Representations of Masculinities in Gaya Jiji's Film Named My Favorite Fabric

Introduction

The concept of sex refers to biological sex. Patriarchal societies based on the biological structure determine certain roles and behaviors they expect from men and women, depending on their sex. These expectations, defended with essentialist approach, are presented as norms that cannot be changed. The essentialist approach bases the roles and behaviors that shape social norms on the human nature. Even though the rules of these roles and behaviors of patriarchal societies, which have survived since the Early Neolithic Age, differ according to time and societies, the subjects of male domination, which make biology its basis, maintain the inequality between women and men and expect that women to be dependent on patriarchal authority. It can be argued that before the nineteenth century, individual struggle pioneers such as Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft laid the groundwork for struggles in the following centuries. From the second half of the nineteenth century, individual struggles began to turn into social struggles. The Victorian era, in which women were restricted through concepts such as chastity, honor and morality, went down in history as the period when the first steps were taken against increasing domination. In the Victorian era, when patriarchal norms surrounded women, rebellion against all norms was seen as the only solution and the struggle in this direction has begun to liberate not only women but also men. Described by Millett as a “sexual revolution”, this movement aims to abolish all institutions of patriarchy along with patriarchal ideology, to align polarized women and men on the basis of rights, and to upset the norms of the roles assigned to women and men. In this period, which is called the first wave of the feminist movement in the literature, some rights were obtained. However, the reactionary period that followed this period served to strengthen the patriarchy again (Millett, 2000: 62). The acceleration of left movements in the world towards the end of the 1960s brought the issue of women's rights back to the agenda and this time focused on the specific problems of women. Feminists realized the necessity of a struggle independent of their leftist groups. This is also the period when feminism began to be studied in academia. In the first half of the twentieth century, both the feminist movement and the developing literature helped the academy with a strict patriarchal structure to gain new perspectives. In this period, the argument of the essentialist approach that gender roles stem from the nature of human beings was opened for discussion and it was determined that gender roles were a social construction. Stoller uses a concept that first appeared in his book Sex and Gender. The concept of gender, which is also in the title of the book, is a concept that reveals that gender is socially, culturally and psychologically constructed. Stoller states that the process of learning gender identity begins with learning that a person belongs to a gender. Gender roles determine the social position of women and men (1968: 9, 10). Contrary to the essentialist approach, the constructivist approach reveals that with the concept of gender, gender roles cannot be explained by the nature of human beings, that they are built and changed by societies in line with expectations and are also imposed.