who participated in
the war, they returned back and they expect
like women to be at home for them, to bear
their children and to be the loving wife.
This leads to women being stereotyped into
the role of a wife and mother.
Shikriti: Right, and Betty Friedan also says
that the women actually aspired to become
the suburban housewife and that was an aspiration
to them.
But then, the question arises that - when
they were fulfilling their aspirations, why
were they not happy?
Mohit: Yes, correct.
And that led them to realize that to completely
fulfill their roles as human individuals,
they need to move forward, move ahead, beyond
that 'housewife' role.
Shikriti: Yes, so they need to appreciate
themselves as an individual and have their
own dreams and aspirations which were thoroughly
submerged under the pressures of the patriarchal
society.
Mohit: Which led to the development of feminine
consciousness and, like, the consolidation
of identity and like experiences of what constitutes
a woman, so to say.
Shikriti: I think this was a very important
phase in the second wave where the category
of women came to be identified and all the
women came to join that force and they came
to identify the similar sets of problems,
or similar sets of experiences that all women
have to undergo in their lives.
And they wanted to change that for themselves.
Mohit: Yes, a common front was opened; a political
and a social front was opened around which
to consolidate their own identity and their
own issues.
And it was also explored in a lot of texts,
like I said Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine
Mystique'.
Another text 'Second Sex' was seminal in creating
such a front.
Shikriti: Right, and 'Second Sex' is more
important, I think, and you can associate
it with the sentence that Beauvoir uses - that
one is born but one becomes a woman.
I think it is a very important thing from
during that time because she comes to dissociate
gender from biological sex.
Simone de Beauvoir's work 'The Second Sex'
is very important because it distinguishes
biological sex from gender and it talks about
gender as constructed by several discourses
that operate around, in society.
Mohit: Another important feature of 2nd wave
feminism is that the writers and the theorists
in the 2nd wave feminism, they started the
initiative to rediscover women's writing.
Shikriti: So, if we notice that before this
phase in feminism, even in the academic circle,
all the texts that were taught and introduced
were male dominated text.
So, if you were a woman writer, you were not
actually understood as someone of importance
and your content was criticized for being
domestic.
Mohit: Neither was your voice...
Shikriti: Heard.
Mohit: ...uniquely identified as a female
voice who is articulating the female consciousness.
And that was the project that writers and
theorists like Elaine Showalter took up and
they tried to articulate women's voices in
literature.
Shikriti: And one major aspect of this project
was to rediscover women's writing, as Mohit
previously mentioned, so female author texts
were introduced in academia, they were reprinted
and circulated by the Virago Press, for example,
and more and more female voices started to
be articulated and experiences started to
be shared.
Mohit: India rediscovered as well in the 19th
century.
A lot of female writers who had previously
been unknown, they were discovered.
They were found out to articulate unique experiences
of being a woman which were probably ignored
in the mainstream canonical writings of let
us say Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte and
other writers.
Shikriti: The idea was to build a separate
canon for women because in the male dominated
canon, women were not allowed, she did not
have a place - the female author.
So it was important to build a history of
female writing which was the project taken
up with Elaine Showalter and the other critics
of her time.
So Showalter distinguished...
Mohit: Between three phases, yes.
Shikriti: Yes, the three phases of feminist
writing.
Mohit: Yes, which is feminine, feminist and
the female phase.
So in the 'feminine phase', she says that
she strives to rediscover the writers who
basically initiate the women's writing and
who start by imitating the concerns, the genres
and the forms that dominate male writing.
And they move on to feminist writings.
Shikriti: Right, and in the feminist phase,
the women writers were seen as a reaction,
as reactionary to the male stereotypical representation
of women in their texts.
You could say that when we talk about male
dominated texts, women were stereotypically
represented as good and evil - the binary
between the virgin and the whore.
So they reacted to all these stereotypical
representations of women and so their writing
can be seen as reactionary and to a certain
extent, protest and political.
Mohit: Yes, and it was from 1920 onwards that
the third phase that Showalter characterizes
as the female phase, starts, in which she
says that from 1920 onward, especially in
works of writers such as Virginia Woolf and
other modernist writer such as Dorothy, Richardson,
in which female writers start to explore the
concept of what it is to be a woman, what
it is to write as a woman and what it is to
experience the world around themselves as
women.
Shikriti: So, female, feminist writing was
no longer a response to the patriarchal writing
or the male authors, it had a voice of its
own, a structure of its own which brings us
to the important concept of 'gynocritisim'
that was theorized by Elaine Showalter.
In gynocritisism, Elaine Showalter says that
because women's writing is so different from
men's writing and they address different issues
than male authors, there needs to be a separate
tool in order to critique that set of writing.
Because the conventional tools are only proper
to appreciate male authors and male experiences.
They do not incorporate the female articulation
and female experiences.
So she suggested that we should have a, just
as she suggested the need for a separate canon
for women, she suggested a need for a separate
set of tools or troops to appreciate female
writing.
Mohit: Right.
And she identifies that the basic psychoanalytic
for a textual tool might not be enough or
might be very male oriented.
Shikriti: Right.
Mohit: ...to rediscover female and the feminine
concerns in those writings.
Another issue, like, towards the end and with
the develop... post-structures perspective,
it was also identified that there were a lot
of issues with second wave feminism primarily
with the category, with the universal category
as woman.
Shikriti: Yes, the category of woman as seen
by second wave feminism is a monolithic fixed
category which primarily represents the white
American or European middle class, upper class
woman.
Mohit: Yes, and it excludes all other identities,
all other experiences of a woman.
For example, a black woman, a gender, a lesbian
woman, and women... different regions and
ethnicities.
Shikriti: From different races and different
ethnicities.
Mohit: It articulates only the concerns of
the American women and it couches them in
a universalist language which suppresses the
voices of other women.
Shikriti: Yes, to take an example, say the
experiences of an upper class Manhattan woman
cannot be the same as that of a Dalit woman
in a rural area of India.
Mohit: True.
That led to the development of the third wave
feminism which was influenced with a lot of
other theories building it around the same
time, like the post-colonial theory which
articulated the issues of other, the colonized
nations and post-structuralism which also
identified a lot of issues in how we perceive
texts.
Shikriti: Yes.
And in the third wave, I think the different
voices or different experiences of feminism,
feminism came to understand the difference
within itself and it provided the space for
different voices to emerge and different ethnicities
and people of different sexualities came forward
to represent themselves.
So the unified and consolidated idea of the
second wave feminism was diffused in the third
wave where multiple identities and multiple
stories were made available.
Mohit: And it is in that third wave feminism
that we see a lot of theorists coming out
and projecting a lot of theories which include
the experiences of those women and it is very
multifarious, multi-vocal and it tries to
integrate their experiences in what it means
to be a woman which we later on analyze in
a lot of our texts.
Shikriti: Right.
So we understand the third wave as a more
inclusive way of understanding feminism which
represents, or tries to represent the different
categories of women from different backgrounds
where everybody can have a platform to discuss
their point.
Mohit: We will start with a text.
The first text which we will take up is the
essay 'Understanding Patriarchy' which again
is an example of a seminal third wave feminism
text.
We'll start with the essay 'Understanding
Patriarchy' by Bell Hooks.
And as the titles indicates, Understand Patriarchy
tries to understand patriarchy as a grand
narrative which, in the words of Bell Hooks,
is the single most life threatening social
disease assaulting the male body and spirit
in our nation.
Shikriti: It also does a brilliant job of
deconstructing the binary between men as perpetrators
of patriarchy and women as victims, like we
usually understand.
So when we talk about feminism, it is always
women against men.
And she is the one who identifies that the
major problem or the primary, the root cause
of the problem is patriarchy and not any particular
biological sex.
Mohit: Yes.
And Bell Hooks tries to understand how patriarchy
suffuses all our social and cultural institutions
and it is patriarchy which perpetuates this
violence, gendered violence, both on the psychological
and the physical level.
Shikriti: Physical level.
And, so patriarchy comes as a grand narrative,
a pre-determined given, so nobody questions
it.
And she discusses patriarchy as a discourse
that is replicated in the institutions, the
socio-cultural institutions and that we are
taught to perform in different setups so that
nobody can question its origin and it seems
like natural.
Mohit: Yes.
And she goes on to analyze how patriarchy
operates as a natural given in our social
institutions, even the most natural ones like
family and education etc.
Shikriti: Right, exactly.
So maybe expanding a little or giving some
examples, we can talk about how patriarchy
operates in the family, okay?
And we don't understand it, it is not given
in the face, we think that it is how it should
be.
Mohit: And how it can be identified in how
we regulate children's behavior, how we regulate
children's play which is what we see in the
essay as given by Bell Hooks when she talks
about her own experiences as a child in a
mid-west household where she plays with marbles
and her brother plays with marbles, which
leads to a harrowing story of violence perpetrated,
gendered violence.
Shikriti: Right, and we can have similar examples
in our own family settings where boys are
encouraged to play with cars or guns and little
girl children are expected to play with toys
like dolls and cooking machinery which would
make them as potential householders.
Mohit: Right.
Boys are encouraged to go and play outside,
go get hurt, it is better if you get hurt,
you will become strong.
Shikriti: Yes.
They are encouraged for more physical activity
and women are encouraged to be passive, obedient,
docile bodies and individuals.
Mohit: Which is also what Bell Hooks indicated
in one of the passages here - that a male
child is taught that his value consisting
his ability to perpetrate controlled violence.
Shikriti: Right.
Mohit: And, a female child's nature should
be the one to show emotions and the one to
refrain from violence.
So we see that all these discourses of patriarchy
are instilled into people right from the very
childhood...
Shikriti: Right from the childhood, even when
a child is born; it starts with the name probably,
or even then, if you are born in a particular
biological sex, the entire script is given
to you - what kind of positions are available
for you to take up or what kind of subjectivities
starting from games to education to what kind
of career choices, everything is determined
by the gender of the child.
Mohit: And we see in the example given by
Bell Hooks, how the particular event of violence
which was inflicted on the girl child, Bell
Hooks herself, as a child, it becomes a sort
of psychological terrorism which both disciplines
a girl child in her own role and the boy child
in his own role.
Shikriti: And the entire system operates through
reward and punishment.
So if you adhere to the roles that are prescribed
by society, you are rewarded and you don't,
you are penalized, just like in this text
- Bell Hooks discusses her own experience
in how she is penalized for arguing with her
father and insisting on playing the marble
game.
Mohit: So, this is the dual phase of a this
course, a grand narrative so to say, which
is naturalized through obedience, but if you
don't obey, then you will be punished either
via violence or through psychological violence,
let's say shaming.
Shikriti: Right.
And then, she brings a very important connection
of PTSD - the post traumatic stress disorder
which we usually associate to post-war exposure.
So, she brings it in the family context and
she says that these punishments, in the shape
of punishments, these scars that we receive
live with us for the rest of our lives, they
are not so easy to get rid of.
Mohit: Yes, and another incident that we see
in which such a stress occurs at the level
of childhood is when Terrence Real shows us
the example in which a boy who likes to dress
up as a girl is shamed, instantly shamed by
his playmates.
And even that leaves a scar on the boy child.
And it is through these examples that we get
see that trauma is a thing which doesn't act
only in the field of war or in the...
Shikriti: Right, trauma can be domestisized
as well.
And we can also see, Mohit, very interestingly,
that patriarchy is something that does not
only restrict the girl child or affect the
girl child, it affects the boy child as well.
Like the example that you just took - here
the boy child was trying to dress as a woman,
is again not appreciated or not rewarded,
rather punished or laughed at.
So, it shows that patriarchy expects each
gender to stick to their own roles and not
exceed them or challenge them in any way.
Mohit: Yes.
It is here that we see how patriarchy as an
ideology, as a grand narrative affects both
men and women in the same way because, by
instituting men as perpetrators, it is also
installing men as victims in their own category
because it stunts their emotional development.
Shikriti: Yes, and they are not able to achieve
the emotional wholeness of empathy because
they see life through this frame of violence,
through their masculinity which needs to be
asserted at all levels, every time.
They are forced to behave in that violent,
aggressive fashion.
Mohit: Yes, which is why she describes patriarchy
as a social disease, because it makes an emotional
cripple out of men and it inflicts both men
and women with trauma.
During childhood which they have to carry
or which they...
Shikriti: Find very difficult to overcome.
Mohit: Find very difficult to overcome till
very late in their adulthood.
Shikriti: Right, and it shapes the way we
see ourselves as human beings and shapes the
way in which our future entails.
Mohit: One very important way in which patriarchy
incinerates itself as a grand narrative in
people's mind and in societies by disguising
itself.
Because if you go and ask people - why do
you think, what is the problem in gender discrimination,
people will say it is violence, gender violence,
sex violence and the sexual assaults in women.
People usually do not identify patriarchy...
Shikriti: As a male problem.
Mohit: As a male problem, as a problem which
is at the root of these issues
Shikriti: Yes.
Because mostly, we see men as perpetrators
of violence and women as victims.
Mohit: Yes, it is only the external phase
of violence which is visible.
Shikriti: Right.
Mohit: But most of the people are used to
see patriarchy as a beneficial... to society
in general.
Shikriti: Yes, and especially for the men;
they feel that patriarchy is beneficiary to
them because they obviously enjoy a certain
degree of power and privilege in society.
But what they don't understand, or what is
not apparent is that how it is like a disease...
Mohit: It makes them emotional cripples and
it also dehumanizes them; in making them perpetrators
- it also dehumanizes them.
Shikriti: It also makes them behave in a certain
way that does not let them achieve their full
capacity as a human being, like a rational
and emotional human being.
Mohit: And it is not only men who are, who
think patriarchy is beneficial, but like women
are also equally prone to fall into this belief
that it is not patriarchy, as such, which
is at the root of these issues.
And Bell Hooks takes up this thing and she
points out to the fact that it is not only
homes with mother and father which has this
patriarchal model of obedience and domination,
but in...
Shikriti: Even in families with single parents
- like a single mother, we'll see the same
patriarchal set of because we have this idea
of the absent father.
Even when the father is not there, the mother
has to behave like the father or she follows
the same protocols that a male entity would.
Mohit: Yes, and the absent father becomes
an idealized figure which is to be revered
and which is to followed then.
Shikriti: So till this point, whatever we
have discussed, we have seen that when we
talk about feminist theory or movement, it
is not a fight between the sexes or the gender.
It is actually a fight against patriarchy
where both the sexes should come together
and fight.
Mohit: It says that anti-male feminists, when
they are fighting against males, and they
are fighting against male oppression are basically
couching their own desire for power.
Shikriti: Right, and they are replacing one
system of power with another system of power.
Mohit: Right, they are not really deconstructing
the binary and they are not really deconstructing
that it is the binary which, both which causes...
Shikriti: Which we need to do away with.
Mohit: Yes, because of which the issues that
men also face are not resolved.
Shikriti: Right.
So the patriarchy as a problem to men is a
very and novel idea that Bell Hooks proposes.
Because before this, as we previously discussed
that patriarchy was understood as a problem
primarily of women, but since henceforth,
through Bell Hooks essay, we can understand
how it affects both the genders.
Mohit: Right.
And another thing that Bell Hooks points out
in this essay, in fact, she reveals it through
the way she structures the narrative, is that
gender relations and patriarchy is something
which needs to be understood both on the experiential
and the textual level.
Because often times, we textualize these differences,
the binaries of oppression and we do not see
that...
Shikriti: We do not give enough stress to
that everyday lived experiences of patriarchy.
And...
Mohit: Which can be more complex than those
binaries indicate.
Shikriti: Exactly, so we can see, at different
levels, how patriarchy works in order to oppress
women.
Say whether it be the objectification of the
female body or the creation of docile, passive
women and women with passive sexuality.
So just like women are given these passive
roles to adhere to, men are just given the
opposite.
Mohit: Yes, and the idea of a passive male,
or a peaceful male so to say, is strongly
opposed by such a narrative.
And a man which is a peaceful, passive male,
is shamed or is forced to change his way of
living in such a case - which we see in the
example that she gives of her own partner.
Shikriti: Right.
And then, so we see that patriarchy promotes
a certain kind of lifestyle in men through
this macho, masculine exhibition where it
makes men prone to addiction and violence
and trauma of all different sorts of levels.
So, Bell Hooks asks that if patriarchy is
so beneficial to men, how come they are constantly
prone to trauma, depression, and addiction.
Mohit: Right, which is where the experiential
part of the picture comes in.
Shikriti: Exactly.
Mohit: So one important point that Bell Hooks
points out is that it is a complex relation
between experiatiality and textuality that
men are perpetrators as well as victims.
Shikriti: And also we can, through this understanding
of patriarchy that Bell Hooks proposes, we
can identify patriarchy as a performance which,
you know, we reproduce in different contexts,
socio-cultural contexts differently, but it
is something that is not voluntary of the
human being or the individual.
It is something that is proposed by the society
and that is basically a discourse that is
performed by the individuals.
Mohit: Another aspect of patriarchy which
is often disguised is how it replicated itself.
In the case of Bell Hook's partner, he ultimately
becomes the same person that he doesn't want
to be for somebody that he opposes.
And this is the way how patriarchy replicates
and perpetuates itself.
Shikriti: Yes.
Another important aspect of patriarchy perpetrating
itself and replicating itself is through the
process of embodiment which Dr. Parui has
discussed in detail.
You know, because when we try to understand
a certain set of or follow a certain set of
norms, we come to live it.
And it is experienced by us and it is reproduced
through us in the way we dress, in the way
we talk, in the way we...
Mohit: In the way we play.
Shikriti: Exactly, in the entire way we conduct
ourselves as human beings.
So, we can see how patriarchy operates at
very intricate levels and not always on very
apparent levels like male violence over women
but also very... in a family context, in the
context of the most intimate spaces where
we feel the most comfortable and protected.
Mohit: Yes, which is why Bell Hooks stresses
at the end that while countering anti-male
activists... which is why Bell Hooks stresses
at the end that while opposing anti-male feminists
that we need to work with males, we need to
work with men and understand their problems
in understanding how patriarchy works in deconstructing
its premises, try to remove it.
Shikriti: So one model of domination cannot
be replaced with another model of domination.
So then what we are looking forward to is
a society without patriarchy where men and
women both can function at equal footing and
where patriarchy does not destroy the empathetic
and human relationship that can exist in a
society, through violence and perversion.
Mohit: Right.
So in this session, we have covered feminism,
the evolution of feminist though and we covered
the essay 'Understanding Patriarchy' by Bell
Hooks.
Shikriti: Where we came to understand the
term, or analyze the term 'patriarchy' in
great detail and how it operates in multiple
layers of society as well as culture and politics.
Thank you.
