Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Considering David and Women


I'm going to bring up again David's comment at the end of our Beauvoir class. He quoted a book and said something along the lines that women are the stabilizing core of society. Men go off on adventures, confident their wives will maintain the society they left. I'm not taking a side on this point, but I think it's an interesting perspective that doesn't deserve all the negative retaliation David received. Do some societies function in this way? Some women? I don't really know. But I realized this perspective isn't alien to that one book, and relates to reading I've done in my Chinese cinema class. In one of the most widely known texts to those who study Chinese cinema (and healthily criticized as well), Rey Chow's Primitive Passions, she writes, "women are always the places where primitive passions are cathected" (44). When we read her work, we looked at the big shots of Chinese Fifth Generation filmmakers (who's audience is larger outside China than within) and considered whether or not these directors were feeding to a Western view of China, using women protagonists as the centerpiece. 

6 comments:

  1. When you say that "men go off...confident their wives will maintain the society left," I immediately think of WWII when all of the men went to war, leaving women in charge of businesses and war production. At first, David's comment really put me off, but if we consider this example, it is not such a bad thing to say that women are stable. WWII proved that women are more than capable of entering workforces and keeping society moving without their husbands. I don't like the idea that women have to stay behind while men go out and live and have adventures, but in the context of WWII, it is actually a compliment to women to say that they have to stay behind and take care of America. Being the "stabilizing core of society" is not a bad thing here. I think it becomes a problem when being stable is all women are expected to do, and they are denied opportunities to go and "have adventures" like men.

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  2. I feel as if the idea of women as the stabilizing core of society seems somewhat outdated for a modern society. It seems almost as though the current world is too populated to make broad statements about any more. (Or maybe, one day, a true melting pot will arise, but I'm doubtful) Obviously, not all societies are as progressive as others, but the idea doesn't help the progression of women's rights even in a "western" society. The WWII example presents the issue in a society that is truly antiquated despite its proximity to present day. Relating the idea to a modern context is what seemed to take people back in class when it was mentioned. I agree that the point is relevant for certain time periods, but as humanity progresses it may become less and less true. Or maybe not, who knows? Maybe we'll follow Asimov into a post-national society based off human dependance on robots. One can dream I suppose.

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  3. At first I was surprised at David's comment as well, maybe just for the way it was phrased. But after he explained it, I couldn't help but thinking about the example Kristen had also mentioned above about soldiers going to war and women staying home. In the case of war, the women staying behind didn't mean that they literally stayed at home and did nothing. It was in the time of World War II when lots of women stayed behind the battlefronts and stepped up to roles outside of their domestic responsibilities. Women were able to enter career paths which were typically occupied by men. I think if we interpret this in a different way, it can be not as negative. Maybe this was perceived in a negative sense because many of us assumed that this meant "men were allowed to have adventures while women weren't allowed to do the same".

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  4. When thinking about the role of women and how they should be seen as a stable core of society that is unchanging, I think back to our readings on liberty. In order for a civilization to develop, we must be able to think freely and convey ourselves. With out change and individuality, there can be no forward progress for our civilization. If we think of all the women who have once or still do not have the freedom of education, speech and thought, there must be a great deal of lost potential for our world. In the example of Albert Einstein, if we restricted him from being able to go out and have adventures, get an education and have the freedom to convey his thoughts, we would never have experienced the benefits of his intelligence. Also, it can be argued that women have these same intellectual capabilities with examples such as Marie Curie, Edith Wharton and Malala Yousafzai.

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  6. The text that I was referring to was Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. What I said in class was that women make civilization. Men go off on expeditions, adventures, to make a fortune, and we'd think that the stuff they do creates society but it doesn't. Women stick to the roles given to them; they live out most of there lives making the society around them. The book that your mom read to or the suit she acquired for you; are things that not only you experiences but everyone else can too. Its the stuff that are of apart of our daily lives.

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