Fleckenstein: Resistance, Women, and Dismissing the "I"

Fleckenstein puts forth in her article an intriguing argument claiming that when Bartholomae offers insight to how writing should be taught in classrooms to the idealized "student," he ignores that people's experiences differ depending on their gendered identities. Fleckenstein indicates one of Bartholomae's key arguments, the dismissal of the writer outside of the text, thereby eliminating subjectivity and allowing the text to stand on its own. However, Fleckenstein says that "a writer outside the text is always embedded within a cultural system that dictates and constrains options for material and rhetoric identity, and women writers are culturally situated in circumstances sharply divergent from men" (110).

If I had never taken a sociology or women's studies course in college, I don't think I would've understood much of Fleckenstein's article. Personally, I understand what androcentrism is and how being a man is the norm, while anything associated with feminism or women is considered "other," but I'm not sure that this article is accessible to everyone, because often she spoke in such abstract terms. There were several times that I found myself desperate for some concrete examples. It rather annoyed me because I think she had some great points, but she definitely needed to back them up to avoid confusion.

I have to say that this article kind of ripped the rug out from under me. I've experienced sexism in all sorts of ways outside the classroom, but I never considered that I was in a subordinate position when it came to my own voice in my writing. Am I just oblivious to my own cultural boundaries? Am I just so used to this role that I play in my everyday life that I fail to recognize the signs of my own limitations? Or, as Josh says in his blog, since I never acknowledged the privileged/subordinate issue between men and women writers, does that make me just a writer?

I suppose the real question here is the difference between how I think about myself in my own writing verses the how other people, either consciously or subsonsciously,make judgments about my writing as they consider that I, a women, wrote that piece of prose.

What would happen if all writing were gender anonymous?