Role Reversal: A useful exercise or mostly entertainment?

In Janet Bing’s paper “Gendered jokes: Building boundaries or subverting sexism?”, she cites Alice Duer Miller’s 1915 piece, "Why We Oppose Votes for Men" and notes that “role reversal” has often been used by feminists to illustrate the sexism, and absurdity, of some accepted ways of thinking. Also included in Bing’s paper is a description of a cartoon in which a man complains to two female police officers about being robbed, only to be accused of having asked for it by dressing expensively and calling attention to his “financial charms.” Bing refers to such humor as “subversive” – that is, making fun of a system, as opposed to divisive humor that earns laughs at the expense of someone or some group on the outside – and it can be effective. However, applying the idea of role reversal to real-life situations to demonstrate their sexist nature is not always as useful.

One example is a situation in which the sexist behavior of one in a “dominant” role, as Jean Baker Miller refers to it, can, in the case of a female “subordinate,” make her quite uncomfortable, whereas a reversal of the situation would probably reflect poorly on the female in the “dominant” role. It could be argued that no man knows what it’s like to sit through a job interview and have the interviewer, the person with the authority to hire or not hire, staring at your chest throughout the session. Applying the idea of role reversal to this situation, and thinking of how a male interviewee might react to a female interviewer looking at his chest for 20 minutes as she assesses his qualifications for the job, it is likely the man would simply think the womans’s behavior was strange, and probably wouldn’t be the least bit offended by it.

A more obvious example where role reversal doesn’t work is that of the “street remarks” discussed by Carol Brooks Gardner. Picturing a group of female landscapers, for example, openly admiring a businessman’s physical attributes would, again, probably be viewed by the man simply as odd, since it is outside of the norm. But even if we posit a scenario in which such a thing is as commonplace as the cat calls of construction workers directed at a young woman walking by, such “street remarks” would likely never be viewed as threatening by the man to whom they are addressed. Quite the contrary, the comments might be welcomed, or at least not rebuffed, and could be considered an ego boost.

Still other ideas for revealing blatant sexism through role reversal are perhaps unnecessary. If one were to suggest, for example, a “wet briefs” contest among men at a bar, the image of such a thing might effectively show the sexist nature of “wet t-shirt” contests for women, but it’s doubtful whether one even needs to argue such a point.

So, while role reversal may work well when used in the context of humor, its usefulness for real-world examples of sexist attitudes may be diluted. This is likely the case because males and females simply perceive the world differently, in addition to having dissimilar self-images, particularly in situations involving interactions between men and women. For women, the world can be a dangerous and unwelcoming place, where females have to fight to be judged as human beings, as opposed to specifically as female human beings. For men, body image, in the sense of simply having been born male, is not generally perceived as problematic.

ODU Literary Festival - Crossing Boundaries

The 28th Annual Literary Festival was held at ODU from October 3rd through 7th. Among the events, Sheri Reynolds’ read from her newest novel, The Firefly Cloak, and there was a presentation by poet Thomas Sayers Ellis. Both Reynolds and Ellis did much more than simply read from their works, crossing the boundary into performance, with both of their presentations designed as much to entertain as to inform.

Reynolds uses vivid imagery in her writing. In an early scene from her book, Tessa Lee, a little girl, watches the “dusty ghosts” behind the truck as she rides along a country road. Later, Tessa Lee listens as her mother and her mother’s boyfriend crack open pop-top cans, making “the beer hiss.” Not only does she breathe life into inanimate objects, crossing the boundary between real life and fiction, but she also crosses the boundary between the world as seen through the eyes of adults and the world as seen through the eyes of a child.

Tom Ellis was introduced as a “leader in the poetic insurgency.” As is often true of poetry, Ellis’ writing leaves a lot of room for interpretation, or as he might put it, “more places to hide in the shade between stanzas.” Ellis combines humor with social commentary, and often makes his point with repetition. Like Reynolds, Ellis has the ability to paint a picture with his words, effectively making the leap across the boundary between the words on the page and the images in the minds of his audience. He writes of Andre, a cross-dressing musician. “What a drag,” he says. He then goes on to give Andre’s rationale for his choice of wardrobe, which happens to be a bridal gown. “A good wedding starts in the department store and works its way into the photo album.” Andre crosses boundaries, and so does a wedding dress.

Though Reynolds’ book is written from the point of view of three different characters, she is at her best when she reads from Tessa Lee’s section. With her southern accent and the sweet voice she intones for Tessa Lee, Reynolds transports us to the little girl’s world and, like Ellis, paints a picture with her words. A teenage Tessa Lee meets her mother’s boss, and describes the man’s hair as looking “like a rusty Brillo pad.” The man, in turn, looks at Tessa Lee, “like she was a raccoon in his garbage.”

Ellis, too, relies on metaphor, and explains such images require destruction, crossing from the reality of what we see to the poetic analysis of what it could mean. As Ellis introduced a poem about a church, one that he read like a preacher giving a sermon, he explained that he had asked that the lights be turned down so the atmosphere would be “more like a church, more like a party.” Perhaps my favorite metaphor, however, was when he described those who walk through life unseen as being “like the scratched instrumental side of a 45.”

Reynolds comes from the quiet, though not necessarily peaceful, countryside of the south, and the “multiple tensions” that bubble beneath the surface begin to boil over in her latest novel. Ellis, on the other hand, grew up in Washington, D.C. The term “multiple tensions” is one that he coined for his own hometown, describing it as being a “percussive town.” He captures the rhythm of the city in his poetry, and it is amplified by his performance. Both writers cross the boundaries between the words on the page and the living, breathing essence of those about whom they write, and in so doing, they invite the audience to cross boundaries, as well.

Blogger Tourism

The following was written in response to an article review one of my classmates wrote. The link is at the bottom of the page.

The more I have read about blogs, and experienced having one of my own on Blogger, the more I believe they have tremendous value. As you point out in your review, one valuable aspect is the ability of a blogger to give the reader a sense of place. One of the blogs mentioned in the article, Fragments From Floyd, turns out to be written by a man named Fred, who lives in Floyd County, Virginia, which happens to be where my mother was born and raised, and where my grandparents lived their entire lives ... and where they are buried. Like thousands of other places in the world, Floyd County is a place only a few people know about. It's not situated in a location that one would normally pass through on the way to somewhere else. For the most part, unless you specifically set out to go to Floyd County, you likely will never know it exists.

The town of Floyd is home to true country folk. With its one stop light, despite the one fast food restaurant and one convenience store (at least last time I was there), it can certainly boast that it was "country when country wasn't cool." Part of the reason is its remote location, 50 miles from the nearest big city, Roanoke, and far enough away from southwest Virginia's biggest claim to fame, Virginia Tech, to have been able to maintain its country charm. Willis is another town located within Floyd County. With a population of about 400, it's where my grandparents lived for 40 years. The road on which their home sat remained unpaved until the early '80s.
Bloggers like Fred, who bring people from all over the world into tiny places like Floyd County, not only give readers a glimpse into places they otherwise would never know, but they do so while preserving the very things that make such places special. People reading Fred's blog don't clog the narrow streets of "downtown" Floyd with their SUVs or rocket past dairy farms in their mini-vans. Yet they're able to get a glimpse into a way of life they may have had no idea even existed within their own state .... or on the other side of the world.

And to me, the best thing is, Fred is just an ordinary guy who teaches at Radford College and has made his home in Floyd County for the last 8 years or so. He didn't need to find a cable access channel that would allow him to broadcast or a publisher to take on his book. He just set up a blog and introduced the world to the place he now calls home.

Links:
http://myrhetoricincyberspace.blogspot.com/
http://www.fragmentsfromfloyd.com/

What about goodwill toward women?

When I was a little girl, probably around eight years old, one of my favorite seasonal activities was to memorize and sing Christmas songs. My friends and I would sit on the screen porch and sing The First Noel, We Three Kings, and Oh Come All Ye Faithful, among others, for hours. As much as I loved the songs of the season, I was perplexed by some of the words. Even as a little girl, I wondered (and asked my mother), why do Christmas songs say things like “peace to men on earth”? What about peace for women?

In a recent discussion of this subject with a couple of men, they were somewhat incredulous that such a thing would bother me. After all, the argument went, everyone knows that the word man in that context is meant to refer to both men and women. Consulting The Merriam-Webster Dictionary and looking up the word man, indeed, the first definition given is “human being.” However, that is followed by “esp. an adult male.” Definition 2 tells us that the word man means “the human race, mankind.” However, the next five entries define the word man as meaning “one possessing in high degree the qualities considered distinctive of manhood, an adult male servant or employee, the individual who can fulfill one’s requirements,” as in he’s your man, “one of the pieces with which various games are played, one of the players on a team,” and, finally, a disturbing entry: “white [emphasis added} society or people.”

So, interestingly, the dictionary both supports and contradicts the position that the term man is meant to be all-inclusive, covering both man and woman. While the first two definitions tell us that the term refers to anyone of the human race, the third definition refers not just specifically to a male but to “the qualities considered distinctive of manhood,” clearly not meant to include females. Additional consultation of the dictionary muddles things even more. The word mankind is defined first as referring to “the human race” but the second definition is “men as distinguished from women.”

I never really got an answer to my question about Christmas songs. My mother tried to explain to me that the term men is meant to include both men and women, but that didn’t make a lot of sense to me since there were such obvious distinctions between the sexes, differences that were apparent to me even as a third-grader. However, I was left with little choice but to accept the status quo. I continued to sing Christmas songs with my friends, but I never quite got over the idea that it was only good Christian men who should rejoice and that we were calling on God to grant rest to only merry gentlemen.