Month: October 2019

The Wikipedia article Masculinity has many underdeveloped sections. While it briefly touches on the social construction of gender, there is limited content to support these points. Reading the article, “‘Night to His Day’ The social construction of Gender” by Judith Lorber, would support and add depth to the Masculinity Wikipedia article. The section on the development of masculinity would benefit significantly from added content–mainly by references and citations added specifically the sub-topic title “The Social Construction of Masculinity” that address knowledge gaps and support the idea of gender as a social construction. Although there are multiple ways to be masculine in the world, the article is a bit misleading as it downplays representations of hegemonic masculinity or toxic masculinity. The article then goes on to discuss anything other than “normative” performances of gender as effiminate. For example, Lorber states, “Gendered social arrangments are justified by religion and cultural productions and backed by law, but the most powerful means of sustaining the moral hegemony of the dominant gender ideology is that the process is made invisible; any possible alternatives are virtually unthinkable” (356). Mostly, the Masculinity Wikipedia article potentially is part of the erasure of any performance of masculinity outside of hegemonic masculinity by using terms such a “normative” in juxtaposition to effeminacy. The comparison of normative masculinity and “effeminacy” masculinity, whether intentional or not, ultimately others all things outside of “normative” masculinity in the Wikipedia article and also generalizes gay men as a static identity. The language used in the article has the power to continue to uphold and participate in hegemonic masculinity. Furthermore, the subsection on hegemonic masculinity contains only one citation and is labeled confusing from Wikipedia.

Works Cited

Lorber, Judith. “‘Night to His Day’ The Social Construction of Gender.” Readings For Diversity and Social Justice, edited by Maurianne Adams et al., Fourth edition, Routledge, 2018, pp. 354–59.

When the hegemonic identity or default / standard human existence and experience is white, social systems of power not only impact online spaces but also sustain and preserve white colonists’ ideals. We live in a white, heteronormative, capitalist patriarchal society. Furthermore, this is the social system of normativity that has power and social influence in several overlapping social, digital, and institutionalized spaces. However, this is not to say that social change and activist efforts are not on-going and have been on-going. However, what this does tell us is that similarly to social norms, digital norms, and online spaces are considerably influenced, occupied, and appropriated by white folks. Most specifically, in terms of feminism, hegemonic white feminism consumes and upholds digital and social power on the internet. For example, Daniels argues, “Without an explicit challenge to racism, White feminism is easily grafted onto White supremacy and becomes a useful ideology with which to argue for equality for White women within a White supremacist context” (Daniels). Mainly, without an intersectional lens, where women at all social locations have safe spaces online to create content and create social change and justice, feminism online is part of systemic racism and oppression of women who challenge social norms.

Continuing, the lateral violence in the social justice and social change areas that white heteronormative capitalist patriarchal power causes include the perpetuation of colonialism, and the erasure of Indigenous folks, people of color, and anyone who challenges social norms, as well as the appropriation of their experiences. ancestral knowledge and cultural value. Additionally, when white folks imagine solutions to social problems without an inclusive and intersectional approach to the many systems of oppression women in all social locations experience, the risk of institutionalized violence exists, along with state violence through the prison industrial complex. Without a critique of whiteness and its racial power, white feminism in digital spaces is dangerous, harmful, and rooted in white supremacy.

Works cited

Daniels, Jessie. “The Trouble With White Feminism: Whiteness, Digital Feminism, and the Intersectional Internet.” The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online, edited by Safiya Umoja Noble and Brendesha M. Tynes, vol. 105, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, pp. 41–60.