Real Women

[Diana York Blaine]

Mark, let me clarify cuz you've got my position exactly backwards.  I do
NOT think there's essential and fundamental Woman. Nor do I think that
intuition and vulnerability are female.  They have been labeled
"feminine"--that's different. But there's no monopoly on them held by
those of us with ovaries.  We've needed to restrict characteristics
artificially to each (not-opposite) sex in service of various ideologies,
many of which are now under attack if not dead.  So we can redefine gender
if we want, and IMHO we ought to do a better job of it this time.

In terms of TRP, I agree he is "self-conscious about the impule to turn
the Other into a fixed and delimited object."  Good point and well-put.
BUT as we acknowledge self-consciousness, let's also acknowledge
un-consciousness.  He's no more able to divorce himself from his culture
than the rest of us are--that's why structuralism had to give way to
post-structuralism. The structuralist's assertion that he could stand
outside of any system to observe it objectively has been rightly debunked.
So Pynchon's representation of women will be sexist.  We live in a sexist
culture. This will be reflected in the material in both self- and
un-conscious ways.  And before everyone dumps on me, let me say that I am
sexist, and racist, of course, because I was raised in a culture that is.
Why do we waste all this time on parading around pretending not to be
affected by our socialization?  Let's acknowledge it and move on. Right
now there's a brouhaha at my bible belt university because one famously
racist fraternity (according to my husband who is a bona fide Southerner)
wrote *gasp* racist and sexist things in the "memory book" of a pledge.
It's pretty funny to watch to them scramble to refute the obvious but
the sad part is that we're prevented from real dialogue by yet again
making it a "you're wrong" no "you're wrong" issue.   Diana