Adam Sandler's latest movie

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The movie gets panned, deservedly so, a drag queen without the refinements? Does anything go in comedy, or just women? Some do it better, some worse.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jan/26/what-a-drag-cross...

Comments

Comments

That Grauniad article had closed its comments before I could get in. Yet more 'gender is a construct' drivel with little comeback; it seems Money's poisonous tripe is still being trotted out.

Hint to Guardianistas: gender ROLES are constructs. I am not a shopper. I can read maps extremely well. I don't lust after jewellery. Make-up is no big thing for me, and the clothing is largely for influencing how others perceive me.

But I know, absolutely, what I am. And I always have done. Nobody 'constructed' me.

I don't feel constructed

I spent a day with my brother. At one point I got fed up with his "I think it's down here..." so I asked. That's not a gender construct; that's just common sense.

S.

Neither do I...

Andrea Lena's picture

...It feels more like I'm deconstructed...

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

The exception(s)...

Jennie Kermode

Okay, let's run throught the basics:-

In biologiy, 'male' means 'producer of comparatively small gametes'; female means 'producer of comparatively large gametes'. That's the only consistent distinction across species. There is no special meaning for humans.

'Man' and 'woman' are in fact the culturally constructed terms. We decide whether someone is a man or a woman based on a set of physiological characteristics including genital appearance, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, hormone levels and brain anatomy. It is important to note, however, that these characteristics do not always align neatly in the expected ways. Between one and four percent of humans are to some degree intersex.

So much for sex. Then there's gender, which may or may not also have its origins in physiological factors (neuroscience suggests that it certainly does in some cases). Like the sex characteristics mentioned above, gender doesn't always neatly align in the ways we'd expect.

Gender has been understood very differently across a range of human cultures over time. No contemporary scientist would claim that women are inherently more interested in shopping - any anthropologist could tell you that in some places that's a masculine behaviour. So in arguing that gender roles are performative, Butler is strongly supported by evidence from a variety of respected scientific disciplines. Her theory is not anti-scientific. It is based on observable evidence.

An earlier comment from The Sub was on the right lines, but was called out on claiming that gender is purely a social construct.


As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

Some reviews are very subjective

but, then again, I notice that the media seems increasingly to adopt the premise that "if you tell someone something often enough, and with conviction, they'll believe it."

Sadly, very often, the viewing public is gullible enough to do so.

Susie

I'm never sure

Angharad's picture

about the gender/sex differentiation other than to consider I'm female and accept the gender things which tend to go with that to a large extent, except I'd rather cycle than do housework - as would most of the women in our cycling club.

I'm not very good with directions or map reading or mathematics and I do like shopping especially for books sometimes for clothes, and shoes - yesss. I do sometimes do the girly bit, makeup and so on, but often not.

How much of our behaviour is innate and how much is learned, I have no idea but I don't think I learned that I wanted to be female, because my cultural influences were anything but; I believe it came from within and was something I felt compelled to act upon.

Angharad

Exactly

Just as you say. Self knowledge rather than learned.

Except for the "gender as construct"

Except for the "gender as construct" bit, I thought it was a pretty good article.

I mean, the worst thing a reviewer can say about a comedy is that it's predictable and not funny.

To me, the solution is that we have to write the kind of stories they'd want to make into movies: comedies, dramas, tragedies, horror, everything.