Reflection: Feminism and Gender Studies

This has been another mind-expanding week where we read and discussed a lot of illuminating discourse on feminism and gender studies. The theorists are Simone Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Susan Bordo, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar.  Beauvoir address feminine issues in general, and she is, in fact, a precursor to the others. Foucault and Butler concentrate on gender issues regarding sexuality, while Bordo, Gilbert, and Gubar mainly focus on female writers’ issues. I plan to write my analysis primarily on the female writers’ issues.

During class Dr. Wexler showed us a film clip from the original Pink Panther showing a seductive, sensual female singer entertaining her audience, then the ensuing discussion revolving around: “Who has the power? How is power represented in this scene?”  This elicited responses incorporating Foucault’s “History of Sexuality,” and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s “The Master-Slave Dialectic.” Opinions varied; my response was that the males hold the power because she depends on the predominantly male audience to become enthralled and attracted to her. Simone de Beauvoir might say the singer has the quality of “alterity”—the other—while Hegel may give her the slave characteristics of the master-slave relationship. However, it is still rather subjective, and thus one should be flexible in his or her opinion. From my personal experience, the women with whom I have been attracted to predominantly hold the majority of the power.