In the last post, I discussed gender as a system of symbolic meanings. People understood to be “men” are often expected to be “masculine” and associated with masculinity/ies; while people understood to be “women” are expected to be feminine, and associated with femininity/ies. Traits associated with masculinities and femininities are often also transposed onto ideas, concepts, and things, in everyday life and in global politics. Masculinities and femininities are often salient in political, economic, and social life.
But, like all good political “scientists,” you ask the “so what?” question – what does that matter? What does it tell us about how the world works? Most of the answer to that question will be in another post, but, to get there, you’ll need the punchline of the answer: because global politics (at the individual level, at the state level, and at the systemic level) is gender-hierarchical. To discuss that meaningfully, though, we’ll need to know a few more gender-words, and have a vocabulary for talking about gender hierarchy.
Sex hierarchy: the explicit or implicit valuing of people (or things, concepts, ideas, etc.) differently on the basis of their (perceived) sex difference(s).
Gender hierarchy:Â Â the explicit or implicit valuing of people (or things, concepts, ideas, etc.) differently on the basis of their (perceived) gender difference(s), usually the valuing of masculinity/ies over femininity/ies. Any give gender hierarchy is not absolute or universal, sometimes gendered hierarchies value different gender-related characteristics differently in different times and different places. Still, the existence of gender hierarchy/ies is/are universal. Patriarchal gender hierarchies (or gender hierarchies dominated by (hegemonic) masculinity/ies are often described in terms of “gender oppression,” or “gender subordination,” indicating the devaluing of non-idealized masculinity/ies and femininity/ies as compared to dominant/hegemonic (Weberian) ideal-typical notion of what “a woman” or “the feminine” should be and what “a man” or “the masculine” should be. Different feminism(s) refer to deconstructing gender hierarchy differently, using those words, or “ending gender subordination” or “gender emancipation.” Note that none of these terms are explicitly about or exclusively for “women” (to be discussed in a later post).
Other terms describe important complexities, including …
masculinism (n.) – the social preference for masculinity/ies and/or the social exclusion of femininity/ies.
homosexual (adj.) – describes people (perceived to be) of a certain (biological) sex, having sexual preference for or exclusive sexual attraction to people who are (perceived to be) of the same (biological) sex.
lesbian (adj.) – describes people (perceived to be) “women,” having sexual preference for or exclusive sexual attraction to people who are (perceived to be) “women”
gay (adj.) – describes people (perceived to be) “men,” having sexual preference for or exclusive sexual attraction to people who are (perceived to be) “men”
bisexual (adj.) – describes people who are sexually attracted to “both” (“male” and “female”) sexes, regardless of their own (perceived, biological) sex.
heterosexual (adj.) – describes people (perceived to be) of a certain (biological) sex, having sexual preference for or exclusive sexual attraction to people who are (perceived to be) of the “opposite” (biological) sex
homophobia (n.)/homophobic (adj.) – describes (unreasoned) fear or discrimination against people perceived to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual
heteronormativity (n.) – the assumption of the normalcy of heterosexuality and the abnormality of “homosexuality” or “bisexuality”
heterosexism (n.) – the preference for or bias towards heteronormative personal, social, and political organizations and bias against (people and lifestyles classified with) “homosexuality” or “bisexuality”
transgender (adj.) – an imagined cross-gender community
transgender (n.) – people who do not appear to conform to traditional gender norms by presenting and living genders different than those which are assigned to them at birth and/or presenting and living genders in ways that may not be readily intelligible in terms of traditional gender roles and norms. Sometimes “transgender” is distinguished from “transsexual,” where “transsexual” refers to people who use hormonal and/or surgical technologies to alter their bodies in ways that may be construed as at odds with the sex assignment at birth or which may not be readily intelligible in terms of traditional conceptions of sex bodies (see Talia Mae Bettcher’s work on this). Others object to the reification of biology in separating “transgender” and “transsexual.”
FTM (adj.) and MTF (adj.) – signify directionality of “sex change” or “gender change” in trans- people (“female to male” and “male to female”). Some object to the use of these terms because they legitimate illegitimate biological sex categories.
transphobia (n.)/transphobic (adj.) – negative attitudes (hatred, loathing, rage, or moral indignation) towards (perceived or “actual” trans- people and/or transgressive gender performances.
cisgender (n.)/cissexual (n.) – people who are comfortable with and/or identify with the sex and/or gender one was assigned at birth and who experience their “physical” and “conscious” sexes as being aligned.
cissexism (n.) – the belief that trasngendered or transsexual identifications are inferior to or less authentic than those of cisgender or cissexual persons; including (in Julia Serrano’s words) trans-fascimiliation(viewing or portraying transsexuals as merely imitating, emulating, or impersonating cissexual male or female genders), trans-exclusion (refusing to acknowledge and respect a transsexual’s identified gender, or denying them, access to spaces, organizations, or events designed for that gender), trans-objectification (when people reduce trans people to their body parts, the medical procedures they’ve undertaken, or get hung up on, disturbed by, or obsessed over supposed discrepancies that exist between a transsexual’s physical sex and identified gender), and trans-interrogation (when people bring a transsexual’s identified gender into question by asking them to answer personal questions about their life story, their motives for transitioning, medical procedures they have undertaken, or when they obsess over what causes transsexuality – such questions reduce transsexuals to the status of objects of inquiry.
Sexism, heterosexism, and cissexism are iterations of gender hierarchies seen throughout the world, though they take different forms and play out with different empirical results over time, place, culture, and situation.
Still, only armed with these “vocabulary words,” one might think that the only people who should care about sex/gender hierarchies in global politics are the people on the “bottom” end of them – that is, women, persons of non-heterosexual sexual preference, and persons of non-cissexual sex/gender identification. One would be wrong.
to feminize (infinitive), feminizing (gerund), feminization (n.) – subordinating people, political entities, or ideas by associating them with values perceived as feminine. (In Spike Peterson’s words), not only subjects (women and marginalized men) but also concepts, desires, tastes, styles, “ways of knowing” …can be feminized – with the effect of reducing their legitimacy, status, and value. Importantly, this devalorization is simultaneously ideological (discursive, cultural) and material (structural/economic) … this devalorizaton normalizes – with the effect of “legitimating” the marginalization, subordination, and exploitation of feminized practices and persons.
In Catherine MacKinnon’s words (which I am sure I will get a lot of blog-spam for mentioning, but, whatever), feminization is something that can (and often does) happen to anyone – it is only that we assume that it is natural when it happens to women. Put another way (and key to the forthcoming discussion in post #3), gender hierarchy is operative in social and political relations not just when “men” discriminate against “women,” but in a variety of instantiations where associations with perceived genders/sexualities/gendered characteristics are mapped onto persons, states, and other entities in (global and everyday) interactions.
PS …Â
Gender equality: This is a phrase that some people and scholars use to discuss what I call ending gender subordination, or gender emancipation. I do not think it makes sense, though, in the context in which it is used, because “equality” implies both the appropriateness of existing standards of human treatment and human dignity (which were mostly made when women didn't so much count as human) and the appropriateness of applying the “same” standards to everyone, since equality is really the “same” treatment for the “same” people. In theory, then, denying abortions to everyone is “equal,” but, of course, affects differently sexed bodies radically differently.Â
This is all too meta. You vented (are venting) against the publishers-that-be, and now you give a glossary. Meh. The value of these (or any) concepts is not inherent; it lies in what they let you do. Perhaps it would be more effective to demonstrate their value (e.g. with the piece that failed to get published) instead of just declaring them to be valuable. You may be the world's best rock climber, but making the claim in a pub won't carry half the weight of the same claim made at the bottom of El Capitain (and then showing it). If the journal failed to see the brilliance of your work, why not let it shine elsewhere (like in this very medium)? Otherwise, it sounds like just so much hollow disciplining by a subaltern sourpuss.
Boast not; do.
Ben: “Subaltern sourpuss”? Really? Do I need to do a separate post explaining what the term “subaltern” actually connotes?
Laura: You're doing a service; it is only sad that it is necessary…Â
I'm with Vikash in that response. In regards to the statement, “The value of these concepts is not inherent; it lies in what they let you do. Perhaps it would be more effective to demonstrate their value…” presupposes a philosophical and an epistemological position that the validity of concepts must be “demonstrated” or that they practically must be used for another purpose (arguably an explanatory one) to be considered useful. Those “subaltern sourpusses” you refer to Ben would clearly take issue with this, especially if normatively, their goal is to elucidate silenced perspectives, challenge structures of domination, or for that matter explicate power/knowledge relationships (though Vikash or others can correct me if I'm wrong here). Furthermore, Laura is obviously addressing this broadly speaking through a feminist theory lens, and to conflate that with postcolonial perspectives in the last statement is dubious and questionable (though there are obvious overlaps to a certain extent). I suppose the utility brought to bear by thinkers concerned with the subaltern is questioning if your call for demonstration is grounded in certain power relationships which effectively marginalize alternative perspectives or conceptions of “knowing” and “purpose.” Before demanding that scholars like Laura “do” something instead of “boasting,” it's best to question if demonstrating concept value really is the goal at stake here, and secondly, if this call of yours silences alternative conceptions here of social theory (and by extension metatheory and philosophy as well).
@Ben: It is a _series_ of posts; posts shouldn't be 20000 words long; I'm introducing the vocabulary and what it is feminist IR is (which most of the field somehow still doesn't seem to know) in order to lay the groundwork for more sophisticated arguments in following posts. @Vikash and @Nawal, thanks for the support …
I'm a bit confused by your objection to the notion that “the validity of concepts must be 'demonstrated' or that they practically must be used for another purpose (arguably an explanatory one) to be considered useful.”  (my emphasis)
Besides the curious implication (or am I misreading you?) that something need not be useful in order to be useful, isn't “elucidat[ing] silenced perspectives, challeng[ing] structures of domination, or for that matter explicat[ing] power/knowledge relationships” not only a “use” of these concepts, but an “explanatory one”? Â
Perhaps you mean for the emphasis to be on “for another purpose”… Â In which case, is it not Laura's argument here that feminist concepts *are* useful to the purpose of understanding IR? Â Which is why her ideas merit consideration for publication in mainstream IR journals…?
As an aside, I'm actually confused by this entire series. Â While I of course haven't read the article in question, it seems to me quite possible that all of this might have less to do with its feminism and more to do with its anti-positivism (and surely even Laura would acknowledge that these are in fact distinct positions, even if they do often overlap). Â I can't say that I find it particularly surprising that journals dedicated to a positivist enterprise do not dedicate much space to articles that decry the very enterprise of positivism.
@Matt: you raise great questions and I wish to clarify my position here a bit. In principle, I'm not against the idea of demonstrating the value or usefulness of concepts or even theoretical terms, be it for an explanatory or a normative purpose. The questions that come to my mind, however, are: A) how do we define “demonstrate” here, and does the term imply a preference for explanatory versus normative theory persay, and even within explanatory theory, does it also pressupose certain philosophical and epistemological positions? That I think remains an open question and was not addressed by Ben's critique of Laura's post, hence why I took issue with the critique in the first place. So, to answer your question, in principle, I'm all for demonstrating the value of concepts in methodologically and epistemologically diverse ways, so long as that doesn't silence or marginalize other perspectives. This leads me to consider a second point:
B) My argument above is that depending upon how one defines “demonstrate,” (for example in an explanatory sense, and not to say Ben did, this is just an example), then this can effectively silence alternative perspectives. It's questionable if broadly speaking, normative theory is concerned with demonstrating the value of concepts, or if it would question how such “demonstration” as a goal itself is embedded in certain relationships between power/knowledge and advanced by certain oppressive structures. It's a philosophical question regarding if power is present in the discourse itself, in the definition of “thinkers” and “actors,” in the very definition of “purpose” for the social sciences even. An example that comes to mind is would postmodernists or poststructuralists buy into this notion of “demonstrating” the value of concepts? Or, would their epistemological and ontological positions prevent them from doing so?
These are just some thoughts regarding intellectual openness and academic freedom writ large. Granted, my points above have greatly detracted from Laura's points, but I took issue with the critique of her post given that it struck me as parochial, unreflective, and not self-conscious regarding its underlying philosophical and metatheoretical orientations which prescribed “doing” as opposed to “unpacking” in a conceptual sense persay. That and the label “subaltern sourpusses” I felt merited a response.
And one more note: I am obviously not a postmodernist or a poststructuralist, but consider myself to be broadly speaking, a post-positivist and a constructivist, who may be closer philosophically to a critical realist (to be determined there). I think all I'm calling for Matt is a more reflective and self-conscious social science which is academically open. So, the minute I here someone basically ask, “What's the point? How can you demonstrate the value of the concepts you use, or your work?,” I cringe a little and am always half-tempted to push them to consider the metatheoretical assumptions they operate on, or against. That's really where my critique comes from. Hope that clarifies matters a bit.
Two thoughts: 1) the series of post is about the journal thing, but also about more than the journal thing. Most people I have talked to “outside” feminist IR about what it is feminist IR does (at best) fundamentally misconstrue it and (at worst) conflate (what I see as particularly low quality, empirically inaccurate, and normatively problematic) research on “gender” (by which they mean “sex”) as a variable, ignorant of the power relations it is a part of. I want people to understand that complaint when I make it, so I'm (through a series of posts) explaining it
2) the rejection may have been about not being positivist. Part I of the initial post allowed for that possibility – talking about pluralism more than about feminism. That said, for a variety of reasons which would likely identify the journal if shared, I'm pretty sure that was not the case. And even were it, while feminism and “anti-positivism” (a phrase I wouldn't use because it normalizes positivism) are distinct positions, (it is my argument that) feminist ontologies necessitate certain methodological stances that (sometimes) fly in the face of the scientific method orthodoxy, (an argument I will flesh out in a later post). So in my particular situation, they're distinct debates, but intertwined, and both of interest.Â
Of course, there's the very interesting possibility that the “post-positivist” article would have been treated differently if it didn't “look like” a positivist article (that is, have numbers in it) and/or if a justificatory piece about its methodological stance(s) had been published previously. That said, as a reviewer and soon-to-be-journal-editor, my first priority would be to figure out what an article is actually trying to do. But maybe that's a radical notion.
What might be helpful Laura is two things for future posts: clarifying the linkages (or even the divergence) between different feminist IR thinkers in relation to: critical theorists, postcolonial writers, poststructuralists, and postmodernists. I myself question the different positions feminists take, and how they would distinguish themselves persay from other post-positivist thinkers. That's a huge agenda obviously, but it begs interesting questions I think, especially for young minds new to the game, or for scholars asking for a theoretical reengagement of sorts. Secondly, it would be interesting to compare feminist IR theory within the U.S. and across the Atlantic. I'm curious how the different intellectual environments affect the development and application of feminist theory in IR? Just some food for thought…