Reading Response #20

          "Composing as a Women" (and "Contextualizing 'Composing as a Women'") is an article written by Elizabeth A, Flynn--for College Composition and Communication, suggesting that the primary audience is for those who study feminist theory (the contextualization was printed in Feminism and Composition: A Critical Sourcebook)--that points out the similarities feminist inquiry and composition studies have. In looking into the relationship each studies represent, she finds out that "composition specialists expose the limitations of previous product-oriented approaches by demystifying the product and in so doing empowering developing writers and readers" (Reading About Writing, 156). The result of this demystifying is a look into the questions a more feminist mode of composition have to face, mainly towards the methods, approaches, and thinking both male and female act towards one object to another. Observing student writing of how each gender feel about a specific approach of one situation, along with using Nancy Chodorow's The Reproduction of Mothering, Flynn discovered a form of identification; an identification process that sees girls "develop through and stress particularistic and affective relationship to others," while boys work with "the denial of affective relation, and categorical universalistic components of the masculine role" (158). Once people are aware of these way of thinking, only then can composition writing of feminist theory can "become self-consciously aware of what their experience in the world has been," (164) crafting writing that can never ignore the different genders into "a suppression of women's separate ways of thinking and writing" (162). But as she puts it much later in time, this line of thinking should be viewed in a context, where "a strong case for differences between men and women, even if we would later need to qualify, refine, and even contradict those claims" (168) was strongly in favor sometime in the past, it might not reflect on how the writer truly expresses on what the writer might really thinks about some theories that was still developing. So while feminist composition is "embraced to a greater or lesser degree in most fields in the humanities and the social sciences," (167) the writing should be remembered as an article that aims at looking at difference of some gender in a time where it was needed to further research, instead of an opinion of something trying to search for a common ground of different sexes.

          This contextual approach of the influence each gender has towards their writing invokes the writings of previous Reading Responses. As Flynn talks about how "the composition and feminist studies are not engaged in a serious or systematic way" (157), she mentions that some feminist research suggest that "men have chronicled our historical narratives and defined out fields of inquiry," just like when James Gee described his Discourses having "conflict and tension between the values, beliefs, attitudes, interactional styles, use of language, and ways of being in the world which two or more Discourses represent" (Writing About Writing, 485). With this conflict, the enculturation--from Wardle's research--between the two genders (or discourses) is now complicated into a power struggle for authority, or, sourcing her paraphrase from Bourdieu's "Language and Symbolic Power," maintain "appropriate expressions of authority" of those genders (526). Until that sense of authority is gone, where the difference of men and women is seen past through "their relational capacities" (Reading About Writing, 159) and the "massive increase in fundamentally uncertain yet persuasive discourse" (261) is the main source of understanding how writing works within the individual can each gender assume a sense of power not through definition by who they are, or what they represent throughout history, but what exactly the tools and available they can harness for the benefit of those genders.

          Does this have anything to do with the gender difference in the classroom, as an example? From my recollections, I wouldn't really say. Although there were a greater influx of female teachers than male as I grew up, the general attitude of the students generally stayed the same, but things changed when it came to social events. The men would usually hang around with each other and play as much physical activities as they could, and the women would go socialize with one another and stay far away from other groups as they could, finding a niche within one another they could talk about with one another. The activities each of them partake usually have a majority that appeal to the ideals of one specific gender--I recall the females took the social obligations of the choir activities much more seriously than the guys (it extended to the plays too), and the football player very rarely had female player with them. Yet once the time came for situations where they do have to be with one another, the process usually far in favor for whatever mainly interested one gender--a dominance depending on which one had an specific interest in, usually for personal, or social, reasons.

          It's probably that search for gender based authority, in conflict with the more physical-based authority males have, that caused Flynn to comment that feminist research have women's perspectives be "suppressed, silenced, marginalized, written out of what counts as authoritative knowledge," where "Difference is erased in a desire to universalize" (157). In analyzing this statement, I get the impression that what Flynn wants her audience to realize is that because males "have chronicled our historical narratives," (157) the structure falls in favor to the thought patterns of our society, out of a sense of being comfortable to one's fiction on what he/she believes to be true--if you are [gender], then we assume you are capable of doing [this activity], [this action], and [these emotions], never [this other activity], [this other action], or [those other emotions]. Once society place this principles into action, then the desire to be what is not mainstream grows; "universalize" not by what is deem acceptable, but by what fits in an applicable purpose that can benefit the excitement of one community.

           With this concept in mind, I managed to figure out the oppositions that define the core of what feminism is out to achieve as an academic course. They seek to place their own gender into a position that can grant them the rights any other discourse communities receive (or get the same rights men do), but in order to arrive at those rights, each women will have to figure out on which rules apply to them in ways that can benefit them as their own community, without striking an imbalance that will easily corrupt themselves into power that define the same problems men face daily. It's that construction that got my interest to this article, and I'm glad I got the opportunity to see it in a social context that only continues to develop in a path that will further expand my own thoughts toward women. Perspective is key, and I'm ready to look at it that way.