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

132 reframing latin america
The challenge from women is now well documented. The nineteenth
century saw a historic change in gender politics, the emergence of feminism
as a form of mass politics—a mobilization for women’s rights, especially the
suffrage, in public arenas. This was closely connected to the growth of the
liberal state and its reliance on concepts of citizenship.
Yet women’s challenges to the gender order were not confi ned to the
suffrage movement, which had a limited reach. Gentry and middle-class
women were active in reforms of morals and domestic customs in the early
nineteenth century which sharply challenged the sexual prerogatives of
gentry men. Working-class women contested their economic dependence on
men as the factory system evolved. Middle-class women again challenged
men’s prerogatives through the temperance movement of the late nineteenth
century. The conditions for the maintenance of patriarchy changed
with these challenges, and the kind of masculinity which could be hegemonic
changed in response [. . .].
Discussion Questions
• Why do you think people fi nd it so difficult to accept gender as
a social construction, even if they willingly regard nation and class in
that way?
• If transsexuality remains atypical, i.e., if it is not an issue for the vast
majority of people in society, how are West and Zimmerman able to apply
the case of Agnes to the broader discussion of semiotic versus essentialist
notions of gender?
• Think back to our introduction on race in which we described the
arguments against considering minority groups racist. Can similar arguments
be made against considering women’s groups sexist?
• In what ways are you a “dead actor” in terms of gender? In other
words, in what ways are you gendered without necessarily having the conscious
opportunity to make decisions about that?
• How is Connell’s historical exploration of gender construction
comparable to Blum’s and Wade’s historical explanation of racial/ethnic
construction?
• Can you think of other ways in which a belief in gender essences
reveals contradictory practices across time or place? We provided the
example of women in sub-Saharan Africa who do fi eld labor versus those
in Europe who would not. Can you think of other such examples? One
might be the rise and fall of the belief around the turn of the twentieth
century in the medical condition known as female hysteria.