BEFORE AND AFTER GENDER Hau BOOKS Executive Editor Giovanni da Col Managing Editor Sean M. Dowdy Editorial Board Anne-Christine Taylor Carlos Fausto Danilyn Rutherford Ilana Gershon Jason Throop Joel Robbins Jonathan Parry Michael Lempert Stephan Palmié www.haubooks.com BEFORE AND AFTER GENDER SEXUAL MYthOLOGIES OF EVERYdaY LifE Marilyn Strathern Edited with an Introduction by Sarah Franklin Afterword by Judith Butler Hau Books Chicago © 2016 Hau Books and Marilyn Strathern Cover and layout design: Sheehan Moore Cover photo printed with permission from the Barbara Hepsworth Estate and The Art Institute of Chicago: Barbara Hepworth, English, 1903-1975, Two Figures (Menhirs), © 1954/55, Teak and paint, 144.8 x 61 x 44.4 cm (57 x 24 x 17 1/2 in.), Bequest of Solomon B. Smith, 1986.1278 Typesetting: Prepress Plus (www.prepressplus.in) ISBN: 978-0-9861325-3-7 LCCN: 2016902723 Hau Books Chicago Distribution Center 11030 S. Langley Chicago, IL 60628 www.haubooks.com Hau Books is marketed and distributed by The University of Chicago Press. www.press.uchicago.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. Distributed Open Access under a Creative Commons License (CC-BY ND-NC 4.0) The Priest Sylvester, in Russia in the sixteenth century, writes to his son: The husband ought to teach his wife with love and sensible punishment. The wife should ask her husband about all matters of decorum; how to save her soul; how to please the husband and God; how to keep the house in good order. And to obey him in every- thing. And no matter how guilty the wife is, the husband should not hit her eyes or ears, nor beat her with his fist or feet under the heart. But to beat her carefully with a whip is sensible, painful, fear-inspiring, and healthy. In the case of a grave offence, pull off her shirt and whip politely, holding her by the hands and saying: “Don’t be angry; the people should not know about it; there should be no complaints.” (Quoted in Catlin 1929: xvi) Lord Kames, Loose hints upon education (1781): “To make a good husband is but one branch of a man’s duty; but it is the chief duty of a woman to make a good wife.” (Quoted in Catlin 1929: xx) From George Gissing, The odd women (1893): “I don’t think, Edmund, there’s much real difference between men and women. That is, there wouldn’t be, if women had fair treatment.” “Not much difference? Oh, come; you are talking nonsense. There’s as much difference between their minds as between their bodies. They are made for entirely different duties.” Monica sighed. “Oh, that word Duty!” From Wilkie Collins, The woman in white (1859–60): “Human ingenuity, my friend, has hitherto only discovered two ways in which a man can manage a woman. One way is to knock her down—a method largely adopted by the brutal lower orders of the people, but utterly abhorrent to the refined and educated classes above them. The other way (much longer, much more difficult, but in the end not less certain) is never to accept to provocation at a woman’s hands. It holds with animals, it holds with children, and it holds with women, who are nothing but children grown up.” From George Gissing, The odd women (1893): [Miss Barfoot, talking about her uncle:] “I have heard him speak bitterly, and very in- discreetly, of early marriages; his wife was dead then, but everyone knew what he meant. Rhoda, when one thinks how often a woman is a clog upon a man’s ambition, no wonder they regard us as they do.” “Of course, women are always retarding one thing or another. But men are intensely stupid not to have remedied that long ago.” Table of Contents Original Acknowledgments ix Editorial Note xi editor’s introduction “The Riddle of Gender” by Sarah Franklin xiii preface “Concepts in Transition” by Marilyn Strathern 1 chapter one The Seductive Symbol 5 chapter two Stereotypes 33 chapter three Families and Housewives 63 chapter four The World Outside 97 viii BEFORE AND AFTER GENDER chapter five Dependency 129 chapter six Sex and the Concept of the Person 175 chapter seven Sex and the Social Order 245 Afterword by Judith Butler 293 References 303 Index of Names 309 Original Acknowledgments The purpose of this book is to apply some of the findings of social anthropolo- gists to a topic which they do not often treat on its own, male-female relations. It is intended to suggest a point of view rather than offer an original synthesis, and the ideas in it are drawn from many sources in addition to those specifically given reference. But although the point of view is one which an anthropologist might be expected to follow, it in no way amounts to an orthodoxy. At the same time, I have both taken much anthropological analysis for granted and been free with the material I quote. I hope the authors whose works I cite will find there has not been too much distortion. Several parts of the book were written in collaboration with Joyce Evans, my mother. I thank her for her help in this way, especially for the reading she did and for perusing the manuscript. Joyce Evans has for many years lectured on women’s roles and “the woman question” to historical studies and literature classes, and any perspective I can lay claim to on the topic derives largely from what she has taught me. Marilyn Strathern Port Moresby, 1974 Editorial Note In the quoted material, paragraphs follow the original text, with occasional eli- sions, but not necessarily in the original order. Intervening or missing text is indicated by ellipses (. .), while square brackets ([ ]) supply explanatory or link- ing material, or else an English term substituting for a vernacular. All original footnotes have been ignored. Gratitude is offered to all of the authors and publishers who kindly gave consent for material to be reproduced in this volume: Robin Morgan, Wiley Publishers, Shirley Ardener, Stanford University Press, The CS Lewis Company LDT, International African Institute, Ann Oakley, Pearson UK, Taylor and Francis Group (UK), Fabian Society, Aboriginal Studies Press (with particu- lar thanks to Kim Johnston), and the American Anthropological Association. The author, editor, and publisher would also and especially like to thank Gavin Stevenson for his invaluable assistance. editor’s introduction The Riddle of Gender Sarah Franklin Written in Port Moresby in the early 1970s, Marilyn Strathern’s remarkable missing book makes an invaluable contribution to gender scholarship on several fronts.1 It would have had an immense effect on the questions it addresses had it been published sooner, and has for too long lacked a wider audience. It reads, like many feminist writings from the 1970s, with vivid contemporary relevance to questions of sex, sexuality, and sexual inequality. This is a classic 70s feminist text with a difference, however, as it offers a more complete theory of gender as a social and cultural form than any other writing from this era and interrogates how “woman” came to be a question at all. The intervening four decades since it was written allow us to appreciate the insights Before and after gender offers into changing forms of feminist argumentation, as well as their objects. These transforming frames of feminist thought cannot be aligned within an orderly genealogical sequence: the issues are too vast, too intertwined, and too impor- tant to be understood to have “evolved” in the manner we often associate with 1. I would like to thank Marilyn Strathern for agreeing to publish this book as well as Judith Butler for generously providing the Afterword. Hau Books has been an assiduous partner in this effort, and I am also grateful to the many authors and publishers who have agreed to allow lengthy citations from their work to be reprinted here. xiv BEFORE AND AFTER GENDER this word—namely to progress. The thick palimpsest of debate that allows the twenty-first century reader to parse Strathern’s early engagement with the gen- der concept through the present lens of trans activism, queer theory, and cyborg feminism means that this text, in a sense, has not aged at all. Indeed, the text remains extremely lively. The decision to retitle a work com- missioned and written for a general audience concerning “men and women” to mark instead the many transformations in how gender is conceptualized ex- presses not only an intellectual, scholarly, and political ambition. There is an- other reason, too. Throughout this text the art of demonstration is at a premium, and it turns out to reveal even more than was originally intended. Part of the reason for this amplitude is that we get the several layers of icing hindsight al- lows to us add on top of what was a very impressive cake to begin with. We can slice this satisfaction several ways—in terms of how prescient so many of the insights offered here remain, in terms of the dexterity of argumentation and the quality of writing, and through the fascinating glimpses of how gender began to be rethought that flash past in the snapshots Strathern provides of the texts that influenced her thinking. The manuscript was produced under commission for a series to be edited by Jean La Fontaine in association with the Royal Anthropological Institute. But the series fell through. The neatly typed completed manuscript was carefully labeled, wrapped in card, bound with string, tucked into a red box, and shelved. When the decision to publish this long waylaid manuscript had been taken, and the editing begun, it was an easy decision to agree not to make any other than minor and mainly typographical corrections because this is a beautifully written and argued book.