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Triangle Pose/Gender Bender: Un-becoming A NonJistening Male-Prisoner using Alcoffs Theory of Subjectivity

Jeffrey D Schoneman

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Schoneman 1

Triangle Pose/Gender Bender:

Un-Becoming a Non-Listening Male-Prisoner
Using Alcoffs Theory of Subjectivity

I am tired of it! I said. My wife and I were arguing about our

relationship. At one point, I could no longer bear to listen to her thoughts and
feelings, so I rushed out of the apartment, fleeing to the nearest (you take
your pick) escape. But angry people are not always wise.
Literature is relational through and through. As a form of
communication, it enacts the famous rhetorical triangle: speaker-messageaudience, or in literatures case, author-work-reader(s). A literary work brings
two or more people together, uniting them in a particular triadic relation; the
author and the reader relate to each other in and through the work. This
author-reader relation divides itself into two functions: expression
and reception. On one hand, the author expresses the work. Hemingway
slowly pounds out a novel on his Royal Quiet DeLuxe Portable, one stern
sentence after another. Jane Austen scribes her dense tomes with quill pen
and iron gall ink while a desktop candle resists the dark English sky. On the
other hand, a potentially endless number of readers receive the work. High

Schoneman 2

school students pick up THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA and try to make sense of
the symbolism, while literature students like me flip through the pages
of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in an attempt to unravel its social intricacies. Both
functions, expression and reception, constitute the relation between author
and reader, as mediated by the work; these functions emerge in the very
event of literary communication, inherently.
I am tired of it!
But what happens when a relationship goes wrong? Like when a man
cant bear listening to what a woman has to say and so refuses to receive her
words? I saw my grandfathers do it, I watched my dad do it, and sometimes
observe myself doing it in my own marriage, it being that boyish
avoidance and degradation of a womans words, especially if those words are
difficult to hear, i.e., unflattering to the ego. Why do the men in my family
persistently not want to receive their partners messages, partners whom they
ostensibly love? Until someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to
get better. It's not.
In literary communication, the relationship often goes wrong on the
reception side, too; the reader, for whatever reason, does not receive the work

Schoneman 3

adequately or at all. And the relation which makes communication possible

falls apart. I wonder if the two problems coalesce in men? That is, do male
readers carry their avoidant and defensive behavior from their relationships
with women into the realm of literature when they encounter works written
by women? <Hmm.>
I did not want to study the poetry of Holly Prado. It was too personal,
too much like a diary. She was on a list of contemporary poets whose papers
are housed in The Archive for New Poetry at UCSD. As I Googled the names
on the list, I was especially drawn to the male poets from the Modernist
period; I felt that I could relate to their heavy philosophical themes. Holly
Prado was one of the few women on the list, all of whom did not appeal to
me. Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice. Why
did I avoid and disdain the women poets? Was it simply a matter of personal
preference? I did, after all, at one time read Phillis Wheatly, Emily Dickinson
and H.D. <Pause.> But only because I was assigned those readings in my
course of study. Push sl-o-o-o-o-wly into the stretch. G-o-o-o-d. Now feel the point
of resistance. Perhaps I indeed unconsciously avoided and rejected the poetry
of those women poets on the list. Could the communication problems in my

Schoneman 4

marriage have anything to do with it? Do both problems have the same
subterranean root? Now that you feel your point of resistance, gently push just a
little further. Understand the discomfort. Know it. Embrace it. G-o-o-o-d.
I decided to study the poetry of Holly Prado, primarily to probe my
communicatory resistance, as it applies to both the literary realm and the
relationship with my wife. I gleaned Prados books of poetry from the web,
visited her archive to read her journals and unpublished essays, watched her
readings on YouTube, and listened to her audio CD. In short, I immersed
myself in the work of Holly Prado. I also reflected on many of the
conversations and arguments I have had with my partner over the past three
years. After it all, I developed a better awareness of the ways in which I resist
listening to women (or try to dominate them so that I do not have to listen).
Perhaps my newfound awareness, as it is expressed here, will help other men
understand and overcome their resistance/dominance, so that their personal
and literary relations with women can be healed. Perhaps not. In any case,
the fruit of my awareness work lies below, imperfect but meaningful, like a
bruised mango on a hot summer day. This paper operates on two levels. At the
first level, I explore the issues in general, that is, how the phenomena of men

Schoneman 5

not listening to women and men not reading women writers shows up in
the culture-at-large, both in empirical data/observation and in discourse
(which I will discuss last). At the second level, I explore how these
phenomena show up in my own life, applying the insights gleaned at the first
level to my own context. In these second level explorations, I hope to enact a
form of self-realization/identity politics a la Alcoff, consciously positioning
my male subjectivity in a way which allows me to do what I want to do-listen to women. Throughout, I interspersed close readings of Holly Prados
poetry, as a further (meta)enactment of my second-level purpose. <He
breathes, inhaling the atmosphere.>

First: Prepare the Stock, Heat to a High Boil

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. / What's Montague? it is nor hand,
nor foot, / Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part / Belonging to a man. O, be some
other name!
Any discussion should begin by defining the terms, since
miscommunication often results otherwise. I want to carefully explain what I
mean by men and women. It would be so easy, and so dangerous, to

Schoneman 6

begin speaking about how men do this and women do that. Indeed, most
casual conversations about gender involve the uncritical use of the categories
man and woman, as if it were obvious what these words refer to. Know it
when I see it. I would like to avoid the uncritical at all costs, since it would
weaken my exploration considerably. So, let me slow down and analyze the
idea of gender, first, before we go any further. <He moves into mountain
pose.>
How we understand gender ultimately depends on how we
understand subjectivity, or the self. As it happens, the concept of subjectivity
holds modernity together to such an extent that it may be called the depthmovement of our time (Van Den Hengel ix). Cogito ergo, sum total. A
question which perennially plagues philosophers asks, What is reality? The
Greeks sought the answer in the external physical world, medievals sought it
in religious revelation, and we (post)moderns seek it in the interiority of the
human self, or the subject. For us, what reality is depends on what the human
subject is, that thing which asks the question in the first place. And since
subjectivity is such a fundamental question for (post)modernity, there is no
lack of recent material on the matter; everyone in the (post)modern era wants

Schoneman 7

to know the nature of subjectivity (and hence reality), and it seems that every
school of thought has its own theory to explain it (Van den Hengel viii-ix).
Despite the plethora of commentary on the subject <snicker, snicker>, two
dominant strains emerge. Linda Alcoff identifies and summarizes these two
strains in her article Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The
Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory. Alcoffs article proves especially helpful
because it connects the discussions surrounding subjectivity to the issue of
gender, which is ultimately what I want to focus on. Microscope?
The first strain of thought regarding subjectivity, which Alcoff calls
essentialism, argues that the subject contains a hidden core from which
springs an essential identity (429). Essentialists contend that the subject
possesses a set of attributes that are objectively identifiable (436). These
attributes, according to biological essentialism, largely stem from biology,
and they determine a subjects fundamental identity, including his or her
future behavior (430). In this essentialist view, a man who hunts deer is
expressing his essential, biologically-rooted identity as a man, while a woman
who crochets at home is expressing her essential, biologically-rooted identity
as a woman, perhaps emerging from DNA. This is a perfect day for bananafish.

Schoneman 8

Not all essentialists would agree with that specific example, but they would
certainly follow its line of reasoning, which contends that certain subjects
have inherent core qualities, attributes, or behaviors emerging from their
biology. Another form of essentialism is cultural essentialism, which, while
not positing a biological core of identity, does argue for a cultural core of
identity. This core emerges from the values or traditions of a particular
subject category, such as Chinese, communist, or woman (Yu-Chieh Shih 6-8).
In other words, a cultural essentialist might argue that all Mexicans have
strong extended families because the Mexican culture values family bonds
above all other bonds. Having a strong extended family thus becomes an
inherent part of being a Mexican. The sound of exceptions flocking like mad
sparrows. In both forms of essentialism, an objective set of traits or behaviors
exists in individual subjects precisely because they belong to a certain subject
category. Some plants, some small water creatures give a sort of jellyfish sort of birth
by breaking apart, by separating themselves from themselves. <He imagines.>
The second strain of thought regarding subjectivity, which Alcoff calls
nominalism, argues that the subjects identity is socially constructed
through discourse. The most recent expression of this nominalist view occurs

Schoneman 9

in French poststructuralist thought, represented primarily by Lacan, Foucault,

and Derrida (430). For the poststructuralists, subjectivity is not found in an
essential biological or cultural nature: The subject or self is never determined
by biology in such a way that human history is predictable or even
explainable, and there is no unilinear direction of a determinist arrow
pointing from fairly static, natural phenomena to human experience (430).
So, the subjects biology is not what drives him or her in a deterministic way.
The man does not hunt because his biology compels him to, nor does the
woman crochet because her DNA inspires her. And neither do they perform
those actions due to some hidden cultural essence. What, then, drives or
determines subjectivity, if not biology or cultural essence? Alcoff answers:
[The] rejection of biological determinism [by poststructuralists] is not
grounded in the belief that human subjects are underdetermined but, rather,
in the belief that we are overdetermined (i.e., constructed) by a social
discourse and/or cultural practice. The idea here is that we individuals really
have little choice in the matter of who we are, for as Derrida and Foucault like
to remind us, individual motivations and intentions count for nil or almost nil
in the scheme of social reality. (430)

Schoneman 10

Subjectivity, under this view, comes from without, not from within.
We do not know who or what we are by listening to a deep biology or
cultural essence within us, but by being constructed by the social
discourses without us. According to the poststructuralists, then, the man who
hunts has been constructed (or socialized) to hunt; he does not do so because
he is driven by some hidden core of maleness. And the woman who crochets
possesses a subjectivity which has been constructed to crochet; she does not
do so because her identity as a woman contains a natural tendency to crochet.
Pattern recognition was our first response to loneliness. Ultimately, continues
Alcoff, the poststructuralists claim the following:
We are constructsthat is, our experience of our very
subjectivity is a construct mediated by and/or grounded on a
social discourse beyond (way beyond) individual control. As
Foucault puts it, we are bodies totally imprinted by history.
Thus subjective experiences are determined in some sense by
macro forces. (430)
And here Alcoff ends her exposition of the poststructuralist view of identity.
In her article as a whole, Alcoff ultimately sides against essentialism and

Schoneman 11

argues for poststructuralism, but with one proviso: In their defense of a total
construction of the subject, post-structuralists deny the subjects ability to
reflect on the social discourse and challenge its determinations (430). Alcoff
does not agree that the subject is powerless inside his or her discursivelyshaped subjectivity. If that were so, the poststructuralist theory of subjectivity
might collapse into cultural essentialism, which some forms of nominalism
(or poststructuralism) seem to do. Si se subject puede. Even though subjectivity
is given and not chosen, and even though it results from a process of endless
discursive accretion, the subject can contest the way he or she has been
constructed through discourse (Alcoff 430-431).
Alcoff goes on to propose her own modified theory of subjectivity. Her
theory is ultimately driven by her concern for the feminist project, especially
its focus on the transformation of womens lived experience in
contemporary culture and the reevaluation of social theory and practice from
womens point of view (426). Alcoff acknowledges that cultural feminists
have used essentialism fruitfully, in the hope of creating and maintaining a
healthy environmentfree of masculinist values and all their offshoots such
as pornographyfor the female principle (427). However, for Alcoff, the

Schoneman 12

essentialist argument is at this point factually and philosophically

indefensible (429). Not only that, it promotes the continuation of sexist
oppression, since essential definitions about women have historically been
used against women (429-430). For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. In
other words, by using the structure of essentialist thought, cultural
feminists, even as they re-value essential definitions of female subjectivity,
are in fact perpetuating the very coercive structure which oppresses them
(430). On the other hand, Alcoff, as I mentioned earlier, rejects the
poststructuralist hopelessness regarding political action and the subjects
agency. The post-structuralists seem to only allow a negative agency,
whereby the subject continuously denies every attribute attached to him or
her by social discourse (431). Alcoff, speaking from the feminist position, sees
this negative agency as being detrimental to the feminist movement (and
probably all socially progressive movements, at that), since such movements
require a positive alternative, a vision of a better future that can motivate
people to sacrifice their time and energy toward its realization (431). For
progressive change to occur, subjects must be able to envision something
better toward which they can effectively move through their individual and

Schoneman 13

concerted efforts. The hopeless negativity of post-structuralism gets nobody

nowhere fast.
In order to avoid the pitfalls of both essentialism and poststructuralist
nominalism, Alcoff proposes a more nuanced theory of subjectivity called
positionality. Essentially, <wink, wink> Alcoffs positionality adheres to the
poststructuralist critique of essentialism in defining subjectivity as an
historically situated posit or construct, formalizable in a nonarbitrary way
through the matrix of habits, practices, and discourses (434). One important
difference in Alcoffs definition is her inclusion of habits and practices.
With Teresa de Lauretis, Alcoff wants to avoid the [poststructuralist]
idealism that can follow from a rejection of materialist analyses by basing her
conception [of subjectivity] on real practices and events (434). In other
words, the poststructuralists revert to idealism in their totalization of
language or textuality, since they ignore the way in which subjects are
situated in material habits and practices which both reflect and inform that
textuality. There may be nothing outside the text, but there is certainly
something besides the text. Into the chamber behind the thought.

Schoneman 14

Subjects, then, are determined not only by their larger discursive

context, but by their immediate material-social context, in which they occupy
a particular position. Alcoff, using the subjectivity of a woman as an
example, shows that this newer positional definition . . . makes her identity
relative to a constantly shifting context, to a situation that includes a network
of elements involving others, the objective economic conditions, cultural and
political institutions and ideologies, and so on (435). And even though this
new positional model adds a great deal of complexity to our understanding
of the subject, it does not bar fruitful analysis: The position of women (and
men) is relative and not innate, and yet neither is it undecideable. Through
social critique and analysis we can identify women via their social position
relative to an existing cultural and social network (435). Though we can no
longer look merely at discourse to understand a subject, and must take into
account the subjects more immediate context, we can still analyze whether
that subjects position lacks power and mobility and requires radical
change--although our analyses must be much more nuanced and complex
(435). Spider webs!

Schoneman 15

Moreover, by inserting position into the definition of subjectivity,

Alcoff clears theoretical space for agency. If subjects are not only discursive
accretions, but also bodies in historical context, then they can, from their
contextual position, affect the construal of their subjectivity. Alcoff explains:
[My] view [of positionality] should not imply that the concept
of woman [or man] is determined solely by external
elements and that the [woman or man] is merely a passive
recipient of an identity created by these forces. Rather, [he or
she] is part of the historicized, fluid movement, and [he or she]
therefore actively contributes to the context within which [his or
her] position can be delineated. (435)
In other words, the subject does not only receive subjectivity from his or her
context; the subject also creates subjectivity by affecting that context through
his or her actions, or practices. O, be some other name! In this sense, the
subject can proactively engage the world from his or her subject-position and
can seek to change the construction of that subject position from within, as it
were. This conception of subjectivity avoids essentialism, since subjectivities
are still not natural or inherent, but it also prevents post-structuralism

Schoneman 16

from becoming a form of cultural essentialism. The poststructuralists, in

claiming that subjectivity only emerges in discourse, seem to imply that ones
culture will completely determine ones identity, so that everyone in that
culture will have the same (or similar) behaviors, values, etc. How is this
different than saying that all Mexicans have strong families or that all women
are good at taking care of children? Thus an oversimplification in theory
leads to an oversimplification in application. Alcoffs more nuanced
approach, though, avoids cultural essentialism by taking account of the
unique historical and material conditions in which subjects dwell. In this way,
even though cultural discourses which shape subjectivity are disseminated
monolithically, through various media, they are never realized
monolithically, due to the variety and fluidity of historical-material realities
in which the individual subject is embedded. Additionally, the subject, as an
agent within these historical-material conditions, can use the particularity of
these various conditions to help shape the realization of his or her subjectivity
in that context, even if he or she cannot directly re-write the larger cultural
discourse. In this sense, the subject can contest the subjectivity he or she was
given, and, who knows, maybe this single contestation will inspire others to

Schoneman 17

do the same? A chain reaction of this sort could talk back to the larger
discourse, thus effecting more widespread change (both geographically and
temporally).
If we narrow our focus from subjectivity-in-general to gender, which is
one (very important) subject category, then we will be ready for the
remainder of our exploration. Alcoff, being a feminist, is particularly
interested in gender. Again, with the poststructuralists, she sees gender as a
socially constructed category. For her, there exist no essential maleness or
femaleness, waiting to be expressed. Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
Also, like the poststructuralists, she ties the social construction of gender to
the issue of power: The mechanism of power referred to here is the
construction of the subject by a discourse that weaves knowledge and power
into a coercive structure that forces the individual back on himself and ties
him to his own identity in a constraining way (430). (The quote she
references is from Foucault.) All gender constructions are thus tied to
someone (individual, group, institution) trying to constrain or disempower
some other person or group of people. In this sense, no piece of discourse is
random or innocuous; every discursive artifact emerges from the desire to

Schoneman 18

contain, constrain, control, oppress, marginalize, or disempower someone. As

Foucault puts it pithily, [K]nowledge is not for understanding; knowledge is
for cutting (88).
Historically, the subject category of woman has been constructed in a
way which oppresses the individuals to whom it has been attached. In fact,
Alcoff goes as far as to say that every source of knowledge about women has
been contaminated with misogyny and sexism (426). This contamination
occurs largely because the gender categories of man and woman are
constructed around Western cultures infamous hierarchies of difference,
through which reality is typically divided into two binary terms, one of which
is privileged (430-431). To the sub-prime category of woman is attached other
sub-prime categories, such as irrationality, corporality, immobility, etc. (430).
To the prime category of man, on the other hand, is attached other prime
categories, such as rationality, spirituality, mobility, etc. Thus, in Western
culture at least, the subjectivity of women is persistently devalued,
marginalized, and oppressively constructed, while the subjectivity of men is
persistently valued, centralized, and endowed with privilege. Who will grieve

Schoneman 19

for this woman? Does she not seem / too insignificant for our concern? / Yet in my
heart I never will deny her, / who suffered death because she chose to turn.
However, even though gender is one of the most dominant
hierarchies of difference, it is not the only one. Alcoff is careful to avoid the
trap into which many cultural feminists fall, the trap of positing a simple
manichean ontology in which a universal category of man battles a
universal category of woman. Instead, Alcoff seems to adopt what is called
intersectionality. In this view, every individual is intersected by a number of
subjectivities, all which complicate that individuals experience of
empowerment or disempowerment (McCall 1). Alcoff quotes feminist Cherrie
Moraga, who writes:
When you start to talk about sexism, the world becomes
increasingly complex. The power no longer breaks down into
neat little hierarchical categories, but becomes a series of starts
and detours. Since the categories are not easy to arrive at, the
enemy is not easy to name. It is all so difficult to unravel.
(qtd. in Alcoff 428)

Schoneman 20

One reason why categories are not easy to arrive at is because they always
exist at the intersection of multiple other categories; identity categories never
exist alone. Not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint
and the sinner, but between thousands and thousands.
In fact, after quoting Moraga, Alcoff comments that she has simply
not found writings by feminists who are oppressed also by race and/or class
that place or position maleness wholly as Other (429). While I am not sure
that this will always be the case, as Alcoff seems to imply, I do agree that
feminist authors who experience multiple forms of oppression are
probably more likely to see the intersectional nature of subjectivity, how
feminism is not simply a matter of oppressive men versus oppressed women.
As an example of how intersectionality affects the dynamics of power, an
African-American man might receive some form of privilege through his
belonging to the male subject position, but probably not for being an African
American, a subject position which is still devalued in many parts of the
United States. But what about his myriad other subject categories, such as
class, profession, sexual orientation, etc.? How will they complicate his
balance of privilege and oppression? And if we factor in the fluid historical-

Schoneman 21

material context, as Alcoffs positionality requires, the situation gets quite

messy. There might be contexts where his maleness is devalued while his
African American identity is privileged, say at a black feminist rally, or
instances where being both a man and being black are beneficial, but not
being wealthy. In any analysis of gender subjectivity, then, the complex
nature of subjectivity must be taken into account, lest we fall into a simple
manichean ontology of empowered man versus disempowered woman.
Kaleidocope?
As we saw above, any analysis of subjectivity must also be
contextually sensitive, as well as intersectionally sensitive (if there is such a
phrase). In Alcoffs concept of positionality, the individuals subjectivity is
constructed in a specific historical material context, which will invariably
shape that subjectivity in complex ways. In other words, there do not exist
any abstract men or women, created solely by discourse. Rather, historically
embodied individuals exist to whom the subject categories of man and
woman have been attached. These individuals, moreover, because of their
unique historical material contexts, will experience these subject positions
differently. My experience of male subjectivity is entirely different than my

Schoneman 22

Marine neighbors experience of it, even though we both inhabit the same
subject position. This variation is probably in part the result of
intersectionality, but it is also the result of the different historical material
contexts we inhabit (or have inhabited). I go to campus while he goes to base.
I had a loving father, but he had an abusive father. He grew up working poor,
while I grew up in the lower middle class. I have certain religious and
political affiliations, and he has others. Our different contexts shape our
disparate male subject positions. Rivers twice stepped in--cant do it.
Additionally, each of us might participate in those contexts differently,
employing our agency to unique degrees. Alcoff argues that everyone can
enact an identity politics from within the various contexts in which they
participate. They can consciously manifest a certain subject category and
utilize their unique historical-material context to actively influence how that
subject category is realized (435-436). So, instead of passively receiving a form
of male subjectivity shaped by Camp Pendleton, my neighbor
might proactively create a modified male subjectivity by joining a book
group at the library, which would be one way of using his unique historicalmaterial context to manifest his male identity against the grain. I, on the

Schoneman 23

other hand, might use my unique horticulture experience, developed with the
help of my brothers and my ancestral roots, to modify the expression of my
male subjectivity by growing flowers and medicinal herbs. Flower power?
This understanding of subjectivity resembles but ultimately differs from
Judith Butlers performativity. For Butler, subjectivity is essentially <teehee>
a continuous performance, and [t]he act that one does, the act that one
performs, is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one arrived on
the scene (Butler 272). For her, the very notion of a cohesive subject category
is a social fiction, since we only later aggregate a continuous stream of repeat
performances and deem it a cohesive subject category, such as heterosexual,
Cuban, or male. Butler contends that gender is an act which has been
rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it,
but which requires individual actors in order to be actualized and reproduced
as reality once again (Butler 526). When I perform a gender role in a
particular way, according to the norms of my culture, I am perpetuating an
illusion that is inherently unnatural and which need not exist. Alcoff, on the
other hand, seems to adopt a less skeptical view of subject categories. While
she never claims that they are natural, she does seem to think that one must at

Schoneman 24

least adopt a set of subject categories if he or she is going to have any sort of
position in the social world; without accepting pre-existing subjectivities
(despite their constraints and oppressive roots), one has nowhere to stand.
In my view, Alcoffs approach is more realistic and practical than
Butlers. While Butlers conception of identity may be true, we cannot jettison
all of our pre-existing subject categories, since those categories help us dwell
in the social world. Springboards into being. Boing. They give us a place to
position ourselves, so that we can participate in the stage of life, as
Shakespeare puts it. <He winces in pain at that tired allusion.> Butler remarks
that it is the presupposition of the category of woman itself that requires a
critical genealogy of the complex institutional and discursive means by which
it is constituted (530). Perhaps, but outside of academia, most of us are
living from those two categories each day, and it is from there that I think that
each of us should determine, voluntarily, on our own, through introspection,
how real or unreal our gender categories and their related attributes truly are.
Theorizing cannot extinguish these categories, since they have probably been
around since the beginning of human language (which says something about

Schoneman 25

their utility, perhaps). Only deep self-awareness can eliminate our attachment
to these categories.
As such, for myself and the purposes of this exploration, I will adopt
Alcoffs theory of subjectivity as it relates to gender. Tools of the trade. In other
words, I will, for the most part, assume the categories of man and woman in
my analyses and discussions. For me, these categories are where we
must begin, even if it is not where we end up. <He said with a wizards
wink.>
The picture of gender I have painted with Alcoffs help is quite
complex, but it can be boiled down to the following claims: the subject
categories of man and woman are not essential or singular, nor are they
hopelessly reified; they are two subject positions which are shaped or
constructed discursively (at the macro level) and by the individuals historical
material context (at the micro level). Importantly, the individual can
consciously and proactively influence how his or her gender position realizes
itself by drawing upon his or her unique historical-material conditions,
utilizing their inherent variety and particularity to add complexity yes! to the

Schoneman 26

narrowness which characterizes most Western conceptions of man and

woman. After reducing the sauce, let it cool.

Praxis
You have brains in your head. / You have feet in your shoes. / You can steer
yourself any direction you choose. When I was seventeen, I got my first job
tearing down the garden exhibits at the local fairgrounds. Most of the men
with whom I worked exuded a pungent masculinity, a strong scent with no
complexity--like bleach or urine. Scent, the first sense. Unfortunately, I was a
sensitive boy, experiencing my feelings very strongly. Inevitably, the mens
crude masculinity pounced on my feminine sensitivity and pummeled it
into conformity. They criticized me, ridiculed me, and mocked me when I
deviated from their strong masculinity (because having feelings is a sign of
weakness). Take it like a man! Ever since then, I have unconsciously believed
that there exist two options for manhood: You can either conform to a
narrowly-defined hyper-masculinity (and so be deemed a real man), or you
can express an alternative form of masculinity (and so be deemed a faggot).

Schoneman 27

But Alcoffs theorizing gives me hope! If gender categories are discursively

constructed and not naturally given, then they can be constructed otherwise.
And, if such categories are performed in specific material contexts, which can
eventually change how the categories are constructed, then I can realize my
male subjectivity in diverse ways in my own context in order to challenge
(and hopefully erode) the false binary of real man versus faggot, both in
my own mind and perhaps also in my culture-at-large. Though outwardly we
are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. What a liberating
realization! Even if the oppressive discourse which constructs gender persists,
I can at least know that I have the power to determine (in part) how that
discourse is realized in my own particular life.
And that is one purpose of this project: To shape the realization of Jeffas-man, in terms of how he communicates with women. A long tradition
cultural discourse informs my understanding of how I, as a man, should
communicate with women. This discursive pressure, most of which operates
unconsciously in me, prevents me from connecting to women on a deeper
level, beyond the superficial. It has weakened my marriage bond (and the
bonds I have with other women in my life) while also closing me off to

Schoneman 28

literature written by women. Even though I want to connect to these women,

to listen to what they have to say and to read what they write, I find myself
behaving in ways that inhibit such a connection; I often avoid their words
and works. What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. According to
Alcoff, the positional nature of my subjectivity, that is, its historical-material
imbedded-ness, gives me the opportunity to influence how my subjectivity
realizes itself. In other words, I can draw upon people, habits, practices, or
alternative beliefs in my particular context that might widen the narrowness
of the male subjectivity that I absorbed from our larger cultural discourse. For
instance, much of the discourse surrounding us has long suggested that a
man must be physically strong in order to be a true man. In my context,
though, I can find many men who are not exceptionally strong, but who I still
consider to be true men. Many of my male friends belong to sub-cultures
which champion men who are not necessarily strong but who are talented in
other ways, such as intellectual capability, craftsmanship, or devotion. I can
blend these alternative models into my own subjectivity in order to expand
its narrow limits. Another way I can do that is by drawing on the practice of
reading poetry written by women, which, while not common in my context as

Schoneman 29

a whole, is at least not out of place in literary academia, a sub-context in

which I often dwell. <He reminisces, and sighs.>

Prado
<He cracks open THESE MIRRORS PROVE IT, a book of Holly Prado
poems.> This poem right here, for instance, is one of Prados untitled diary
poems, dated 5/16/80. It begins, Egyptian, and holds two cakes from the
bakery. Pays with food stamps (147). Already, the image forms in my mind.
(Yes, I am thinking of someone who looks like Cleopatra.) I stand with the
speaker at the grocery store, observing the Egyptian lady. The poem
continues, Many cold canned drinks and I believe a birthday, though she
asks / directions from someone which makes me think, From out of town?
(147). The speaker and I are making suppositions, we are being human. The
speaker notes that Its her profile that I fall for: a sphinx, a crocodile, a
princess, a lotus. And wearing shorts so I can see how long her legs make her
and the / cakes the best possible accompaniment (147). We admire the
womans beauty, her belongingness to Egyptian culture (sphinx, crocodile,
etc.) and her artful form (with the cakes as accessory). Celebrating the beauty

Schoneman 30

of another human being in the grocery store, now that is art appreciation. But,
[s]he feels me watching, and I am. She turns and smiles and what a large
mouth I have never seen / such a large mouth on a story (147). The
appreciation is acknowledged, and the story closes with a smile.
As a man suffering from schizophrenic masculinity, I find it refreshing
to admire a womans beauty with the speaker of the poem without having to
want to possess that woman sexually, predatorily. Essentialism shackles. And I
dont have to be gay for doing so. I can realize the subjectivity of a man
differently, without having to fall within one of two binaries--and the poem
helps me do so, by allowing me to play. Wolfgang Iser, describing the
concept of play in art, explains that one way in which we may play the text
is by obtaining experience. Then we open ourselves up to the unfamiliar and
are prepared to let our own values be influenced or even changed by it (Iser
259). In play, we enter a text and follow its linguistic directives in order to
experience the texts perspective, or world (From Text to Action 87-88). In
this poem of Prados, I had the experience of admiring a womans beauty
non-predatorily, which indeed affected my values, my conception of what it
means to admire beauty. Hes alive? Hes alive. Hes alive! Would I have had

Schoneman 31

the same experience while reading a male poet, like Charles Bukowski? In
one poem, Bukowski explains that she is no longer the beautiful woman /
she was. she sends / photos of herself / sitting upon a rock / by the ocean /
alone and damned. / I could have had / her once. I wonder / if she thinks I /
could have /saved her? (Bukowski 103). <Hmm.>
In any case, even if playing with the poem did not change my
values, the very act of reading a diary poem written by a woman pushes
against our cultures narrow conception of what I, as a man, am supposed to
do, particularly as a man who reads literature; for even in the realm of
literature, gender norms persist, despite the abundance of theories and
literary works which contest such norms. I do not feel like I am supposed to
read poems like Prados, since I supposedly cannot relate to them. But I did
relate to Prados poem above, unless we take relate to mean the
confirmation of my own views and values. Specious. True relation is, as Iser so
aptly describes, a form of opening up oneself to anothers vision, as embodied
in the text. In this single act, I took my male subjectivity, as conditioned by a
tradition of discourse, and I used my unique context to expand that
subjectivity, making it a tad less narrow for myself, and perhaps others. Many

Schoneman 32

men have recently expanded their male subjectivity by becoming the primary
caretakers in their families, while their female partners work. As a
consequence, caretaking is now a more available possibility for men, thanks
to the individual acts of all those men. Similarly, I hope that one day reading
poetry written by women will become a possible (and desirable) way of
expressing male subjectivity. <He imagines it, but not without difficulty.>

Second: Slice One Large Onion, Add It to the Boiling Stock

In an overview of the research on gendered communication in the
classroom, titled The Construction of Gendered Identity in Classroom Talk,
Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen and Bronwyn Davies point to a number of studies
which demonstrate the disparate experience of boys and girls in classroom
talk. In a series of studies in the mid-eighties, researchers found that a
typical discourse unit in a primary school classroom talk goes as follows:
Teacher asks a question, a girl raises her hand and is appointed to answer.
She does so briefly and her answer is usually correct. A boy interrupts with
an interesting comment on the topic and the teacher leaves the girl and
engages in an exchange with the boy. Other boys then join the discussion. The

Schoneman 33

girls silently wait for the next question or may use the time to whisper
together on other matters (126-127). Memory bloom.
Girls, then, engage in less interactive discussion with the teacher than
boys do. Other studies confirm the fact that teachers unconsciously expect
less oral activity from girls and more oral activity from boys (127).
Obviously, this study involves the subjectivities of boys and girls, and not
men and women, but doesnt what occurs in the elementary classroom
contain the seeds for what happens in the college classroom and beyond? <He
resists answering his own question, then succumbs.> If my experience
indicates anything, it shows that the typical discourse unit described above
is similar to what I have seen in multiple contexts. In graduate level seminars,
I have seen a pattern: men are allowed to dominate conversations by
answering more often, speaking more volubly, and subtly intimidating other
speakers (including women). All of this happens in an environment which is
supposedly more aware of such things! Awareness has no loyalties, Jonathan!
Dont you know that by now, after our summer in Kandahar? Please, Jonathan. Say
something! To be fair, I do not think anyone is intentionally allowing men to
dominate conversations, thus silencing the women. Rather, the men seem to

Schoneman 34

have been conditioned to converse in such a way--and women not so much,

as the study above suggests.
In fact, many researchers have discovered similar results in studies of
adult inter-gender communication. Deborah James and Janice Drakich, in
their article Understanding Gender Differences in Amount of Talk: A
Critical Review of Research, survey the research on differences in the
amount of talk in inter-gender conversations. Overall, despite the stereotype
that women talk more than men, men were found to speak much more often
than women, in all types of conversations (282). Men do not only talk more,
but they often use specific discursive tools in order to actively dominate the
conversation. Men will interrupt women, talk louder than women, and adopt
an adversarial role towards women (Tannen 270-274). In using these tools,
men silence women in a conversation. Okay. Yes. I see.
Deborah Tannen, however, warns us not to use these tools as simple
indicators of domination, since they can also be used to create solidarity
between conversants. For example, in Greek family culture, family solidarity
is often created through playful adversarial opposition at the dinner table
(277). Opah! Also, men can also use the opposites of these tools to dominate

Schoneman 35

women in conversations. Several research studies show that men will use
silence as a way to dominate a woman, especially in marriage situations
(DeFrancisco 179). This silence often forces women, in subservient way, to
bear the burden keeping the conversation alive. Pamela Fishman explains
how women ask more questions and use more hedges like you know in
conversation, largely because men often try to kill inter-gender conversations
with their willful silence: And why do women have more conversational
trouble than men do? Because men often do not do the necessary work to
keep conversation going. Either they do not respond, or they respond
minimally to conversational attempts by the women (258). Thus we cannot
say that men only dominate in one way, using a particular set of discourse
tools. But we can say that men do tend to dominate women in inter-gender
conversation, that they either overpower women with their more frequent,
more voluble, or more aggressive speech; or else they silence a womans voice
by withholding their participation in dialogue with her.
Clearly, then, what I described earlier as the avoidance of womens
words and literary works is something more specious: an active silencing of
those words and works. Certainly, avoidance is one aspect of that silencing,

Schoneman 36

but it is only one among many domination strategies which men consciously
or unconsciously employ when they are in communication encounters with
women. Ice jars cracking at midnight?
Researchers give two explanations for why men dominate inter-gender
oral discourse. Aki Uchida summarizes these two explanations well in her
article, When Difference is Dominance: A Critique of the Anti-PowerBased Cultural Approach to Sex Differences. The two explanations could
indeed be called difference and dominance. In the difference view,
men and women inhabit two separate sub-cultures (280). So, when men
dominate an inter-gender conversation, they are not intentionally trying to
dominate; they are simply communicating how they learned to communicate
within their male sub-group. According to this view, from a very early age,
men are socialized to assert ones position of dominance, to attract and
maintain an audience, and to assert oneself when other speakers have the
floor (282). Women, on the other hand, as girls, learn to create and maintain
relationships of closeness and equality, to criticize others in acceptable ways,
and to interpret accurately the speech of other girls (281). When men and
women attempt to converse as adults, then, they inevitably miscommunicate

Schoneman 37

and misunderstand each other, since they are operating from an entirely
different set of behavioral patterns. So, men do not willfully dominate, they
simply bring their way of communicating into interaction with how women
communicate, and a cross-cultural clash ensues. <He feels like something is
missing, but goes on.>
The other explanation, which Uchida calls domination, argues that
men and women are not merely miscommunicating in inter-gender
conversation; women are actually being silenced and subordinated in various
ways. If it were merely miscommunication, both parties would be affected
equally. In reality, women suffer more from this miscommunication. Not
only do they experience psychological damages (especially in intimate
partnerships), they can also be affected economically, since it is usually men
who are in control of the resources, most of which involve some sort of
communication to access or acquire (289). As such, it will be less of a problem
if a man does not understand a woman, but more of a problem if a woman
does not understand a man. Referring to the disparate socialization of men
and women, Uchida writes:

Schoneman 38

[T]he proponents of the dominance explanation also claim that

it is not a coincidence that men can afford to be aggressive and
hierarchically oriented conversationalists, whereas women are
expected to provide conversational support. Nor does it seem to
be a coincidence that mens roles are more likely to be those of
the protector, the teacher, the expert, in relation to women. The
sexual division of labor shows a pattern that is too consistent
with the pattern of dominance to assume that it occurred
naturally. (288)
In other words, we cannot assume that the socialization of male/female
behavior is innocuous, that it has no link to more widespread social
hierarchies. Yes, men might be socialized in that way, and women might be
socialized in another way, but these socializations are linked to the positions
in which men and women are placed in social hierarchy (288). Spider webs
stick to anything and everything.
James and Drakich concur. They forcefully argue that men do not
dominate women in conversation simply because they happen to belong to
the male gender. Instead, every conversation, whether inter-gender or same-

Schoneman 39

gender, is shaped by the status perceptions of each conversant. Whether one

person dominates a conversation will depend on his or her perceived social
status within the group (289-290). Thus, in the conversation of a group of
women at a board meeting, the CEO, even though she is a woman, will likely
dominate the conversation because of her higher social status within the
group. The reason men tend to dominate most inter-gender conversation is
because gender is a status characteristic, a subject-position which
determines ones social status (289). Since the male gender is privileged in
Western culture (and probably in most other cultures), it can shape the status
perceptions in an inter-gender conversation and create space for men to
dominate the women conversants, even if that does not actually occur. In one
study, gender was nullified as a status characteristic. In married couples
where the wives belonged to a feminist organization, the wives spoke longer
in decision-making conversations. In couples where the wife did not belong
to a feminist organization, the wife spoke for a significantly shorter length of
time than did their husbands . . . (292). The researchers argue that the
feminist wives are more consciously aware of sexism and traditional gender
roles and chose husbands who have similar views. As such, in their

Schoneman 40

conversations, both husband and wife were able to actively erase the status
influence of gender. My wife, for instance, who has studied feminist theory
and whose family is largely matrilineal, does not simply accept my gendered
discourse behavior in conversation; she almost always contests it. So, even
though this behavior certainly shows up in our relationship, it has not been
able to go unchallenged, both by her, and, through this paper, myself.
Together, we have consciously made an effort to question the cultural
conditioning which informs my behavior (and hers). Unexamined love is not
worth loving.
Overall, Uchida advocates a double awareness of the difference and
domination inherent in all inter-gender conversations (290). Men and women
are indeed socialized differently, and so much of what they do in
conversation they probably do not do intentionally. However, these
socialized behaviors do not merely produce cross-cultural
miscommunication, as some theorists believe. They in fact produce
domination. Men, often through their socialized communicative behavior,
dominate women in conversation. Moreover, even if, like James and Drakich,
we ignore the socialized aspects of communicative behavior, and look merely

Schoneman 41

at the event of conversation itself, we see that men typically fall in the higher
status slot, which gives them the opportunity to dominate the other gender in
various ways. They fall into the higher status slot more often than women
because gender is a status characteristic. And in Western societies, if you
belong to the male gender, your status level in social interactions will more
often be higher than that of women. Uchida remarks, As a female, I am
seldom socially equal to someone who is male, even when we share other
identities such as ethnicity, age, class, and education (285). So, we cannot
escape the fact that men do dominate women in oral communication, and that
this domination is tied to a larger system of gender oppression which seems
to stem from both socialization and status hierarchy.
Where do socialization and status hierarchy come from? Do they
emerge from our individual historical-material contexts, or do they come
from discourse? <He remembers something about the chicken and the egg.>
Even though, with Alcoff, we must remember to never ignore historicalmaterial reality, I think that discourse plays a considerable part in
determining how we socialize our children and how we construct our
cultures status hierarchies, especially in todays media-saturated culture. The

Schoneman 42

philosopher Paul Ricoeur contends that there is no self-understanding that is

not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts . . . (Ricoeur 15). For many, their
social context is populated more by words, images, media, and celebrities
than it is by real events and real people, I suspect. If that is true, discourse is
becoming an increasingly powerful source of socialization and status
perception (but more on that later).

Praxis
I began this exploration thinking that I was simply avoiding my wifes
verbal expressions. Now, though, I suspect that by using the somewhat
innocuous word avoid, I obscured the true nature of my behavior. When I
willfully fail to receive my partners words, I attempt to dominate her
(unsuccessfully, of course). I realize now that I do not only avoid her words; I
often raise my voice and aggressively criticize my wifes position when we
are arguing, or I do not listen to what she is saying when we are conversing
normally. What do you mean, Phib?" asked Miss Squeers, looking in her own little
glass, where, like most of us, she saw - not herself, but the reflection of some pleasant
image in her own brain. My conscious self does not want to behave this way,

Schoneman 43

since I really care about my partner, but something deeper within my psyche
becomes me when I am talking or arguing with my wife.
What is this something? It is a pattern of response, a habitual
reaction to my wifes words. When she is praising me, certainly, I listen! But
when she is offering me a perspective that differs from or challenges mine
(especially if it is about me) then I jerk into domination mode, automatically,
without thinking.
So perspective is the key! Men habitually resist and silence
the perspective of women. Is it that painful to hear another perspective, to the
point where we need to suppress, dismiss, or oppress it? <He stares,
stupefied, at the computer screen. His wife, sitting nearby, comments on the
last two sentences.> My wife thinks that men tend to resist womens
perspectives because those perspectives are often valid/useful/truthful;
admitting as much would threaten the fragile, but entrenched, status position
of men in our society, since only those at the top can be right--right? As such,
in order to preserve patriarchy, men are socialized to reject these Other
perspectives by learning to accept, perpetuate, and champion the behavioral

Schoneman 44

norms of ignoring, silencing, or otherwise dominating women in situations of

oral communication. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
Earlier, I mentioned that according to Alcoffs theory of subjectivity,
my agency as a subject emerges in my unique historical-material context. As I
understand it, this means that in order to actively shape the realization of my
(misogynistically-tainted) male subjectivity, I must draw on elements within
my particular context which might expand my narrow subjectivity, and so
de-misogynize this unwanted behavior. So, what do I draw upon in my
unique context to replace my misogynistic programming?
For one, I draw on my exposure to feminist theory, both in my
undergraduate studies and in a recent graduate seminar. Feminist theory, I
think, helps men become more aware of misogyny, both in themselves and in
their surrounding culture (assuming that they are actually open to the theory
to begin with). I also make an effort to develop friendships with women
because (1) they tend to be more interesting than men and (2) I want to learn
how to relate to women in a less antagonistic or alienating way. This indeed
helps; I learn to genuinely listen to women and to care about what they are
saying--because they are my friends. But I still need to find something in my

Schoneman 45

context which can more forcefully challenge the beliefs underpinning my

misogynistic behavior.
I find that something in my spiritual practice as a disciple of Jesus of
Nazareth. Eg eimi h hodos, kai h altheia, kai h z. As a disciple, I study
closely what Jesus said and did, so that I might follow him--into God.
Looking specifically at what he did when he communicated with women, I
see the following: A woman who has been ritually unclean for twelve years
due to her chronic menstrual bleeding touches Jesus cloak. According to
religious prescription, Jesus should not have let that woman touch him, nor
should he have spoken to her--but he did. He sought her among the crowd
and listened to her: [S]he declared unto him before all the people for what
cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately. And he
said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole;
go in peace (King James Bible, Luke 8.47-48). He asked, he listened,
he commune-icated. In another episode, Jesus is alone at a well in Samaria. It
is midday, when nobody would normally be at the well, due to the heat. But a
Samaritan woman comes to draw water, and he proceeds to have a dialog
with her. He listens closely to her questions and answers them respectfully.

Schoneman 46

Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him is followed by Jesus answered
and said unto her, at least four times in a row (King James Bible, John 4.726). He should really not be conversing with her because according to
religious prescription (1) Jews and Samaritans should not associate with one
another (2) men and woman should not associate with one another alone, in
the open and (3) the woman, having been married five times, is not looked
highly upon in her society (which is why she is coming to the well at noon,
when no one else is there). Jesus ignores all of these prohibitions and
prescriptions, and instead commune-icates with the Samaritan woman. His
disciples, on returning from the market, are astonished by his behavior: And
upon this came his disciples, and marveled that he talked with the woman
(King James Bible, John 4.27); as patriarchally-conditioned men, Jesus
behavior of listening does not match how they have learned to behave
toward women. These are only two of the many instances where Jesus
reaches out to women, not in a condescending or dominating way, but with
openness, acceptance, and respect--which I call love. Since, as a disciple, I
consider Jesus to be the way, the truth, and the life, his attitude towards

Schoneman 47

women gives me a forceful model with which to challenge my misogynistic

conditioning. Selah.

Prado
Put on the character of Christ. <He opens Prados MONKEY JOURNAL,
and listens. > The poem, titled February 24th, begins, In the morning,
nearly every morning, Harry reads / me a poem hes written during the
night (7). A daily ritual of communicatory communion. She listens to him,
but I am listening to her; inequity fades and balance is restored. Then, This is
the right way to / open the window so the cats can go out. This is what makes
the / fruit Im eating--pear or strawberry, banana or melon--its juiciest / self
(7). Harrys reading of the poem makes each morning better, fuller, and more
meaningful. Weaving ourselves into each other with words is what helps give
the day significance. The first stanza breaks, and the second begins, The
Chinese say a metal year, good for the gold market (7). She alludes to
Chinese astrology because the entire book of poetry revolves around one
particular lunar year, 2004-2005, the year of the monkey. She has woven the
overall theme into this poem, cross-stitch style--impressive. And the speaker

Schoneman 48

ends, Good for the gold we can spin from the straw of ourselves, given
devotion and time (7). A play off gold, this line ties the first and second
stanzas together metaphorically. A plausible interpretation: By absorbing the
presence of our loved ones, and cherishing their being, we can spin gold from
our own private moments together, especially as we spend more and more
time with one another, devotedly.
What if a man chooses to let go of his need to dominate, to truly
receive a womans words? In the first praxis, I realized the benefits of such a
choice when I inhabited Prados poem about the Egyptian woman at the
grocery store. I received Prados words by momentarily letting my
perspective as a man be informed by the poems perspective. And here, like
Christ, I listen to her beautiful portrayal of men and women sharing words,
seeing how it gathers us together in an almost mystical way. The very act of
listening to her poems, of opening myself up to them, changes me, regardless
of the message. I no longer resist them just because they are written by a
woman. The result: a richer, deeper, more complex identity--even if just by a
hair. Selah.

Schoneman 49

Third: Then Add Red Lentils, and Stir

In the previous section, I showed that men tend to dominate women in
situations of inter-gender oral discourse (in the West, at least). In this section,
I want to focus on domination in the situation of written communication,
literary texts in particular. Scribble, scribble. That is, I want to establish
whether or not men can dominate women in literary discourse, whether they
can silence or subordinate them the way they do in oral discourse.
At first, it appears as if men cannot possibly silence or subordinate women in
literature due to the inherent structure of written communication. However, a
closer (historicized) inspection reveals that women can be indirectly
dominated by patriarchy in various ways, even when men are not physically
present during the act of writing.
First, let me begin by assuming the unproblematic view of literary
communication. This view is best represented by the work of hermeneutical
philosopher Paul Ricoeur, whose theory of interpretation attempts to
construct the entire cycle of textual production and reception. According to
Ricoeur, when written literary texts are produced, they enact a spatiotemporal barrier between the author and reader. That is, the reader is not

Schoneman 50

physically present in the same spatio-temporal situation as the author

(INTERPRETATION THEORY 9). The author, in this view, is very much alone
when he or she writes, for the reader exists in another time and place.
Similarly, the reader sits alone when he or she reads the literary text, since the
author is not physically present. As such, the reader cannot look to the author
for help in interpreting the text (which provides the basis for Wimsatts nowclassic critique of the intentional fallacy) (INTERPRETATION THEORY 30).
If we transpose our discussion of dominance in oral communication to
written communication, what do we get? Under Ricoeurs theory, we
encounter few problems. Let us take the example of Jane Austen. If Jane
Austen and I were to have a conversation, I might unconsciously silence her
through my socialized male discourse behavior or else through my privileged
status as a man, even if we had that conversation today and not in the 18th
century. However, because, through her novels, we are actually
communicating through a text, my physical presence plays no part in the
production of her text. Theoretically, she can speak freely in her novel
without me dominating or subordinating her in any way.

Schoneman 51

Unfortunately, the world does not consist of theory, but of historical

facts. Thank God! No, really, thank God. Even though women can theoretically
write freely, due to the physical absence of their future male readers,
historically, they have not been able to do so. Why?
Elaine Showalter, who has studied the history of womans writers in
the West, argues that for the most of that history, women have effectively
been silenced by the surrounding patriarchal culture (Showalter 34-35). She
cites a Victorian novelist, who writes that [w]omen are greater dissemblers
than men when they wish to conceal their own emotions. By habit, moral
training, and modern education, they are obliged to do so. The very first
lessons of infancy teach them to repress their feelings, control their very
thoughts (25). As a consequence of being socialized as women in a culture
which privileges the experience of men, women writers in the past learned
not to express everything they felt or thought--even though theoretically they
could. Showalter adds:
Florence Nightingale [another woman writer of the Victorian
Era] thought the effort of repression itself drained off womens
creative energy. Give us back our suffering, she demanded in

Schoneman 52

Cassandra (1852), for out of nothing comes nothing. But out of

suffering may come the cure. Better have pain than paralysis.
(27)
For Nightingale, then, patriarchys cultivation of repression in women
writers had the effect of convincing women that nothing was wrong. Only by
being allowed to feel their pain and suffering, and then by expressing those
feelings in writing could women perhaps find a cure.
Showalter historicizes this patriarchal oppression of women writers in
Anglo-American culture by delineating three historical phases. The authors
she cites above fall in the Feminine phase, which is the period from the
appearance of the male pseudonym in the 1840s to the death of George Eliot
in 1880. The second phase is the Feminist phase, which lasted between 1880
and 1920. The third phase, the Female phase, includes the years 1920 to the
present, but entering a new stage of self-awareness about 1960 (13). As these
phases follow one another, according to Showalter, Anglo-American women
writers begin to repress less and less of themselves. In the Feminist phase, she
writes:

Schoneman 53

[Authors] challenged many of the restrictions on womens selfexpression, denounced the gospel of self-sacrifice, attacked
patriarchal religion, and constructed a theoretical model of
female oppression, but their anger with society and their need
for self-justification often led them away from realism into
oversimplification, emotionalism, and fantasy. (29)
As such, it took the writers in the Female phase to challenge patriarchy even
further, since the Feminist project carried with it the double legacy of
feminine self-hatred and feminist withdrawal (33). Specifically, for
Showalter, the 1960s marked the beginning of an authentic female
literature, which has been strongly influenced . . . by the energy of the
international womens movement (35). Currently, in the Female phase,
Anglo-American women writers are freer than they have ever been, which
allows them to describe formerly taboo areas of female experience (35).
Patriarchal ideology has become less and less of a presence at the woman
writers desk. However, Showalter cautions against painting too happy a
picture: Feminine, feminist, or female, the womens novel has always had to
struggle against the cultural and historical forces that relegated womens

Schoneman 54

experience to the second rank (36). As long as Western culture is dominated

by patriarchy, women writers will never feel completely free when they sit
down to compose a work of literature, because, historically, the gender
category of woman has been shaped in a way that promotes repression,
submission, and silence.
In addition to this historical repression, women have also been denied
the opportunity to be authors at all. Joanna Russ sums up the situation
perfectly:
In a nominally egalitarian society the ideal situation (socially
speaking) is one in which members of the wrong groups have
the freedom to engage in literature (or equally significant
activities) and yet do not do so, thus proving that they cant. But
alas, give them the least real freedom and they will do it. The
trick thus becomes to make the freedom as nominal a freedom
as possible and then--since some of the so-and-sos will do it
anyway--develop various strategies for ignoring, condemning,
or belittling the artistic works that result. If properly done, these
strategies result in a social situation in which the wrong

Schoneman 55

people are (supposedly) free to commit literature, art, or

whatever, but very few do, and those who do (it seems) do it
badly, so we can all go home to lunch. (4-5)
Women, for Russ, count as one of the wrong groups. In the West, in our
nominally egalitarian societies, we like to believe that we give women the
opportunity to engage in literature. However, because of gender hierarchy,
that opportunity is largely nominal; numerous barriers have prevented (and
continue to prevent) women from writing literature. Later in her book, Russ
explains some of these barriers, which have included economic dependence,
enforced domesticity, denial of access to materials and education, misogynist
literary agents and publishers, and negative cultural messages about women
authors (6-14). Egalitarianism is thus a deceptive mask for an unlevel playing
field, one where women are actually prevented from becoming professional
authors. Showalter echoes this argument in her study of early women
novelists in England. Many of these writers exploited a stereotype of
helpless femininity to win chivalrous protection from male reviewers and to
minimize their unwomanly self-assertion (17). They would not have had to
exploit that stereotype if there hadnt been social resistance to them becoming

Schoneman 56

authors. Some women writers felt this resistance so strongly that they
published anonymously, whence Virginia Woolfs famous comment that for
most of history, Anonymous was a woman (17). In many respects, then,
women have not been free to become authors in the first place. Sharpen focus,
reveal skeins.
And when they did manage to become authors, they were often
restricted to particular genre forms. Historically, women have been consigned
to the minor genres, such as letters, autobiography, and novels (Russ 4-5).
Their consignment to minor genres raises another issue which Russ
highlights in her quote above. Even if women managed to produce a work of
literature, it was often dismissed as being inferior or of little importance.
Patriarchal ideology has generated strategies for ignoring, condemning, or
belittling the work that women do publish. One of these, of course, is to
assign that work to a minor genre, which has the effect of dismissing it as
trivial or insignificant. Another is to simply not publish it. Showalter points to
the historical strategy of (feminist) women writers beginning their own small
presses. She cites the example of Virginia Woolf, who, printing her own
novels at the Hogarth Press, owed much of her independence to the

Schoneman 57

feminists insistence on the need for women writers to be free of patriarchal

commercialism (31). These writers were forced to start their own small
presses because many presses would not publish their work, likely because of
the influence of certain misogynistic prejudices. (Why else would someone
not publish a Virginia Woolf novel?!)
However, if a publisher were to cite market demand when deciding
not to publish a novel or book of poetry written by a woman, saying that
people just dont want to read that sort of thing, he or she would probably
be right. Recently, in a Salon.com article titled Literatures Gender Gap,
Laura Miller points to the fact that books written by women continue to be
under- published, even in 2010. She cites a report written by three women
staff reporters at the NEW REPUBLIC, which found that in most publishing
houses women accounted for around 30 percent of [published authors], with
small independent presses turning out to be even more male-heavy than a
behemoth like Random House (Literatures Gender Gap). In other words,
a long-existent gender disparity in publishing persists; two-thirds of all
published books are written by men (excluding genres such as self help,
cookbooks, art, etc.) (Literatures Gender Gap). Studies conducted by

Schoneman 58

VIDA, an organization dedicated to exploring critical and cultural

perceptions of writing by women, show demonstrably that women continue
to be underrepresented in literary magazines (The 2011 Count). As you
scroll through their 2010 study, for instance, you see how almost every
literary magazine reviews books by men around 75 percent of the time, and
that most reviewers are men, too (The 2011 Count). Miller is puzzled by
this disparity, especially since other statistics show that women buy and
read far more books than men do (Literatures Gender Gap). Why are
readers, most of whom are women, not demanding more books written by
women? Miller suggests that we conduct our own informal survey. Ask six
bookish friends, half men, half women, who their favorite authors (or
books) are. According to Miller, the men will almost always list male authors
(or books by male authors). The women, on the other hand, will be equally
favorable to books written by either gender. A study at Queen Mary College
in London indicated that women readers are in fact almost as likely to have
read a book by a male author as a female (Literatures Gender Gap).
Miller provides the following (exploratory) explanation:

Schoneman 59

Conventional wisdom among professionals in the childrens

book business is that while girls will read books about either
boys or girls, boys only want to read about boys. Could it be
that this bias extends into adulthood, with the preference
among boys for male characters evolving into the preference
among men for male authors? Or it could be that many male
readers simply doubt that women have anything interesting to
say. (Literatures Gender Gap)
Miller doesnt really explain why women are just as likely to read books
written by men, but she does offer an interesting possibility for why men
might not read books written by women: [I]t could be that many male
readers simply doubt that women have anything interesting to say
(Literatures Gender Gap). I think that womens equal likelihood to read
books written by men and mens tendency to ignore books written by women
can be explained by returning to our discussion of men and women in oral
communication. The market for written texts reflects the misogynistically
constructed scene of oral discourse, as I presented it earlier. Men are
allowed/encouraged to speak (write), while women are expected to listen

Schoneman 60

(read), and if women do speak (write), men need not listen (read). Thus, the
same structure of domination transposes itself onto literary written
communication.
The seemingly obvious counter-examples to this claim would be
bestsellers like J.K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins, and Stephenie Meyer. Right? Is
their success a sign that the tide is shifting, that women are no longer being
oppressed in the literary world? Perhaps. But notice the genres in which these
authors publish: Fantasy or Romance. Fantasy and romance, I would argue,
continue to be seen as minor genres, even with their commercial success and
the liberating work of cultural studies in academia. In fact, most genre fiction
continues to be excluded from prestigious book awards lists (Miller,
National Book Awards). Also, most of the books, with the exception
perhaps of HARRY POTTER, seem to have been read more by girls and women
(Weiner, Why Women Read More than Men). Alyss Dixon, in
an ATLANTIC column piece, does not think that the gender disparity in the
literary world has changed, but she hopes that it eventually will:
[W}omen writers and readers . . .will decolonize [themselves],
find a way to overthrow the literary patriarchy that overlooks,

Schoneman 61

and at times outright smothers women's literary expression and

cultural production, and celebrate that [they] create more than
just the bodies that populate the planet. (Dixon)
Could men be a part of that project? True, many of us harbor a culturallyconditioned resistance to choosing books written by a woman. Miller posited
that male readers might simply doubt that women [authors] have anything
interesting to say (Literatures Gender Gap). Indeed, I think that, given
everything we have unearthed thus far about how men (and women) have
been led to understand inter-gender communication, we can probably say
that men, in general, do not automatically expect that a women author has
anything interesting to say to them, as men. But what if a male reader was
made aware of the socially-conditioned assumptions guiding his literary
choices? Could he come to believe that women authors do indeed have
something interesting to say to him, as a man? At the end of her article, Miller
recounts the following anecdote:
A novelist I used to know once defiantly informed me (apropos
of nothing wed been talking about) that hed never read a Jane
Austen novel and had no intention of ever reading one.

Schoneman 62

Deeming him something of a lost cause, I kept my mouth shut,

but it was clear he expected me to get indignant, and to scold.
Instead, I could only look at him with pity. The loss was entirely
his. (Literatures Gender Gap)
By ending on such a note, Miller begs the question, Why was it a loss? Why
should a male reader assume that a work of literature written by a woman
has something to say to him, as a man? If we could answer that question, I
think we would give some men a strong reason to read womens literature.
Again, it all boils down to perspective. In reading a book written by a
woman, a man allows his subjectivity to momentarily play from that
perspective. But what is the value of playing from another perspective?
Paul Ricoeur contends that reality is dynamically complex. If this everchanging and perpetually intricate reality is to disclose itself to our individual
subjectivity, we must be willing to play with our subjectivity. For Ricoeur,
texts (in the broad sense of the term) facilitate this play of subjectivity
(INTERPRETATION THEORY 87-88). When I listen to my wifes account of my
behavior at the grocery store (a text), I let my subjectivity play from her
perspective. In doing so, I create more space for reality, truth, synoptic vision

Schoneman 63

(or whatever you want to call it) to emerge. Similarly, when a man reads a
work of literature written by a woman, he lets his conditioned male
subjectivity play from the perspective of another gender. His conditioned
insularity erodes, his gendered subjectivity expands, and he truly communeicates with her. Of course, a man can always choose to hold on to his
gendered perspective if he wants, but he will be the one who suffers the most,
since he will have chained himself to a (typically) narrow image, which he
will thereafter need to conform to, cling to, and protect in anxiety and fear.
The women in that mans life will also suffer as that man dominates them in
conversation. And women authors will continue to suffer from cultural
domination, as they are ignored, dismissed, or suppressed by male
readers/publishers.

Praxis
If I trace my reading history, I can identify a pattern of struggle. For
the most part, I would stick to male authors, as my gendered conditioning
might predict. These male authors were more often than not the especially
masculine authors I thought I should read as a burgeoning man, names such

Schoneman 64

as Jack Kerouac, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Bukowski,

Philip Roth, etc. Their novels contain male protagonists, sex, violence, pain,
adventure, and (arguably) a predominantly male perspective. On the other
hand, I was also secretly drawn to works written by women, or else by men
who represented an alternative male subjectivity. These included authors like
Emily Dickinson, Cynthia Ozick, Kate Chopin, Jane Austen, Hermann Hesse,
David Sedaris, etc. Why was I reading these authors secretly? Why the
conflict? The pressure of the masculine image I was supposed to conform to
was too much for me to bear, I think. By reading novels written by women, I
was able to release that built up pressure, even if only temporarily in play. I
imagine that other men are pressured to conform their being to a narrow
construction of male subjectivity--or else be labeled queer. Perhaps that is
why women authors continue to be largely unread and unstudied, even by
male readers and scholars who might enjoy those authors?
But according to my Alcoffian identity politics, I can draw upon
elements in my unique historical-material context which challenge my
narrow, avoidant-dominant reading behavior. Fortunately, in my universitys
department of Literature and Writing Studies, most of the professors tend not

Schoneman 65

to adhere to conventional canons (which are dominated by male authors).

This allowed me to sign up for courses on the literature of medieval women
mystics and the novels of Jane Austen; these two courses played a large part
in expanding my reading behavior. Also, I habitually follow an
underground (i.e., non-mainstream) book review site (Complete-Review.com)
which covers contemporary literature (with an emphasis on literature from
outside the United States). I found more contemporary women authors
through this one site than I have found through all the many issues
of HARPERS, THE NEW YORKER, or the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW I have
purchased in the past. Perhaps underground websites avoid gender disparity
more effectively because they are less beholden to (patriarchal) commercial
interests? At the very least, I can change my misogynistic reading pattern by
simply walking in to the local bookstore (Barnes & Noble) or clicking on my
favorite online bookstore (Abebooks.com) and intentionally seeking out a
work of literature written by a woman. <He imagines how this might unfold.>
Walking through the aisles of the local bookstore (yes, they still sort of
exist), I search for a novel to read over the winter break. Like in the
arguments with my wife, the resistance persists; my eyes initially skip over

Schoneman 66

the women authors. Wont hold my interest, I think. Wait. Stop. Selfawareness bloom. Remember all of the insights and new visions you have
received from women authors, Jeff? The cultural conditioning is still
speaking, yes, but you dont have to let it direct your actions anymore--now
that you are aware. I breathe, and smile, and remember, and stretch towards
the novels written by women. Amelie Nothombs LOVING SABOTAGE stands
out for some reason. (Actually, they love her novels on CompleteReview.com, my favorite literary e-haunt.) On reading the first pages, the
book proves to be a delight, an event, a stylistic solar-flare, a new world, a
vision, a treasure. I see anew--not completely, but possibly, precariously, for
sure.

Prado
Buck the tide. <He opens THESE MIRRORS PROVE IT to page 388> What
perspective will I play from now? The title reads On Christmas Eve, Your
Body Reborn. Prado writes many poems for or about her loved ones. This
one is about her friend Andrea, who died of cancer. She sets the scene: A few
days after new years Im inside / the house that Frank Lloyd Wright

Schoneman 67

designed. One ceiling--lovingly restored--shines copper, gold and green

(388). With the speaker, I pay attention to the details of a house. But, then, we
move, through association I suppose, to another topic: My dream, dear
Andrea, was this: / I find you naked in your bedroom: round belly, curving / thighs,
richer in flesh than when you were alive before. / Youve gained the weight of women
who will never die again. / I bring you a Christmas gift which you dont need; / your
cancers gone (388). The image of a woman richer in flesh and the positive
attribution of the weight of women who will never die again defy the
beauty-in-women-equals-thinness lie which infects our culture. And
movingly, I watch as someone sees her friend in a sort of heaven, where
your cancers gone. The speaker continues, So, as I tour these outer rooms,
I understand the park exists / to prove existence does hold on. Abandoned,
left to ruin, / then rescued by the faithful (388). The speaker realizes that the
afterlife exists, but only when an individuals memory is rescued by the
faithful, her loved ones. She buys:
gold bookmarks / made to be the hollyhock design the house is
named for: / abstracted, graceful, bold. I want to take home
beauty, / which is how the living fill themselves. Andrea, /

Schoneman 68

youd come here to the park to paint, but now, / season of

miracles, you are the truest art yourself. (388)
In a way, Andrea lives in the park where the house is, her memory lives
there, here, now. And, again, as in most of Prados work, the miraculous
occurs in the everyday, in a moment sparked by looking up at the ceiling of a
Frank Lloyd Wright house. And, I look again into the brilliant ceiling, / some
kind of heaven; then, I leave (388). The remembering moment closes with a
return to the associative object. But, [o]utside / heres sky, sheer endlessness.
Youll never be / forgotten, Andrea. Deaths made you sun. You walk in me
(388). Andreas eternal existence, then, is not solely dependent on the
speakers memory, which will eventually cease to exist. Instead, Andreas
being exists in both the natural world and the world of the speakers mind;
outer and inner are one: Deaths made you sun. You walk in me (388).
I am not sure what in the poems perspective stems from Prados
gender, and what does not. Perhaps I could have received a similar poem
from a man. Tennysons In Memoriam A.H.H. treats the theme of
remembering a loved one, too. But a close inspection reveals traces of his
gendered perspective: Are God and Nature then at strife, / That Nature

Schoneman 69

lends such evil dreams? / So careful of the type she seems, / So careless of the
single life (59). Nature red in tooth and claw, according to Tennyson, is the
great, unsympathetic destroyer of the individual--and she is a woman! She
and God fight like a husband and wife. But since God is all good by
definition, Nature must be . . .? Even though I cannot delineate exactly what
in Prados poem emerges directly from her subjectivity as a woman, I dont
need to. Her poem comes from a womans perspective; that is enough. Even if
I share all sorts categories with her, like white, American, Angelino, etc., I will
never share her gender (even though I could probably try if I really wanted
to). So, her perspective, as it emerges in the poem, will likely put pressure on
my male subjectivity in various ways. For instance, I resisted following the
speaker down the path of taking home beauty. As a male, I was never taught
that the living fill themselves with beauty. For me, action was paramount,
not observation. Strength, not beauty. And for many men, taking in beauty is
often equated with lust. By reading her poem and letting her perspective play
through me, though, this conditioning was momentarily displaced. I saw that
I could perform a different subjectivity, could take in the beauty of the world
around me, including bookmarks. But first, I had to let go of the old

Schoneman 70

subjectivity and actually read and listen to Prados poem. In listening to it, I
let it play me; it carried me along its perspective and showed me
a different way of seeing.
The crux of the matter: I no longer need to secretly read literature
written by women, as if doing so would nullify my manhood; I have much to
gain from reading womens literature. Without frequently inhabiting a
womans perspective, I am trapped by my own perspective, one which has
largely been shaped by my cultures narrow version of the male gender. In
making an effort to commune with women writers by reading their work,
though, I am slowly transformed into a man whose subjectivity is potentially
more expansive and less rigid--in short, a man who is freer. This effort, then,
is not merely an altruistic or ethical move; I am acting in my own self-interest-for who does not want freedom?

Fourth: Melt Butter and Spices in Saucepan, Pour into Boiling

Stock
In the previous two sections, we saw how men dominate women in
oral communication and in the literary realm. Now we need to explore one of

Schoneman 71

the roots of that dominative behavior: the tradition of misogynistic discourse

in the West, especially in terms of communication. Earlier, I contended that
discourse plays a considerable part in shaping subjectivity in contemporary
society, even if it is never the only shaping force. If that is so, then it behooves
us to complete this exploration of gender disparity in communication with a
brief foray into Western misogynistic discourse. Examining this discourse
will not be hard to do because it so obviously exists! R. Howard Bloch, a wellknown medievalist, says the following:
So persistent is the discourse of misogyny--from the earliest
church fathers to Chaucer--that the uniformity of its terms
furnishes an important link between the Middle Ages and the
present and renders the topic compelling because such terms
still govern (consciously or not) the ways in which the question
of woman is conceived by women as well as by men. (1)
He goes on to say that a scholar can fairly easily begin anywhere in the search
for misogynistic texts, since misogyny permeates all historical periods from
which we have written documents (2). For the sake of my particular
exploration of inter-gender communication, though, I want to unearth some

Schoneman 72

texts which pertain to my topic, in particular. I would do no better than to

start with an author who has had an inestimable impact on Western
discourse, St. Paul. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes that
[T]he women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted
to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says (NIV Bible, 1
Corinthians 14.34). Similarly, in Timothy he explains that [a] woman should
learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to
have authority over a man; she must be silent (NIV Bible, 1 Timothy 2.12).
Now, I am wholeheartedly against the practice of cherry-picking passages
in order to misrepresent a text, and I think that to truly discern St. Pauls (or
the entire Bibles) representation of women, careful scholarship is required.
That said, people have historically cherry-picked those passages from
Pauls letters in order to define women misogynistically. As such, the
passages have indirectly contributed to the domination of women by men in
conversation, since they allow the construction of women as submissive and
silent and men as dominant and outspoken in their natural role as teachers
and authorities.

Schoneman 73

This representation is not unique, either. In her study of women in the

history of rhetoric, Cheryl Glenn remarks:
For the past twenty-five hundred years in Western culture, the
ideal woman has been disciplined by cultural codes that require
a closed mouth (silence), a closed body (chastity), and an
enclosed life (domestic confinement) . . . . Little wonder, then,
that women have been closed out of the rhetorical tradition, a
tradition of vocal, virile, public--and therefore privileged--men.
(1)
In their exclusion from the entire tradition of rhetoric, women have been most
forcefully silenced because rhetoric always inscribes the relation of power
and language at a particular moment (including who may speak, who may
listen or who will agree to listen, and what can be said) . . . (Glenn 1-2).
Rhetorical theory shapes our understanding of interpersonal communication,
and since women have not been given a place in rhetorical theory, they are in
effect silenced as that theory is translated into particular material historical
contexts. Glenn concludes by saying that rhetorical theory has replicated the
power politics of gender, with men in the highest cultural role and social

Schoneman 74

rank (2). In fact, rhetorical discourse is only one thread of a dark tapestry
which has silenced women in oral communication, a tapestry which includes
biblical, philosophical, rhetorical, scientific, and literary texts. These texts
continue to influence of how inter-gender communication operates today, if
the evidence presented in the previous two sections is any indication.

Praxis
In the previous two praxes, I performed a form of identity politics by
using elements in my context to proactively widen the realization of the
narrow masculine subjectivity stemming (in part) from the misogynistic
discourse outlined above. Here, I want to look at whether or not I can
intervene in the toxic production and dissemination of this discourse. Can a
single individual affect a millennia-old body of texts?
Well, not very extensively. No one person has access to or control over
all of those texts; they have a life of their own. Here the poststructuralists
quickly become pessimistic, since we seem to be trapped in a prison of
textuality! However, I am able do what I can in my particular context (kudos
to Alcoff). And what I can do is actually quite considerable, when we take

Schoneman 75

into account the many contexts in which I will dwell throughout my lifespan.
For instance, as a future instructor, I can choose texts written by woman
authors (or else relatively non-misogynistic male authors) when I teach
composition courses. Doing so would at least help slow the dissemination of
misogynistic discourse to college students. Additionally, since I plan on
writing fiction and poetry in the future, I could shape stories which
consciously challenge that discourse, creating characters that stretch gender
boundaries, yoga-style. Additionally, in all of the contexts where I interact
with women, I can perform a male subjectivity which actively contests our
cultures often narrow definition of masculinity. And these contexts will be
many! Whether I am interacting with my wife, my mother, my friends, my
sister, my colleagues, or a stranger, I will continuously be given the
opportunity to enact an identity politics by practicing deep listening,
something which most men have not been conditioned (or programmed) to
do. And, still following Alcoff, all of these habits and practices which I
perform in my numerous contexts can inform the larger cultural discourse,
helping to change how it represents male subjectivity; historical-material
reality talks back to discourse (Alcoff 430-431). At the very least, I have

Schoneman 76

made a minor (feminist?) intervention with this thesis itself. For one, my
memoir-ish self-representation challenges certain gender norms, since most
men, I suppose, do not worry about whether or not they are dominating
women in conversation and literature. But if a few courageous men
perchance peruse this mini-tome, they might realize that it is possible to care
about such things and remain a man. A new discursive representation of a
man (myself) can thus birth newer, more expansive male subjectivities. Selah.

Prado
<He spots a small diary poem in MONKEY JOURNAL, titled May 30th..>
The poem, with Zen-like brevity, reads, Harry says, looking at the big stack
of books next to my / chair in the living room, Do you have enough to read?
/ If I didnt have too much to read, I say, Id be lonely (22-23). Here, we see
that literature, as a form of communication, mediates relationships between
real people. When we read a book, we are connecting to another person, even
if only indirectly, through a third party: the text. We might not ever know
what that person really meant to say, or what her authorial intentions were,
but we are still reading the words she put down. We still follow the

Schoneman 77

injunctions contained in her text, even if we do so idiosyncratically, in a

personal way. As such, reading combats loneliness, since even through
spatio-temporal distance that a text generates, we are connected to some one,
some person, no matter how tenuously. And, as a relational connection,
reading, like conversation, is susceptible to relational infections like racism,
bigotry, prejudice, and--as we have seen--misogyny. We might like to think
that we can put aside those infections when we read a text, and maybe some
of us can, but, like Aristotle observed long ago, humans are by nature social
creatures; as such, we have great difficulty not thinking about the people
behind the texts we encounter--for better or for worse.

Fifth: Serve Hot, Garnish with Fresh Parsley

Okay, I can see that, I said as my wife and I discussed a recent
argument we had at the park. Topic: Who knows the best way to walk our
dog? So much depends / upon/ a red wheel / barrow. She wanted to let the dogs
walk ahead of us, to trot to the beat of their own drummer. I, on the other
hand, having read Cesar Milan, insisted that we dominate the dogs (as pack

Schoneman 78

leaders) by forcing them to walk at our side, keeping them in line with hisses
and jerks.
We returned home with heated emotions, but I chose not to escape. I
stayed with her, even though I could feel the resistance coursing through my
brain. Her perspective was painful to hear because it clashed with my own; I
took it as a personal affront. I can see your point. And I reformulated it
back to her to see if I had indeed understood her correctly. Next I shared my
perspective, and she demonstrated that she understood it. Communion. This
was no fairy tale where we each submitted to the other (if that is even
possible), nor was it a nightmare where one submitted to the other. We both
retained our respective positions, but they were less antagonistic now, almost
complementary. She saw the value in leading our dogs, which would make
them feel more secure on our walks, but she disagreed that leading
necessarily involves physical constraint and hissing, i.e., domination. I saw
the value in giving our dogs enough freedom to retain their dignity as dogs
(especially since our dogs are not working breeds), but I did not agree that
they have to have that freedom all of the time, since that might endanger
them in certain situations (like crossing the street). In effect, our perspectives

Schoneman 79

expanded themselves by momentarily embracing each other. A seemingly

trivial moment of marital resistance (How to walk a dog?) was transformed
into a meaningful and generative encounter.
The cover of Holly Prados These Mirrors Prove It shows a 1948 photo of
a teenage Prado in a background of greenery. The photo seems to be
a declaration and an invitation. It declares that the poems contained within
come from a real human being. And it invites the potential reader to open the
cover in order to momentarily inhabit and share in that human beings
creations, her visions. The cover thus highlights that reading is ultimately
a relationship between one human being and another. If a reader has
relational problems with certain Other genders, ethnicities, creeds, or groups
in daily life, he or she will carry those problems into the act of reading, by
dismissing, ignoring, trivializing, misinterpreting, resisting, dominating, or
otherwise oppressing the work of those Others.
Euangelion. But our relational problems need not persist. They are the
result of conditioning, and conditioning can always be transformed.
Metanoeite! Through self-awareness and Alcoffian identity action, men can
learn to overcome their culturally-conditioned (and perhaps otherwise-

Schoneman 80

conditioned) resistance to and domination of a womans words. They can

learn to listen, and to read. I bring you good news of great joy. The joy of
true communion--and the ensuing transformation--may then come to
fruition, like a bruised mango lying in the shade on a hot summers day.
<My partner and I open These Mirrors Prove It. We read a poem while
sitting on the green couch we got from Big Lots. We dont agree on its
meaning, but I listen to her, increasingly, weaving an invisible thread around
our synchronized hearts.> Selah.

Schoneman 81

Works Cited
Alcoff, Linda. Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity
Crisis in Feminist Theory. Signs 13.4 (1988): 405-436. JSTOR. Web.
25 Jun. 2012.
Bjerrum Nielsen, Harriet and Bronwyn Davies. The Construction of
Gendered Identity through Classroom Talk. Encyclopedia of Language and
Education. Eds. Davies and Corson. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1997. 125-135. Print.
Bloch, Howard. Medieval Mysogyny. Misogyny, Misandry, and
Misanthropy. Eds. R. Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1989. 1-24. Print.
Bukowski, Charles. Love Is a Dog from Hell. New York: HarperCollins, 1977.
103-104. Print.
Butler, Judith. Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519531. JSTOR. Web. 30 Sep. 2012.
DeFrancisco, Victoria. The Sounds of Silence: How Men Silence Women in

Schoneman 82

Marital Relations. Ed. Deborah Coates. Language and Gender: A Reader.

Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers Limited, 1998. 176-184. Print.
Dixon, Alyss. On Invisibility, Gender, and Publishing. TheAtlantic.com. The
Atlantic Monthly Group, 27 Aug. 2010. Web. 5 Oct. 2012.
Drakich, Janice and Deborah James. Understanding Gender Differences in
Amount of Talk: A Critical Review of Research. Gender and
Conversational Interaction. Ed. Deborah Tannen. New York: Oxford UP,
1993. 281-306. Print.
Fishman, Pamela. Interaction: The Work Women Do. Social Problems 25.4
(1978): 397-406. JSTOR. Web. 5 May 2012.
Foucault, Michel. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. The Foucault Reader. Ed.
Paul Rabinow. New York: Random House, 1984. 76-100. Print.
Iser, Wolfgang. Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Print.
King James Bible. Biblos.com. n.d. Web. 5 October 2012.
McCall, Leslie. The Complexity of Intersectionality. Signs 30.3. (2005): 17711800. JSTOR. Web. 10 October 2012.
Miller, Laura. Literatures Gender Gap. Salon.com. February 9, 2011. Web.

Schoneman 83

5 June 2012.
--. National Book Awards: Genre Fiction Dissed Again. Salon.com. Salon
Media Group, Inc. 10 October 2012. Web. 11 October 2012.
NIV (New International Version) Bible. Biblos.com. n.d. Web. 5 October 2012.
Prado, Holly. Monkey Journal. Huntington Beach, CA: Tebot Bach, 2008. Print.
--. These Mirrors Prove It. Los Angeles, CA: Cahuenga Press, 2004. Print.
Ricoeur, Paul. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern UP, 1991. Print.
--. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth, TX:
Texas Christian UP, 1976. Print.
Russ, Joanna. How To Suppress Womans Writing. Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press, 1983. Print.
Shih, Kristy Yu-Chieh. Challenging Cultural Essentialism: Gender, Power,
and Family Politics Among Mothers, Sons, and Daughters-in-law Across
Cultures. Diss. UC Riverside, 2011. Proquest. Web. 4 October 2012.
Tannen, Deborah. The Relativity of Linguistic Strategies: Rethinking Power
and Solidarity in Gender and Dominance. Gender and Conversational
Interaction. Ed. Deborah Tannen. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. 165-188.

Schoneman 84

Print.
Tennyson, Alfred. In Memoriam A. H. H. London: Bankside Press, 1900. Print.
The 2011 Count. VIDA.com. VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. 27 Feb. 2012.
Web. 25 Sept. 2012.
Uchida, Aki. When Difference Is Dominance: A Critique of the AntiPower-Based Cultural Based Approach to Sex Differences. Language in
Society 21.4 (1992): 547-568. JSTOR. Web. 25 May 2012.
Van den Hengel, John. The Home of Meaning: The Hermeneutics of the Subject of
Paul Ricoeur. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982. Print.
Weiner, Eric. Why Women Read More Than Men. NPR.org. National
Public Radio. 5 Sept. 2007. Web. 10 October 2012.

Schoneman 85

Quotation Sources
Page 1
But angry people are not always wise. (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)

Page 2
Until someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's
not. (Dr. Seuss, The Lorax)

Page 3
Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice. Basho
Push sl-o-o-o-o-wly into the stretch. G-o-o-o-d. Now feel the point of resistance.
(J. Schoneman)

Page 4
Now that you feel your point of resistance, gently push just a little further.
Understand the discomfort. Know it. Embrace it. G-o-o-o-d. (J. Schoneman)
like a bruised mango on a hot summer day. (J. Schoneman)

Page 6
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. / What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor
foot, / Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part / Belonging to a man. O, be some other
name! (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2)
know it when I see it. (Idiomatic expression)
Cogito ergo, sum total. (J. Schoneman, with Descartes)

Page 7
Microscope? (J. Schoneman)

Page 8

This is a perfect day for bananafish. (J.D. Salinger, A Perfect Day for Bananafish)
The sound of exceptions flocking like mad sparrows awakens me from myopic
slumber.( J. Schoneman)

Schoneman 86

Page 9
Some plants, some small water creatures give a sort of jellyfish sort of birth by
breaking apart, by separating themselves from themselves. (H.D., Hermione)

Page 10
Pattern recognition was our first response to loneliness. (Rae Armantrout, Upper
World)

Page 11
Si se subject puede. (J. Schoneman, with Cesar Chavez)

Page 12
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. (St. Paul, Ephesians 6:12)

Page 14
Into the chamber behind the thought. (John Ashbery, A Tone Poem)

Page 15
Spider webs! (J. Schoneman)

Page 19
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem / too insignificant for our
concern? / Yet in my heart I never will deny her, / who suffered death because she
chose to turn. (Anna Akhmatova, Lots Wife)

Page 20
Not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the
sinner, but between thousands and thousands. (Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf)

Page 21
Kaleidoscope? (J. Schoneman)

Page 22
Rivers twice in-stepped--cant do it. (J. Schoneman)

Schoneman 87

Page 24
Springboards into being. Boing. (J. Schoneman)

Page 25
Tools of the trade. (Idiomatic expression)
After reducing the sauce, let it cool. (J. Schoneman)

Page 26
You have brains in your head. / You have feet in your shoes. / You can steer yourself
any direction you choose. (Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!)
Scent, the first sense. (J. Schoneman)
Take it like a man! (Idiomatic expression)

Page 27
Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by
day. (St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 4:16)

Page 28
What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. (St. Paul, Romans 7:15)

Page 30
Essentialism shackles. (J. Schoneman)

Page 31
Hes alive? Hes alive. Hes alive! (J. Schoneman, with Dr. Frankenstein)

Page 33
Memory bloom. (J. Schoneman)
Awareness has no loyalties, Jonathan! Dont you know that by now, after our
summer in Kandahar? Please, Jonathan. Say something! (J. Schoneman)

Page 36

Schoneman 88

Ice jars cracking midnight-like? (J. Schoneman)

Page 39

Spider webs stick to anything-everything. (J. Schoneman)

Page 40
Unexamined love is not worth loving. (J. Schoneman)

Page 43
What do you mean, Phib?" asked Miss Squeers, looking in her own little glass,
where, like most of us, she saw - not herself, but the reflection of some pleasant
image in her own brain. (Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby)

Page 44
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! (Idiomatic expression)

Page 45
Eg eimi h hodos, kai h altheia, kai h z. [I am the way, and the truth, and the
life.] (Jesus of Nazareth, John 14:6)

Page 46
Put on the character of Christ.(J. Schoneman)

Page 49

Selah. [Meditate on that.] (Unknown, The Book of Psalms)

Page 57
Sharpen the focus, multiply skeins. (J. Schoneman)

Page 67

Self-awareness bloom. (J. Schoneman)

Buck the tide. (J. Schoneman)

Page 78

Schoneman 89

So much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow. (William Carlos William, The Red

Wheelbarrow)

Page 79
Communion. (J. Schoneman)

Page 80
Euangelion [The Good News]. (The New Testament (Greek))
Metanoeite! [Repent!, or Think About Your Thinking!] (The New Testament (Greek))
I bring you good news of great joy. (An Angel of the Lord, Luke 2:10)