Moving beyond feminism: Toward a new ideology of gender

Contemporary American society operates under a set of cultural ideologies that not only inform individual ideas of truth, but help to perpetuate the chosen ideological 'truths' of the governing segments of the population. The actuality of innate 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics is one such 'truth' that has prevented Enlightenment doctrines of equality and humanism from being extended to women in modern democratic society. An examination of gendered myth in selected literary works from Ancient Greece to the present reveals the perpetuation of a dysfunctional, culturally constructed concept of the 'feminine.' Academic theory, feminist texts, and the texts of American popular culture (such as film, which has to a degree taken the on the mythological role of literature in 20th Century America), have perpetuated these ancient mythological concepts of 'femininity,' even while they have seemed in part to supplant them. By applying contemporary anthropological theory, myth theory, literary theory and translation theory to questions concerning the dissemination of the 'feminine' myth (as established in Hesiod's account of Pandora and Ovid's account of Pygmalion's Ivory Girl) from its origins in ancient Greece and Rome to its persistence in contemporary American popular culture, one can gain insight into the causes of the failure of feminist revolutions and other equality based movements to bring about gender equality in contemporary American society. The Pandora and Pygmalion myths exemplify the gendered and hierarchical nature of the myths of Ancient Greece and Rome that have in turn shaped American social institutions and have caused modern myths to continue to be shaped by western cultural ideology. These gendered myths are based upon the establishment of a hierarchical and dyadic opposition between the concepts of 'masculine' and 'feminine'---terms which in reality have little (if any) biological basis. This conceptual dyadic hierarchy was effected by Aristotle and its philosophical effects have endured throughout western history. Geertz's theory of social and cultural ideological dependency and change provide vital insights into the manner in which this phenomenon functions. Only when this theory is integrated with translation and semiotic theory and applied in an interdisciplinary manner to methodologies concerned with mythology and pedagogy can the destructive effects of gender bias be countered. Such an application could have the effect of making society receptive to a re-visioning of gender mythology that is humanist in orientation and that will transform cultural ideology, inducing the educational systems it creates to define human value using terms that do not permit discriminatory conclusions to be posited or perpetuated. What is needed to begin the process of amendment is the establishment of terms that are not gendered to replace those of 'masculine' and 'feminine' in both academic theory and pedagogical practice. This first step toward the transformation of cultural ideology and social reality into structures that are in actuality democratic and sexually impartial can then be expanded upon and integrated into other academic disciplines. Ultimately these conceptual approaches can be redirected toward the elimination of other types of discrimination in American society.