ok so it's not just me....lableing practices to be feminine & masculine can reify gender stereotypes

I just finished the piece by Lane titled "Producing identities: Gender problematization and feminist argumentation" and it is  really nice to see that some of what I have tried to articulate in the past with lots of backlash exists in other people's minds as well.

I have always felt uncomfortable with labeling speech, rhetoric, debate, and/or argumentation practices as either feminine and/or masculine. And, I have particularly felt uncomfortable when this type of labeling is done within the proposed framework/lens of "feminist". As Lane (1996) notes, this risks reifying gender stereotypes more than problematizing them .

What I like about this piece, not only that it critiques  feminist practices that re-entrench gender stereotypes, is that it offers an alternative. Lane (1996) suggests "limit work" and identifies this as "a theory of subjectivity based upon the assumption that all language systems, and more specifically all identities are simultaneously enabling and constraining". She further states that the "goal of limit work is to analyze systems of constraint in order to determine their productive/constraining ratios" (Lane, 1996).

I believe that this alternative practice of limit work can be a viable approach to studying rhetoric, argumentation, and speech. A major advantage of this approach is that it not only is very critical and highlights of course what is problematic, but it also allows for discussion of positives, what is done well, what enables. The combination, which ideally won't fall too much into the real of binarism, allows for openings and more insight into what one is studying. For me, someone who is interested in political movements, their campaigns, and their advertisements, and is especially concerned with social justice, this approach seems as though it could provide for some useful findings that could potentially add to existing knowledge and possible improvements with social justice campaigns and movements.