The Unconscious Mind: A Feminist Analysis

Society is very much aware of its conscious brain as it works away and leads them throughout the day unscathed. Society may even be vaguely aware of something called the unconscious mind, which they believe exists in the shadow of our conscious and “fills in the gaps” where it fails. However, our unconscious brain has more to do with our daily lives than we may take for granted. When we take a phone call and listen to caller’s voice, an image forms in our minds as to what the caller may be like. This may seem conscious, but, in fact, the image that forms is a reflexive selection of various biases stored within our unconscious brain that are pulled together from the word ‘hello’: deep voice signifies a man, eloquent and perspicacious language signifies a white man/woman, if

the voice is a woman, then she must have “Caucasian blue eyes, Spanish lips, California tan, long Swedish legs…” (Fey 23). If the reality is revealed to be quite different, as shown in the case of the boy in Billy Elliot, our unconscious brain produces an error message and the conscious mind resorts to criticism. Though the product of our unconscious bias is not directly our fault, we are still held accountable for not suppressing it. Our ingrained visual and verbal languages has created a social construct of male and female roles in our society that posits certain irrefutable truths about gender roles, which must be altered if we hope to consider ourselves as an egalitarian community.

During the feminist movement in the 1960’s and 70’s, women across the United States fought against society’s unconscious bias in an attempt to ensure that their daughters have the same opportunities as their sons.

From their struggle, we are now aware of how highly the English language is male oriented: the words, “mankind, chairman, family man, manpower, cameraman, forefathers, sportsmanship…” (Hurley). The role of women depreciated, not entirely because the community’s conscious bias did so forcefully, but because the unconscious mind noticed this trend of hidden bias within verbal language. Of course some of this language has been made more “neutral” in order to avoid the “sexist” label to chair member and such, but the bias has not left our psyche. Consider the autobiography of Tina Fey, Bossypants, where she discusses how Amy Poehler did “something vulgar as a joke” and the various male writers in the room commented on how it was, “unladylike” (Fey 129). When we talk about women in positions of leadership they are often called “bossy” or “pushy” or “stubborn”. Gender charged verbal language has discouraged women to lead, discouraged to participate, and even discouraged to speak at

all.

If a specific gender is constantly portrayed in a certain light, it both reflects our belief about that gender and, for better or for worse, shapes their role in our society. A new language within our communities is evolving with the help of Facebook and Instagram, which takes the usage of pictures as a language to an entirely new level. It is because of these sites and it’s users that the visual representation of a woman, created by our unconscious mind, shares a similar body structure as Jennifer Lopez (JLo) or Beyoncé, because, as Tina Fey states, “All Beyoncé and JLo have done is to add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful” (Fey 22). Women are constantly portrayed by actresses, singers, etc. as being sexualized and/or in supporting roles. Consider news and media: “The percentage of stories in which women were the subjects or the focus of interviews was 13.7% on ABC, 10.2% on CBS and 8.9% on NBC. Although women make up 52% of the United States population, they hold only 6 percent of the top management jobs in the news media” (Rasky). If young girls are constantly bombarded with evidence of their gender being this way, their views of their roles become limited.

Recently, the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister made a speech urging women not to laugh in public, his reason being, “[The woman] will know what is haram and not haram. She will not laugh in public. She will not be inviting in her attitudes and will protect her chastity" (Saul). The Prime Minister goes on to say “women can’t wait to climb poles when they see one” (Saul). Turkish women responded to this by taking pictures of themselves laughing and posting them on Facebook. These are the type of biases the Prime Minister and many others have when they consider women. He is not justified in doing such a thing, but women, and the visual language they employed, have given society all the evidence it needs. Armed with this, society has effectively generalized half the earth’s population as being immature, sexual objects that must be relegated into supporting roles in order to protect them. This is the damage that one visual language was capable of doing to a gender; now a woman must work twice as hard to remove that from her name.

Our society survives on a system of placing groups of citizens in boxes so that every option anyone could elect has been accounted for. These boxes are separated by age, by race, and by gender. This system was generally accepted, but now and again, one individual would not fit in his/her box. This was Billy Elliot; a boy who loved to do ballet, though his father did not approve. Billy’s father would often repeat the visceral characteristics of boys such as: “lads do football, boxing, not ballet.” Boys are often relegated if they do not fit this description by being referred to as a “poof” or homosexual. Billy eventually refuses to be put into a box; he realizes that his role and the possible roles for his gender reach farther than football and boxing.

During his journey, Billy reached a startlingly powerful conclusion about his dad and the society he lives in: “you are the same as everybody else all you want to do is to tell me what to do!” This is society’s security blanket: by telling everyone what they must be and putting them into a box, they can ensure that everything is ‘safe.’ They employ verbal and visual language to enforce, squash, hesitate any idea that a citizen would have. Tina Fey’s motto against this: Do want you want and don’t care about others. She encourages women to make statements, do want they want, and not to worry about their appearance. Billy Elliot set the example for boys to forget the stereotypes and do what makes you happy. Thanks to these two, individuals can see that every blanket is eventually grown out of with a little push. Any type of ingrained idea about a gender can and will be removed if everyone can follow these two figures. The evidence is heavily stacked against the sexes, but being who you are is better than being inside a box.