Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

identity construct #3: gender 121
of the Spanish-speaking world, for example, argue convincingly that they
have been marginalized by the dominant feminism hailing from the United
States and France and that they have been effectively “ghettoized” by the
patriarchal critical establishment that typically wields the label of feminism
to separate their work from the mainstream canon. Many Hispanic
women writers and directors refuse the feminist label, expressing their desire
to be considered good artists, rather than good artists who are women.
Essentialist genderists would regard the absence of a universal feminist subject
as evidence that we are getting ever closer to rooting out failed theories
and to fi nding out the truth about women. Semioticians, on the other hand,
would point out that the lack of a feminist standard across space (cultures,
nations, regions) and time (eras) attests to the impossibility of collective, as
well as individual, essences.
The student’s exclamation that begins this chapter was a reaction to the
assigned readings for that day; excerpts of those readings by West and Zimmerman
and Connell are included here. Lest we fall into the trap of equating
gender studies with feminism and women’s studies, we have included
pieces that treat both of these issues, as well as others of concern to the
fi eld, namely transgender and masculine studies.
West and Zimmerman, who are professors of sociology at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of California, Santa Barbara,
respectively, study gender as performance and acknowledge differences between
the sexes, but they deny that these differences are essential. Lawrence
Blum and Peter Wade exposed race as a construct in Chapter 6 and
replaced the term with the more appropriate racialized groups. West and
Zimmerman use the term sex category to emphasize that male and female
are cultural divisions that are both refl ected and produced in the daily
achievement of gender. These authors illustrate the way gender is achieved
or defi ned on a daily basis with a case study of a transgendered person who
at age seventeen had to learn how to display the appropriate markers associated
with being a woman. West and Zimmerman emphasize the link between
gender norms and power by exposing the moral grounds upon which
norms are based. They also argue that gender is accomplished individually
but that this individual accomplishment sustains, reproduces, and renders
legitimate the institutions that society agrees upon.
In an excerpt from The Science of Masculinity, Connell, a professor of
education at the University of Sydney, Australia, expresses skepticism
about the social practice of gender. By examining both the history of gender
studies—and in particular those dealing with masculinity—as well as contemporary
gender research and practice, she argues that all are gendered