by Nick Cox
Kim Elsesser, in a recent New York Times article, raised the question of why there should still be separate Oscars for male and female actors, and makes a compelling case for making the acting Oscars gender-neutral. She pulls out all the punches, pointing out what an outcry there would be if the Oscars were racially segregated, claiming that the separate Oscar for Best Actress insults women by implicitly suggesting that they could not hold their own in a competition against men, and noting that even term “actress” has fallen out of favor. I admit that the possibility of gender-neutral Oscars never really occurred to me before I read her article, but in retrospect it seems obvious. It seems, in fact, almost impossible to disagree with her—there is scarcely any argument I could mobilize against hers that would not fundamentally contradict my own beliefs as a feminist.
Nonetheless, I still somehow feel compelled to try. The reason, if I had to name one, is probably nothing more than my instinctive mistrust of anything that seems manifestly obvious. I do not deny the validity of any of Elsesser’s claims. The idea of gender-neutral Oscars is certainly something I could get behind—although, to be perfectly honest, I don’t have a terribly strong opinion on the matter either way. Unlike other feminist issues, such as abortion, this one has no practical consequences for any real women other than movie stars, who make up a very small fraction of the population—it is more or less completely symbolic. The question, then, is about the meaning of this symbol. On the surface, as I have already acknowledged and as Elsesser argues so well, it would be an unqualified step in the right direction. Everything is a mixed bag, though, and even the most seemingly positive changes always come with hidden dimensions of ambiguity, and it is these subterranean problems that I want to probe here.
The question of gender-neutral Oscars might not be all that important in itself, but it actually has enormously far-reaching implications that cut right to the heart of feminism. The reason it is so important, even without any properly practical significance, has to do with the singular importance of movies in American culture. Movies are, simply put, the closest thing our pluralistic and secularized society has to a national religion—they provide us with the stories that we use, for better or worse, to shape our lives. The world of movies is much more than entertainment; it is a formative influence on the fundamental symbolic structure of our society. And one of the most important elements of that symbolic order is, of course, gender—movies define for us what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. The annual ritual of the Oscars is even more important: it consolidates the movies of the previous year into a coherent narrative and determines for posterity what stories were the ones that really mattered.
To cut right to the chase, it would not be a terrible stretch to say that the real question at stake, underlying the issue of gender-neutral Oscars, is the following: Should our binary conception of gender be preserved, or does it deserve to be done away with once and for all? Don’t get me wrong here—I am no reactionary alarmist, and I don’t mean to suggest that integrating the Oscars would precipitate so drastic a change. Because the world of movies is so instrumental in determining our society’s symbolic order, though, this integration would at the very least represent a significant step in that direction; and, for that reason, I think the question is worth considering. Over the past twenty years or so it has been the trajectory of feminism as well as of society as a whole. As Elsesser herself points out, the differences between men and women have recently been emphasized less and less in language and in institutions, and people have come more and more to see the gender binary as a societal artifice. The abolition of gender-segretated Oscars would certainly be in keeping with this trend, and would represent a decisive step forward in its progress—and, to that extent, I have no objection to it.
What gives me pause, though, is the question of how far this dissolution of the binary of gender should, and will, extend. Elsesser does acknowledge that gender-segregation is reasonable in sports competitions, citing the biological differences between men and women. And these biological differences are not likely to change. The males of the species will continue to be somewhat larger and have penises, and the females will continue to be somewhat smaller; and, more importantly, reproduction will probably still require one of each. Is it our goal, then, that our conception of gender, and its expression in our society, should be restricted to only these purely biological distinctions? Should we strive to think of ourselves and each other purely as equal, gender-neutral human subjects, and ignore as much as possible the fact that we remain enfleshed in sexed bodies?
In my mind, the answer to this question is clearly no: a complete eradication of the conceptual, societal binary of male and female is neither possible nor desirable, and not only because it would put feminists out of a job. The whole point of culture, understood in the broadest possible sense, has always been to provide human beings with a framework for understanding, and living with, the natural facts of life. One of the oldest human customs, for instance, is the burial of the dead, which is a way of reframing the naturally-determined inevitability of death in human terms, and thereby, as it were, domesticating it. The socially-determined framework of the binary of gender is likewise a human reframing of the biological facts of human reproduction. This binary has, of course, consistently been used as a pretext for the horrendous oppression of both women and those who did not fit easily into it, and it is the work of feminism to struggle against this oppression. I feel, though, that taking our anger out on the binary itself and striving to abolish altogether is not the right answer; instead we should work to find newer and more flexible ways of conceiving it.
14 Comments
March 6, 2010 at 8:29 pm
I’m not in favor of gender-neutral Oscars, if only because it *wouldn’t* erase the underlying fact that people understand each other in gendered terms. Gender-neutral Oscars would immediately cause problems of unequal representation of men vs. women at the Oscars, because gender persists.
However, I don’t think sex/gender has ever done much for me. I think it’s a crappy way of organizing society and I’d be happier if it just went away. I don’t think we can make that happen, but I wouldn’t miss it.
March 6, 2010 at 9:27 pm
If acting awards were gender neutral, women would very very rarely win acting awards. Let’s take last year – can you honestly see Kate Winslet beating Sean Penn? Cotillard over Daniel Day-Lewis? Helen Mirren over Forrest Whitaker? No. Simply put, for whatever reason, men are much more successful at putting in decent acting performances on the big screen than women. Perhaps this is down to screenwriters having trouble writing good female parts in comparison to male parts, but whatever the issue, making the Oscars gender neutral is effectively removing women from the Oscars completely (they are already underrepresented in pretty much every other category)
March 7, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Toni, I think you hit it with your comment on screenwriters. It’s not that women can’t put it the performances, it’s that the parts aren’t being written for them. A truly phenomenal performer can, of course, turn a good performance out of a poorly-written part, but it’s something we ask of female performers much more frequently than we do of their male counterparts.
March 8, 2010 at 10:30 pm
That wouldn’t work, and the reason why: Look at the Best Director category. You’d think that would be gender-neutral–after all, you don’t even see the director onscreen. But in 82 years, only four women were nominated for Best Director (Lena Wertmuller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, and Kathryn Bigelow), with the first nomination in 1976 and the first winner only last night. In eighty-two years, mind you!
Only two African-American men have been nominated, John Singleton in 1991 for “Boys n the Hood” and Lee Daniels last night. Neither won.
An African-American woman has never been nominated.
If the acting categories were made gender-neutral, I can easily see only a token one or two women being nominated, or (more probably) none at all. I imagine the percentage of female winners would fall just as drastically.
the separate Oscar for Best Actress insults women by implicitly suggesting that they could not hold their own in a competition against men
That would be nice if the Oscars (and indeed, the motion picture industry) was a level playing field.
They’re not.
March 9, 2010 at 1:59 am
I was just watching some post-Oscar programming about the red carpet, and the level of criticism that women underwent about their dresses and style amazed me. Can’t they just be recognized for their careers and accomplishments? Nope…it all boils down to the cut and color of their dresses on an occasion that’s meant to celebrate careers.
March 9, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Brenda, who do you think watches the Oscars? The audience is overwhelmingly female. Whatever channel broadcasts it is catering to its audience. So, if what you say about the programming is true, we can conclude that many females care about the cut and color of the dresses. (Apply the same analysis to Cosmo and similar magazines.) Are you saying that women shouldn’t be interested in these things? that they should care more about “careers and accomplishments”–traditionally masculine interests?
This is one of the two biggest problems I have with your brand of feminism (after the idea that women lack agency). You measure a woman’s success by how much she acts like a man: she should be bold, confident, speak her mind, be independent, argue, compete, fight, strive, win. You say that as it is there is a “double standard”: women and men are evaluated differently. But in your hurry to eliminate the “double standard”, you’ve gotten rid of the female standard and simply further “reified” the male one. Your answer to the question of how a human being should behave is that he *or she* should act like a man should; the implication, at bottom, is that women are essentially defective human beings to the extent that they are different from men. That femininity is immoral, that femininity should be punished, that the world will be a better place when femininity is gone. You call this feminism?
The alternative is to recognize that men and women are different, and that what men should do is different from what women should do. In this way one could value women as women instead of criticizing them for not being men.
March 9, 2010 at 8:37 pm
You measure a woman’s success by how much she acts like a man: she should be bold, confident, speak her mind, be independent, argue, compete, fight, strive, win.
This is an artificial distinction that does not exist in nature; it is culturally imposed.
These traits should be neither male nor female; they should be human.
So, if both men and women were free to express all sides of their personalities, and not be straitjacketed into some narrow cultural definition of what is “male” and what is “female,” we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. There wouldn’t be any male or female standards; there would be human standards, nothing more, nothing less.
If both men and women could be both feminine and masculine, this society, as well as individual males and females, would be far better off.
March 9, 2010 at 10:42 pm
If these evaluations are “culturally imposed”, why does essentially every culture ever known to exist have them? Did everyone just happen to have the same ideas? And who exactly is doing the “imposing” here? How do they do it? When did it happen?
You can’t deny that differences between women and men “exist in nature”, even if you only consider physiology. And I see no reason to think that these are the only differences: there are good evolutionary reasons that males and females (of all species) have different interests and behave differently. In a Darwinian (i.e. non-moral) sense, some behaviors that are good for males are bad for females; for example, behaving promiscuously as opposed to nurturing one’s offspring.
This is an explanation for the behavior that we see today and that we have always seen–it gives an explanation where “culturally imposed” gives none. It also shows that there is some behavior that is distinctly feminine and some that is distinctly masculine, although of course most behavior is neither. Given that men and women have different interests and will behave differently, why equate masculine behavior with human behavior? Why try to expunge feminine behavior (as you still want to do in your post)?
March 9, 2010 at 10:54 pm
I agree very much with Tristan.
Another thing to bring up is that Bonnie assumes there are an equal number of females (or black people) that WANT to direct movies. I’m not saying there aren’t, but you certainly aren’t bringing ANY (none, zip, absolutely nothing) evidence (read: data) to show that there are an equal number of men and women (and black people) who desire to be directors. (I only put black people in parentheses because it was also a secondary example in her paragraph, I promise I’m not racist XD)
As anyone versed in any kind of statistics can tell you, the low number of female directors can be a sign of two things. The first thing is that there is some sort of bias against women. The other completely legitimate conclusion is that the number of women who win Oscars is representative of the number of women, compared to men, who direct. I’m not saying either is right or wrong, but many feminists refuse to acknowledge the second possibility, as if it would be preposterous to think that maybe MOST women do not want to have a career, etc.
Again, I don’t think most women blah blah blah, because I don’t have a good statistical study to look at.
Brenda also refuses to acknowledge that even if males and females can act exactly the same, as some human standard, that perhaps that is not the best way to approach things. She begs the question when she says, “if both men and women could be both feminine and masculine, this society, as well as individual males and females, would be far better off.”
I’m not exactly here to argue against this claim, but just to point out that in the end, Brenda is just saying “if both men and women could be both feminine and masculine, this society, as well as individual males and females, would be far better off because it would be better if both men and women could be both feminine and masculine”
March 10, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Let’s be clear: I said nothing of the categories of “feminine” and “masculine”. I said nothing about “women versus men” or that women should be men. Those were assigned to my simple statement that female actors undergo a rigorous critique of their physical presentation, and such a critique either accompanies or replaces a discussion of their acting talent.
But while we’re talking about gender assignment, Tristan seems to think that having a career and being accomplished is a masculine interest. I must be hypermasculine, then!
Tristan also purports to know my “brand” of feminism just from my previous 56-word statement. Let’s just say the argument that ensued was about Tristan’s angst about the breakdown of traditional gender roles, not about my factual contribution to Nick’s post.
March 10, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Forgive me, I must have made the unwarranted assumption that you’re the same Brenda who has made so many other very insightful comments and posts on this blog, and who in so doing provided more than a 56-word statement from which one could infer her beliefs. My deepest apologies. Please correct me if I have misconstrued the brand of feminism that the other Brenda believes.
I claimed that the interest in, roughly speaking, “having a career and being accomplished” was/is traditionally masculine cross-culturally, and I indicated why that might be the case. So I’m happy to allow that you’re more masculine with respect to your personality than most women are, just like I would say that a female bodybuilder is more masculine with respect to her body than most women are. But just as I don’t see why having a lot of muscles would necessarily be better than having a softer body, I don’t see why behaving in a masculine way is necessarily better than behaving in a feminine way. Perhaps you could explain that to me. (Seriously, I would appreciate it.)
It really doesn’t matter if you reject my evolutionary explanation, although I see no reason why you should. Even if you just say that “masculine” and “feminine” are aspects of “traditional gender roles” (presumably “culturally imposed”, right?), you know the traits that the terms refer to. So my question is why say that the traits “assigned” in the past to men are better than the ones “assigned” in the past to women? Because that strikes me as more than a little misogynistic.
March 10, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Hi Tristan,
Thanks for your comment. Although we have been conversing in a sarcastic tone before, I would like to set all sarcasm aside for my response.
First off, I like to think that my “brand” of feminism is my own. Just as the category “Christian” does not mean that all “Christians” share the same beliefs or practices, “Feminism” is likewise not a monolithic set of beliefs to which one subscribes, although it is, in my opinion, founded upon the belief that men and women are equally human. The diversity of feminists, feminist thought, and feminist “brands” must be acknowledged. So when you respond to me, I hope that you will respond to exactly what I have said and written, not to what you believe my “brand of feminism” would say. Likewise, I respond to your comments as an individual, and I would not go so far as to group you into an entity and then argue against what I conceive to be that entity’s beliefs.
I don’t recall making any statements about “femininity” versus “masculinity” or “men” versus “women” in any recent posts or comments, except to address yours. Personally, I find these categories to be problematic and as a rule of thumb carefully avoid them. My most recent posts have been about LGBTQ issues and representations of femininity, which I encourage you to read and explore. In your response, you are referring to what *you* believe my “brand” of feminism to be, and have subsequently applied that impression to my writing. It’s not a matter of which “Brenda” I am but a matter of acknowledging that I, as a “feminist”, do not necessarily subscribe to the gender categories in the way that you described.
As such, my remark that I must be “hypermasculine” was sarcastic and intended to highlight how you associate “natural masculinity” with “having a career” and being “accomplished”, even though I myself am quite naturally career-driven and accomplished. Indeed, if these are truly “masculine” qualities and I value them over “feminine” qualities, then I must be a misogynist as you correctly rationalized for privileging the “masculine” over the “feminine”.
I do not believe that “having a career” and being “accomplished” is an inherently masculine faculty. Nor do I believe that all societies across time have been patriarchally organized. I don’t believe that there is a “better” or a “worse” behavior. I would never assert that being “career-driven” is morally better than not; rather, I think people should have the freedom to express and explore their identities, regardless of whether their behavior, in their minds and in the eyes of society, is linked to gender expression.
And you highlight a very relevant problematic that feminism attempts to address in many ways. Women who are go-getters (like myself) are often considered to have “masculine” personality traits. This is why I think your last paragraph is especially rich and striking. The application of the category “masculine”, and the valuation of this trait as “better”, simply and only because it is considered “masculine”, is a misogynistic application of gender norms by society. And there, I think you would be in agreement with very many feminist authors and thinkers, so I encourage you to continue thinking about these issues and the meaning of gender categories, hierarchies, and sources of “power” in our culture.
March 11, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Fair enough, you may not yourself be among unwittingly venerate masculinity. Still, unless there are some vicious internecine battles in feminism about this, you could for the sake of argument defend this belief, which I imagine a portion of your blogging cohort holds. This is pretty much what I do with Anscombe.
I wouldn’t say that someone is misogynist who herself values masculine traits or behavior about feminine ones. It’s when the claim becomes that there is a single standard for human conduct that I begin to have a problem, since in my view that standard is essentially the one traditionally applied, with some reason, to men. As a relativist (“I don’t believe that there is a “better” or a “worse” behavior. “*) you reject the idea of a universal morality at all, so a fortiori you reject the version I criticize.
(But one problem with relativism that you may want to consider is that it implies that you cannot criticize the culture you live in. If morality is relative to the culture you live in, then what is moral in that culture is moral for you. Indeed, to the extent that your behavior and beliefs conflict with the prevailing cultural norms, you are simply wrong, both morally and factually. If you want to be a cultural critic, you can’t be a moral relativist.)
Finally, I’ve mentioned my reasons for believing that some behaviors e.g. status-seeking and promiscuity are in some sense “inherently masculine”, and likewise for feminine behavior e.g. nurturing. You’ve only denied the conclusion, not my arguments for it, while at the same time advancing no arguments in favor of your conclusion. So my conclusion still stands.
*Technically this statement does not entail that you’re a relativist, so I’ll just ask: are you? If not, the argument applies to those of your co-bloggers who are, which I suspect is a fair contingent, so I’d be interested in their response whether or not you can provide one.
March 11, 2010 at 10:20 pm
I think that a gender-neutral Oscars is an interesting proposal, but I just don’t see it being feasible until cinema itself becomes gender-neutral. Screenplays aren’t gender blind; roles for actresses and roles for actors are written fundamentally differently. Part of the difficulty of awarding acting is evaluating a performance when the context of each movie is so different (e.g., many critics would argue that Morgan Freeman’s acting of Nelson Mandela in Invictus was better than Jeff Bridges’s acting in Crazy Heart, but Freeman’s role was highly circumscribed in a movie that was, after all, just about rugby), and throwing gendered roles into the mix would only muddle up the situation even more. The same way clothes are gendered for the most flattering fit, roles are gendered to maximize performance.