Can A Gay Man Be A Housewife Summary
Week 4 Day 1 Domestic Worlds and Public Worlds Readings: GCC Part III CR Berkowitz, Can a Gay Man Be a Housewife? First Response Paper Due Wednesday February 2
Summary of Previous Week
If we are looking to the primate for a record of Hunter and Gatherer behaviors then we must be very careful indeed not to anthropomorphize characteristics in either direction.
This is an oversimplification but it is the essence.
As I said, the research changes weekly, when new fossil evidence, genomics or simply a paradigmatic shift in the understanding of gender in prehistory emerges theories move to accommodate new information.
Public Private and
Sexual Division of Labor and Gender Stratification
Opposition of public to private …show more content…
a modernistic modality/dyad based on androcentric anthropological analyses rooted in Victorian western ideology. Still, they are hard to elide. [way too much was made about, doesn’t mean that we should ignore this sector; specific set of ideas: even though we know that public and private are these black and white thing, we changed our opinion that there is still some difficulty found in the public priveate split; ]
Rosaldo and Lamphere- Woman, Culture and Society 1974
Reiter-Toward an Anthropology of Women 1975
Pervasive asymmetry between the sexes
Traditional Dyadic reading of Gendered Behaviors or as they were called then “Sex Role Theory” held that public=powered=political=male private=disempowered=home=mothering=female a post feminist, more nuanced inspection saw women’s bargains with both patriarchy and their “real” circumstances.
To be male is to disassociate from female realm
Three issues that are key to the discussion as feminism emerged:
Is male domination universal? In some sense yes, but it does not look the same everywhere.
Is male domination explained by the public private split?
No. Because this appears differently depending on the context…
Under what conditions does domestic and public split have relevance? Good Question…
An apparent Split emerges from industrial revolution…why?
Subsistence PP
Domestic and public spheres interpenetrate
All this implicates gender, status and power
Informal power more important than once conceived
Women’s circumstances must be seen by women
SUSPECT THE UNIVERSAL
Lamphere
Whatever men do is valued
Men’s houses key to understanding rank/hierarchy/stratification
Search for gender asymmetry followed trend in anthro to look for broadly human
Incest taboo, marriage patterns, and family structure. uterine and Iroquoian examples
PP
More complex women use private space differently depending on time.
Margery Wolf- Taiwan-uterine family structure
Rosaldo suggests an analysis of gendered relationships and hierarchies
“Womaness” not definite as defined by Westerners
Colonialism- perhaps the place where Public/Private emerges as a theme?
A Victorian legacy?
Gender Relationships rather than women should be a focus
Not all women can be treated as part of the “universal” category of woman
Civilized/native another hierarchal paradigm
Parallel sex system- separate but equal=native
Civilized=men in political control
Lila Abu-Lughod’s Bedoin women self determined
Patricia Zavella’s- Chicana women and self-determination
Karen Sack’s- black and white women family notions at work
Production and reproduction
Summary- in 1974 public private a useful dichotomy
Now more nuanced and complex looking at the intersections of race, sex, gender, power, law, education, etc.
Murcott
Wales
Not just a study of who does what. But a study of why and meaning.
Housework as an occupation
Home=proper eating
Reflects relation between husband and wife
Homecoming
Two features
Women are cooks Modifiable Marital justice and obligation
Women cook-men breadwinners
Who cooks for whom
Women cook for family
Service work
Marital and parental relationships define who is served
Deciding what to have
Cost
Provision of a proper dinner
Is it the server who decides what the recipients want?
Servants define the wants
“Nothing but chips at Christmas”
Men can cook but bacon-y things- Who grills?
Cooking not directed by the woman but a series of controls
Occasions reflect value of home
Limit on domestic work
Townsend
Fatherhood
Paradox men say they want to be better fathers but don’t act that way
Child support
Currently 35 Billion due.
He shows:
Women “driving force behind men’s decisions to have children
This varies widely based on class and culture
In Japan, many women calculate the cost of children before having them.
Here, many are offended by such a concept.
A structural division of labor places men in the workplace And when women enter the market there is “culture work” (Erving Goffman)
Parenting gendered with women default parent Men=fun dads and enforcers
Two spheres interpenetrate
All from same high school
Father child not thought of independent of husband wife
Christmas card-its your baby
For men having children is the reproduction of fatherhood- a patrilineal process
Men assume conception can be controlled
Nuclear family the ideal but if altered- cultural work is required
Who arranges interactions with …show more content…
children?
Arrangement between the sexes
He has shown-
Men’s work in the labor force and roles as fathers maintained by culture work which emphasizes work of men although mothers work
Gendered division of parenting in the domestic sphere.
Weismantel
Contests a gendered geography in Latin America
Women dominate the produce market
Flamboyantly female and unabashedly public in a world where this is generally not permitted.
“For the most part, working-class women have not been afforded the protection—or suffered the imprisonment—of seclusion within the private domain to the same extent as elite and middle-class women”
When women enter the market-men in markets lose public unself-consciousness
emphasizes the opportunities for homosociality that the produce market provides.
IN a radical inversion of this gender paradigm, domestic life with husbands, fathers and brothers appears in market women’s testimonies as an ominously patriarchal territory controlled and dominated—often violently—by men.
THIS IS KEY
When women penetrate markets or occupations previously denied them men often respond violently or with genuine fear.
The world of the plaza exists to provide services for the domestic sphere.
The metaphor of “eating junk food” describes the pernicious penetration of capitalist markets into the women’s sphere. In that masculinist capitalist incursions into home made food displaces women form a traditional stronghold of their work.
Industrialization of the home erases the line between work and
family.
The market challenges sexual geography:
It brings women’s work into the public sphere
Allows some women to reject patriarchy
It threatens to produce a domesticity without walls
In other words a public projection of women’s spheres into public enclaves is threatening to the status quo of male female geographic distributions into public and private.
Summary of Previous Week
If we are looking to the primate for a record of Hunter and Gatherer behaviors then we must be very careful indeed not to anthropomorphize characteristics in either direction.
This is an oversimplification but it is the essence.
As I said, the research changes weekly, when new fossil evidence, genomics or simply a paradigmatic shift in the understanding of gender in prehistory emerges theories move to accommodate new information.
Public Private and
Sexual Division of Labor and Gender Stratification
Opposition of public to private …show more content…
a modernistic modality/dyad based on androcentric anthropological analyses rooted in Victorian western ideology. Still, they are hard to elide. [way too much was made about, doesn’t mean that we should ignore this sector; specific set of ideas: even though we know that public and private are these black and white thing, we changed our opinion that there is still some difficulty found in the public priveate split; ]
Rosaldo and Lamphere- Woman, Culture and Society 1974
Reiter-Toward an Anthropology of Women 1975
Pervasive asymmetry between the sexes
Traditional Dyadic reading of Gendered Behaviors or as they were called then “Sex Role Theory” held that public=powered=political=male private=disempowered=home=mothering=female a post feminist, more nuanced inspection saw women’s bargains with both patriarchy and their “real” circumstances.
To be male is to disassociate from female realm
Three issues that are key to the discussion as feminism emerged:
Is male domination universal? In some sense yes, but it does not look the same everywhere.
Is male domination explained by the public private split?
No. Because this appears differently depending on the context…
Under what conditions does domestic and public split have relevance? Good Question…
An apparent Split emerges from industrial revolution…why?
Subsistence PP
Domestic and public spheres interpenetrate
All this implicates gender, status and power
Informal power more important than once conceived
Women’s circumstances must be seen by women
SUSPECT THE UNIVERSAL
Lamphere
Whatever men do is valued
Men’s houses key to understanding rank/hierarchy/stratification
Search for gender asymmetry followed trend in anthro to look for broadly human
Incest taboo, marriage patterns, and family structure. uterine and Iroquoian examples
PP
More complex women use private space differently depending on time.
Margery Wolf- Taiwan-uterine family structure
Rosaldo suggests an analysis of gendered relationships and hierarchies
“Womaness” not definite as defined by Westerners
Colonialism- perhaps the place where Public/Private emerges as a theme?
A Victorian legacy?
Gender Relationships rather than women should be a focus
Not all women can be treated as part of the “universal” category of woman
Civilized/native another hierarchal paradigm
Parallel sex system- separate but equal=native
Civilized=men in political control
Lila Abu-Lughod’s Bedoin women self determined
Patricia Zavella’s- Chicana women and self-determination
Karen Sack’s- black and white women family notions at work
Production and reproduction
Summary- in 1974 public private a useful dichotomy
Now more nuanced and complex looking at the intersections of race, sex, gender, power, law, education, etc.
Murcott
Wales
Not just a study of who does what. But a study of why and meaning.
Housework as an occupation
Home=proper eating
Reflects relation between husband and wife
Homecoming
Two features
Women are cooks Modifiable Marital justice and obligation
Women cook-men breadwinners
Who cooks for whom
Women cook for family
Service work
Marital and parental relationships define who is served
Deciding what to have
Cost
Provision of a proper dinner
Is it the server who decides what the recipients want?
Servants define the wants
“Nothing but chips at Christmas”
Men can cook but bacon-y things- Who grills?
Cooking not directed by the woman but a series of controls
Occasions reflect value of home
Limit on domestic work
Townsend
Fatherhood
Paradox men say they want to be better fathers but don’t act that way
Child support
Currently 35 Billion due.
He shows:
Women “driving force behind men’s decisions to have children
This varies widely based on class and culture
In Japan, many women calculate the cost of children before having them.
Here, many are offended by such a concept.
A structural division of labor places men in the workplace And when women enter the market there is “culture work” (Erving Goffman)
Parenting gendered with women default parent Men=fun dads and enforcers
Two spheres interpenetrate
All from same high school
Father child not thought of independent of husband wife
Christmas card-its your baby
For men having children is the reproduction of fatherhood- a patrilineal process
Men assume conception can be controlled
Nuclear family the ideal but if altered- cultural work is required
Who arranges interactions with …show more content…
children?
Arrangement between the sexes
He has shown-
Men’s work in the labor force and roles as fathers maintained by culture work which emphasizes work of men although mothers work
Gendered division of parenting in the domestic sphere.
Weismantel
Contests a gendered geography in Latin America
Women dominate the produce market
Flamboyantly female and unabashedly public in a world where this is generally not permitted.
“For the most part, working-class women have not been afforded the protection—or suffered the imprisonment—of seclusion within the private domain to the same extent as elite and middle-class women”
When women enter the market-men in markets lose public unself-consciousness
emphasizes the opportunities for homosociality that the produce market provides.
IN a radical inversion of this gender paradigm, domestic life with husbands, fathers and brothers appears in market women’s testimonies as an ominously patriarchal territory controlled and dominated—often violently—by men.
THIS IS KEY
When women penetrate markets or occupations previously denied them men often respond violently or with genuine fear.
The world of the plaza exists to provide services for the domestic sphere.
The metaphor of “eating junk food” describes the pernicious penetration of capitalist markets into the women’s sphere. In that masculinist capitalist incursions into home made food displaces women form a traditional stronghold of their work.
Industrialization of the home erases the line between work and
family.
The market challenges sexual geography:
It brings women’s work into the public sphere
Allows some women to reject patriarchy
It threatens to produce a domesticity without walls
In other words a public projection of women’s spheres into public enclaves is threatening to the status quo of male female geographic distributions into public and private.