Blog Post #1

I cannot believe that my first blog post for this class is exposing this experience I had. I also cannot believe I am talking to candidly about this because I worry that what happened between my roommate and I earlier last semester would not be taken seriously, both the occurrence and why I am still thinking about it months later.

In other words, this experience falls in line with one issue that feminist theory touches on heavily: The question of whether or not this study is really about real-world issues and if it’s as important as security, etc. As somebody who has been gendered, it really backs a person into a wall.

Last semester, I was sitting in my living room with a new male roommate of mine. He was going on about how we should hang out and do something other than watch TV. I had sent him a list of activities to do in and around Gainesville, and he pulled it up.

Then he said: “Oh, paintball sounds fun.” Then he looked at me and blinked.

“But guns are a guy thing,” he said. “So, you probably wouldn’t be into that.”

I was honestly dumbfounded. He said the same thing, about a week later, when I suggested laser tag as if the concept of hiding to escape being (hypothetically) shot suddenly decided its victims would only be males.

As I type this out, I think about Cynthia Enloe writing in “The Curious Feminist” about the terms “always,” “tradition,” etc. To my roommate, guns have always been a guy thing; traditionally, they’re not a girl thing. (Enloe, 2004, 2)

His mother, too, hopped on the bandwagon by telling me, “You live with guys. What do you expect?” when I spoke to her about how messy her son is.

Now since I’ve brought up a major point of feminist theory, I should bring up a second one as well that resonates with me: Taking seriously the experiences of women.

Around the same time last semester, this same roommate got the wrong impression of me agreeing to watch a movie with him on the couch. Not to get into too many details, but let’s just say it took me five times of kindly protesting before I got up and went upstairs for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, to this day, this roommate doesn’t show much remorse for that night and only thinks a “sorry” is good enough.

So, to the question of whether or not feminist theory is as important as security or other avenues of studies, my answer will always be yes.

A quote by Enloe has really resonated with me as well: “We also need to be genuinely curious about others’ lack of curiosity—not for the sake of feeling self-satisfied, but for the sake of meaning- fully engaging with those who take any power structure as unproblematic.” (Enloe, 2004, 3)

Today in class, we spoke about Robert Keohane and his interpretation of feminist theory, and it reminded me of that quote. Like the rest of the discussion, it also reminded me of the two aforementioned issues and how it seems as though he fell down the hole a lot of people tend to fall down when it comes to feminist issues, especially those of women.

Keohane seems to have attempted to fit feminist theory into what he believes it should be and analyzed it as such, as somebody had pointed out.

I do understand what Keohane was getting at when he wrote that feminist theory should create an “alliance” with liberal institutionalism because the latter is related to power and state behavior. As well, Keohane points out that liberal institutionalism is “persistent and connected sets of rules (formal and informal) that prescribe behavioral roles, constrain activity, and shape expectations' - are as important as the distribution of power in affecting state behavior.” (Keohane, 1989, 250) This falls in line with feminist theory regarding gender roles and the gendering of characterizes as well as the concept of traditionalism in how people are, what they like, what they do, the roles they play in society and in the household, etc.

But what I fear, among all of that, is Keohane’s seemingly backward stepping of belittling a couple of works in his response to Ann Tickner’s article “You Just Don’t Understand” as well as Cynthia Weber’s writing. It’s as if he had forgotten the concept in his own writing of the feminist standpoint and how the perspectives of women are quite important and instead, he questions the “real-world” reach of Weber’s approach and the “response” to his “challenge” of bringing together feminist theory and institutionalism. (Keohane, 1998, 193)

He considered his own writing on the topic a “challenge” to feminist theorists, but to me, it looked more like somebody who was unwilling to be curious enough to take a step back and look at feminist theory as a separate entity rather than something that must fit inside one of three boxes to make sense.

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The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire, by Cynthia H. Enloe, University of California Press, 2006.

Keohane, Robert O. “International Relations Theory: Contributions of a Feminist Standpoint.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 18, no. 2, 1989, pp. 245–253

Keohane, Robert O. “Beyond Dichotomy: Conversations Between International Relations and Feminist Theory.” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 1, 1998, pp. 193–197