1. 10- ABSTRACTIA ABSTRACTIA-11
WHAT CAN WE HOPE TO FIND? CAN WE SEE OURSELVES?
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RE-LEARNINGINTUITIONS
What do you see around you? On those billboards that litter our public space?
Rolling off the radio, filling up your TV screen? You’re a half-person, an
incomplete demon. You’re a manic sex-beast, driven by insecurity. You’re an
impulsive buyer. A compulsive self-liar. You’re a pliant receptacle for social
conditioning.
Such are the ways that reinforced sterotypes are proliferated and
sustained through the media curtain of disseminated images, sounds, texts,
and generally speaking, representations of ideological continuity. These
ideas seek to place you within the discourse of a product fulfilment narrative;
the end receiver in a global game, a system of labour, production and profit.
We’re made to feel as if we’re making some huge choice every time we enter
into this system of exchange, when in reality these choices are severely
curtailed by market forces outside of our possible awareness and control.
The illusions surrounding such phenomena are legion and aimed primarily
at obfuscating the ontology behind global structures of inequality, placing a
prearranged narrative at the forefront of any type of exchange. Among the
most ingrained of these illusory representations is that of the gender divide.
When we think of gender types and classifications, we’re inclined to muster
up an old picture ingrained into our collective
unconscious over the course of human civilisa-
tion. When we think of natural gender types, our
mind associates this with the all-too-common
idea of woman and man. As a species, we can’t
be too surprised or discouraged at this automatic
association. Our struggle throughout the ages has
been catalysed and cauterised through this under-
standing of assumed roles based on physiological
differences and the respective strengths and
weaknesses these entail.
Women are mothers. They’re the ideal
choice for raising children. They are rulers of the
domos, thus securing their limited place of power
within outside society, preparing meals, gather-
ing and storing foodstuffs, managing household
economies, and more often than not, maintain-
ing the psychological well-being of those living
within its walls. Men are more capable in terms of
aggression. Diametrically, they are also more ca-
pable of protection in terms of outside aggression.
With this advantage comes the ability to interact
between parties,
to govern and lead
societies, to col-
laborate ideas, to
trade, to build and
construct wonders.
These social con-
structs, while not
applicable to either
gender as a whole,
conveniently divide
the human race into
neat sections which
provide cohesion
on a mass scale,
while ignoring the
‘fringe’ individuals
in the minority who
may have found
themselves, for
whatever reason,
unhappy with their
lot in life.
When we think of
developed societies
today, we tend to
render this pre-
made conception
through the lens
of modernised dis-
course on gender,
equality, individu-
ality and personal
psychology. But this
seemingly decep-
tive naturalisation
of gender roles is
still there, even
if on the decline,
and not stated as
explicitly as it once
was. One only
need to look so far
(or should I say so
close?) as the world of advertising to see those old
ideals reflected: the woman as an aesthetic and
ultimately passive being. A mother, a nurturer. An
emotional foundation.
Inversely, man is the malleable denomi-
nator and implicit dominator, pragmatic, secure,
ready to undertake all manner of challenges and
able to compete under any circumstance. Upon
examination of these reinforced images, the divide
between the two primary genders is still indicative
of the extreme privilege enjoyed by males, and
the prejudices experienced by females. Places
of power in politics and business are still held
by a vast majority of males despite a slow but
steady incline of females into the more influential
positions of society.
In a sense, it might be said that the struggle of fe-
males to gain equal rights and to share man’s priv-
ilege is a struggle based on subverting this pact of
avoiding the implicit aggression which looms over
us all, as individuals and societies. Understanding
our history and its impact on our current time is
one way to build up strategies for resistance to
such ideological condensation. When we look at
Leonardo Davinci’s Mona Lisa, we’re accustomed
to recognise a figure of kindness and passive
beauty. Understanding the historical pressures
surrounding the production of such images forces
us to re-encounter them with a discerning eye -
one that looks beyond surfaces and seeks out the
implicit complexity hidden behind their obvious
beauty. When we read a play like Shakespeare’s
As You Like It, we’re forced to consider the impact
of such strange gender inversions which almost
certainly added complexity and depth to his
works, and gave him a reputation for challenging
and reimagining social conventions. When we look
at Bosch’s Das Paradies, Sundenfall, with similar
eyes we’re challenged to recall the inherent ideo-
logical tensions within the myth that this artwork
seeks to depict.
Was it not written in the mythologies of the
Judeo-Christian religions – still a dominant
ideological foundation for much of our civilisa-
tion – that Eve was the first to give in to sin, thus
dooming the whole of humankind to wander aim-
lessly in a hostile world? Was she not said to be
made from the ribs of a man, as a copy of God’s
initial design? An analysis of such stories in terms
of societal impact reveal what might be consid-
ered the breeding
grounds for psycho-
logical constructs
implicating women
as being the weak-
er of the sexes, and
further implying
that through this
weakness she
admits a sense of
moral shortcoming
which has damned
humankind.
We can
go further afield
throughout the
course of human
culture to find simi-
lar portrayals of the
‘weaker’ sex. Fairy-
tales compel us to
think of women as
those to whom dan-
ger is natural. She
is a princess safe
in the comfort of a
father’s kingdom.
She is a damsel
in distress. The
Victorians would
have us believe that
women were a pack
of light-minded
gossipers, social
harpies and social
flippancies. In the
1950’s, Madison
Avenue took anoth-
er jab, implicating
women as being
materially obsessed
glamour queens
and saboteurs of
rational discourse.
Skip forward to today, and the objectification of
the feminine form in advertising and surrounding
media is hard to ignore. And while the same can
be said for cultural representations of mascu-
HelenaXavier