Art, Education and Gender

The Shaping of Female Ambition

Gill Hopper

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137408570
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Why do girls study art and why do girls become primary teachers? This book examines and reveals the powerful influence of the family, the school and the state in shaping female identity and constructing notions of gender appropriateness. It also discusses the status of art at school and the position of women artists in society.

1

Identity

Introduction

This section explores the construction of both gendered and sexual identities in society, particularly, but not exclusively, those of women, and considers the powerful influences of family, school and work. It draws together the thinking, findings and views of a number of scholars, working in related but different fields, who are not usually seen together in the same text, but whose writings have resonated with my own thinking on this subject: philosophers such as Foucault and Bourdieu, feminist scholars from the 1960s onward and current researchers in the twenty-first century. Of particular interest is Garfinkel’s work and his 1967 study of the transsexual Agnes as well as Clarricoates’ detailed studies in the 1970s of gender identity within working class communities.

The discussion provides some insight into how women come to view themselves as females, frame their identity and position themselves in society. Within this broad context, I integrate, where appropriate, the findings of my research, which examined the factors that shape the subjectivities of female BA (Ed) Art students on a primary initial teacher training course, particularly the relationship between art and femininity.

Gender and sexual identity – how women come to view themselves as female

Society divides itself into the two sexes of male and female, each traditionally defined by the existence of essential biological differences. Thus, women are female and men are male. Yet what does this division actually mean in terms of females’ and males’ consciousness of living as gendered beings? As a Bachelor of Education BA (Ed), year four female student recently said, ‘I don’t wake up each morning and think, I am a female and this is how I must and do behave. I am not overtly conscious of being female; I am who I am, and that happens also to be female.’

Yet there are characteristics and behaviours that we routinely associate with being female or male, and the polarity of these, as commonly agreed, has less to do with physical differences and more to do with a number of influential factors, including those experienced within the family and school and those experienced within the history and culture (particularly as mediated through the media) of the wider society (Clarricoates, 1980; Knowles and Lander, 2011; Paechter, 2001; Perry, 1999; Spender, 1980). A form of gender attribution, this process results in characteristics that typify gender yet vary ‘across cultures, periods and societies’ (Pooke and Newall, 2008: 137). Paechter (2001) refers to a person’s sex, assigned at birth according to sexual characteristics, as ‘gender assignment’; whereas how a person feels about his or her identity, which may be different from the identity assigned to them, has more to do with a ‘gender identity’(Knowles and Lander, 2011: 87). This ‘gender identity’ might be described as the psychological self (Garrett, 1998 in Lander and Knowles, 2011).

Lorber and Farrell (1991) argue that ascribed gender is part of the foundation of every existing order, and no society ignores its implications, although gender differences are more deeply prescribed within some social groupings than within others (a finding particularly attributed to the early anthropological studies of Margaret Mead, 1949). Yet how we align ourselves with our particular gender, or how knowledge of the supposed inherent characteristics of our gender shapes our psychological selves or identities (Knowles and Lander, 2011), is of particular importance, not least with respect to its impact on how we live our lives. For many, socially agreed upon and learned signifiers of male and female (dress codes, legitimated behaviours and expectations) are established from birth within the family; and although interpretations may be broad, such ‘gender signifiers’ will undoubtedly inform the child’s developing identity as a female or male. Additionally, almost all contact with the child – the way the child is related to and the way the person enacts that relationship – will in part be shaped by culturally defined and gendered expectations. Such behaviours seem to be maintained to a lesser or greater degree within the wider political, cultural and economic structures of an ever changing society. Indeed, as Mead argued in her seminal text Male and Female (1949), differences in character and behaviour between societies are often learned and shaped not by genetics but by cultural patterns passed on through the generations – a view that is supported by many today.

According to the early, highly influential work of Freud (1923), the psychological self consists of three parts: the id, which desires instant gratification; the ego, or the rational part of the mind that adapts to the reality of the social context and the needs of others – also coined ‘the reality principle’(Rennison, 2001); and the superego, or ‘the internalised voice of parents, carers and society which provide the individual with the rules and regulations that guide it when it moves beyond primary narcissism’ (Rennison, 2001: 39 in Knowles and Lander, 2011). All three parts are subject to change.

Yet, according to Lawler (2009), in developing, achieving and maintaining our identity, genetic heritage and DNA coding also have a part to play. Freud (1923) believed that identity – at whatever level – was shaped by external experiences, but Lawler (2009) suggests that ‘achieving our identity’ results from having some control over those influences, although our genes ‘provide us with the raw materials from which an identity can be constructed’ (cited in Knowles and Lander, 2011: 21).

Sex or gender?

Yet if one’s sex and associated gender are the foundation blocks of self-development, they are also confusing descriptors. One’s sex (male/female) is usually employed to define what is natural and cannot be changed, but it could be argued that the social construction and standing of sex, like the social construction and standing of gender, is socially developed, with gender identity the significant constituent of ‘femaleness’ and ‘maleness’. Thus, although gender identity might be informed by physical or sexual development, it is the learned social roles of that sex that largely shape sexual behaviour, preference, difference and practice (Lorber and Farrell, 1991). Ever-evolving trends in the sexual behaviour of both sexes continue to render and retain a gendered expectation.

Furthermore, it could be argued that biological difference is not an essential determinant of who is or who can be the socially constructed and sexualised male or female, since gender ‘manipulation’ (manifest in the male-to-female or female-to-male transsexual) does not necessarily result in an androgynous third gender (although in some cultures, the term ‘lady boy’ may be employed). Thus, ‘the experience of transsexuals, gays, bisexuals and cross-dressers suggests that gender and sexual identity can be complex issues’ (Pooke and Newall, 2008: 136), which may result in the shaping of a transsexualised character to fit into the socially constructed and accepted male/female gendered groups to which a transsexual wishes to be affiliated. Transsexuals do not typically challenge culturally prescribed notions of gender; they are more likely to adopt socially agreed upon characteristics and may even seek to change their anatomy to ensure that they have the accepted credentials to assume a particular gender. ‘How gender is created through interaction and at the same time structures interaction’ (West and Zimmerman, 1991: 18) was a process revealed in the 1960s study of the transsexual Agnes, who, born and raised as a boy, adopted a female identity at the age of 17 (Garfinkel, 1967). For Agnes, not having the socially agreed upon biological criteria and attendant social biography of a female required him to learn and display what he believed to be the key features of a woman, including social behaviour and interaction (Garfinkel, 1967). Through observation and daily experience, Agnes internalised and reproduced the culturally defined female gender of that time, which ‘real’ women ‘do naturally’ and supposedly without thinking. His main fear was that his penis might become known rather than that he would be unable to maintain an essential femininity (West and Zimmerman, 1991). Agnes’ knowledge that he appeared to be a ‘normal female’, as defined by a society that presumed women should dress to endorse their femaleness in a culturally recognised and approved way, was his primary resource, and that knowledge provided the necessary membership to the female category. Accordingly, based on the social norms of his time, Agnes conducted himself in what he perceived to be a feminine manner, being careful not to overdo his ‘performance’ and raise suspicion. The task of being a woman was ongoing and required behaviour constructs that would and could be read by others as normative gender display. To this end, Agnes learned, alongside ‘her’ subsequent fiancé’s critical observations of other women, the expected way for a woman to behave: for example, in line with the societal expectations of that time, ‘she should not insist on having things her way and she should not offer her opinions or claim equality with men’ (Garfinkel, 1967: 147–148).

But ‘doing gender’ is not simply adhering to known and current social conventions and etiquette; it is a continuous process of subtly adjusting to evolving situations and contexts. Yet culturally informed and prescribed bounds of social accountability and acceptability are always in play. As Irigary notes:

Sexuate identity rules out all forms of totality as well as complete ownership of the subject [I] ... I is never simply mine in that it belongs to a gender. Therefore I am not the whole: I am man or woman. And I am not a simple subject, I belong to a gender. I am objectively limited by this belonging. (2004: 10)

In an interview (Hopper, 2015b), heterosexual transgender or ‘T girl’ Peter spoke of appropriating, when constructing his alter ego Penny, a particular ‘female identity’ inspired by his beauty queen mother. As a boy, he had watched and become interested in his mother’s daily rituals of ‘making and dressing up’ to construct a certain type of glamourised female beauty. Although never part of this making up process, Peter wanted to experiment and imitate – much as a daughter might when watching her mother do similar things. Yet this was never encouraged, and he learned that such behaviour was taboo for a boy. At work, Peter as Penny dresses in a stereotypically female, if somewhat conservative, way: in a skirt, blouse, low heels and dangling earrings. His make up (foundation, eye shadow, lipstick and nail varnish), is carefully selected ‘in line with what women use’, and his long hair carefully conditioned. He wears low heels because of his height – as he says, ‘I am tall enough’ – and because comfortable heels (as women will testify) are a particular problem. In such clothing, Peter spoke of feeling more at ease with himself: ‘I feel more relaxed in a female identity and am probably more outward going’. Yet he acknowledged that his male physique and associated sexual identity largely precludes any acceptance as a ‘natural’ woman even when his female identity is so carefully attended to and requires especially rigorous facial shaving: ‘doing my best to ‘pass’ is important’. As Penny, Peter conducts himself in what he perceives as and associates with a more feminine manner, so that when walking, he reduces his stride and accentuates the click of his heels; when driving, he is more relaxed and reduces his speed, noticing a certain change or moderation in what might be termed his more masculinised self. For Peter, to be a woman has only partly to do with being noticed: ‘I do like comments, but it is much more to do with how I feel inside, which is much more relaxed and feeling in line with myself.’ So he dresses to achieve or release those associated feelings – something that he feels is not easy for him to realise as a heterosexual man. At work, when required to hold one-on-one meetings with colleagues in his capacity as mentor and appraiser, Peter chooses to dress as Penny, which he feels enables him to reveal and perform a more caring and attentive self.

Transgendered behaviour may be more complex than the desire to dress, perform and be accepted as a woman, and for Peter, it may have to do ‘with issues of maleness and not liking maleness’ (Hopper, 2015b). But it could be argued that Peter’s appearance and behaviour as Penny, like Agnes’ appearance as a female, is largely learned from observations of and interactions with his mother and other females. It could also be claimed that as Peter, certain characteristics of maleness take precedence, characteristics that he has also learned but finds more alienating. Both (heterosexual) genders are defined and bound by culturally approved expectations and limitations concerning behaviour and appearance that are not easy to transgress. However, it is interesting to learn what Peter observes and defines as female characteristics and how they come to define his female self.

Is gender identity largely dependent on culturally informed socialisation and psychodynamic processes of identification and disassociation, with some genetic influence thrown in? According to Chodorow and Gilligan (1982), as boys begin to see themselves as separate and different from their mothers, there is a need to suppress their relatedness. Conversely, girls’ gender identities acquire a greater sense of self-in-relation, with mothers seen as primarily like themselves. Sandra Bem (1993 cited in Charmé, 1997: 43) believes a combination of ‘complex, intersecting forces’ combine to produce gender identity:

The insight of socialisation theories is that the adult woman or man is, in part, the product of the child’s encounter with the culture. The insight of psychodynamic theories is that because the process of socialisation necessarily regulates the child’s natural impulses, the adult psyche inevitably contains repressed desires and psychic conflicts. The insight of identity-construction theories is that even a child is never merely the passive object of cultural forces; both children and adults are active makers of meaning, including the meaning of their own being. And finally, the insight of social-structural theories is that at least some portion of who people are, even as adults, is not what they have become inside but what either current level of status and power requires or enables them to be. (Bem, 1993: 137)

Sexuality and sexual desire

One’s sexuality, on the other hand, denotes sexual desire and the way ‘an individual chooses to express and enact their sex or gender’ (Pooke and Newall, 2008: 137). The distinction between sexuality as a social construct and sex as a biological construct was an area of particular interest to Foucault. He noted that talk about sex began as early as the seventeenth century ‘with the Counter-Reformation’s legislation on the practice of confession’ and the need for penitents to ‘examine their consciences’ (1978 cited in Gutting, 2005: 93). According to Foucault, the secular advance within modern sexuality of self-knowledge led to the ‘discovery’ of specific categories of sexual nature by sexual ‘experts’ such as Sigmund Freud, Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, Haveloch Ellis, Margaret Mead and Londa Schiebinger; and this advance grounded society’s acceptance of ‘new social norms of behaviour’. Additionally, Foucault (1978) observed that the modern sciences of sexuality are transmitters of both knowledge and control, particularly within the area of sexual dysfunction. To support this claim, he cited the case of Jouy, a nineteenth-century French peasant inclined to seek ‘harmless embraces’ from young village girls. Subsequent detailed legal and medical examinations found him not guilty of any crime, yet he was confined to a hospital for the remainder of his life: a ‘pure object of medicine and knowledge’ (Foucault, 1978: 32, cited in Gutting, 2005: 94). Although in the twenty-first century, it might be argued that Jouy’s behaviour was a form of sexual abuse, according to Gutting (2005: 95), Foucault would interpret such a ‘reaction as itself a sign of the effects of the modern power/knowledge system’ in the context of culturally approved sexual behaviour.

In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977), Foucault noted that subjects could internalise the norms of the discipline of control and become monitors of themselves. He believed that within the context of sexuality, this self-monitoring also emerges, despite our understanding that we base our definitions of our sexual selves on self-knowledge. Consequently, not only are we controlled as ‘objects of disciplines that have expert knowledge of us; we are also controlled as self-scrutinising and self-forming subjects of our own knowledge’ (Gutting, 2005: 96). Foucault believed that we continually reshape our lives according to new sets of norms, or modern ideals, of sexual liberation (sexual promiscuity, for example), and he argued that our acceptance of new value systems is nothing more than an internalisation of external norms and has nothing to do with freedom of choice (Foucault, 1978: 159, cited in Gutting, 2005: 96). One’s sexuality is an integral part of one’s identity as a self or subject, and to declare one’s sexual proclivity (for example, ‘I am homosexual’) is to reveal ‘what I am in the concreteness of my subjectivity’ (Foucault cited in Gutting, 2005: 98). This ‘standpoint of individual consciousness’ in effect also leads us to assume a particular identity ‘as directed by a given set of ethical norms, which give its existence a specific meaning and purpose’ (Gutting, 2005: 99).

Gender display

Despite the assumed polarity of the sexes, Rubin (1995) notes that males and females are more alike than different, but that over the centuries, societies have imposed a ‘sameness taboo’ upon them. For example, in the sixteenth century, Italian courtier and prominent Renaissance author Baldessare Castiglione determined, through a series of fictional conversations published in Il Cortegiano or The Book of the Courtier (1582), the ideal male and female characteristics. The ideal qualities of men were noble birth, valiance, physical adeptness and dignity, as well as decorousness, artistic talent and artistic appreciation. Likewise, a man’s ideal female companion was to conduct herself with dignity as well as display artistic talents, yet greater importance was attached to her beauty, modesty, virtuousness and reputation (my italics). For both sexes, outward appearance and conduct was a signifier of difference (Weaver, 2004). Highly influential, The Book of the Courtier contributed to the spread of Italian humanism throughout France and from France to England and established a gendered blueprint of etiquet...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Identity
• 2  The Construction of Women as Artists: Art, Gender and Society
• 3  Women, Subject Choice and Employment
• 4  Women and Art Education
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index