Oldal 102 [102]
IZOLDA TAKÁCS: THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
necessarily imply her becoming feminine too”® and vice versa. They consider
this to be merely a question of personality, character, habitude, and not the
biological gender.?#f
I, for example, had a male peer who could only accept me as a leader if I was
behaving manly, even when driving a car. But there is no such thing, that men are
only manly and women only womanly. A woman can be masculine as well. But the
majority is full of prejudices. Due to their childhood experiences, their models, like
how their father behaved, etc. (Subject no. 17, social sciences)
A problem arose with relation to the attitudes typical ofthis grouping. Since
the gender of a woman is the most apparent difference, it would be worth
mentioning why placing the female body into the focal point of identity research
can be misleading.”*’ Based on the statements made by the interviewees grouped
into this category, if the genders definitely need to be discerned, women have
the more important roles — all things considered — due to their motherly (bi¬
ological) obligations. They think women to be positively different from men,
because a woman is a creator, existence itself is therefore tied to the female
continuity. They particularly stressed femininity as the area of positive demar¬
cation, meaning femininity and identifying with feminists do not necessarily
exclude each other in this case, unlike with the “essentialist identifiers” group:
No woman has to ever prove — just as a mother never has to ask — what life is, what
the purpose of their life is; men do. (Subject no. 17, social sciences)
We were sitting in the studio of a male painter. The wife — a painter as well — brought
us cookies, took care of everyone, served the guests, as a good wife ought to. She was
a better painter by miles than her husband. And besides, she even gave birth to two
children. (Subject no. 17, social sciences)
This also means that if a woman happens to have a more successful career
than a man or her husband, the traditional roles will still apply at home.
With regards to intergroup behaviour, Henri Tajfel (among others) states
that “an individual will tend to remain a member ofa group [...] if these groups
have some contribution to make to the positive aspects of his social identity;
285 Moi: Feminista irodalomkritika, 236.
86 Derrida elaborated on a Heideggerian interpretation referring to the 72nd fragment of The
Gay Science that states that Nietzsche considers the formation itself a manly act, just as the
whole of tradition. But if all that is shaped and created is manly, that means even the pro-cre¬
ating mother is a masculine mother (cf. Derrida, J.: Eperons. Nietzsche stilusai, Athenaeum
1992, I. kötet, 3. füzet, Budapest, T-Twins 1992, 172-213). As such, it disunites itself from
the general, social category of woman (Takäcs: Nök a tudomänyban).
287 Showalter: A feminista irodalomtudomány, 427.
s 100 ¬