Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies - Volume 23, Issue 4, 2020

For some time, feminist philosophers have been debating how to understand the concept ‘woman’. On the one hand, any substantive definition inevitably comes with a normative claim of what it means to be ‘a real woman’. Since the women’s movement tries to show how women come in all kinds of shapes, it goes without saying that feminists should steer clear from imposing new gender norms themselves. On the other hand, a refusal to define the concept leads to the inability to talk about women as a social category, and hence complicates a feminist plea for women’s rights. If feminists are incapable of clarifying what a ‘woman’ is, can they still describe their own mission and target group? First, I will give a rough overview of the history of the philosophical debate by critically examining the works of two influential scholars: Elizabeth Spelman and Sally Haslanger. Then, I will turn to Mari Mikkola’s recent book, where she declares that the debate is theoretically bankrupt and needs to be reoriented. I will argue that there is value in Mikkola’s suggestion, but that it nonetheless remains vital to engage in critical debate concerning gender concepts.

Bavo Defurne’s film Noordzee, Texas (2011) provides a unique cultural object with which to re-examine the discourses concerning queer representation in Flemish audio-visual media, the normative acceptance of the Flemish LGBTQ+ community, and the importance of coming out narratives. Vanlee (2019) and Vanlee, Dhaenens, and Van Bauwel (2020) argue that the banal representations of queer identity in Flemish television has privileged normative discourses about both sexuality and Flemish identity. In the film, coming out both takes place and never occurs. The deathbed scene presents coming out as a moment of disorientation from the normative. Sara Ahmed’s (2006) concept of disorientation is employed as a tool to help develop a pluralistic definition of coming out that takes into account the endless repetition and adaptability of the act in practice. The scene illuminates the vulnerability of conventionally saturated notions of coming out, being out, and gay identity. The film’s narrative, and its Flemish roots, serve as analytical tools to help better understand how coming out can be enacted in a manner that forces the audience to re-evaluate how identities are formed and adopted.