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evakuality · 6 years

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Isak and internalized homophobia

Okay, so, I keep telling myself I’ll write my Even meta, but apparently what i then always do is find something else to write about Isak. What can I say? I love this guy. So yeah, this isn’t about Even, yet again. This is about Isak. As we’ve already established at length, Isak is a complex character who is endlessly fascinating to me. One thing I think I really find interesting about him is his internalized homophobia and how hard he works to overcome it. I’ve been thinking about this over the last few days and decided to write about it. Partly to share it with others, but if I’m honest mostly to sort it out properly in my head so it’s coherent rather than a series of notes that try to connect together but fail miserably. I’m not claiming to be original here, as I’m sure this has been discussed many times by many different people, but I do want to get this all straight (haha, or not straight as the case may be) in my own head. Once again, because I cannot be concise to save myself, this is stupidly long. So once again it goes under a cut.

Isak is fairly obviously really deep into internalized homophobia before we even meet him. In season one, he reacts very badly to the jibes casually thrown out about him being gay, about Elias having to be in a room with the gay guy, that he likes gay songs. It irritates him that people think this about him. But why? By season two it’s fairly clear that he’s hiding his sexuality, not that he doesn’t know about it. Some scenes at the end of season one heavily imply that he knows he’s got a crush on Jonas but is keeping it as secret as he can (though honestly, the amount of heart eyes he’s giving at the end there means than anyone less oblivious than his friends would almost certainly have noticed and figured it out). So, Isak has a pretty good idea of who he is but he’s hiding it. I propose that he’s doing so at least in part because of the way masculinity is portrayed in his world. He has three examples to go by: his father, his friends, and Eskild.

We don’t know much about his father, except that he leaves his family when things get tough and Isak resents him for it. His reaction to receiving texts from him is irritation and a demand for money. What they were like as a father/son dynamic before his father left is uncertain, but it’s definitely a strained relationship whenever we see them interacting. Even the hug at the end of season three, when Isak has come to terms with himself and is more open, is distant and stiff. It’s not likely that Isak would see his father as any sort of role model for ‘how to be a man’ given that he resents him so much.

The boys in his group of friends are lovely, supportive people who have each others’ backs and will do anything for each other. They are also very bro-ish, for want of a better word. They, and the other guys he sees around him at school, perform a lot of very heterosexual male behavior. They talk about girls and sex, they hook up, they want to get with girls at every opportunity. This may be very authentic for these boys, but it isn’t for Isak. We see how uncomfortable he feels around them when these conversations start, we see how he tries to emulate them and hook up with girls. They also, very casually, throw homophobic slurs around. This is Isak’s immediate group of role models. No wonder he feels anxious and ill at ease when they say things like ‘why don’t you want to hook up with Emma, are you gay?’ -- they’ve made it very clear that being gay is somehow not the way you should be. Jonas talks a good talk, but he too is guilty of these comments and ironically the only person he calls out for homophobia is Isak. Other casual gay comments, use of it as a slur etc etc are all just accepted as usual. This is the world Isak inhabits day after day after day. Adolescents tend to be heavily influenced by their peers and Isak’s peers are all sending him the message that being gay is somehow not right, that it single you out and means you don’t fit it.

That leads us to Eskild, Isak’s only (or at least closest) representation of what it looks like to be gay. Eskild is very open, he’s proud of who he is, he likes to suck dick, he likes to hook up with guys and he has no shame in it. He’s also very feminine-coded: he wears tights, likes makeup, has delicate clothes, scents everything with lavender etc etc. To Isak, this looks very threatening if applied to himself. His friends have made it clear that the way to be a man is to be bro-ish, and his only model of gayness is the opposite of that. In order to be gay, Isak believes he has to be like Eskild and he rejects that idea. If, in order to be true to who he is, Isak has to be like Eskild then he’d rather not. It’s far more important for him to fit in with his group of guys.

It’s no surprise at all that when Isak talks to Eskild about his ‘thing’ with Even, he doesn’t want to be associated with being gay. He still feels like gay = feminine = not what he wants to be. The things he mentions to Eskild in that speech are all feminine-coded and all things he personally doesn’t want to be associated with. Eskild quite rightly calls Isak out on his close-minded, self-centered view of the world and on what it means to be gay; he is insulted and horrified by what Isak is saying, and he defends the open, flamboyant gay people from Isak’s narrow minded ideas. It’s important to note here, that Eskild never says here that it’s okay to be whatever type of person you want and still be gay; he’s too busy defending himself and others like him from Isak’s ideas. But of course, this reinforces for Isak that gay= all those things he’s been rejecting. It would be easy to blame this on just Eskild and his flamboyance or on the boys and their casual homophobia, but this is Isak’s perception of the world. This is his take on it. It’s easy to say he’s just being close-minded, but it’s coming from somewhere. We’ve seen some of that in the types of masculinity he sees around him, but it’s not just that.

Of course, some of it is his mother and his perceived understanding of the world that her religion has imposed on her and by proxy onto him. He’s scared of her response to him being gay, because of course what he hears from the religion around him is probably not great. His mother isn’t stable, so it’s hard to know what things she’s said to Isak when she wasn’t particularly lucid. What is easier to know is that there are passages in the Bible which suggest being gay is wrong. Living with someone who is so clearly religious, Isak will almost certainly have heard these passages and taken them to heart. If we couple this with what he ‘knows’ about being gay, which is that gay=feminine, it’s not a surprise that Isak has decided to go as full-bro as he can. The one time in the earlier seasons that we see him being true to himself, he’s effectively told that he’s ‘too gay’ and heartbreakingly, after that what we see is an Isak who explicitly rejects pop music and is instead drawn to rap and other very masculine-appearing music. I’m sure he does like those songs as well, he certainly seems keen on them, but it’s sad that he’s pushed away from other music because of how it associates him with ‘gay’ and is therefore a problem.

It’s not until he meets Even, who seems so cool and effortless and amazing to Isak, that he starts to realize that you don’t have to act any one way to be not-straight. Even is unashamed to be exactly who he is. He fits in very well with what look like bro-ish guys and he’s one of the guys whenever he’s with them. But he also loves pop music, he is a fan of flashy love stories, he’s kind and gentle. He’s a mixture of all the things Isak sees as manly, and has many of the attributes of ‘gay’ people too. It’s a revelation to him that you can be like this and people can love you and accept you. When he’s with Even, then, it’s easy to be open. But it’s not so easy when he’s with others. Because they keep on with their casual homophobia, their fixation on girls and hooking up. Isak still can’t be sure that they’ll accept him because they don’t have that mix and he’s unwilling to lose them or to not fit in. It’s a shame that Isak doesn’t have more access to a wider range of stories around what it means to be gay. But unfortunately for Isak, a lot of what is gay in mainstream media is the stereotype that Eskild also represents so they echo each other to a point where this is, for a long time, all Isak knows ‘not-straight’ can look like. The types of shows he’s likely to have been watching all tend to have one flamboyant gay character who’s there as comic relief and/or as a tragic figure who gets killed off. The more nuanced portrayals are in less mainstream things, and given Isak’s reactions when people suggest he might be gay, he’s unlikely to have been seeking them out. Indeed, the media Isak seeks out in the show (apart from Romeo and Juliet, which he looks at because he’s infatuated with Even) is all very masculine: Narcos, Nicolas Cage etc etc. These are not pieces of media that would help him come to terms with being true to himself, in fact they are likely to do the opposite.

It’s a testament to Isak that he learns and grows from all this. That meeting Even allows him to open himself up and take a leap of faith beyond the hookups with girls. That Eskild telling him off allows him to reconsider his ideas, that his conversations with Sana allow him to look at things from another point of view. But it can’t be denied that Isak would have had an easier time if he’d been exposed to a wider range of ‘gay’ role models. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his friends are so masculine, that they fit that stereotype so thoroughly, and that his only representation of ‘gay’ is so feminized. Isak rejects that idea so thoroughly because he’s been so conditioned to see that stereotype as somehow ‘lesser’ (we can blame this on our society’s unfortunate misogynistic tendency to code anything female or feminine as lesser, weaker, not as important) -- this is, of course, why Eskild reacts so badly to what Isak says. He’s so rejecting of gayness because he associates it with femininity and Eskild is offended, as he should be.

The other reason Isak might find it so hard, is that because there’s such a narrow representation of ‘gayness’ in his life and in the media he consumes, there’s also the very real possibility that he fears he’d fit in nowhere. Not masculine enough to be one of the guys, not stereotypically gay enough to be part of that community either. Why risk that when you can keep on repressing yourself? It’s an easy choice for a young guy to make: kind of fit in with the friends you’ve already got because it’s better than probably not fitting in anywhere at all. Isak’s internalized homophobia has its roots in many different causes, but they all contribute to keep him firmly in the closet.

The problem here, of course, is as it is for so many young lgbt+ people, particularly those who live in environments which aren’t open and supportive. Isak has no broad base to extrapolate from. He’s desperate to be true to himself, but at the same time he thinks being true to himself means he has to possibly lose the respect of his friends and/or be a feminized, stereotypical version of ‘gay’ because this is all he has experience of. His mother’s religion, and the subsequent messages through that, would definitely not help either. But if our mainstream media had better examples of lgbt+ characters for young people, ironically more like Isak himself is in his show, then Isak may not have been as isolated as he was for so long. This is why I wish there was more nuance in the way being lgbt+ is portrayed. Isak is such a good representation of why stereotyped versions of characters are harmful. He’s so thoroughly in the closet because of what he’s seen portrayed. His journey is not to figure out that he’s gay, but rather to accept that he can still be himself and proudly be open about his gayness, because he’s been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the stereotypes that he can’t see beyond them. It’s important to note that Isak is not a feminine character and does not associate himself with that type of gayness, and it would have been so helpful to him to see different gay people shown more readily. Isak is very lucky in that when he does come out his group of friends and family is all very supportive and welcoming and so his fears about not fitting in and not being ‘right’ are diminished. This isn’t true for everyone, which makes diverse representations in media even more crucial for those people. It’s also important for straight people to see how diverse the lgbt+ community is, so more diversity is a win for all!

Media is definitely getting better now, so hopefully in the future there won’t be so many Isaks trying to find their place in a world which tries to put them into black and white boxes. There’s still a feeling that lgbt+ people who want nuance and respect in their portrayals have to seek out explicitly lgbt+ media, while mainstream media still tends to keep its lgbt+ characters as more stock characters. I’d love to see that changed, to see a variety of lgbt+ characters and not have that feminized, stereotypical character be all that people are exposed to. Young lgbt+ people have a right to see themselves reflected more accurately and be able to recognize themselves without having to seek out media that is made explicitly for them. And non-lgbt+ people also deserve to see a wider range of characters as well, to know that there’s more to ‘gay’ than the generally accepted stereotype. Like I said, this is changing with a number of very good characters on more mainstream shows (and hopefully Skam US does as good a job with this as Skam Norway did). Long may this continue! May Isak himself be one of many to show how the society we live in is reflected in our views of ourselves, and may his struggle to be seen as himself, and not the stereotype he doesn’t fit, be just one of many.

#skam #evak #my meta stuff #I had feelings okay and they had to go somewhere

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kitmcroninillustration · 3 years

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‘The Routledge Companion to media and gender’ - Edited by Cynthia Carter, Linda Steiner and Lisa McLaughlin (2014)

Media and the representation of gender – Margaret Gallagher

Image and reality

“how can the media be changed? How can we free women from the tyranny of media messages limiting their lives to hearth and home?” Media sociologist Gaye Tuchman ends her celebrated essay. “The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media” witch these two questions (Tuchman 1978: 38). Straightforward, confident, and unambiguous, from today’s vantage point the questions may seem naïve in their formulation. Yet in essence they encapsulate the concerns that continue to drive much feminist media analysis around the world almost four decades later. Despite enormous transformations in national and global media landscapes, and the development of infinitely more sophisticated approaches to media analysis and theorising, the fundamental issues remain those that preoccupied Tuchman and her colleagues: power, values, representation and identity.

Feminist cultural politics is a common thread running through much work on image and representation, from its origins to the present. The edited collection Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media, in which Tuchman’s “symbolic annihilation” essay appears, was motivated y “an interest in the progress we are making toward the full social equality of women” and by “the rise of the women’s movement” (Kaplan Daniels 1978: v). these early analyses argues that the US media are deeply implicated in the patterns of discrimination operating against women in society – patterns which, through the absence, trivialisation or condemnation of women in media content, amounted to their “symbolic annihilation”. The term, originally coined by George Gerbner in 1972, became a powerful and widely used metaphor to describe the ways in which media images make women invisible. This mediated invisibility, it was argued, is achieved not simply through the non-representation of women’s points of view or perspectives on the world. When women are “visible” in media content, the manner of their representation reflects the biases and assumptions of those who define the public – and therefore the media – agenda.

Much of this early work attempted to establish the extent to which media content departed from “reality”. Some of the earliest analysis was driven by personal experience. In the early 1960s, former magazine journalist Betty Friedan, introducing her study of how the cultural definition of femininity in the USA shifted between the 1940s and 1950s, explained: “there was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform, the image that I came to call the feminine mystique” (Friedan 1963: 9). A decade later, more systematic studies of basic stereotypes were providing a basis from which to argue that the media provided idealised versions of femininity that we “false”.

“Televised images of women are in large measure false, portraying them less as they really are, more as some might want them to be” (Franzwa 1978: 273)

Despite the use of terms that today we might find lack nuance, these early studies were not necessarily as unsophisticated as they are sometimes characterised. The notion that women were being portrayed “as some might want them to be” theorises the media as part of the system “that cultivates the images fitting the established structure of social relations,” a system whose function is to create cultural resistance to change – in this case, change in the status women (Gerbner 1978: 46-8). Gerbner identifies three main tactics of resistance to change used in media imagery of women – discrediting, isolating, and undercutting. He says that the result is a “counterattack on the women’s movement as a social force for structural change” (1978: 50). Betty Friedan, too, was concerned with the interplay between media images, social change, and gender identity. Asking why the “spirited New Woman” who dominated women’s magazines of the 1940s had, by the 1950s, given way to the “happy Housewife Heroin”, while, over the same period, educational and employment opportunities for middle-class white American women had greatly expanded, she concluded: “When a mystique is strong, it makes its own fiction of fact. It feeds on the very facts which might contradict it, and seeps into every corner of culture” (Friedan 1963: 53). What many of these early studies were grappling with, without naming it as such, was the ideological role of the media.

Ideology and Representation

In many respects the contemporary field of feminist media scholarship looks vastly different from the relatively straightforward terrain occupied by the “women and media” studies of the 1970s and 80s. the inadequacies of studies that conflate the condition of white, heterosexual, middle-class women with the condition of all women are now acknowledged, and contemporary media research has tried to grapple with more complex understandings of gender identity and experience. As Marsha Houston has put it :

Women of colour do not experience sexism in addition to racism, but sexism in the context of racism; thus they cannot be said to bear an additional burden that white women do not bear, but to bear an altogether different burden from that borne by white women. (Houston 1992: 49)

Most early studies of “women and media” had analysed only women’s representation, thereby appearing to assume that the representation of men’s experience was unproblematic. As feminist media critique developed and deepened, it became clear that masculinity was also represented in quite specific ways in media content. Rosalind Gill contends that studies of masculinities developed as a direct result of feminism’s critique, literally “transforming research on women and media into something that is properly about gender and media” (2007: 32; see also Carter 2012).

The crossing of intellectual and disciplinary boundaries that characterises much of today’s work can actually be traced back to some of the most creative points of departure in feminist media studies. As far back as 1977 Noreen Janus critiqued the theoretical shortcomings of white, middle class, liberal research into “sex-role stereotypes”. Janus advocated more holistic studies of media content, allied with analyses of the economic imperatives of the media industries and with studies of the perceptions of different audience groups, and the linking of media-related questions to other kinds of social analysis. This type of integrated interdisciplinary research agenda will seem familiar to many feminist media scholars today. Yet its implementation has demanded the location and articulation of a distinct feminist voice. This has involved a difficult and protracted struggle to achieve intellectual legitimacy within the general field of media and communication studies (see Gallagher 2003).

A move towards analyses of the socioeconomic contexts of media structures and progresses during the 1990s signalled feminism’s recognition that media representations and gender discourses take shape within particular, and changing, socioeconomic formations which must themselves be analysed and understood. Indeed, one of feminism’s significant contributions to the overall field has been its emphasis on the relationship between gender and class.

[…]

Going beyond the issue of socioeconomic formations, feminists also grappled with the wider concept of political ideology, focussing on how women’s representation is frequently a site on which wider, public meanings are inscribed. At the simplest level, it is clear that all parts of the world, at different times in history, representations and images of women have been used as symbols of political aspirations and social change. An obvious example was the widespread use of particular asexual, “emancipated” female images in Soviet culture: the confident, sturdy woman on her tractor, on the farm, or in the factory. Images of this kind reflected an idealised political vision: “the social realist tradition was intended to create an ideal reality and utilised this model to portray the exemplary woman of the radiant communist future” (Lipovskaya 1994: 124; see also Ibroscheva and Stover 2012). In such a situation female imagery becomes a metaphor for a particular political ideology, rather than a representation of women’s lives. - E.g. Muslim women in head-dresses being blamed for the instances of 9/11-

https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hJRWAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA23&dq=gender+representation+in+media&ots=qUePOk0Vbl&sig=XqdZosV3lj7Omsgq-p5mADNBKdk&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

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goldiesugar · 7 years

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Seduction? What?

Here’s a list of tips that you can try out, use and adapt to attract your prince charming… oh yeah by the way, forget that stuff… Prince Charming doesn’t exist.

Be confident

Self-confidence… that’s a phrase I like. Would you like to bring every man to his knees?

Start the work of seduction on YOURSELF. If you don’t have confidence in yourself, you can keep wasting all your evenings watching Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives in your SpongeBob pyjamas, which you bought for 99 cents… For the love of God, don’t underestimate yourself…

EVER! All women are beautiful, and EVERY woman has her charms and her qualities. If you are less beautiful than other women, you SURELY have a very fine quality that others do not possess. If you have hang-ups, forget them! Nobody’s perfect and everyone has their own flaws!

Nowadays, and since time immemorial, beauty has always been considered something common, that everyone has, but today a woman with good qualities has become something rare [I’ll come back to this in the last paragraph] and exceptional! A woman with graceful and noble qualities is, precisely, a WOMAN…

So stop making dramas and comedies about yourselves, ladies … put your right hand on your heart, and repeat after me:

“Today, I accept myself, WITHOUT any conditions at all, I am a woman, and I can seduce every man that I want.”

Think about your Look

There’s nothing better than chatting and having conversations with a woman whose physical appearance is attractive! I respect all women, but more the ones who take GOOD care of themselves, and invest heavily in their look.

Your mom probably tells you that beauty is on the inside and blah blah blah, but if you have a hairstyle shaped like an artichoke, wear super-large jeans and a supermarket shirt, men will avoid you like the plague… Beauty is, FIRST, external, if you don’t have style and class, no normally constituted man will give you a second glance. Not even a SD.

Change your hairstyle more often, and if you can, try to grow long hair, it’s a typical sign of femininity. Invest in clothes that are more or less sexy and glamorous. In summer, wear skirts, it’s another sign of femininity… and you know what, burn all those masculine clothes you have in the closet, men HATE to see women dressed like them.

Before I forget, I’d like to give you a little tip… Keep several different perfumes! I remember this girl who wore a different perfume on every date, it made me go crazy every time I smelled a sensual and pleasant new scent. Try this trick and let me have your feedback.

Be a “rare” woman

Everything rare is expensive: the more we’re seen, the more we’re heard, the more we do, the more ordinary we seem. If you’re part of a group, stay away for a while and people will talk about you more, they’ll even admire you more. Practice absence: scarcity will increase your value.

In the excellent book by psychologist Robert Cialdini, Influence and Persuasion, the author discusses the principle of scarcity as a weapon of mass persuasion and, appropriately, seduction goes together perfectly with the art of influence and persuasion. Therefore, ladies, use scarcity as your weapon.

Make yourself into a woman who is rare and special, today’s men can’t stand conventional and ordinary women, all interesting men are TOO demanding on this point. In general, a situation of scarcity makes them react in a way that clouds and diminishes their powers of judgment, and pleasure no longer consists in enjoying something rare, but SOLELY in possessing it.

In other words, as soon as a man sees you as a special woman, trust me ladies, your work of seduction has definitely achieved its goal… it’s in the bag!

To put it in different terms, the “Romeo and Juliet” effect is probably the most widespread phenomenon associated with the principle of scarcity, so in fact, the more the parents oppose a relationship, the more united the couple will be.

In this situation, the sensation of loss they feel will drive them to focus more and more on you, blindly and with every means at their disposal.

Make use of this principle of persuasion, don’t give him the impression that you’re seduced and already won over.

And how do you seduce a man while remaining natural?

That’s the question I’ve focused on in recent years, in order to provide THE right answer! In fact, if you want to seduce men you have to start by seducing YOURSELF.

Next, you need to master the techniques of communication, confidence and, finally, optionally, the techniques of seduction.

Additionally, you should adopt and develop the mindset of the seductive woman, and you’ll be surprised to see CLEARLY that the secret codes of seduction, have become a child’s game for you.

Personally, I am firmly convinced that if you want to learn to be seductive, you must:

Develop self-confidence

Work on your personality to make it attractive

Master the art of communication with others (the better you communicate, the better your basic level of seduction)

Take care of your appearance and image.

Know the techniques of seduction, and adopt those that suit YOU!

There is no magic formula in the galaxy of seduction. But there is the work you do on yourself, and what’s known as personal development. That’s the motto of my philosophy.

To your success,

~ Bleuet 💸💖

#bleuet chats #strategies & tips

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tendance-news · 6 years

Link

Picking up a man isn’t as difficult as people sometimes lead you to believe… But Learning to seduce menand to understand them is still an art form… an art form that you can master, Madam, starting this very instant!

In this first article from the series, seducing a man, we’re going to cover the basic rules you should know, along with a set of techniques and methods of seduction that will let you EFFECTIVELY seduce a man, with class and elegance!

Many of you visit the site, and it is our duty to serve you and especially to boost your knowledge of feminine seduction, or if you prefer, to sculpt it.

But before sharing the secrets of seduction that will enable you to capture any man you desire, let me tell you a secret.

As I explained in my first book , we men are like ON/OFF buttons. Simply press the ON button, and there you go! Meanwhile you ladies, you’re like volume buttons that move incrementally, we have to turn the volume up bit by bit, or in other words, we need a whole seduction arsenal to achieve our goals. See the difference.

I would also like to pay a small tribute to my first girlfriend, who seriously *cruelly* seduced me, and made me go totally crazy over her, and still managed to stay…

Classy and elegant! I’m grateful to her because, first of all, I am currently in Hawaii next to two beautiful supermodels while I write this article but, more importantly, because I’ll analyze all her diabolical little techniques and draw inspiration from them, and then I’ll add the techniques of feminized men, to give you, ladies, the best recipe for seducing men.

But seriously … I’m not in Hawaii, and I’m not next to a supermodel, it’s actually my cat who’s messing around with the mouse on my laptop, and keeping me from writing… Go on Hitch, get down! oh thank you now… (yes, his name is Hitch )

Let’s move on…

Men aren’t all jerks, as some desperate women say, and women aren’t all sluts, as Loser men say… everything is a question of…?

Seduction!

Bravo…

Here’s a list of tips that you can try out, use and adapt to attract your prince charming… oh yeah by the way, forget that stuff… Prince Charming doesn’t exist.

Be confident

Self-confidence… that’s a phrase I like. Would you like to bring every man to his knees?

Start the work of seduction on YOURSELF. If you don’t have confidence in yourself, you can keep wasting all your evenings watching Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives in your SpongeBob pajamas, which you bought for 99 cents… For the love of God, don’t underestimate yourself…

EVER! All women are beautiful, and EVERY woman has her charms, and her qualities. If you are less beautiful than other women, you SURELY have a very fine quality that others do not possess. If you have hang-ups, forget them! Nobody’s perfect and everyone has their own flaws!

So stop making dramas and comedies about yourselves, ladies … put your right hand on your heart, and repeat after me:

“Today, I accept myself, WITHOUT any conditions at all, I am a woman, and I can seduce every man that I want.”

Think about your Look

There’s nothing better than chatting and having conversations with a woman whose physical appearance is attractive! I respect women who take GOOD care of themselves, and invest heavily in their look.

Be a “rare” woman

Make yourself into a woman who is rare and special, today’s men can’t stand conventional and ordinary women, all interesting men are TOO demanding on this point. In general, a situation of scarcity makes us react in a way that clouds and diminishes our powers of judgment, and pleasure no longer consists in enjoying something rare, but SOLELY in possessing it.

In other words, as soon as a man sees you as a special woman, trust me ladies, your work of seduction has definitely achieved its goal… it’s in the bag!

In this situation, the sensation of loss we feel will drive us to focus more and more on the other person, blindly and with every means at our disposal.

Make use of this principle of persuasion, don’t give him the impression that you’re seduced and already won over.

And how do you seduce a man while remaining natural?

That’s the question I’ve focused on in recent years, in order to provide THE right answer! In fact, if you want to seduce men you have to start by seducing YOURSELF.

Next, you need to master the techniques of communication, confidence and, finally, optionally, the techniques of seduction.

Additionally, you should adopt and develop the mindset of the seductive woman, and you’ll be surprised to see CLEARLY that the secret codes of seduction, have become a child’s game for you.

I’ve prepared and assembled everything in a single book, The Seductress’s Guide.

This book, let’s be honest, is not about transforming you into some kind of tease or man-eater.

No, far from it…

Personally, I am firmly convinced that if you want to learn to be seductive, you must:

Develop self-confidence

Work on your personality to make it attractive

Master the art of communication with others (the better you communicate, the better your basic level of seduction)

Take care of your appearance and image; and finally:

Know the techniques of seduction, and adopt those that suit YOU!

There is no magic formula in the galaxy of seduction. But there is the work you do on yourself, and what’s known as personal development. That’s the motto of my philosophy.

To your success,

#IFTTT #Blogger

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genderneutrality00-blog · 6 years

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Gender Aporias

D oes gender operate as an individual choice or a social mandate, or as D oes gender operate as an individual choice or a social mandate, or as something in between? How do we conceive of gender roles over time something in between? How do we conceive of gender roles over time and across cultures? If gender is not to be conceived as a simple mecha- nism that dictates behavior, and if we are to avoid the trap of merely replac- ing biological determinism with cultural determinism, how exactly does gender work? Can we construe gender in a way that addresses changing stereotypes and that can be challenged, transformed, and refigured? What kind of flexibility does it have as a category, and to what does it owe its authority? If women are not assigned to subservience and passivity by some inflexible, innate nature but are accustomed to cultural roles, then rescripting those cultural roles should make transformation possible. But who writes the scripts, and how do they avoid privileging their own experi- ences and subject positions in a way that mimics precisely the alleged neu- trality that patriarchal values uphold? A useful way of considering how feminism has developed during this century, and where it might be going in the next, is to focus on how it has been served by the language of sex and gender. My intention is not to identify any feminist thinker or group of thinkers with a single approach but rather to isolate general tendencies, in order to clarify how best to carry forward our thinking about sex and gender, and to reflect upon whether these terms remain useful. To that end I distinguish three typical models of the relation between sex and gender and show how each is inadequate. I indicate the direction in which we need to go in order to ensure the usefulness of the categories of sex and gender, which might serve as a start- ing point for reflecting on the next millennium. The logic of sex and gender The relation between the terms sex andgender can be characterized as neces- sary, as arbitrary, or as contingent. At the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury, U.S. suffragists were trying to combat traditional conceptions of the relation between what later came to be called "sex" and "gender." The female sex was defined by certain physical, biological, and psychological [Signs:Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2000, vol. 25, no. 4] ? 2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2000/2504-0044$02.001238 I Chanter characteristics that were taken to be innate, unchanging, lated to activities, behaviors, and customs that were defined ally, and historically. To be defined as a member of the model, necessarily entailed a specific and limited range model, necessarily entailed a specific and limited range nurturing and child rearing, based on claims such as nurturing and child rearing, based on claims such as good mothers" or "the feminine constitution is unfit demands of the masculine world." Once such language the causal relation that was traditionally posited between ture could be cashed out as producing a relation of necessity terms sex andgender. Feminism challenged the idea that women were naturally certain prescribed roles and unsuited for others by construing of sex and gender not as one of necessity but rather some free play. But what kind of free play? Are women tion, men as well) completely free in relation to their the relation between sex and gender be understood mony? Is gender free of any determining force deriving still constrained in some ways? If it is constrained, what is involved, and how is it to be thought? Is the connection between sex and gender arbitrary? During the 1960s, gender became the preferred category of analysis be- cause it offered a flexibility that sex did not appear to. But how exactly can gender free itself from its apparently necessary connection to sex? Are these categories to be seen as entirely independent of one another? Is the rela- tionship simply one of habitual association, such that to point to the logical independence of gender from sex is also effectively to dismantle their ap- parent symbiosis-or at least to create the conditions for such disman- tling? If gender is only arbitrarily attached to sex, if sex places no restriction on gender, then any number of cultural behaviors and gender identifica- tions become available for adoption and reevaluation, and being a woman no longer entails being restricted by the traditional sphere of feminine ac- tivities. By positing the relation between sex and gender as arbitrary, femi- nist theory seemed to be rendering the body unimportant, collapsing sex into gender and claiming that gender could become the sole explanatory category. For all the possibilities it may seem to open up, construing the relation between sex and gender as arbitrary poses a number of problems and leaves important questions unanswered. It implies not only that there is no rea- son for the habitual association of gender with sex but also that sex hasS I G N S Summer 2000 I 1239 nothing to do with gender. It is important to bear in mind, severing the relation of necessity between sex and gender there is no connection whatsoever. In fact, experience suggests has everything to do with sex: if a girl is treated like a girl, because she has a female body. Furthermore, there must be tion for the consistent linking of sex and gender, other than tion for the consistent linking of sex and gender, other than accident. Even if the explanation turns out to be grounded accident. Even if the explanation turns out to be grounded liefs, those beliefs have held sway in ways that have systematically social and cultural formations and institutions, so that expression seem possible and legitimate while others are closed possible and illegitimate. What, then, does it mean to assert an arbitrary connection and gender? It cannot mean that simply redescribing the relation vent it or that choosing not to conform to old stereotypes old restrictive ways of thinking. It cannot mean that gender be re-created merely by a voluntary act of individual will relation to the social forces that create cultural stereotypes. means, the assertion that the connection between sex and trary, in order to have any effect, must involve a constitutive tive element; it must involve a transformation of the systemic established and traditional roles. Gender is not simply a matter or even a series of choices, at the individual level. Is the connection between sex and gender contingent? To conceive of the relation between sex and gender as contingent, than arbitrary, allows feminists to acknowledge the significance it is because a girl's body identifies her with the female sex to be, and expects herself to be, feminine. To see the relation acknowledges the force of social pressure but leaves room amount of discrepancy between cultural norms and an individual's or desire to reject them. An individual may well feel the weight that demands behavior considered normal for the gender sex by society, but she will not necessarily conform to those tions. If individuals challenge gender norms, then gender selves will reflect such challenges and over time become less a wider spectrum of gendered behavior comes to be tolerated, and, finally, normalized. Construing the relation between as contingent allows for some, but not total, free play. bodies are relevant to gender identity but not determinative connection between sex and gender is not conceived as entirely 1240 I Chanter fixed but as capable of absorbing challenges and as changing this view, the relation between sex and gender is construed than on the model of necessity, but some kind of causality rather than simply denied, as it is when the relation The contingent model characterizes the relation of sex of probability rather than necessity: having a female although not necessary, that one will be influenced by to act in traditionally feminine ways. to act in traditionally feminine ways. The problem with the arbitrary model of sex and gender is that, by The problem with the arbitrary model of sex and gender is that, by collapsing sex into gender and treating the entire arena of sexuality as a normative, constructed dimension, it seems to disregard the relevance of the bodr. The contingent model responds to this potential eclipse of the body by ushering it back into play, but to do so it must posit the body as given. It seems to ignore the fact that the body is not the unchanging and natural ground it was once thought to be, that bodies themselves are sites capable of change. Work on transgender studies in the 1990s has brought this new understanding to the fore. Bodies do not necessarily naturally fall into the categories of male and female; they are made to fit these categories. Through a variety of techniques, including fashion, technology, surgery, and bodybuilding, we are able to reshape and resculpt our bodies. Does this ability suggest that perhaps the arbitrary model has more credibility than it first appeared? Should we embrace the idea that sex is really gender, or that sex is merely a normative projection of a binary heterosexual ma- trix? Such a model absorbs bodies into cultural norms, without leaving any space to consider the effects of materiality on these norms. Each of the three models I have outlined makes one of two mistakes. Either it assumes that sex and gender are logically autonomous categories that have a relation of necessity or probability or it assumes that one cate- gory can be subsumed by the other. One must therefore be the founding and original category and the other merelxy a symptom or effect. We need a more porous model, in which neither category is evacuated of meaning but both are constituted, in relation to one another, as permeable and un- stable. The challenge, it seems to me, is to resist both the tendency to collapse one term entirely into the other and the tendency to assume the initial integrity and independence of both and then ask how thev can be brought into relation with one another. We must find ways of conceptual- izing the sex-gender relation that avoid both. Otherwise, not only will we be forced to learve aside a proper investigation of bodies and materiality, we will also fail to think through the complexities of race, class, ethnicity, and other axes of oppression. Some theorists have embraced the language of sexual difference in anS I G N S Summer 2000 I 1241 effort to formulate experience as both gendered and the same time recognizing that such formulations themselves mune from ideological inflection. If the terms sex andgender their purchase, their meanings must be able to shift as them is rethought, rather than always being strictly oppositional ally exclusive. We cannot be content to construe gender society or culture and sex as dictated by physical nature; stand that the domains we designate as gendered can have as when medical technology reorganizes bodies to cohere gender definitions. We must be prepared to think sex gender definitions. We must be prepared to think sex in dynamic relation and the distinctions between the fixed or rigid but malleable and flexible. Philosophy Department University of Memphis

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