Paper Example on Gender and Representation

Introduction

In the penetrating analysis of gender, Techno gender by Paul B. Preciado depicts how hormone synthesis since the 1950s has changed fundamentally how sexual identity and gender are formulated, and how the pornography and pharmaceutical industries are in the business of creating desire. The riveting continuation of Michel Foucault's history of sexuality has also included Preciado's diaristic account of his testosterone use every day for a year, and it becomes a mesmerizing impact on his body and his imagination (Preciado n.p). Preciado explains that the changes in neoliberalism that people are witnessing are characterized not only by the transformation of sex, sexuality, gender, pleasure and sexual identity into objects of living political management.

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Also, by the fact that the drawn management is carried via the dynamics that are new or an advanced techno-capitalism, biotechnologies and social media (Preciado n.p). According to Preciado, people are being confronted with a new type of psychotropic hot punk of capitalism. The recent transformations are imposing a new micro-prosthetic ensemble control mechanism of subjectivity using multimedia and biomolecular technical protocols. The economy of the world today is dependent upon the circulation and production of many synthetic steroids, on a worldwide diffusion of numerous images of pornography, on the distribution and elaboration of new varieties of illegal and synthetic psychotropic drugs, on the floods of circuit and signs of a digital transmission of information (Preciado n.p).

Nevertheless, after the second world war, the semipolitical context of subjectivity production seemed to be dominated by a series of new body technologies and representation that penetrate and infiltrate daily life like never before. These are digital, biomolecular and broad data transmission of technologies. The invention of the gender notion in the 1950s as a sexual reassignment technique and the commercialization of the contraceptive technique pill characterized the change from discipline to a Pharmacoporographic control. This is the age of feather-weight, viscous, soft, gelatinous technologies that can be incorporated in the testosterone. According to Preciado, when he takes the testosterone gel in the form of a gel or liquid injection, he gives himself a chain of political signifiers that are materialized to acquire the molecule form that the body can absorb (Preciado n.p).

He injects an oil-soluble steroid that is a crystalline carbon chain of molecules that has a fragment modernity history. Like a body, a techno-living system, Preciado says that the platform makes possible the materialization of political imagination. Preciado uses himself as the test item for the experiment on the effects and impacts of increasing intentionally the testosterone level in the body of a bio-female. The hormone could turn him into something different than a cis-female (Preciado n.p). The changes that are generated by the molecule are imperceptible socially as weird changes occur, a person is neither a techno-boy nor a techno-girl, but an insertion port for C19H28O2. Preciado is a copyleft biopolitical agent who considers the hormones of sex open and free bio codes, whose use should not be regulated by a nation commandeered by the pharmaceutical companies (Preciado n.p).

The testosterone consumption, like that of progesterone and estrogen in case of the pill, does not depend on ideal constructions of gender that can influence the way people think or act. According to Preciado, people are directly confronted by the materiality production of gender. Everything is a matter of regularity, doses, points of melting and crystallization, milligrams et cetera and what is happening to him is a molecular revolution that can point to a type of political gender homoeopathy (Preciado n.p). It is not a matter of transforming from man to woman or woman to man, but of contaminating the bases of molecular production of the sexual difference and understanding the males and female, only exist as biopolitical fictions or somatic effects of the technological normalization process. It is a matter of intentionally intervening in this production process to come up with viable forms of a gender that is incorporated. The action is done to produce a new effective and sexual platform that is neither female nor male in the Pharmacoporographic sense of Preciado's terms that can transform species possible. Also, T is a molecular door, a threshold or a becoming between multiplicities (Preciado n.p).

Nonetheless, with Preciado, the modern binary gender is done through representation, and Teju Cole also proves the strategy. In Cole's story, "A Too Perfect Picture," he writes about the photo of McCurry. He laments that McCurry's homogeneity latest book presents a worldview that through settling on an authenticity notion which edits out the present day, is simply not to present an alternative truth but is to indulge in a world of fantasy. Cole instead, offers the work of Ragubhir Singh whose work of gritty is a stark contrast to McCurry's boring work, which suggests that the more edgy style is somehow a more authentic view of the world (Cole 972). The notion that McCurry has spent his career setting up scenes in capturing iconic photos is a massive insult to a photographer who is talented. Just because a photo is too perfect does not indicate that it is.

The photo of James Nachtwey of falling WTC behind a cross on Saint Peter's church comes swiftly to mind as a photo that is too perfect, and of incredible tragedy. However, the picture was a combination of skill and luck (Cole 971). Additionally, the argument of Cole is not unique as at one-point David Shield lamented on the "war porn" that was found on New York's cover which led to publishing "War Is Beautiful." However, Coles point of view is a historical criticism with a lens that is temporary. The Afghan girl of McCurry is among the most recognizable and iconic images of the 20th century. This action suggests that the 21st century is vacuous and staged image is spurious. McCurry also helped to define a style of photojournalistic portraiture which is objectionable for Cole. Moreover, the dislike of Cole of McCurry does not diminish his corpus (Cole 973).

Additionally, in his profession, McCurry produces a video in India, and almost nothing in the video allows a true contemporaneity to the Indians. A fantasy withers in the realism sunlight but as long as the realism is held at bay, the fantasy can be satisfying to a large audience. Millions of people have watched the Coldplay video since it was posted. "Are we then to cry appropriation when a westerner approaches a subject that is non-western?" Non-Indians have made pictures that capture aspects of an endlessly complicated experience of Indians, just to have photographers who are Indians like Richard Bartholomew, Ketaki Sheth, to mention but a few. Creation of art is always difficult, but it is more difficult when it comes to sharing or telling the stories of people (Cole 974). And it is difficult ferociously when the people you are talking to are tangled up in your history, and you are also tangled up in their history. What honours the people we look at, or those whom we try to tell stories is work that acknowledges their complex sense of their reality. Taking the photos of Indian prostitutes only shows the world we live in and good photography is always emotionally generous according to Cole (Cole 974). For this reason, it outlives the moment that occasions it. Photography that is weaker delivers a quick message; pathos, humour, sweetness and fails to do more, but unfortunately, more is what we are.

Furthermore, Preciado says perceptions and representations permeate every aspect of life including science, and Emily Martin portrays this in her article "The Egg and The Sperm." Martin focuses the science anthropology and analyzes science from a perspective of a feminist. Her main work is to evaluate and analyze the human reproductive system or reproduction and related things. From her feminist perspective, she argues that the current scientific literature is gender-biased and is it through the language of the people (Martin 408). According to her, explanations that are scientific like "the sperm penetrates the egg forcefully" are depicted or presented in a sexist way, to women's disadvantage.

In "The Egg and the Sperm," Martin approaches scientific literature from an anthropologist's perspective. She evaluates the metaphors used to educate concepts of biology and claims that these metaphors reflect the constructed socially "definitions of female and male." Martin focuses on analogies that are made during fertilization with the roles that the sperm and the egg plays, and points how words like "debris, dying and sheds." As opposed to the "amazing, remarkable and produce" insinuate that when the biological processes of the female are inferior to that of male, so then will women be of less worth than the men (Martin 409).

Additionally, Emily Martin argues that the reproductive system of the female is shown as a failure because, during their menstrual cycle, they expel only one gamete per month while the reproductive system of male produces millions of sperms every day. She also describes the scientific accounts of the reproductive biology, stating that they produce pictures of the egg and the sperm always relies on stereotypes which prove to be key to most people's cultural definitions of female and male (Martin 410). For instance, Martin depicts that the perception of people on menstruation is always misogynistic and negative. People think menstruation as a failure as the egg is always not fertilized and the uterine tissues of the woman begin to shed off. Also, she ascribes this perception to a cultural and linguistic gender bias (words describing menstruation imply dirtiness, failure, destruction and wound). According to Martin, menstruation should be viewed as a success as it is a normal physiological process and function. However, in the language of people and their culture prevents this and the gender bias is responsible for a person's tendency to praise the male for their amazing ability in the production of the huge amount of sperms. Even though the sperm is biologically cheaper to produce as compared to the egg, and it also suffers extremely high mortality in the reproductive tract of the female (Martin 410).

Martin claims that these incidences imply that the biological processes of the female are less worthy than that of the male. The language that is used in describing the egg is more feminine, waiting for rescue, while the description of the sperm is said with a more masculine vocabulary. However, this stereotype is dispelled by Martin through research which proves that the egg is more aggressive than it is described (Martin 413). Most researchers as the question about the mechanical force of the tail of the sperm and they conclude that the sperm is weak. Thus, the egg of the female is more aggressive due to the adhesive molecules that can easily capture any sperm with a single bond and clasp it to the surface of the zona. Other researchers also concluded and gave credit to both the sperm and the egg being involved mutually, but it continues to use a vocabulary that is traditional in describing a sperm that is aggressive (Martin 412).

Conclusion

These studies show simultaneously scientists making efforts of changing the old and previous analogies. But in attempting to change the passive imagery of the female, scientists have gone to the extreme opposite to portray the egg as a "dangerous spider woman" and the sperm as the "person involved or the victim," according to the western stereotype and Martin poses the idea of using neutral analogies of gender instead (Martin 415). Nonetheless, when metaphors that are tradi...