Unknown Speaker  00:05
For perhaps half an hour the absolute most after which well that's up to you. Maybe we shut the door

Unknown Speaker  00:18
inside i Can you hear me now? I'll talk just a half an hour most and then is this a workshop? We will all I hope for is you know the title of this workshop is androgyny and the psychology of sex differences. And I want to open this workshop by offering backgrounds on the relations have these two concepts to each other. The concept of androgyny has in six years, and I count the six years since of the publication for the recognition of androgen in the first two books on it. It's enabled many people in many disciplines and ways of life, to question the veracity of sex differences, their immutability, and their ultimate power to affect our lives. These changes, which I'll elaborate on more fully in a moment, are certainly profound and have the utmost importance to feminism. Yet, as you may know, and must know if you listen to Dhamma. Today, the word androgyny has fallen on hard times. Ironically enough, I feared when my book was published six years ago, but I wouldn't offend unbearably. Those who have their being in the metro sex kicking dichotomy, the inevitable quarterback cheerleader assignment of life's roles. Certainly, the reviews the book got reflected that this group in our society were momentarily upset. But oddly enough, they soon quieted down soon indeed, began swaying in the winds of changing trends. So for example, Anatole Broyard, who in 1973 in The New York Times, sneered at the idea of androgyny is useless, preposterous and disgusting, providing this for my unbelieving eyes and a 1976 review of some other book, I quote, while friendships in one's own sex may be deeply reassuring, it is also conceivable that in the overstressing, this kind of contact, we may be begging the question of our deep seated, androgyny. What men are accustomed to call the otherness of women may correspond to the unexplored parts of themselves, for which many of them feel such a profound yearning. The fun continue when I learned that a section from total recognition of androgyny had become part of one years LSAT exam that's taken care of for people who are trying to get into law school. One can see why it tested the candidates ability to distinguish what from what was said from his or her assumptions about what was said. Let me add, incidentally, that I was neither paid or officially informed of the use of this passage. Till the word and the concept of androgyny were catching on and freeing many from the prison of gender and the bonds of appropriate behavior. What was even more pleasing to those who hate the idea of stereotypical sex roles? Androgynous comments from the past began to surface. Here is a single example. Cora Kaplan in her excellent introduction to the 1978 edition of Aurora Lee quoted Elizabeth's Barrett Browning's comment in a letter to miss Mitford about Charles Kingsley. Quote, I like him and admire him a few people have struck me as much as he did last year in England. Man What do you say? But I am not very fond of praising them by calling them landline. I hate the test of masking online yet many feminists too many feminists and to those whose intelligence and commitment I most respect the word androgyny the kind of dirty word for it against with a determination I don't go together understand

Unknown Speaker  04:59
it Let us take for example, the works of a woman for whom I have the most profound admiration, and respect. Andrey enrich. She published in 1973, simultaneously with my book, a poem, which I did not then know and titled The stranger. It is a poem, a few lines of which I read this morning, not of course, giving you a copy of the rest of it. Let me read it to you. Looking as I've looked before, straight down the heart of the street to the river, walking the rivers of the avenues, feeling the shutters, the caves beneath the asphalt, watching the lights turn on and towers walking as I've walked before, like a man like a woman in the city, my visionary anger, cleansing my sight of the detailed perceptions of Mercy flowering from that anger. If I come into a room out of the sharp, Misty light, and hear them talking a dead language, if they asked me my identity, what can I say? But I am the androgen, I am the Living mind you fail to describe and you're dead language, the loss now, the verb surviving only in the infinitive. The letters of my name are written under the lids of the newborn child. In her new and marvelous book of poems, the dream of a common language, this verse appears, it's one verse in a long poem called natural resources. It's for certain 13 There are words I cannot choose again, humanism, and drogyny. Such words have no shame in them. No difference, but for the raging stoic grandmothers, their glint is too shallow, like a dye that does not permeate the fibers of actual life, as we live it now. In Rich's book, a woman born, she complained that androgyny had recently become a good word, like motherhood itself, implying many things to many people from bisexuality, to a vague freedom from closed sex roles. Really, she said, has the term been accompanied by any political critique? To my great sorrow, which expunged her poem, The Stranger, the one I just read you from? 1973 from her Collected Poems, so that one tracing her career would never have known it was there. I wrote, Master ye I've never met her. And she answered beautifully he is she I gathered does everything that the poem had been misused by chichi types, I guess. I think, however, that in removing it, she removed the witness that that is a stage one goes through that she to pass through it. I have one more example, the latest issue of heresies, which is untitled on women and violence. I don't know if all that we know what it's a feminist publication has an editorial. It says this. At birth, infants are assigned to gender. This division war people into mutually exclusive and non overlapping sex roles is assumed to be natural. But this development is not the unfolding of some genetic blueprint. It requires learning a complex set of rules and rituals, which create rather than reveal what it means to be a man or a woman in a society. Exactly. But further down the page, the editorial goes on, and progeny is not the answer. Men expressing their female side and women expressing their male side, we've unchallenged sexist definitions of what is masculine and feminine. Now you will like hope but notice that the first quotation from heresies expresses androgyny, as I understand it, the second does not. My confusion is increased when I read again and again that the French feminists all support bisexuality for everyone, but not androgynous. But of course bisexuality, which was Freud's word, not only retains the definitions of masculinity and femininity, but reinforces them as Binomo reinforces the sacred dichotomy emphasizes it says there is this or there is that

Unknown Speaker  09:57
meanwhile, where it matters The concept of androgyny, bisexuality or whatever we choose to call it has done and is doing its work. The progress in this area is what I wanted a moment to talk about the psychology of sex differences. Only then do I pause here now over the political fate of the term androgyny. Not because I do not understand the objections to it, which are in addition to those I've mentioned first, that in the history of the Andrew gene, it has been the male who assumed female aspects, leaving the female to keep all the inconvenient female duties like typing in the laundry. But second is Adrienne Rich's pointed out to me the media in that letter I mentioned the media has taken up androgyny in a way in which she and certainly I find profound wave hosting, but I and I suspect she find everything the media does. What troubles me I think, is the tendency of the women's movements like all other political movements, to break into factions, which use energy attacking each other, rather than the problem in the heresy editorials, for example. Why not simply make a statement to the effect that gender need not determined sex roles? Why do the editors also find it necessary to take a swing of androgyny? Which is certainly not the philosophy of those who perpetuate violence upon women, or even who resist the era? If we are to undermine the slavery for women empowerment and old idea of sex differences? Why should we begin by publicly borrowing about the time here then, is how a psychologist puts it. Sandra Ben's pioneer work on androgyny has stimulated alternative theories and new methodology in the area of sex roles. And this I am quoting now from her. Even if people were all to become physiologically, sorry, even if people were all to become psychologically androgynous, the world would continue to consist of two sexes. Thus, being female typically means that you have a female body built, that you have female genitalia, that you have breasts, that human straight, that you can become pregnant and give birth, and that you can nurse a child. Similarly, being male typically means that you have a male body bill that you have male genitalia, that you have beard growth, that you have erections that you objectively inspection can impregnate a woman when they are by Father child, precisely because these are biological Givens which cannot be avoided or escaped, except perhaps by means a very radical and mutilating surgery. It seems to me that psychological health must necessarily include having a healthy sense of one's male or female. But I would argue that a healthy sense of maleness or femaleness involves a little more than being able to look into the mirror and to be perfectly comfortable with the body that one sees there. But beyond being comfortable with one's body, one's gender need have no other influence on one's behavior of lifestyle. Thus, although I would suggest that a woman ought to feel comfortable about the fact that she can bear children if she wants to. This does not imply that she ought to want to bear children know that she wants to stay home with any children she does bear. Similarly, although I would suggest that a man would feel perfectly comfortable about the fact that he has a penis which can become erect. This in no way implies that a man wants to take a more active role during sexual intercourse, or even that his sexual partners ought to be female. These wise words, firms were written in 1975. To indicate how far we've come in the psychology of sex differences, I want to pick up one of her minor clauses, except perhaps by means a very radical and mutilating surgery. Because the tremendous attention given these days to transsexuals, like Jan Loris and Renee Richards has brought the whole discussion of sex differences to a new sharpness of definition.

Unknown Speaker  14:42
But let me review first what has been accomplished in the area which we may for now call androgyny psychological tests for masculinity and femininity, once almost universally employed, have now been abandoned, in their place has been substituted and androgynous. To test so called, which attempts to measure the integration of the entire personality, it will come as no surprise to anyone. It was thought as these matters that those who measures the most androgynous are the also the most intelligent, the most mature and the most integrated within themselves. Those of the extreme ends where if men strongly inhibited from tender or emotional behavior, those women at the extreme end of femininity on the scale were inhibited not only from masculine behavior as such, but from any behavior where the appropriate behavior is not specified. And likewise, the psychological tests for moral maturity once widely used, were discovered to conflate human behavior and male behavior and to define a woman with male behavior as on feminine and with female behavior is non human. These tests have been recognized for what they are and largely abandoned, other tests have been developed. Most important here, of course, the work of Nancy Shahdara has been particularly mentioned, there have evolved indications that the sex are not ideally defined against each other. Until very recently, men assumed they would define masculine behavior primarily as not feminine, not what girls do, thus leaving girls passively to accept what was left, which wasn't much. Yet now, most recently, the phenomenon of transsexualism has given us the sharpest insight into the psychology of sex differences. What is obvious, of course, is that those who need to transform themselves from one sex to the other are the most committed to stereotypical sex roles. Those doctors who perform these mutilating operations, never question whether it is necessary to change one body in order to change where one belongs. psychoanalysts like Stoller find that the source of transsexualism lies. This is the male to reconstruct the female of course lies in the mother's use of the newborn boy as penis. She unhappy as a woman uses her son who in turn conceives of himself as a part of her feminine this entire concept of courses based on the inevitability of difference. Now there have been recently two excellent articles on this subject. The first in chrysalis number three by Janice Raymond is called transsexualism, the ultimate homage to sex role power. The second for which I'll read something in a moment, is in feminist studies, volume four, and number three, which is October 78, and is entitled transsexualism and women a critical perspective. It's fine Marsha, you're both authors, and the second refers to the first demonstrate how the entire phenomenon of transsexualism from the individuals needs to the treatment now meted out, is the result of defining sex roles is absolutely distinct, as an opposite ends of the old masculinity and femininity scale. The fact that most transsexuals are male to reconstructed female helps the underlying this phenomenon. They rejoice after their dominant roles as males in the passivity of their female life. And as evidence of this, I wanted to read you a bit This is Jan lorises. Amanda. This is the man of course who ran up Mount Everest and sneakers as a man. I literally he has total use of his body as a reporter. Here he is a woman. The more I was treated as a woman, the more woman I became. If I was assumed to be incompetent, versed in cars or opening bottles, I believe incompetent I found myself becoming if a case was thought too heavy for me, inexplicably, I found itself myself

Unknown Speaker  19:21
I wanted to find one other marvelous indication of this but I think you get the point. He says here she sorry, she says here. First I feel small and neat. I am not small in fact that five feet nine and 133 pounds and not terribly needed, but femininity conspires to make me feel so my glass and skirt are like bright crisp. My shoes make my feet look more delicate than they are besides giving me practice more than any other piece of clothing a suggestion of vulnerability that I'd rather like my red and white bangles give me a racy feel. My bag matches my shoes. makes me feel well organized. I do not use much makeup but what there is on my face is enlivening fun like a fresh lick of paint on the front door. When I walk out into the street, I feel consciously ready for the world to read crazily in a way that I never felt as a man. Indeed he did. That, I mean that could have been written by whatever magazine on women picked up in the supermarket. Now, here is Marcia Yudkin. In the second of the articles, I mentioned the inevitable problem for me here is the criteria of masculinity and femininity are culturally relative subject to change, and may only be accepted unquestioningly or rejected vehemently by members of a culture so that a person's gender identity is soluble, be bound up with his or her attitude towards the prevalent ideas of femininity and masculinity. For instance, I do not consider myself particularly feminine, nor do I wish to be feminine is my culture defines it, but I have a firm sense of myself as a biological female, so that the definition of gender identity is one sense of oneself is belonging to one biological sex, so the other fits my case. On the other hand, most transsexuals are quite aware of the evidence that shows them to be biological males, yet they feel themselves to be feminine, want to be able to present to express their femininity and wish desperately to be able to present their unimpeachable social identity for a woman. Because they feel their gender identity to be at odds with their biological identity and cannot be disabused of this conviction, one has to define their gender identity as identification with the sex roles and norms, appropriate behavior, feeling, preferences, and so on, which is in Congress with their biological sex. I believe that this difficulty of giving a consistent and more substantive definition of gender identity that is the psychological counterpart of sex and sex role is fruitful, and not cause for despair. For I think it is an index of our culture's confusion in this area, and I see transsexuals as victims of that confusion, victims of our societies taking sex and sex roles as the center of one's private and public identity. If displaying or wishing to display characteristics deemed inappropriate to one's biological identity is a disturbance only within a cultural system which insists on dichotomous sex roles tied to the presumed dichotomy of the sexes. The other characteristic expression of the transsexual predicament declaims, I am really a woman, a girl, or I'm girl, a woman in a voice or man's body, equally testifies to the power of sex stereotypes. Here, I have to confess that in the sense in which transsexuals use the phrase, I do not feel myself to be really a woman, I feel myself to be really just a person, sex unspecified. Of course, I know that I am female, just as I know that I am five feet six inches tall, have brown hair and blue eyes, and I'm 25 years old, but I do not let any of those facts define me. And I prefer to be in circumstances where others do not define me by these physical facts I wish to and she says with an even bigger, more global question, are sex roles necessary for individuals or society? why or how not? Should we strive to do away with the concepts of woman and man all together or reduce them to the level of incidental ways of identifying people like blonde teacher in a short person, West Indian? Are there other alternatives to our present system of assigning a biological sex and birth socializing the person in parallel sex world expecting him or her to develop the Congress gender identity, and as we do now, providing the emergency measure transsexual surgery, when the process those hopelessly arrived?

Unknown Speaker  24:06
And progeny event or whatever term we prefer, is not as rich says they? Precisely, it seems to suggest that sex roles or societal constructs which ought to be abandoned. I'm willing enough to let the word androgyny go since I seek the ends, not the word. But I think we might as well recognize that it began what is a wonderfully liberating process. And that inspired rich, for example, to that beautiful poem, she is now disclaimed, can we not at least recognize androgyny as a step along the path that may be the most important and is certainly the most revolutionary yet triumph by humanity. Now, that is what I have to say, which I would like just to pick up two phrases from this morning one One of money critics, we should not reject any discourse. And one from Fairall, whatever we do is a moment in the struggle. And therefore, I think it's very important that we not take absolute views against this or for that, but recognize that each of us is working where we are largely because of the work other people are doing other places. And I think for our maintenance performed very well, that some Americans, for example, with their political efforts make possible for busy icing, much more interesting efforts of the French feminist critics. And that really is the end, I suppose I might as well call it a message it is a message that I've got today is that we ought to stop fighting about terminology and get on with the job, which is precisely to make sex roles, no longer dominant in our society. Has anyone any

Unknown Speaker  26:12
asked about wonder about typing in wrenches the idea of? Well, I heard her speak last year. And she one of the things she said that she echoed again and open the door and was we must see ourselves as women, not as men and women trying to be men not as advertised, but as women. And as she's been going about it. But perhaps this was androgyny was a stage for her in her particular journey to to

Unknown Speaker  26:44
sexual identification that she was helping me and she gave women, which isn't everybody's journey. But it wasn't

Unknown Speaker  26:52
that that is a I would say that androgyny is a phase. It is never for now, in my opinion. But I think it is an essential phase, I think one must go through that word. Probably that word, maybe this, that concept in order to get where which is, I have no quarrel with her saying for her. Now, there is no such word as androgyny. My only quarrel with her is cutting that poem out from hard Selected Poems, so that those who wish to follow that glorious, patchy trend will not now know that that was an important stage in it. And I think it is. And that's all really that I would say for it. I think now she is not a fan. And I did not because of being on the Executive Council and not being able to attend anything interesting here Monday bidding at the MLA, for example. But I hear that she said, we are not women. And I think what she was saying is, is again, the same thing, we are not what men define as women. And obviously, I think we all feel the same way.

Unknown Speaker  28:08
Are you saying that you're feeling this today?

Unknown Speaker  28:13
Well, I'm the word doesn't seem to give me as much trouble for what made you fail for the obvious reasons. Frankly, I'm sort of tired of it. And was simply shocked that the idea that it was what I was talking about today.

Unknown Speaker  28:29
Let me let me elaborate on this. And I found your work very this one was a children's reuse. Do you have a reinforcement six rolls, and I use the word project. And then I look at the scale. And I got more and more taken away. And I really understood today why? So that instead of using the word androgynous, I'm still talking about non conforming. Boys. Of course, it gives you space to grow right, androgynous sort of solidifies the space. I'm not sure what.

Unknown Speaker  29:08
Yeah, I think that's right. I described it once and brought the concept of androgyny is that part of the rocket that falls off when you're outside gravitational space, because it's not needed. And that's exactly how I think of the concept. I began the way I did the day really just puts I've gotten a little angry. The word has taken such a beating from feminists, many of whom are where they are now because someone said to them at some stage in their life, if you feel like a boy inside you are there's nothing wrong with you. And that's all the phrase is for which is why I went on to suggest how it is not working with with transsexuals I think is a word it's commonly and as soon as one can move beyond that one or two, but when needing turned back and attacking. It's like the elders who you For parents, I mean, we hear

Unknown Speaker  30:03
you trying to say something. It has to represent a concept. And I'm not sure that we have as we move towards this, that way, definitions of masculine gender, like you're what we're moving towards. So when we say Nonconformist, it's different than say,

Unknown Speaker  30:22
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't want to leave it. I mean, maybe someone. It's a problem in the French. Those French we heard today are right in the middle of it. Because I don't know how many of you got those that undertone. But it's a real problem. Because it's you wanted to find a woman, but how are you going to define it? And what do you mean in relation to the male language we all speak and so forth? I think the poetic answer we this afternoon was very low, and it's fabulous. But and I think her answer the woman writing the thing on Brandeis was the answer. What do you write it is you feel as a woman, but one can see how we are left with this problem? Inevitable. I think for for me,

Unknown Speaker  31:11
sort of the word androgyny and its uses

Unknown Speaker  31:20
that at certain points, it becomes a kind of combination where there's a positive and negative and they sort of cancel each other out and you have this. And that has ended its usefulness comes in an understanding of a tension and an energy that gets played out within the word itself. And that that concept is something that we don't, that I don't even think I'm willing to throw away, I mean, behind and say that it's something we've got to get here. And I think that that changes.

Unknown Speaker  32:01
No, I'm just I'm not. You know, you all ought to speak if I had to think of ways to arrange this, I would get down. And

Unknown Speaker  32:12
I think that tension is really important, I would go so far. And I think what happens is, as we expand the definition of that very well, and possibly expand the definition of nails and decide what they want, we might have too much larger. aspects of each of

Unknown Speaker  32:42
these Yes, I do think that women have become holy women identify, move into a lesbian world

Unknown Speaker  32:56
as rich, whoever was mentioning

Unknown Speaker  32:59
that do humbly do not find their strength from that conflict. They find their strength from their own strength and other women. And I think that is is the way they have to go. That's all and that's why for her for her Andrea enrich this is not the answer. And for some people, so those of us who remain in the heterosexual world, I think that there is something about that conflict, which is strength. I've not thought of it that way. I think.

Unknown Speaker  33:32
I'm not sure it's to be mutually exclusive use the Jamie's a conflict, I think that the conflict is not generated by the by our information or the good adjectives. And that is very smart.

Unknown Speaker  33:45
If you if you have

Unknown Speaker  33:47
a monopoly on self esteem, yes, men do. You don't want people appropriate. Between us and men, I'm lucky that the conflict within each of us were under seal within these expanded pools, a conflict will be generated, inevitably because there were areas that were mutually exclusive that I missed.

Unknown Speaker  34:12
I would say if you're new. That's what the Frenchman was talking about is our voice and our our bodies speaking for us and so on is good feet that appear to be sewn out properly. And so we're growing on that couldn't be going on on the surface, but I think he's talking about those things and also some of the things that have been defined in men and women.

Unknown Speaker  34:53
You as I just said, like faith does interest me as someone who has been at the center of most of the flack that it's come from William. What I've heard from men, of course, most of the man would know what the words meant. And having heard it, it was one heard of them. And they wouldn't speak to me anyway because I'm not a sex object. But from the men do I do hear from by mail and other things, that the freedom lay felt to move into nurturing and

Unknown Speaker  35:18
into intimacy has been enormous ly liberating.

Unknown Speaker  35:21
And I saw that they did not find the word is as unhappy as women did. And I think probably because as many of those including mature object to androgen, you say, Sure, it's great for men, they always take over the female things. But they, as normal Brown does, he leaves the women, you know, or then the objective women take over male things. Let me just stay here as a footnote that I think it's very interesting, however, that it's always women I hear objecting to a female as a landlord or a woman. But there is an androgynous figure with both who took over the male things and nobody was nervous.

Unknown Speaker  36:05
And I think one of the interesting tension complicated talking about is the expanding pool is not the extremes of what remains do this. But just because you overlap intersects interesting. The one thing that we find difficult to stand in the same place, as someone that we call a very, very careful back defining our term, whether it's if we have the special pool of all the positive qualities of getting well, when I were when I worked in ontological fields and worked in hospitals, the psychologists were very clear. They weren't social worker, and a social worker that they weren't the nurse, and the nurses that they weren't somebody else. And the worst thing was to feel that somebody could stand in your shoes, or that you were in court. And I think that's the tension within ourselves, when we acknowledge what we think comes from both fields, because we're not sure who we are, if we need those definitions. And in intersects, that men are uncomfortable when they see women in white or gay or areas and women equal, when men begin close to failure. But to be your trusted confidant, you want to hold on to the expanding pool, not the outer reaches, which may be reduced in terms of your partner talking in the mirror and saying yes, I have no beard. And maybe I can do a shot. And you'll be fine. We'll give

Unknown Speaker  37:34
you a couple of things one is is speaking, my experiences lexicographer the attorney and progeny is setting up itself just as a word as opposed to say common humanity or so is setting up, okay, male or female for analyzing it into terms and that may be part of the problem. Besides which, why don't we say is I would say, male first always, when is that necessary? Why could it equally well be coined this guy, and that's how we could call like me and read just as well as we can call it in Ragini, and then minus two, but getting to the concept, which really doing those analyzing it out to two separate baby hearts. It's saying this is a sneaky thing to common thing. It's humanity, or private entities, human beings. And what concerns me now that women's experience has not been explored the way dance has done and it has been an easy way to do that. But if women aren't going to do that, to say, no, we want to be women first, and human being second, and we're just going right back and then single sex. Well, it's like women and men are different. But what we're trying to say is how we are right, we are more alike and different. How many of these structures are socially imposed? Open? Yes, of course, men are very, where they listen with women. Why women less structured in other ways than men now, because it isn't in the human capacity of the sexes to be either but because I get channeled into a certain role in where I think we should have been taught from his way or what do we have in common? And if we have differences, what are the real

Unknown Speaker  39:24
effects? Well, the ones badly stated, I think, that's about it, the physical, but the identification of those generativity and she incidentally, says when they have a beard, American Indians do not have beards. It is not a male secondary sex characteristic among my group, the fact that fascinate me even the secondary sex characteristics which common a long line are in some and not other races and people, which is again another interesting fact the The the one of the things I'd like to hear something on because what worries me in which we had a good deal of today in a very interesting way is that if women are now going to say we withdraw, we are women, this is where we are. This is our turf. This is femaleness. This, this is what it's like when you give birth and so forth. Is that something that is going to help women through political and other kinds of fullness of representation? Humanity? That's the question that I find I ask it's a political question. It's one the French are beginning to ask, and I don't know what the answer is, do you? That's one of the things I'd like to hear your thoughts on? The second speaker Ferrell, yes. What is that? I shouldn't use her Nan to pair I suppose or no, the husband. Jeanette says, no, no, I meant I was trying to get her first name is Oh, I'm sorry, I couldn't

Unknown Speaker  41:11
remember. She talks about women gathering themselves together as women outside the structure and achieving that identity and then moving from the outside and change the internal male structure that exists, that's almost impossible. But that the gathering together and achieving identity together as women and individually as women, is a stage again, in the ongoing process toward changing the structure of the outside. I can see that

Unknown Speaker  41:47
the work toward identity and sense of self is maintained mutually exclusive, how

Unknown Speaker  41:54
political action

Unknown Speaker  41:57
was one of the issues? Civil rights? I didn't I didn't hear that. And I think if it's if that was what was the fact that there is a concurrent

Unknown Speaker  42:17
attention? Is this a healthy, productive tension if it's similar, but if it's seen, I think that is a mass withdrawal. And I read a bit of Adrienne Rich's work because there was a real withdrawing into isolation. I don't know if that's true with the basic friendships that generate the theory and combine that with action. But the generation of theory

Unknown Speaker  42:44
has to do with women being together and working on generating it as men have conventionally done all from the central

Unknown Speaker  42:50
question that translating it into two prompts. This

Unknown Speaker  42:56
is why I wanted to speak about the problems that term has had and a tremendous honor to vote, because I think we all in our various ways, serve each other. That is Andrey enrich will not address groups that are women's groups, and so forth. But what she does in the strength she finds is in turn given to me, for instance, who talks to men's groups. That is not God forbid landscapes, but I mean, next. And I what is troubling me in these this phraseology is that we must not fight one another, we must recognize that we're all doing what we're doing, where we're doing it. And that is why I spent the time on this. When I was asked to give this workshop I was pulled off by someone who said, we're trying to find somebody to talk about and Ron Jimmy, doors, were all against it. Can you think of some of them? And I of course, can think of a few people when she said I don't suppose you do. And it was that that really made me realize we have got to recognize that we're all in different places. And leave androgyny is okay for people whose place that, you know, that is that is really the sense I can

Unknown Speaker  44:16
I'm listening to you say we're just saying an idea in my head, so bear with me. It seems to me, as I think about all of this, that when we work on an entourage or this way, just come into this place now is thinking of working with men, you know, in terms of society, and I'm wondering where we got the political. It seems to me that right now, politically, you've made more of an impact, talking about reproductive rights in this country, and really haven't been able to define what the right really is. When it comes down strongly against that. Then we have to have a lot of economic I think goes a lot of other goals. So Matt, maybe if we change the level of diskless to femaleness will affect the change in that world much more than than thinking being concerned that we went roaring from that level. I think that is even coming into light and different and much more clearer and clearer returns. Now, and I'm sure a lot of us who felt very politically engaged, you know, out there, civil rights for socialism, everything else you see the world falling apart in those terms, that they're flexible know that they'd be withdrawing into political lysing a theory that is femaleness.

Unknown Speaker  45:45
Well, I I have to get over my female bathrooms. It's Its title is reinventing, reinventing woman. Your woman was never invented in the first place. But womanhood was, and I leave that I'm suggesting we all do, I can't say another word about it.

Unknown Speaker  46:15
political change, and change the environment 673 74, something like that. In which she mentioned specifically, that six rolls, concept, family, that type of job. That is such a shame since the first, like go to the ship. All of these stages, especially same sex roles, and some of the things we're talking about here have to be designed to do business. That doesn't mean

Unknown Speaker  47:09
in other words,

Unknown Speaker  47:12
intellectuals discussing this and writing books about what is meant by an open sense of violence or something like that.

Unknown Speaker  47:27
Don't believe that you've got to believe in the power of ideas. That's why we're all in this room in this building on this campus, and ideas smart in small dark rooms, and they spread out Nancy Shanna Rose Quartz, which is one of the most important books I think that has been written let you know just it's just fabulous. It's called reproducing, mothering, it's got an awful title, it's almost as bad as mine. But anyway, it she shows not only what you said she shows that the firm when he the now Sacred Family is not capable even of sustaining itself that is that the far end form of the family is self destructing and that the family itself can only possibly continue if it is made symmetrical. If it is taken away from it sense roll from six roll walking with the mother doing all the mothering and the father the outside and so on. In other words that you must have

Unknown Speaker  48:34
totally symmetrical mothering. I thought it was lovely over to having done such a book turn up eight months pregnant. Very different years.

Unknown Speaker  48:49
But that's right, somewhat more human and more management. Those

Unknown Speaker  48:54
are two books that go together very well. And shadow row after all, has their name domain enter tenure to win and she had the right so but not so that the specialists in that field would feel she knew their language. Or she's a sociologist, but she has used the field of psychoanalysis told us very well. And she had to write in that jargon because she's got to make it with them. If you just give it a little attention, though, I think it's accessible. Dinnerstein is obviously imaginative metaphoric writer and with much it's much harder to organize that book, but it's in southern it's very exciting to many people. I know the first insight into the same question that we're all where we are now, because we had female nurtures and the male always was the outside world mentioned the title of the Minotaur. Sorry, the mermaid also dark fantasy yeah center so the thing that I brought in at Senator Babson recently she was very suspicious psychology to set up in wards hospital she seemed innocent

Unknown Speaker  50:27
any ideas robot see satisficing society

Unknown Speaker  50:35
I made myself think incidentally Saundra bend again I never met I just admire and I've heard of. But even though the site this field of psychology accepted at her own faculty that I mean they can consider work and androgyny worthy of notice. I think it accepted it because you've been waiting for it. It became clearer and clearer that this masculinity and femininity scale was nonsense. I think the work of block gene block of gene Humphrey block cleared it also showed the tremendous sex dichotomy in this country was greater than any other civilized country, but we were closer to masculinize little boys and I think they were ready for it. The media is I think, a different matter. I think it happened to coincide with unisex dressing with Ebro that whole bit, which was just the meat is meat. And in a way that was two grams. I think it often you get this isn't wholly a coincidence. And so the I think the one is ready for the ideas, wine, one has the unisex dressing. But androgyny got mixed up in this. And therefore the people who really think and really feel and really work didn't want an idea that began to seem to them cheap. And I think that's where the trouble came, one can understand that

Unknown Speaker  52:01
maybe acceptance and and expressing and then we can now carry three Facebook posts that's even better for Katherine was extremely fearful. Thank you so much, you know, we getting more than I can. Maybe? Well,

Unknown Speaker  52:41
I think you're on to another issue. I think the reason women can be co opted by IBM was because women can be counted on not to five, not to bond not to support each other not to bring other women with them to become insured on Earth men. And I think if women could learn to support other women, and to bring other women with them, co opting would cease to be that easy. It was that meant they could count on every hour it's like a gym getting into a Gentile from if you'd like to me Ella was Groucho Marx used to saying, you know, any club that would take me care, whatever it was, that was the problem I think a lot and that's what going to do, I guess. Yeah. But uh, you know, let's keep my feeling is I am very political here. Let's not just stand around saying, Look, how are they using us? Let's use them. Yeah, absolutely. You know, the refusal now of men to move at the company's behest, anywhere, leaving their bereft wife to abandon her job, her friends, her children's friends, and so on, isn't working anymore? I mean, the men aren't going to do it, because and that's good. I don't think we should just say you're right. They are. But also, we should use that you

Unknown Speaker  54:15
have to be inside is the offense for it to work. Just to give you an example of a political action that has been very successful in the past few years, we have had enormous success in building our new secondary textbooks. We had this success because we had women outside publishing around the country and women's groups in Europe, etcetera, analyzing the books and refining and getting extremely strong guidelines in the space and this is affecting the publishing industry. We also had the requirements to continue to be implemented because if we look inside it, women are in the majority who have moved with it employee turnover at the same time push through the changes written the guidelines and implement them. So you have the pressure outside the Secretary's grace you have the pressure inside when you get changed and you're either exclusively met again no that actually happens

Unknown Speaker  55:20
was just written in our textbooks are still kind of stupid religiously faltering and scandalous with that and I'm a teacher and I've testified in my teenage years textbooks which

Unknown Speaker  55:39
are favorites have a shelf correct are your booklet changes have been made and within really minor

Unknown Speaker  55:49
changes something to increase the amount of units and books can be increased in

Unknown Speaker  55:54
some textbooks

Unknown Speaker  55:56
are also very pleased and we're saying just about Graceland and animal stories and increasing attics and unfortunately the animals and males race there is such an understanding of what

Unknown Speaker  56:14
gender roles are in these books it's shocking

Unknown Speaker  56:17
that depends on who is doing the implementing guys many examples of really good things will change well I think one of the issues you have straight like initially not training around my training very hard to get a female female there again it's first now that was this guy that I was talking about I really value running I found very recently a new type of person

Unknown Speaker  57:43
find That's right. That's that's the same I was referring to just from me. I just made I mentioned that whole realization that when people met a healthy person, they met a man so a woman couldn't be healthy. Tender that made me Why can I not want the women in America right. Now, you know, the one good thing that came out of the Vietnam War, really, is that a lot of men to avoid the draft, started teaching in nursery schools and kindergartens. And for the first time these kids had male teachers and nurtures and a lot of them found they liked. And it it changed a good deal that that are not holding, but to a great extent. And all of that I think is is important. And yes.

Unknown Speaker  58:55
I'm not sure that it's been six or so you can count on this endeavor see less and less the media to target dropped me think, right to be suspicious of it because the connotation that it has and much of an institution that is in addition to it is the end, androgyny is a kind of really an asexual way to be in the image of an antigen is free of trial. It doesn't matter if they're male or female. But as far as resonating with or hearing a cold experience, it doesn't mean feminists and feminists claim to care. Yeah, these feminists are complaining that the evocation of the internal feminine is out of trial that if you didn't put the nameplate on for the description, standard, differentiated job is not immediate. Watch is actually a term basically another way of introducing the content of childishness into what's happening are female growth? I mean, it's not men who are rushing to the engines, it's it's mostly frustrated. Feminists.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:10
Yeah, that's not my experience. And in books that men send me that I quit my meal planning versus the day, right? Admittedly, it is mainly homosexual,

Unknown Speaker  1:00:20
for your own psyche. It's already sensitive.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:24
But the fact is, if they you know, there was a certain value is that that was there I, I really, I don't want to be in the position of defending the term which I just want to keep it going for the the ones coming along the path, and

Unknown Speaker  1:00:43
that's a misunderstanding and misappropriation of the term. But I suspect that that's the media understanding of it, and it's why it's taking off.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:53
Would I say something that's going to be encouraging about the way your term and your book has helped people? Right after your book, a graduate student of mine has written a wonderful dissertation for me. shuffleboard levy androgynous vision, I would like to say that what we should explore now in literary criticism is also the fact that great people are obviously going to be both women and men at the same time. If they are great creative writers, they have to have a good laugh is a prime example. Certainly connect them. And so I would like to say that it isn't perhaps even the tension between male and female. Nor is it non conformists. I think that the true added Regina is a person who was perfectly happy feeling within himself or herself, that he has both elements, and that your book has helped in the direct criticism, a great deal, and much has to continue not only this dissertation, but this kind of analysis has to continue. Someone like Prusa, when they

Unknown Speaker  1:01:56
want to add about Proust is I wanted to get up and yell, Proust, this afternoon, when they said, do you have to be a biological female to write, of course, that for me, the great writer who has done the semiotic bit is Wolf, without question. But Proust is there. And it's question without proofs, she certainly cruised filtered through the work, I don't think great great minds are influenced, I think things filter through them. So that the idea that you have to be a biological female to write this new language, I simply got at this problem,

Unknown Speaker  1:02:31
I just got to do one thing. Today said something very interesting. And I this is a question that activates you. That is, of course, what she did was to run an extraordinary film. But of course, when she says that, we must put aside the Word of God and plumb our depths are dug in a spaces and our feelings and and this is where we will find the language of women. Of course, it is also true that all great male poets refer to the same, I think problems for example, Ambu is a prime example when he writes a food I don't know, I is the other. And of course, you can say that in a way I go with a woman and that proves them away with a woman but I don't think that that is true or that will put them as a woman, I think that's absurd to say that which says that they are truly intelligent, and that is a truly androgynous they are happy to have both and they can have a world of a dark will inside from which will come to language for men and for women. Not just for women, but of course that is a problem with such conflicts. I mean, will there be just a new language for women or will we be able to the Marine Mammal so that they're dark in these search other metal that there will be a new language or some sort of sense of sense right? Because what this does is word happiness rather arbitrary we have to use browser science

Unknown Speaker  1:04:09
and indeed in identifying a woman for a tennis match the question seems to be the ones that are waking

Unknown Speaker  1:04:28
up every morning trying to get started get caught up in

Unknown Speaker  1:04:33
just sounds bad today and I think

Unknown Speaker  1:04:40
that's right. You may have right I do want to add though, that in addition to androgen me which doesn't anymore, what longer wants to wear Humanity either, and which does not have legs graphically is to what she wants his woman, she wants to say, Are you a woman, and that is all humanity when I say. And I think that's, of course in the end what we have to say not going to be happy

Unknown Speaker  1:05:40
just like to say that the one thing that annoys me most, I guess, when it concerns me that some of the implications that we're getting in associating plates with biological femaleness around us are ways of thinking and ways of proceeding, the brain does not have to the Paleo brain is a human like, emotions. And the only thing it does have is on and we have not explored, there may be ways to get to see your senses, that's gonna tell you right or listen, great. We have not exclude word count biologically, given all the essential things that you have raised. There may be some differences in that. But that is not been the greatest, at least simply they are about logic, and that we have differences that they are not interested in, as long as you're going to say yes. And then make it random, or have some kind of logical sequence of restricted or free and negative words and positive words. It's ludicrous to do that. You're saying that you already have this? Map? Right, like I'm not going on.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:07
Course, one last questions

Unknown Speaker  1:07:09
there data.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:10
As you may know, as soon as people get involved in data, I've decided to go on to something else. I don't know if we want to go on. Do you know what, when we're supposed to go on to the footnote? And for certain? Maybe? I don't want to keep those of you who are moving here. If we said it all, or if you want to talk in small groups? Or if

Unknown Speaker  1:07:39
there are any other points to be brought up while staying at 430? Yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:54
My experience with data is that people find what they're looking for. And I think, what's her name? Reveillon. All of the data that surrounds the children of working mothers who are much healthier than the children and not working mothers, which somehow everybody goes through all the years before the feminist movement where Veena has that surname. If you if you go and look for something, you can usually find that I think this is even true when you're not dealing with your personality. Another I think we need data because no one believes us unless we get but I have the humanist suspicion. I should say this is really very unfair of me, but people are always saying a humanist scholar, wasn't it? I really do think that I don't know when the black and white sample is more and so on. You know, the only person facing same sex relations to data seems to me to be really soundless Kinsey's, and it's held up over the years, interestingly enough, and it held up because it had no ideas attached. So trilling wrote a famous piece. So that's what I hate to think all is going down on. U turn