coobeans, Cixous and Butler

The readings on Cixous and Butler made me think about some things that we have been discussing in my English lit class called Gender Adaptations. It seems that Cixous is talking about male dominance and hegemonic masculinity in from Sorties. These topics correlate very strongly with Laura Mulvey’s concepts of hegemonic masculinity and female looked-at-ness. Laura Mulvey’s main point was that women are viewed as objects to be seen by men. In the class we looked at many examples of this. In many ads for products targeted towards men (such as beer, cars, etc…) or high fashion ads women were posed or dressed provocatively and in ways that they are subject to the male gaze. This goes along with Cixous’ message that men are in the dominant position and define the ways in which women are portrayed.
Butler seems to discuss what the words feminism and feminist become associated with because of politics. Once again, in our Gender Adaptations class our professor had asked everyone in the class (mostly consisting of girls), “Who considers themselves to be a feminist?” I remember only about two people raised their hands and everyone else did not. This is because the political nature of things has caused the words feminism and feminist to become associated with extreme radicalism. When many people hear the word feminist they think of someone who refuses to shaves all her hair off and walks around protesting and holding signs. Butler says, “By conforming to a requirement of representational politics that feminism articulate a stable subject, feminism thus opens itself to charges of gross misrepresentation.” This means that when people try to fit the stereotype of what constitutes being a feminist then it becomes easy for the term feminism to be misconstrued. Butler means that by people getting involved in the politics of what makes a person feminist they are perpetuating the illusion that feminism is that way (highly glamorized).