[Xmca-l] Re: A Gender Gap in CHAT

Wed Jul 8 13:43:13 PDT 2020

Hi David, and James, and others,

Whatever the consensus is on what is and is not politically correct, what is really perhaps difficult to understand for some, which may even include myself, is what it means to grow up in a gendered community that casts hard-and-fast roles for which an individual does not feel at home adopting for oneself?

In other words, in the scenario that David outlines to using arm-wrestling to win a trophy girlfriend as a learning exercise (in the way that he puts it) what if a boy does not want a girlfriend. What if a girl doesn't want two boys fighting over her.

The narrative of gender is what is problematic in that exercise because it presumes a lot in the way a leading question "And sir, how many times do you beat your wife?"  presumes.

Even if we took the gender out, let's say, to tell two individuals they will complete in an arm wrestle to take a friend to the mall for an ice cream date, let's say, it just is really weird because why couldn't they all go together, why even compete like that?

What is the importance of competing for resources when it is likely better to learn how to negotiate for and to learn how to share resources?

This gendered narrative of two boys fighting for the attentions of a girl is as silly as centuries ago, men getting in suits of armor, mounting horses, and jousting at each other making one or the other a bloody mess, with the winner being seen as some sort of hero and who apparently boosts the gene pool by the killing off of the other, all based upon carrying a stick to knock the other contestant to the floor.

Not sure how such a knight develops into a good father for offspring, nor how arm wrestling produces a more empathetic and curious young person.

Perhaps it's hard to detect influences when we have been immersed for so long in them, making it difficult to detect how they impact our worldviews.

The most subtle *can* have the largest impact.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2020 9:53 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] A Gender Gap in CHAT

  [EXTERNAL]

"Politically correct" is really incorrect, politically. I don't just mean that it has long since gone from being an inside joke on the left to being a bugaboo-boogaloo of the right and now an excuse for the overt, shameless propagation of racist filth, even on this list. I mean that the issues we are discussing under this heading are often sub-political, or only very subtley political, and reducing them to political stance taking means ignoring their real roots: economic, social, and cultural. That's why I really resisted the idea that my graduate student can fight patriarchy by refusing to teach a lesson in which two boys arm wrestle for a trophy girlfriend. It really makes a lot more sense to trust in teachers to teach the lesson critically, and trust in learners to learn skeptically. Besides, what's the point of saving your own soul if it costs you the rest of the world? (There is a feminist novel making the rounds here in Korea that refers to sexual harrassment, marriage, childbirth and almost every imaginable form of gender gap and somehow manages not to refer to female desire at all--understandably, the kids prefer K-pop, even though some of the K-pop stars have actually started reading it!)

I just read Perezhivanie, Emotions, and Subjectivity, which is the first volume of the Perspectives in Cultural Historical Research series that Nikolai and I are contributing to. There is much to commend, and even more to object to, but what really struck me is that we have a kind of gender gap within CHAT itself: the empirical classroom data is almost always supplied by younger women, and the theoretical, philosophical musings are heavily gendered towards older men. This tendency goes from the editors of the volume right down to the references and even the bibliography. Of course,  this gender gap--our own gender gap--is a reflection of the societies that we live in (from the early USSR right up to our present day). Of course, the editors and the authors and even the learners in the volume are all doing what they can to overcome it in various ways. But instead of going away, it tends to create a noticeable gap between theory and praxis. there is always a slight rumble and grinding of gears, a jump cut, when the article switches from "Theoretical Background" to "Study".  There is nothing quite comparable in, say, systemic functional linguistics. (Interestingly, systemic functional linguistics has a lot of intellectual "power couples", where both husband and wife are both theorists and practioners....) :

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
Outlines, Spring 2020
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!Trh03swFygF6ceszSW_t0pT5H-dduwTAWQVzqsVzVecrtiC0bIqyp1dHEptB6XR-ePbNxQ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!X2yy_83lDbgqTtDKl6EQm_VPddo4jocP4TDbY--02qSkAUMpyOSyWkVYnIRX4_dWtz5QLw$>
New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!Trh03swFygF6ceszSW_t0pT5H-dduwTAWQVzqsVzVecrtiC0bIqyp1dHEptB6XQDRJH0Mw$ 
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!X2yy_83lDbgqTtDKl6EQm_VPddo4jocP4TDbY--02qSkAUMpyOSyWkVYnIRX4_cJdgJlIw$>
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