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T h o r n c r o w n C h a p e l , E. F a y J o n e s , A r k a n s a s . …g e n d e r & e n v i r o n m e n t a l j u s t i c e…. The Sexual Politics of Dwelling. Exam? June 2 nd or 3 rd ?.
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T h o r n c r o w n C h a p e l , E. F a y J o n e s , A r k a n s a s …g e n d e r & e n v i r o n m e n t a l j u s t i c e… The Sexual Politics of Dwelling
Exam? • June 2nd or 3rd?
Keith Brasso’s Wisdom Sits in Places:“for what people make of their places is closely connected to what they make of themselves as members of society and inhabitants of the earth, and while the two activities may be separable in principle, they are deeply joined in practice…We are, in a sense, the place-worlds we imagine” (7).
Aaron Betsky – “Of Penises and Tents”Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture and the Construction of Sexuality • “Men dominate space, and women are shunted to the side of sex, nature and culture. Male body imagery is everywhere, from the phallic constructions of skyscrapers to the ‘muscular’ constructions of our civic buildings. Men rule, and their power is made real through architecture” (xii). • BUT… • Read: “The world that men have made…realms of women” (xiii). • Would you say there are “masculine” spaces and “feminine” spaces? How are these defined for us? • Outside/Inside • Hard/Soft • Steel/Fabric • Appendage/Wound • “Women had a role and a place: to make livable the world men made” (xii). • Read: “We thus live in a…imprisoned them” (xiii-xiv). • “We are taught to that we should aspire to the world of men, which is a world of importance and meaning, but we feel at home in the world created by women” (xiv).
“This distinction is obviously absurd. There is no reason why skyscapers are more important than bedrooms or why women should make places that are more comfortable than those men make. Our culture has assigned these roles and made these places, building on the skills and attributes of our bodies but transforming them into roles that are as oppressive as those we ascribe to wage earners, soldiers, or prostitutes” (xiv). • “..women have wombs and men have penises; ergo, women protect and men project. ..” (xiv). • How are our the very structures we inhabit shaped by power? • Results? “[The split between projection and protection] has resulted in a world of inhuman cities in which we try to carve out places for ourselves. That means that we all are women trying to make ourselves at home in a world of men” (xiv-xv).
“Women’s Environmental Rights: A Manifesto” Leslie Kanes Weisman Gender Space Architecture The Phenomenology of the Skyscraper.. What does the skyscraper say? “Architect Louis Sullivan, often referred to as the ‘Father of the Skyscraper’, described a building by his colleague…this way: Read: “Here is a man for you to look at…miscegenation” (119). “Both the process through which we build and the forms themselves embody cultural values and imply standards of behavior which affect us all” (119). “Skyscapers in our cities compete for individual recognition and domination while impoverishing human identity and the quality of life.”
The Hierarchy of Buildings • Religion • Government • Business
Our built environment reflects the genders that we’ve also constructed. • Erik Erikson’s experiments? p. 2-3 • Wombs/tents vs. Penises/skyscrapers? • Women’s bodies “house” and therefore women belong in the home. • Men’s bodies protrude therefore men belong in the social sphere! • “…the real world we all inhabit is no more than a mirror of the architecture of the sexes” (4). • “Women’s” versus “men’s” spaces in the house? • “We have taken the logic of reproduction and erected over it a world of production, in which men and women have different places and functions…What is not logical is the way we accept this situation as the only possible outcome for any society”(p. 5).
The Campfire and the Monument • “It is the gathering of a group of men and women around a campfire, speaking and making things, that makes a place, a community, and social relations” (9). • What kind of space is a campfire? • The birth of architecture and matriarchy. • Two impulses: dwell/define. (11) • The Beginning of Architecture • Textiles or Walls? Tents or Huts? • The phenomenology of the tent? • What kind of dwelling is the tent? (15) • Typical story excludes women and community/society. • Architecture was defined as man’s triumph over the elements using walls and a roof: “…architecture was an act of the willful imposition of order by a man. There is no evidence for this story, and it seems rather illogical when you think about the much more pressing needs for food, protection, and sex. It assumes that our society is a clear break from nature, performed by men” (16). • Dwellings became Monuments; • Land Became Territory. • Women, Children, Animals, Land as Man’s Property.
“Before there was land that was owned, and before there was an abstract language that was written down, there was the reality of the tent that made us at home in the world. It was a real place, made by men and women together. It was the scene of our humanity, one in which we made a world for ourselves” (18). • We continue to reproduce the erroneous model: • Men leave the home, travel the world. Men give women their homes, pay for them. Women go from the home of the father to the home of the husband. • Women designing and building their own spaces is as powerful as women making as much money as men, doing the same jobs as men. • Men long to leave home.Women long to have their own. • Men want to fill their homes with more property. • Women want to decorate it because • it’s the one place they are told is theirs. • READ: “Two ways…women by men” (19).
“Architecture makes our limits present” • Alberto Perez-Gomez • “The appropriation and use of space are political acts…each woman must become her own architect” • Leslie Kanes Weisman
