For Tuesdays class, we split up the reading assignment on the different theories on the Feminist Thought. I was part of the group who had to read and analyze the psychoanalytic feminist theory. Freud uses the story of Oedipus to categorize how women think. There is father identification, mother identification and the collaboration of the two. According to the infamous psychoanalyst, a son's desire for their mother's attention drives the rest of their thoughts and actions. The same goes for a daughter's need for her father's attention. The oedipal phase is a theory that is meant to direct a child towards heterosexuality. In Oedipus, the protagonist kills his father where he thereafter sleeps with his mother. In this story, Oedipus is unaware of the familiarity relations, but it does show the jealousy uprooted by the same-sex parent and its possible dire consequences. It is an attempt to explain the biological and psychological drives of the unconscious. It sets up to explain the development of the id, the ego and the super ego. We are fundamentally sexual beings, and allow this to motivate a lot of our actions. Then there is the thought that repressed sexual memories control our future actions. Our class used the example of SVU or those Law and Order shows. I have never watched said style of programming, but apparently the basis is that sexually repressed teenage women go crazy and kill other teens. They don't even realize they did it until the plot is revealed and the main characters play detective and figure out the "who-done-it." I made a connection that in fiction and the real world, the mother is blamed when a male commits a felony. Look at the Columbine, or even local news. The first accusations were/are usually against the poor connection between the guilty party and his mother. The media depicts the mothers as poor nurturers and unstable human beings. So essentially, we don't even blame males for the crimes they commit. How fair. The other big missing piece or fault to Freud's work was that he failed to include social agents. The idea is that there are different agents that influence a woman's role or respect toward a woman or women in general. Agents exist such as family, religion, law and politics, education, socio-economic status, culture, tradition, the list goes on. In Freud's theory, he says that ultimately, it is the parental control which shapes and influences an individual's upbringing which according to Freud is preferred heterosexual. Our group came to the conclusion that those other social agents do have a large effect on an individual. Maybe Freud just hated women.
Amongst the other type of feminist thoughts we read about and discussed in class, the other other I found to be very intriguing was the care chapter. The argument lies in the ethics of the category. So its a matter of ethics in terms of justice versus the ethics in terms of care. It can be described as the difference between maternal practice and the actual situation of motherhood. Assumed roles versus desire or want to fulfill responsibility. Eventually, one must bring the care in private spheres to a public place for more support (aka: women cannot raise their children alone). According to Ruddick, one of the authors, there are three dimensions which preserve life for a child: war, sex and societal roles/expectations. There needs to be an equal balance amongst the three for a child to be "raised right." Self-interest, productivity, and efficiency should not take the center stage in areas of education, health, environmental protection, etc. I find that relatively contradictory to his previous statement. I can understand the idea that yes war, sex, and societal expectations are not uprooted from self interest, but aren't all three of these things productive for society and efficient for the sake of said society? Kittay says that we much make the workplace more hospitable for caregivers of both sexes. I think we are progressing with female nurses but what about women doctors? We've got a long way to go.
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