Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!aero!sp299-ad@violet.Berkeley.EDU
From: sp299-ad@violet.Berkeley.EDU (Celso Alvarez)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Gender domination in discussion [Was: Re: Montreal]
Message-ID: <1989Dec19.101758.16044@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 89 10:17:58 GMT
References: <5771@yunexus.UUCP> <89Dec14.120052est.5492@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <89Dec14.120052est.5492@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) raises the issue of gender
domination in discussions.  He quotes Beryl Logan (logan@nexus.yorku.ca)
who wrote about the exclusion of men in the Montreal vigil:

>>They don't think they can fully express their emotions and grief with men
>>present, and want the men to organize their own event...

A.J.Rosenthal comments:
>I'm sure I don't have to tell the readers of this forum that most men tend to
>dominate most women in discussion and in other ways.  We could argue forever
>about whether it's the women or the men's fault.  (I think it's the men's
>fault.)  The point is, I don't think you can get very far without realizing
>this basic fact.  Even in a discussion with dozens of women and two men, you
>can keep track of how much everyone says and find that the discussion was
>totally male-dominated.

I would read B.L.'s posting differently.  It is not that women could not
"express their emotions" fully if men would be present.  After all, one
only needs to utter her/his emotions to *intend* to express them (among other
ways to do it).  The problem lies with the social interpretation of actions
(here, the expression of emotions).  Any given group gathering is dominated
by a certain dynamics for carrying out actions and, most importantly, for
making sense of those actions according to a dominant frame of interpretation.
As Rosenthal suggests, it is often the case that men often contribute most
decisively to set the agenda of what to talk about and, particularly, *how*
to say it.  This unquestionably reflects a sort of gender domination in the
control (management) of communication.  But we should not necessarily infer
from this that it is this sort of control that constitutes power.  The presence
of just one unwanted person in a large group may constrain what one can (or is
willing) to say, but not always because one cannot express one's thoughts --
but because the outsider is exerting a sort of symbolic pressure or domination
which consists of the imposition of his or her frame of interpretation (to be
sure, a socially dominant frame of interpretation).  A silent male in a
largely female group may be exerting more symbolic power than a talkative
one.  Conversely, the silence of females in a male-dominated discussion
may at times reflect the females' power not to accept the frame of
interpretation -- simply, not follow the game.

So, there are two aspects to the issue of gender domination in discussion.
1) The control of talk (who speaks when, and how one speaks); 2) The
power of imposing a frame of interpretation.  According to this
male-dominated frame to interpret speech, the word (speaking) is often a
weapon that we use to reaffirm our position.  From this it follows that
the women's decision not to accept men in their vigil constituted a defensive
strategy not to have to deal with these two issues -- the control of
communication, and the frame according to which their actions would be
interpreted.  In the Montreal case, the clearest evidence of gender domination
is the *absence* of men in the women's vigil.  But (and I would like to
emphasize this very clearly), on the other hand, the presence of men would
have not solved the problem.  It would have very likely contributed to the
fact that the women's actions (including words) would have had *a different
sense*.

Let us imagine that women at a vigil or gathering talk about "feminism",
"violence", "aggression" and "misogyny".  Let us also imagine that
in the gathering they also express their emotions visibly, their outrage
and a certain degree of frustration that usually accompanies social
struggle.  It goes without saying that those words and actions are
interpreted quite differently by different groups of people -- not only
because a given group may not share the experiences of another, but
because both groups don't share either a common frame to *talk* about such
experiences.  If men shared the experiences of women, the Canadian
male politician who at the Parliament referred to the massacre as
something of the sort of "a senseless act of violence" would have used
other words -- for instance, "yet another act of sexist aggression".
The anchorman of one of the TV networks, in the first report of the
massacre emphasized the fact that "again, there are no known motives for
the killings".  Next day, another anchorman said in an aside comment
something like "one wonders why the killer carried to such an extreme
their hatred for women".  If one reads or listens between lines (the only
sane way to interpret the news), what this man meant is that there are
other, "less extreme", socially acceptable ways to express one's hatred for
women.  Language plays on us some very funny power tricks.

To return to the vigil, in sum, if men could indeed share the grief of women
(and women would perceive this sharedness), then probably the presence of male
in the women's vigil would not make a difference.  But my impression is
that the women's decision was based on the perception that the presence of men
*would* make a difference.  That difference is not imaginary -- it is
real, since it is perceived by women (at least, by the women in the
vigil, as a collective; whether all women felt it this way or not,
that's another issue).  Men (also as a collective) cannot ask to be included
in an act of grief or discussion of which they are the primary visible source.
Who can guarantee that any of the men at the gathering would not carry a
real weapon or a symbolic weapon -- their indifference to the word
"violence" or to the word "sexism"?  Who could guarantee that men would
really *understand* it if a woman said "we are tired of violence"?

I view the women's decision not to allow men in their vigil both as an
understandable act of defense and an act of resistance.  The problem is that
such an action may have no further social repercussions if the women involved
do not find a way to invest their actions and words with power.  Power in
communication works both ways.  Men more often than women construct what is to
count as authoritative speech.  This is, of course, a social issue which has
to do with the dominant position of males in society, one from which they
control the resources of communication.  But the symbolic power of a
marginalized group may be of a different sort -- for example, by refusing
to enter the game on specific occasions, women may be signalling that
the premises of male-dominated discourse (asserting one's position
through rhetoric argumentation, condescending, trying to discredit the
opponent, etc.) are flawed.  The problem is that female strategies
to conduct action and talk often *do not count* as authoritative, legitimate
ways.  One way to empower a marginalized discourse is to make it enter the 
dominant discourse.  Another one -- the one chosen by the women at the
vigil -- is to cultivate the group's language in isolation, in in-group
action.  The convenience to adopt either strategy depends ultimately on
the group's decision.  The outsiders' act of questioning whether the women's
decision to exclude men was appropriate or not is highly irrelevant.  Perhaps
it would be more productive to examine and question the social conditions
that made possible such decision, in order to understand it.

Celso Alvarez
sp299-ad@violet.berkeley.edu