Lee Lozano was an American artist. She did something interesting. Possibly. It is possible (yet her motives are irritatingly obscure (2018)) that as part of a method she had of imposing on her life the type of form that an artist normally imposes on material, she decided to impose on her everyday life - a total boycott of women. The boycott lasted until the day she died 27 years later.
Presumably she wouldn't speak to them, write to them, acknowledge them in any way. It is documented that this caused unavoidable difficulties, some unpleasant scenes, and some rudeness. All in the cause of some artistic point is it? If so then it's interesting. Certainly it began as a temporary exercise designed to 'improve communication with women' (how?) but then it became a permanent part of her everyday life. Did she intend to return and to communicate with women in a way different to the one that contains the usual prejudices and undeserved withholdings (and in my view the usual undeserved privileges)? Or quite differently, did she as has been claimed, by boycotting women in this extreme way intend to bring attention to the way a patriarchy boycotts women and thereby to shame it? The notebooks remain - irritatingly - unenlightening.
What she did is interesting, quite apart from whether she consciously maintained it as part of Art In Life or whether it ultimately became something more akin to a compulsion. It's interesting because it isolates not a type, but a whole gender. And that pushes you to look for exactly what privilege or what behaviour it is, within the society that you choose to criticize, that is common to all men. Or to all women.
Within your own tribe - what are all men guilty of? What are all women guilty of? The answer of course is obvious - nothing. I can counter whatever you come up with by frog-marching you to a man who blatantly does not act the way you claim all men act. Similarly any 'all' claims regarding women can be instantly dismissed as the babyish simplifications that they are.
But what you can do is to point your accusing finger at something that is astonishingly common to a gender. To return to Lee Lozano - it may have been that she inhabited a society which was uncommonly patriarchal, and a brutal separation of the genders does indeed highlight what it is that (a very large number of) men are, within that tribe at that time. Conversely - perhaps you yourself inhabit a tribe that ridiculously over-values the young female form (vagina power), offers it extraordinary attention and often a free entry into a man's hard-earned lifestyle, and, as above, a brutal separation of the genders does indeed highlight what it is that (a very large number of) women are.
Excuses are surely a big giveaway. The one tribe (patriarchy) makes an excuse for disgusting male behaviour - the cheating male is hard-wired to cheat. The other tribe (vagina power) makes an excuse for disgusting female behaviour - the cheating female always has a reason.
A brutal separation of the genders such as seen in Lozano's life, sharpens the gaze wonderfully doesn't it.
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