Gender Communication
Theories & Analysis
From Silence to Performance
Lagdameo, Aronales, Alao
Development of
Feminism
THE FIRST FEMINIST WAVE:
VOTES FOR WOMEN
During the period of World War 1 (1914-1918),
Germany had already granted women suffrage in
comparison to the USA.
White middle-class women who were members of
the National Women's Party protested because of
undemocratic practices.
THE FIRST FEMINIST WAVE:
VOTES FOR WOMEN
Protested by "engaging in very unfeminine and
less than bourgeois practices"
Women won the vote in 1920.
THE FIRST FEMINIST WAVE:
VOTES FOR WOMEN
Difference feminism - women's innate moral
superiority.
Equity feminism - women and men as equals;
access to same resources and positions
Socialist-marxist feminism - focused particularly on
working-class women and their involvement in
class struggle and socialist revolution.
THE SECOND FEMINIST
WAVE
"The personal is political"
Radical feminism where it used performance fo
shed light on "women's oppression"
Criticizing "capitalism" and "imperialism", focusing
on the interests of oppressed groups.
THE SECOND FEMINIST
WAVE
Women-only groups and consciousness-raising
groups were formed to empower women.
Redstockings feminist group was influential, red in
their name symbolizes social revolution.
New left formed an alliance with socialist/Marxist
feminism in criticizing the dual workload of
women.
THE SECOND FEMINIST
WAVE
Liberal feminism from first wave continued in the
second wave, documenting sexism in private and
public life.
Difference feminism where gender is culture and
communication and the "genderlects"
It grew to now known as identity politics.
THE SECOND FEMINIST
WAVE
Black feminism - diversity of different standpoints
and identities.
French feminism took a different direction;
deconstructive feminine writing and idea of the
revolutionary potential of women's bodies.
Difference feminism claims that sexual difference is
universal but it is actually contextualand
changeable.
THE THIRD FEMINIST WAVE:
TRANSVERSAL POLITICS
Rise of the movement G.r.r.l.s (Great-Girls)
criticized sexist language, appropriated
derogatory terms for girls and women.
Exaggeration of stereotypes against women.
Goal: to develop a feminist theory and politics that
honor contradictory experiences and deconstruct
categorical thinking.
THE THIRD FEMINIST WAVE:
TRANSVERSAL POLITICS
In Europe the third wave was referred to as New
Feminism characterized by local, national, and
transnational activism.
Common denominator of third-wave feminism is to
redefine feminism.
THE THIRD FEMINIST WAVE:
TRANSVERSAL POLITICS
It is not defined by common theoretical and
political standpoints but by its performative acts.
Emergence of queer and transgender politics.
Development of cyberfeminism; the arbitrariness of
classifications and "natural" categories, locations,
and positions.
THE THIRD FEMINIST WAVE:
TRANSVERSAL POLITICS
Crux of the problem is heteronormativity
In the work Transfeminist Manifesto by Emi Koyama
, primary principles of transfeminism are defined:
a. To define one's identity and to expect society to
respect it.
b. To make decisions regarding one's own body.
Transversal politics is defined by the commitment to
listen and participate in a dialogue beyond the
differences in agenda.
SUMMARY OF THE WAVES OF FEMINISM
FIRST WAVE SECOND WAVE THIRD WAVE
Problem: complex
Problem: opression redistribution of power due
Problem: American women
towards women and those to globalization; lack of
have no right to vote.
who are queer. critical perspective that is
inclusive
Solution: White women
Solution: Create different
protested and did acts that
groups that gives voices to Solution: Rise of
were considered masculine
those “muted” groups in transfeminism and the
at that time
the society. notion of transversal
politics.
Structuralist and
Feminist
Communication
Theory
Structuralist Paradigm
a theoretical approach that analyzes deep-seated
structures shaping human behavior, focusing on
language, social systems, and ideology
used to explain how gender inequalities are embedded
in discourse, media, and social institutions
Karl Marx
German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary
socialist
argued that bourgeois society is built on private ownership and the division of
labor
Society is split into two main classes: the capitalists, who own the production
machinery, and the working classes, who are forced to sell their manual
labor
Marxist theory: the role of the state is to provide adequate conditions for
private production while securing an adequate supply of labor through
reproduction
Feminist Adaptations & Criticisms
Shulamith Firestone, Sheila Rowbotham, and Nancy Hartsock critiqued classical
Marxism for treating women's domestic labor as "non-productive."
Marxist feminists argue that women function as an unpaid labor force and a
workforce reserve, essential to capitalism.
Neo- Marxism
Shulamith Firestone, Sheila Rowbotham, and Nancy Hartsock critiqued classical
Marxism for treating women's domestic labor as "non-productive."
Marxist feminists argue that women function as an unpaid labor force and a
workforce reserve, essential to capitalism.
Louis Althusser (1918–1990)
overdetermination which suggests that the superstructure (ideology, culture)
has relative autonomy and is not entirely determined by the economy.
Argued that ideology is reproduced through Ideological State Apparatuses
(ISAs) such as media, education, and religion, which shape individuals' beliefs
and maintain social order.
Challenged the rigid economic determinism of classical Marxism, showing that
ideology plays a crucial role in maintaining power structures.
Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
hegemony -how dominant groups maintain power through cultural and
ideological consent, rather than coercion.
Unlike classical Marxism, which focused on economic oppression, Gramsci
highlighted the role of ideas, discourse, and media in sustaining inequality.
Proposed that social change happens through counter-hegemonic struggles,
where oppressed groups challenge dominant ideologies through alternative
discourses.
Ernesto Laclau & Chantal Mouffe (1985/2001)
expanded hegemony theory, analyzing how:
Gender ideologies are negotiated through discourse.
Gender identities are shaped by material conditions and social practices.
Chantal Mouffe applied these ideas specifically to gender studies, arguing that:
Multiple discourses construct "woman" in fragmented and shifting ways.
These discourses interact to produce systematic gender effects.
Structural Linguistics & Semiotics in Feminism
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), founder of
structural linguistics, theorized:
Language is a self-contained system with signs
Signifier (word/sound) → "woman"
Signified (concept) → "female identity"
Structural Linguistics & Semiotics in Feminism
Meaning is determined relationally:
"Woman" is understood only in opposition to
"man," "girl," "boy."
Language reinforces binary hierarchies ( man >
woman)
Structural Linguistics & Semiotics in Feminism
Jacques Lacan (1900–1981) extended these ideas
through psycho-semiotics:
Argued that language and unconscious structures define
gender identity.
Notoriously claimed, "The woman does not exist", meaning:
There’s a lack of a stable identity for women in a patriarchal
language.
They are defined only in relation to men.
Nanay ni Rizal
Asawa ni ....
Nakaaddress lang sa lalake
Muted Group
Theory
Shirley Ardener (1975)
Anthropologist
Developed the Muted Group Theory- suggests that women’s voices are unheard
due to dominant male-centered language and discourse.
Muted Group Theory
Suggests that women and men tend to form two distinct
circles of experience and interpretation, one overlapping
the other.
The masculine circle converges with the norms of
society, providing a masculine signature and overriding
the feminine circle.
Women as blackholes
muting is not the same as silencing and that muting is
successful only when the nondominant group (in this case,
women) ceases to find and develop alternative
communication styles to express their experiences and
code their messages
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
MGT draws from Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf
Language shapes perception of reality:
Deterministic view: Language determines how we see the
world.
Relativistic view: Language predisposes us to certain
interpretations.
Feminists argue that male-dominated language shapes societal
values, reinforcing patriarchal beliefs.
Muted Group Theory
Highlights the interplay of subject, language, and
society and emphasize agency, complexity, and
contingencies in exercising power.
Poststructuralism marks a performance turn, a turn
toward performance as an embodied communicative
practice
Standpoint
Theory
Standpoint Theory
Developed as a feminist critique of power and knowledge,
focusing on how women’s lived experiences provide a unique
perspective on social structures
examines the relationship between power and knowledge
Dominant perspective (biased) vs the less powerful perspective
Patricia Hill Collins emphasized that women’s experiences are
not universal—standpoint theory must include race, class, and
sexuality
Application of Standpoint Theory
Carol Gilligan (1982) used standpoint theory in moral
psychology, arguing that:
Women emphasize an ethic of care and relational morality.
Men focus on justice and individual rights.
Sonja Foss & Cindy Griffin (1995) proposed “invitational
rhetoric”, a feminist alternative to traditional persuasive
communication:
Encourages dialogue and mutual understanding rather than
dominance and persuasion.
Criticism
Critics argue that standpoint theory assumes women have a
universal perspective, which contradicts the emphasis on social
diversity.
It has evolved through poststructuralist feminism, integrating
fluid and intersectional perspectives on identity.
Revitalized in the 1990s through continued research by
Hartsock, Harding, Collins, and Heckman, emphasizing that:
Women’s experiences are diverse and complex.
Truth is socially constructed and found in lived experiences.
Posttructuralist and
Feminist
Communication
Theory
Post-structuralism
Highlights the interplay of subject, language, and
society and emphasize agency, complexity, and
contingencies in exercising power.
Poststructuralism marks a performance turn, a
turn toward performance as an embodied
communicative practice
Notable Scholars to the Poststructralist Paradigm
Michael Foucault Jacques Derrida Jacques Lacan Judith Butler
Michael Foucault (1926-1984)
French Philosopher and Historian
Foucault criticized Marxism and psychoanalysis, arguing that our current ideas,
institutions, and behavior patterns are to be understood as discursive regimes.
Foucault referred to the regimes as a simultaneous process of subjectification
and embodiment in which discourses become both subjective and material.
One of his key points is that truth and systems of power are linked in a complex
relationship, which both induces and extends itself, and that power is
considered both complex and contingent—and productive as well as
destructive.
In his own research, Foucault concentrated on how (groups of) individuals have
been classified and constructed as either mad, sick, criminal, or sexually
deviant and how these groups have been marginalized, pathologized, and put
forth as legitimate targets of medical, legal, and governmental intervention.
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
French-Algerian Philosopher and Linguist
Derrida introduced the renowned notion of différance, in which he combined
the noun différence (difference) and the verb différer (defer) in its present
principle, différant. He thereby suggested a simultaneous move in space and
time in order to signify the ongoing play of signs between signifier and signified,
sign and meaning.
Différance denotes that there is no absolute difference and thereby no
absolute identity, only an ongoing diversification process.
Throughout his work, Derrida suggested counteracting phallogocentrism by
focusing on the workings of displacement and exclusion in language and what
he called the return of the marginalized and devalued in order to establish a
deliberate strategy of destabilization and subversion
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)
French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist
Lacan has been influential to both feminist structuralist and poststructuralist
scholars, particularly his ideas on the evolution of identity.
He proposed that the subject is always constituted through the violence of
separation and the substitution in and by language, a situation preceded by the
mirror phase, in which the subject learns to know itself as a reflection in the
eyes of the (m)other.
According to Lacan, the constitution of a subject takes place through its own
imaginary identifications, on one hand, and the different symbolic positions
offered by language, on the other.
Accordingly, subjects can never be self-identical, and “the Real” can exist only
in the intersection between “the Imaginary” and “the Symbolic.”
Judith Butler (1956-present)
American feminist philosopher and rhetorician
Combined the impulses from Foucault,Derrida, and Lacan to create a fully
developed new Poststructuralist paradigm
Butler promoted an understanding of gender, along with other significant social
markers such as sexuality and ethnicity, as discursive practices that produce the
very effects they presume to name, always intricately imbued by power and
inflected by each other but simultaneously unstable and prone to displacement
Inspired by Anglo-American pragmatics and particularly by the speech act
theory of John L. Austin (1911–1966) as well as Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan,
Butler advanced the idea that language and communication neither merely
reflects nor affects gender.
Gender is effected through language and communication.
Performance and
Positioning Theory
Performance and Positioning Theory
The concept of performance as a display of powerful discourses in a
stylized citational practice.
Gender is a regulatory social practice that conditions the way sex is
materialized and that is installed on the body as a repeated stylization,
as bio-power.
Sex and gender are one and a question of discursive practices to be
continuously generated from the heterosexual matrix, which requires
two supplementary genders. (Foucault)
The heterosexual matrix reinstates itself through the installation of
regulatory, normative gender practices.
Performance and Positioning Theory
According to Austin, the performative is a verb that acts in the very
moment of speaking—for instance in naming, hailing, and cursing—
deriving its illocutionary force from the embodied enactment of a
particular ritual.
Butler (1997) developed the core thesis of the performative
“nature” of gender as a discursive practice, which tends to
bring about that which it names insofar as it embodies established
social rituals. (Austin)
Derrida claimed the power of the performative springs from the fact
that it is iterable and free of context.
Butler (1997) has added her own claim: the significance of the body.
Queering effect
Performance and Positioning Theory
Positioning theory, much like performance theory, operates with terms
such as discourse, subjectivity, and positioning in order to analyze the
dynamic aspects of social encounters.
Positioning theory outlines the relationship between subject, discourse,
practice, and positioning.
Discourses are here understood to provide subjects with positions to
inhabit in practice.
Having assumed a particular position, a person inevitably sees the world
from the vantage point of that position in terms of certain images,
metaphors, story lines, and concepts, also known as interpretative
repertoires.
Conversation is a structured set of speech acts that is defined by refernce
to social [illocutionary] force.
Transgender and
Cyborg Theory
Transgender and Cyborg Theory
Viewing gender as performance does not necessarily lead to a
deconstruction of gender.
Performance - embodied enactments distinguishing certain events
Performativity - embodied enactments that are tied to and comment on
the powerful discourses and institutionalized frameworks that constitute
them.
Transgender theorists suggest engaging in the delicate interplay of
performances and performativity by naming and legitimizing a plethora of
gender possibilities, thereby avoiding the pitfalls of a two-gendered system
Drag Queens and Kings
Transgender and Cyborg Theory
Edward Davies (2004) has suggested that we may even discuss gender in the
shape of gender mobility, gender migration or gender transgression
in which “new” gendered and sexual categories are named and legitimated.
He has further suggested a four-step process along the lines of
evolution, revolution, involution, and evolution: imagining sexual
identity (evolution), outing sexual identity (revolution), establishing
sexual identity (involution), and reviewing sexual identity (evolution)
Sandy Stone - gendered borderlands
To Stone, gender/sexual identity is not fixed, nor is it a temporary stage
that individuals outgrow, but rather a real and meaningful experience.
Putting trans into gender thus facilitates a move beyond conventional
manifestations of gender and sexuality. To transgender theorists, it is vital
to also engage in the politics of naming, to assure recognition and
acceptance.
Transgender and Cyborg Theory
Cyborg Manifesto (Donna Haraway) - a criticism of Western humanism
for privileging humans over both other living beings and nonorganic materials
or machines.
Cyborgs - transcend not only the categories of gender but also other
“natural” boundaries, such as race and sexuality. (e.g. woman of color)
Haraway stresses materiality, the importance of situating oneself as a scientist
or a feminist in a specific situation, place, or body, and she suggests the
critical position of embodied “she-cyborgs.”
All knowledge is situated, and new knowledge can be generated only from
this outset.
Rosi Braidotti - reintroduced women’s bodies as particular “body sites”
“perverse-productive” alliance between technology and body and
between technology, politics, and art (a form of feminist agency)
Transgender and Cyborg Theory
Transgender theory and cyborg theory have come together to articulate new
theoretical frameworks that deconstruct the two-tiered gender system and
provide a plethora of gender possibilities, thereby also challenging the idea
of distinct feminisms and opening up the possibility of transfeminism.
Transfeminism denotes not only the diversity and possible mixture of
different types of feminisms but also the very possibility of a new
reflexive framework that cuts across feminisms and even challenges the
idea of particular feminist concerns, grounded in the notion of gender.
Conclusion
Like feminist structuralism, feminist poststructuralism addresses the workings of
power through discourse, although it is conceptualized differently.
Within the structuralist paradigm, discourse is assumed to work
dialectically insofar as it continuously reshapes and is shaped by
“reality.”
Within the poststructuralist model, there is no opposition between
discourse and reality; on the contrary, social and even material
phenomena are considered to be discursively produced. Discursive
practices systematically shape the subjects as well as the objects of which they
speak. Furthermore, power is now conceptualized as being fluid,
complex, and contingent, and attention centers mainly on the
power of agency and the empowerment of groups and individuals.
Thank you!
