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November 30, 2007

Kids Say The Darndest Things!

In the Teaching Seminar we've been having a discussion all semester about student writing, and we've also been talking about gender. (The first is pretty obvious in a seminar teaching teachers how to teach composition, the second is due to a wickedly problematic set of sample papers on gender and performativity with which I've burdened the students this semester.*)

Recently, an op-ed column in the student newspaper of the University of Texas (ah, memories) has waded into the turbulent waters of sex, gender, and performativity. But not in the subtle, insightful way you might hope. Oh, no.

Meet Ryan Haecker. Ryan's a history major in his third year. He had this blinding flash of insight to share with the world:

The nature of sexual attractiveness in women is objective, immutable and incontrovertible because it is directly related to the constant and unchanging physiology of men and women. What men find attractive in women is fixed because the physiology of humanity has been relatively unchanged. In this way, the ideal form of femininity is also unchangeable and without regard for cultural context or time period. What men find attractive in women - the form of a true lady - is objectively identifiable, just as it was in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. In short, femininity is sexy, and sexy is timeless and universal.

Apparently, the history major has never heard of a bustle. Victorian babies got back like no rap guys' girlfriends ever did!

Haecker continues:

In advocating the wearing of dresses, I must distinguish between the flowing elegant dresses of tradition and the more degenerate and immodest dresses of our present culture. The miniskirt, a dress of sorts that doesn't extend below the knees, is both lacking in modesty and elegance. Elegance is essential to femininity, and the lack thereof implies a sort of masculinization. Modesty is essential to feminine virtue, and the lack thereof implies a state of whorification. Immodest, inelegant dresses constitute a degeneration and androgynization of true dresses.

The androgynous masculinization of the modern woman, through the donning of pants, suits, uncovered shoulders and unveiled hair, has in a sense led to the slow whorification of ladyhood. In discarding feminine dress, women seem to have symbolically discarded femininity and modesty (the virtues of women) in favor of sexual virility, promiscuity and immodesty (the vices of men). The ideal form of a true lady is a constant, immutable aspect of humanity, and this strange new development can only represent a bizarre aberration of a perverse and ignoble culture.

You should read the whole thing. It's choice. I am particularly fond of Haecker's neologism "whorification."

As one should expect, there are excellent responses from bloggers TBogg and Pam Spaulding.

The newspaper's site seems to be experiencing some difficulties, as I can't post the link that will let you click through to read all of the comments on this column now. Sigh.

Sometimes I miss UT, the place where I began my college career. Most of the time, though... I really don't.

* The sample papers are wrestling with a core feminist idea: the idea that all gender is performative. That is, that our actions, every action we perform constitutes our gender. It's not an act we put on, but what we do while we're doing the things that make up our lives, that constitutes our gender. Thus, our genders are not essential parts of us that have always been. (This is a big part of the feminist differentiation between gender and sex.) Anyway, it's a complex theory that goes against much of what we're raised to believe about ourselves and the world. Not surprisingly, the sample papers struggle with it.

Posted by reparent at November 30, 2007 5:35 PM

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Posted by: Jude at November 30, 2007 6:24 PM

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