#feminism/queerness/rebellion/freedom of expression

[nomenculture]

Also see previous entries in this series: The confusion between sex and gender. [x] How not to prove the objective existence of gender. [x]

First, what is genderism? It can be used in the same sense as “sexism” and “racism.” And indeed that is how it’s mostly been used. But in this case I mean it in the colloquial sense of people who enforce gender roles. ...

The concept of genderism, as used in feminism, is usually defined as the belief that certain behavioral preferences are caused by a person’s sex, in general that one’s gender is the result of one’s sex, and therefore that gender is natural (and even desirable).

This stands in stark contrast to the view that gender is a social construct. It is also generally held as being the opposite of feminism, because feminists believe that being of the female sex does not constitute an obligation to take on a gender role which is constructed as inferior and subservient.

What are the behaviors and roles considered appropriate for one’s sex?

If you are a Feminist (even a Liberal Feminist or a Fun Feminist), the answer to this should be “There are no behaviors and roles considered appropriate for my sex because Females can be and do anything.”

There is a lot of nuances in definitions here, but they are not entirely necessary. For example, some include within genderism the belief that there are two genders. But the two genders are an artefact of culture; some culture have three genders or four genders, and really, the exact number is irrelevant: all that matters is that some are seen as superior and some are seen as inferior. Genderism would not magically disappear if we added another gender to the list.

So who are genderists exactly? There are two kinds. One is traditional genderism, which generally in the West holds that one’s gender was assigned by God or evolution through their sex. This covers the gamut from non-science (Bible fundamentalists) to pseudo-science (evolutionary psychology) to quasi-science (studies and papers written to “prove” genderism), as well as most conservatives and liberals.

Even if they vastly disagree on pretty much everything, the goal of all traditional genderists is to suppress feminism and restore “women’s place” in society in order to uphold the gender hierarchy. And these various factions have been quite successful; together they encompass so many approaches that one of them is bound to work.

The second kind is trans genderism (not to be confused with transgenderism). Trans theory states that when a male does not feel that ey is a man, or when a female does not feel that ey is a woman, this is a fundamental biological problem which must be rectified by chemical treatment and/or surgery. They believe in the link between sex and gender just as much; they simply add another layer, the “innate gender” which trumps one’s “assumed gender” and otherwise takes over its role.

Trans activists believe they are anti-genderism. This may be so, but the very definition of transgender implies a link between sex and gender:

Transgender (an umbrella term) (adj.)- for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth.

Transgender (sometimes shortened to trans or TG) people are those whose psychological self (“gender identity”) differs from the social expectations for the physical sex they were born with.

These are by far the most common definitions of transgender given by trans-friendly groups, and they clearly link sex and gender. If one is male, then one should feel like a man, and that if one is female, then one should feel like a woman. Gender rebels must be “helped” with chemical treatments and surgery so they can perform the proper gender.

In contrast, the traditional genderist position is that males are men and females are women, and gender rebels must be punished, not rehabilitated. The radfem position, on the other hand, is that we should live the way we want regardless of sex, that neither sex nor gender should limit us, and that gender-rebels deserve neither medical rehabilitation nor punishment.

From a radfem perspective, trans theory is extremely offensive in that it enforces gender roles while giving the illusion of choice. It ostensibly tells people that they can be whatever they want, but in practice they use one’s conformity or non-conformity to gender roles to assign them a label of “cis” or “trans.” And have created a new gender heirarchy between “cis” and “trans.”

Reducing “woman” to a checklist of characteristics that others have forced upon us is insulting. Feeling that you are a woman because you have a medically made hole in your body that does not act anything like our reproductive organ is insulting. Thinking that you can be a woman without experiencing the effects of being a woman in infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood is insulting. Womanhood is not putting on a frilly dress and being emotionally available. Womanhood is dealing with the fact that that is the expectation of us, which you just reinforce.

Cis/trans is a tyrannical, binary label which aims to erase all levels of gender rebellion. Everyone who is not genderist and who rebels against gender has no choice but to take refuge in the domain of queer and eschew the cis/trans binary completely (I know nothing of queer theory, so I will refrain from talking further about it). Given the fact that it reduces third genders from other cultures to a “trans” label that simply doesn’t apply, it is also a colonialist, some might even say white supremacist, concept.

I’m a bakla Filipina. To call me trans for being bakla is to entirely erase the cultural specificity of my identity and to enact a type of cultural imperialism, something I most certainly do reject. Yet in Asher’s binary construction of cis/trans I am considered trans, something that I am not. Either that or simply rendered invisible.

Please note that I am not accusing trans activists of being white supremacists. I know very well they are not. What I am saying is that some have called the cis/trans binary white supremacist from their own cultural perspective, and I completely understand that.

Gender rebellion is a consequence of the existence of gender itself. Once you set up these little prison cells where people have to conform to one or the other set of behaviors, there will be people whose personalities lead them to adopt an admixture of both, and who will rebel against the attempt to impose a set on them. Now we know for a fact that few people, if any, are totally gender conforming, but most people try to follow their role enough so they don’t stick out. Some people, by virtue of having a personality that is too divergent from these sets, cannot do so, and will naturally rebel.

If you research the subject outside of radfem blogs, the first thing you will find is that many people hate radical feminism with incredible passion and vitriol. The biggest part of this vitriol comes from trans activists and their allies, who accuse radfems of being transphobic and of propagating hatred.

The reason for this should not be hard to understand. Gender is an integral part of trans theory, and anyone who seeks to eliminate gender is undercutting trans theory at its very foundation. To deny gender is to deny the transgender identity. I don’t dispute that this is bigotry, but the bigotry is the result of a systemic analysis. An anarchist is right to be a bigot against policemen and soldiers, because their job is inherently one of repression, no matter how nice the individuals might be. An antitheist is right to be a bigot against priests, even if they are nice.

Anyone who identifies their job or their very well-being with hurting other people should rightly be hated, and gender hurts people on a massive global scale. Gender is the rationale for oppressing women, gender sustains the rape culture, gender is an excuse to beat down, imprison and kill people. In that it constrains us to a set of preferred behaviors, genderism is necessarily a denial of freedom, in the political sense as well as in the personal sense. To follow a gender role means to be told how to act, how to talk, how to think, how to react, how to dress, how to have sex; as long as we have to follow gender roles, we are slaves to hierarchy.

Feminism does not believe that asking whether an individual identifies with the particular social characteristics and expectations assigned to them at birth is a politically useful way of analyzing or understanding gender. Eliminating gender assignments, by allowing individuals to choose one of two pre-existing gender molds, while continuing to celebrate the existence and naturalism of “gender” itself, is not a progressive social goal that will advance women’s liberation.

Gender is an extremely oppressive and unnecessary construct. Defining “trans” people as those who deviate from otherwise unobjectionable gender norms is not a progressive social cause. Fighting for everyone’s right to be as gender “non-conforming” as they wanna be, on the other hand, is.

Some people even claim that radfems want to kill transgender people. This is a straightforward lie, but it is a fact that trans theory applied to children leads to the extermination of homosexuality, because a majority of gender rebellious children are homosexual. They are also the ones who issue death threats to “cis” people (the most popular trans slogan is “die cis scum”). It is traditional genderists who kill transgender people and want to take away their rights, not radical feminists. Trans advocates accuse radfem of “transphobia,” but they are the ones who constantly lie to transgender people and tell them that there’s something physically wrong with gender-rebelling children and adults.

I honestly don’t know a group of people more compassionate than people who run radical feminists blogs on the Internet. This is why it boggles my mind when I read claims that radfems are hateful monsters: it is disconnected from the reality I observe in a very egregious way, and so it feels like they’re invalidating my experience. Of course they don’t care that they’re invalidating me: to them, radfem are walking sulfur-smelling devils and that’s all there is to it. I don’t really know what to reply to that attitude except that they’re speaking out of a position of willful ignorance.

[ma-2019-ziwei]

Annotated Bibliography (NEW)

The submitted documents are modified for the wrong order and Harvard referencing system. My analysis is written in this blog.

Brightwell, L. & Taylor, A. 2019, Why femme stories matter: Constructing femme theory through historical femme life writing, Journal of Lesbian Studies, pp. 1-18. [Accessed 26 Mar 2020]. The article focuses on the experiences of women in the second wave of feminism, and analyzes the status of women in the lesbian and feminist communities in women's history, how these dynamics affect current perceptions of homosexuality and women's politics, and how women resist their cultural and critical marginalization. Exploring the views of these authors raises the question of whether women can be theorized in a way that preserves their unique identity without demeaning other female themes. Finally, the authors redefined the female image as a kind of pornography and gender identity, believing that women have pornography and gender identity independent of their partners, and explored the scope of female sexual behavior. In this article, the author talks about the history of the development of women's theory and provides me with a variety of perspectives to examine the feminism mentioned in my research. The article also talks about the concept of sex for women, which is a bit different from the point of view of the author in the book I studied, probably because of the analysis of the two from different perspectives.

Dove-Viebahn, A. 2019, Queer eye for the housewife: Julianne Moore, radical femme-ininity, and destabilizing the suburban family, Journal of Lesbian Studies, pp. 1-16. [Accessed 20 Mar 2020]. The author focuses his analysis on the theory of female identity, femininity in heterosexual normative Spaces, and queer/lesbian, and focuses on the role of housewives. This paper USES the concept of "radical femininity" to express doubts about femininity, a political gesture that undermines normative expectations of gender. In particular, this article examines how the actress Julianne Moore embodies the housewife through a bizarre female persona that resembles and rejects social conventions. This paper reflects the author's research feelings on the role of social rebellion and how they will affect the society. In some ways the social rebel is more in tune with the role of the housewife. This article provides another perspective for my research, showing the stereotype of gender from the analysis of the housewife's image, thus achieving a breakthrough.

Garza, M., Akleman, E., Harris, S. & House, F. 2019, Emotional silence: Are emotive expressions of 3D animated female characters designed to fit stereotypes, Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 76, pp. 102252.  [Accessed 29 Mar 2020]. The motivation of this paper comes from the inconsistency between reality and animation in the depiction of female facial expressions. The study raises questions about whether the design aesthetics of female characters takes precedence over visual expression in animated films. The author believes that it is important to analyze the potential motivation of female characters to express emotions in 3D animation. In order to assess whether female characters and their emotional expressions are stereotypes, the author conducted content analysis on the depiction of female characters in animation, taking race and gender into account, and also observed that race still plays an important role in the creation, modeling and animation of female characters. 3D animation needs to pay more attention to how female characters express their emotions. AAlthough the purpose of this article is to evaluate three-dimensional animation, the author’s point of view also applies to the subject of my research. The stereotypes of female expressions exist in many animation works and  this is worth discussing.

Ivena, I., 2018. Marriage as A Reward for Disney Princesses. K@ta Kita, 6(2), pp.149-157. [Accessed 26 Mar 2020]. The study discusses the meaning of marriage in Disney cartoons. Snow White, Cinderella and aurora are the subjects of this analysis. Through analysis, the author found that the meaning of princess marriage is to reward them. They were seen to be able to endure all the suffering for this, but it was part of the so-called patriarchal process. After marriage became the standardization of women in a patriarchal society, the so-called commitment to women. According to the concept of patriarchy. Suffering is part of their journey to perfection. In order to be perfect, they must be kind, obedient, submissive, and self-critical. The author's point of view is from the side that Disney depicts the woman's duty to have to take care of her family at home and the family. Disney may also explain that women are obliged to marry. Its goal is to find the meaning of marriage for the princess in the animation and this is worth discussing. The ideas in this article correspond to those mentioned in my research. The author usually gives the protagonist marriage a perfect ending. Men win beauty and women win marriage. It demonstrates the stereotyped gender concept contained in these animated stories. I think this is also the stalemate of thought that animation works need to avoid, and while trying to avoid this stereotype about marriage, don't fall into another stereotype.

LaMarre, T. 2009, The anime machine: a media theory of animation, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minn;Bristol;. [Accessed 27 Mar 2020]. In this monograph, the author analyzes in detail the uniqueness of animation as a communication medium, which is different from other visual art forms by combining media studies, philosophy studies and cultural studies. In Japanese animation, the author finds a kind of original mechanical power, which runs through both animation and live-action film. It is the ability to realize artificial space through technical practice. This is a subtle and imaginative book that inspires even more thought. Animation machine provides theoretical support for us to investigate the diversity of animation from the perspective of moving image. It suggests that we should start from the way of image synthesis to re-explain the reason why animation is of the same origin and different flow, to examine whether the guidance of animation works to the potential of moving images is more animated or cinematic, or to find a delicate and unique balance between the two tendencies. Not only that, this kind of synthesis also contains a variety of technical views, aesthetic views and world views. Through the animation machine, we even have the opportunity to explore these intertwined concepts and philosophical thinking, to discover and envision the positive meaning of animation to the world. Overall, the story of the jewel girl studied by the author has its own unique meaning. It links the gender asymmetry to the relationship between people and technology, matching technology to gender. It gives me the space to ask questions and the freedom to explore, and it also enriches my perspective of thinking about gender issues in my later study.

Lee, C.S. & Choi, J. 2018, Early Childhood and Media Representation: How does South Korean Animation Pororo the Little Penguin Reproduce Patriarchal Family Ideology?, Animation, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 116-130. [Accessed 30 Mar 2020]. Media plays an important role in children's socialization in learning social roles, values and ideals. The article examines parents' perceptions of young children and adult expectations in South Korea. The importance of parental modeling is revealed by assigning and locating adult and child roles in typical patriarchy Korean families and suggesting that children learn from other family members through observation and imitation. By observing the changes of the characters in the series and investigating the characters, one can gain a deeper understanding of their social significance. In addition, the study shows that the actual acceptance and interaction of the audience is crucial, and that adults' attention to the influence of television on young children has led to the development trend of educational programs. This article mentions the impact that animation may have on children, and this influence may even form their gender perception. But I think this kind of influence not only exists on children, it may even affect their parents, or cause confusion to parents. In addition, nowadays animation works not only affect children, but also affect adults' views on race and gender.

Valjakka, M. 2019, Worlding through gendering: Female agency, artistic practices and spatio-aesthetic dynamics in and for cities, City, Culture and Society, vol. 19, pp. 100283. [Accessed 29 Mar 2020]. The aim of this paper is to study the emerging practice of cosmopolitanism by shifting the focus to contemporary graffiti, street art and the various forms of female representation that take place in murals. Women are underrepresented in existing subculture and contemporary art scholarship, and while contemporary graffiti is primarily considered a masculine field, the diverse representation of street art and murals is increasingly accepted by women for participation and self-expression. Female protagonists are also contributing to the new world through aesthetic strategies and female agency forms. Contemporary graffiti, street art and murals feature more diverse forms of female representation than previously acknowledged. The active forms of female agency in various urban art practices are developing towards reconfiguration. This paper aims to encourage interdisciplinary readers to redefine the concepts and boundaries related to the urban environment through artistic practice, as well as how women reshape new aesthetics and conduct artistic creation. In this article, the author writes that women will bring different perspectives and concepts to the world, and I agree. Due to physiological problems, the amount of hormones secreted in the brains of women and men is also different, which can lead to different opinions. I think this is a good point. If people of different genders can analyze the problem from the same point of view, it will bring about changes to the world as the author said.

van Rooij, M. 2019, Carefully Constructed Yet Curiously Real: How Major American Animation Studios Generate Empathy Through a Shared Style of Character Design, Animation, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 191-206. [Accessed 26 Mar 2020]. This paper suggests that the computer-animated characters of the leading us animation studios, Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks, are designed according to successful formulas, achieving optimum fidelity and abstraction, and achieving the highest level of audience empathy. This paper Stephen Prince "sense of realism," Scott McCloud "to enlarge" by simplified model and Mori, the Valley of "crazy" (the Uncanny Valley) theory and other academic works, will argue that share a character design style - is defined as a lifelike paradox of sexual union. These studios use digital devices, virtual cameras and perceptual cues to create a real three-dimensional world, and these expressive characters seem to be more acceptable to the audience, evoking empathy and expanding meaning. I think the point in the article about the empathy effect that animated characters will bring to the audience also explains why the stereotypes about gender and race in the animation work will affect the audience, which is helpful for my research.

Sales, K.L. 2019, Subversive Masculinity in Children's Animation: Hey Arnold, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Loud House, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. [Accessed 20 Mar 2020] The aim of this study was to analyze the representation of subversive masculinity. The study had few limitations. The environment in which the characters grow and interact is indicative. Many existing studies on gender in animation media focus on women. Studies of masculinity are usually limited to discussions of negative male behavior, where masculinity is classified as the focus of debate rather than the basis of research. The study ditched the female-themed argument and used an all-male analysis, with men coming up with the results. This paper studies the behavior of each character and concludes that the environment in which the character grows and interacts is indicative. In my opinion, because the article only studies one gender, the kind of triggering it may not be comprehensive enough, we need to look at it dialectically. But it also provides a meaningful idea that the character's story background may affect the character's character, which is a very useful conclusion for me as an animator.

Zhao, Z. 2019, Live Emoji: Semantic Emotional Expressiveness of 2D Live Animation. [Accessed 20 Mar 2020] This paper discusses 2D real-time animation of emotion expression. The author discusses the need to enhance the emotional communication experience animation in life as an extension of interpersonal communication. Research suggests using models to bind behaviors that trigger emotions, actions, semantics, psychometrics, and emotional expression. Based on the model, the author designs and implements a real-time animation system, and proposes an emotional command recommendation algorithm. As a new form of narration, real-time animation opens up the possibility of online communication through the control network. Emotional expression can bring more participatory experience to the audience. This article also mentioned about the empathy ability that animated characters can bring to the audience. The difference is that it is analyzed from the method of making animation, which provides me with technical guidance and analysis.