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Empowering
Men:
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Sex, Lies &
Feminism by Peter Zohrab
Appendix: Women's
This, Women's That, and Women's The Other Thing: Historical Manifestations
of Feminism
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1999 Version
1. Introduction:
This chapter gives a brief survey of some historical forms of Feminism,
which has also been known as the Women's Liberation Movement, or the
Women's Movement. The only difference between these terms is that the
word "Feminism" is sometimes used to refer purely to a theory or ideology,
whereas the terms "Women's Movement" and "Women's Liberation Movement"
also refer to political activities.
My survey does not claim to be complete or up-to-date. In particular,
the Internet and the rise of the international Men's/Fathers' Movement
may well have had impacts on international Feminism that future historians
and writers will be in a better position to look back on than I am now.
My aim is simply to indicate most of the main themes and claims of Feminism
over the last couple of centuries, so as to give a context for the issues
which I have raised in earlier chapters -- and for others which I hope
to raise in future books.
2. What is Feminism ?
Rendall ("The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France
and the United States, 1780-1860," London:Macmillan, 1985) states that
the word "Feminism" was first used in English in 1894. It was derived
from the French word "feminisme", which was apparently invented by the
French Utopian Socialist, Charles Fourier.
I would like to attempt a definition of Feminism which covers all
the "Feminisms" which are mentioned in this chapter -- and perhaps even
some that are not. Feminists seem to have some difficulty in defining
Feminism -- mostly, no doubt, because Feminism has conquered Western
societies so thoroughly, that there are few non-Feminists left here
for Feminists to contrast themselves with. Groups usually define themselves
in relation to non-members, and as this particular group can find few
articulate non-members, it ends up with a fuzzy self-image. I hope to
be of assistance in this regard, as this book is centred around the
thesis that the victims-of-oppression model fits the situation of men
at least as well as it fits the situation of women, and that men's oppressors
are the Feminists -- and some overly chivalrous males.
Another problem for anyone who wants to define "Feminism" is that,
as each generation of Feminist wins their battles and retires, the next
generation comes along with a completely new set of worries, complaints
and demands. These different generations tend to define themselves in
terms of their own current policy goals. This confuses any attempt at
getting an overview of this entire political movement.
"A central problem within feminist discourse has been our inability
to either arrive at a consensus of opinion about what feminism is
or accept definition(s) that could serve as points of unification.
Without agreed upon definition(s), we lack a sound foundation on which
to construct theory or engage in overall meaningful praxis." (Hooks
"Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center" Boston:South End Press, 1989,17)
This uncertainty about the essence of Feminism is one of the hallmarks
of Postmodern Feminism (see below). Previously, Feminists did not find
it quite so hard to define Feminism. The textbook on Feminism by the
Bristol Women's Studies Group (1979), for example, despite declaring
itself unable to give a neat definition of the academic discipline of
Women's Studies itself, gives the following definition of its subject-matter,
Feminism. I consider this an excellent definition, and my own definition
is very similar.
"By feminism we mean both an awareness of women's position in
society as one of disadvantage or inequality compared with that of
men, and also a desire to remove those disadvantages." (Bristol
Women's Studies Group "Half the Sky: An Introduction to Women's Studies,"1979,
p. 3)
A non-Feminist might feel that that definition demonstrated a fairly
rational turn of mind -- one that left the door open for lucid discussion
about whether it was actually true to say that women's position in society
was one of disadvantage or inequality. The desire to remove those disadvantages
and inequalities would presumably disappear if it was agreed, after
a period of dialogue between Feminists and non-Feminists, that they
did not, in fact, exist.
Contrast the mentality that is implicit in the following, however:
"If feminism is broadly defined as the quest for a sexually
just society, many people share at least some of its goals, though
they disavow the label." (Meehan "British Feminism from the 1960s
to the 1980s". In Smith (ed.) 1990, p. 189).
The problem with that definition is that it simply takes for granted,
rather than overtly stating, what the previous definition claimed, i.e.
that women's position in society is one of disadvantage vis-a-vis men.
A Feminist is one who (as the very word suggests) is primarily, if not
exclusively, interested in pushing the female point of view and women's
agendas. To simply assume that this is the same as promoting sexual
justice betrays a one-sided frame of mind which would find constructive
dialogue with non-Feminists virtually impossible.
A good definition of a Feminist appeared in a leaflet advertising
the Public Sessions of the 1993 National Conference of the New Zealand
Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL), in Wellington, New Zealand:
"WEL defines a feminist as someone who believes that women are
socially and economically disadvantaged because of their gender and
acts on that belief."
Here is another interesting view of Feminism:
"Feminism is not, in my view, a set of a priori answers, nor
a commitment to a particular ideology. It is rather a willingness
to follow questions wherever they lead us. Feminism insists upon a
commitment to listening with open ears to women's experience in order
to reformulate our actions and thought. It is thus more a method for
creative inquiry than a set of predetermined points. Feminism is a
commitment to women's well-being, to pursuing justice instead of patriarchy,
but the substance of women's well-being is not necessarily known in
advance." (Pellauer: "Moral Callousness and Moral Sensitivity:
Violence against Women", in Andolsen et al. 1987, p. 34)
Although there is a lot I can agree with in that passage, it seems
to me to embody a misconception as to the nature of ideology. Other
ideologies, such as Marxism, are just as open-ended as Feminism -- tending
to determine what questions are asked by its adherents, rather than
providing all of the answers ready-made. That is why there are so many
versions of Marxism, and that is also why there can be theoretical debate
about the proper Marxist approach to many issues.
I am sure that Feminism has always, by and large, followed questions
wherever they happened to lead -- but the point is that Feminist ideology
determines what questions get asked in the first place. This book is
all about pointing out the inherent bias in the types of questions that
Feminists always ask, and it is also about suggesting other questions
that could and should be asked, as well.
Feminists, as Pellauer points out, listen to women's experience with
open ears. By the same token, they do not listen to men's experience
with open ears. That is one clear indication of the bias that is inherent
in Feminist ideology. As Pellauer points out, Feminism is a commitment
to women's well-being -- but (by implication) not a commitment to men's
well-being. If there is ever a conflict between men's well-being and
women's well-being, there is no doubt at all what side of the fence
Feminists are on.
My own approach to the definition problem is to define Feminism as
the application of the "victims of oppression" model to the
situation of women in society. Thus a Feminist is one who believes
that this model (in any given society) fits the situation of women more
appropriately than it does the situation of men. This does not imply
that all Feminists believe that the "oppressors" of women are men --
some Feminists believe that the real oppressor is Society itself, and
that men, too, are oppressed by the rigidity of the roles that Society
forces them to adopt.
That would suffice as a definition, in my opinion. However, one could
add that Feminists are almost bound to be gendercentric and unable to
see any ways in which men are discriminated against
or oppressed. So Feminism is really a state of mind, which means that
it is unlikely to die out because of a lack of issues to campaign on.
If the issues didn't exist, then they would have to be invented (as
French writer Voltaire said about God).
3. Individualist/Liberal Feminism
Individualist Feminism received its first substantial formulation
in Mary Wollstonecraft's A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). This was in the tradition
of 18th century Individualist social and political theory, deriving
ultimately from John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1689).
Charvet ("Feminism" London: Dent, 1982) describes Individualism as
"the view that understands the basis of social and political
order to lie in the possession by individuals of rights.... the primary
content of the rights is generally understood to consist in the freedom
of individuals to do what they wish without being interfered with
by others" (pp 6-7).
Wollstonecraft said that, when one referred to "people" or "humans",
it was always men that one meant. Women were viewed principally in relation
to men, i.e. as sexual partners and rearers of men's children, and so
on. She said that women must be looked on primarily as people in their
own right, and only secondarily as the housekeepers and wives, etc.
of men.
Wollstonecraft based this claim or demand on the fact that women
(like men) were superior to animals, in that they are rational creatures.
She said that it was irrelevant that men might be better at doing some
things than women were. As long as women were rational, she claimed,
then they were capable of governing themselves. Men differed in their
talents, but this was not used (by liberal democrats, anyway) as an
argument against equal political rights for all men.
She did not, of course, agree that women were generally less talented
than men. Her point was that even people who thought women were less
talented should agree that they should have their full rights as human
beings.
An important theme in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
is that men used education to train girls to play the dependent "womanly"
roles that men have mapped out for them. This, indeed, is a recurrent
theme throughout the Feminist literature.
Wollstonecraft demands equality of civil rights between men and women.
She does not say much about political rights for women, though there
are indications that she had intended to write something on that topic,
too.
J.S.Mill's The Subjection of Women was an important 19th Century
Feminist work, written under the influence of his late wife, Harriet
Taylor. Mill's basic Philosophy was Utilitarianism, where ethical priority
was accorded to the greatest good of the greatest number of people.
According to most authorities on Mill's works, the notion of "equality",
which is so basic to Feminist writings in general, did not seem to obviously
follow from Utilitarian principles. Mill had to add it on, as it were,
in order to construct his Feminist argument. Nevertheless, he does try
to show that beneficial results would flow from granting women legal
equality with men.
What he does is to argue that the liberation of women will result
in a net gain in the quantity of happiness for mankind. This is because
the "servitude" of women in marriage makes many women miserable.
He also says that mankind (by which he meant, in present day Feminist
parlance, "humankind", of course) will benefit if woman's full potential
is freed, educated, and employed to the benefit of all. And marriages
would be happier if men and women were equally well educated. This was
because happiness in marriage depended on the partners being as similar
and unified as possible.
Mill's proposals are similar to those of Wollstonecraft. But he goes
further, in that he says women should have the vote. As far as employment
is concerned, he too says that women should be free to enter the occupation
of their choice (including marriage and child-rearing, if that is their
preferred option).
In response to the objection that women did not have the same capabilities
as men, he too says that this appears to be the case only because of
the way that they are brought up. If they were brought up in the same
way that men are, then they would be just as capable. In addition to
this hypothetical argument, he also says that women are already obviously
capable enough at a wide variety of tasks in order to justify their
wider employment.
In the course of the nineteenth century, the Feminists registered
great gains in Western countries, as regards educational opportunities
in schools and universities and the admission of women to the professions.
Laws relating to divorce, the property rights of married women, and
control of children in marriage were also modified in a direction that
favoured women.
By the early 20th Century, at the latest, women gained the franchise
in most Western countries. The first breakthrough for the Feminists
came in 1869, when women got the vote in the American State of Wyoming,
and the first sovereign state to grant women the vote was New Zealand
-- in 1893. The first European country to enfranchise women was Finland
-- in 1906.
After the franchise for women had been achieved in many countries,
the Second World War intervened. This caused a hiatus in the Feminists'
political struggles, since they presumably did not want to be forced
to serve as front-line soldiers, as might logically be expected of them
if they started agitating in a wartime political atmosphere. And when
the war was over, people had to be given time to forget the men who
had lost their lives and/or limbs in the War. Coole ("Women in Political
Theory" Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books, 1988, p. 234) characterises this hiatus
as a "resurgence of anti-Feminist ideas and practices". But sure enough,
after a decent interval, a peacetime mentality soon evolved in Western
societies, to which the hypocrisy of some of the Feminist demands for
"equality" did not seem so glaringly obvious.
In this post-war era, Feminism's "Second Wave", it seemed natural
to focus more and more on the way that women's role in the family prevented
them from having careers to the extent that men did. This attitude implied
that the roles of wife and mother were somehow inferior to that of income-earner
in a workplace (or wage-slave in the rat-race, as others might phrase
it).
One book that pushed this line within the Individualist Feminist
tradition was Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1965), which
followed relatively closely on the heels of Simone de Beauvoir's The
Second Sex (1953) (see below). Friedan's aim was for society
and women's lives to be organised in such a way as to maximise the ability
of women to have a career as well as a family. She thought that American
middle-class, suburban, white, heterosexual housewives were bound to
feel unfulfilled and bored, unless they had a full-time job outside
the home. This would, of course, not be such a problem in countries
and classes where labour-saving devices were unaffordable.
"... Betty Friedan's 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique``, was
in some ways less 'radical' than Wollstonecraft's, Taylor's or Mill's.
Despite Friedan's implicit understanding of woman as a powerless sex
class, she often wrote as if individual women can, through sheer effort,
advance to the ranks of the powerful sex class known as 'man'. Her
tendency, at least in The Feminine Mystique``, was to forget that
this is easier said than done, so long as men are generally in charge
of hiring and promoting." (Tong 1989, 22)
Tong criticises Friedan's book for not being analytical enough to
look for societal barriers to women's achieving careers outside the
home. But then, many years later, Friedan wrote a second book, The
Second Stage, which filled this gap, to some extent:
"In the first stage, our aim was full participation (of the
woman's movement), .... But we were diverted from our dream. And in
our reaction against the feminine mystique, which defined women solely
in terms of their relation to men as wives, mothers and homemakers,
we sometimes seemed to fall into a feminist mystique which denied
that core of women's personhood that is fulfilled through love, nurture,
home." (Friedan, op.cit., 27)
So the main emphasis in Liberal/Individualist Feminism was on removing
barriers that prevent women from competing with men on an equal footing
in paid employment. And this is still its main emphasis. Now that quite
a lot of these barriers have been removed in many countries, however,
there is a flip-side to this Liberal Feminist approach:
If these customary and legal barriers are all removed, then if women
still don't achieve as well in public life as men do, that can be no
one's fault but the women's (a Liberal Feminist would say). You can't
just look at any inequality between men's and women's achievement in
the workplace and deduce from that that there MUST still be some outstanding
barriers to women's achievement that must be removed.
This issue is relevant to such questions as what happens to women
when they return to the workforce after a break of several years, during
which they have been busy raising their children. Some Feminists argue
that such women should reenter the workforce at the same level of pay
and seniority as are now enjoyed by their (male and female) colleagues
who have had a continuous career throughout the period in question.
I consider this Feminist position unjust for three reasons:
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First, the employer grants seniority (in theory, anyway) not
on the basis of age, but on the basis of experience and skills gained.
A person who has been absent from the workplace has presumably not
acquired that same level of experience and skill.
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Secondly, what about people who are absent from a certain workplace
for other reasons? It would be absurd and unjust to grant
them the same seniority and pay as their colleagues who had stayed
in the same workplace -- yet it would be equally absurd and unjust
to deny them this if returning mothers were granted it !
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Thirdly, women who have children (usually) do this voluntarily,
and bringing up children is a very rewarding occupation in its own
right. It is not as if anyone was forcing them to do it. It is true
that men are not usually the ones who have to choose between children
and careers, but then (on the other hand) men are also denied the
full "joys of motherhood", and so it is only fitting and equitable
that women should be unable to have their cake and eat it too --
especially as the mothers are more likely to be granted custody
of the children after separation or divorce.
The time eventually came when Individualist Feminism had achieved
most of its goals in Western countries. A cynic might add that Feminism
was therefore in need of new demands to make. Certainly, once a political
movement has achieved certain political gains, those gains become part
of the status quo, and the political movement involved is of course
at liberty to examine the new status quo to see if it is completely
satisfied with it, or whether it thinks further "improvements" could
or should be made.
The particular generation of activists which has struggled to achieve
certain political goals tends to rest on its laurels to some extent,
but succeeding generations grow up taking these achievements for granted,
and are likely to consider mounting new campaigns.
4. Socialist/Marxist Feminism
I will be discussing Socialist and Marxist Feminism together in the
same section. This is partly because they have both suffered in the
world-wide slump in Socialist and Marxist influence which resulted from
the demise of the USSR and its satellite governments in Eastern Europe.
So they are no longer important enough to be accorded separate treatment,
in my view. A further reason for lumping them together is that some
people consider that Marxist Feminism has been superceded by Socialist
Feminism. Yet another reason for lumping them together is that they
are very similar to each other:
"Whereas socialist feminists believe that gender and class play
an approximately equal role in any explanation of women's oppression,
Marxist feminists believe that class ultimately better accounts for
women's status and function(s). Under capitalism, they say, bourgeois
women will not experience the same kind of oppression that proletarian
women will. What is distinctive about Marxist feminism, then, is that
it invites every woman, whether proletarian or bourgeois, to understand
women's oppression not so much as the result of the intentional actions
of individuals but as the product of the political, social, and economic
structures associated with capitalism." (Tong 1989,39)
It was Socialist Feminism, together with Radical Feminism (see below),
which made up the vanguard of Feminism's Second Wave. Socialism (including
Marxist Socialism/Communism) has been a very diverse movement. Yet,
with few exceptions (such as Proudhon), Socialists were in favour of
Feminism from the outset.
There were possibly two reasons for this: First, Socialism arose
at a historically later stage than Individualism, when Feminism was
already an up-and-coming ideology; and secondly Socialism was generally
antagonistic to the institution of the family. This stance was attractive
to those Feminists who wanted to free women from their traditional role
in the family.
In most forms of Socialism, there was to be no private property for
the family to own and pass on to later generations. So there would be
no need to rear children privately and so no need to tie women to the
home.
One of the most important works in the Socialist Feminist tradition
was Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Simone de Beauvoir was an Existentialist,
as well as a Marxist. Juliet Mitchell's Woman's Estate (1971) was another
influential Marxist Feminist work. She agreed with the efforts of the
Radical Feminists (see below) to encourage women to analyse their own
situation, but she thought that the results of this process of analysis
would need Marxist theory superimposed on them for them to make any
sort of sense.
One of the main issues that concern Marxist Feminists is household
work. On the one hand, they maintain that, even when women have full-time
jobs, their household workload often remains virtually undiminished.
And, on the other hand, they argue that women's household work has been
undervalued. Women, in Capitalist societies, have been regarded as mere
consumers (using the money that their male partners earned as producers).
In fact, say the Marxist Feminists, women's household work is also productive
-- in the sense that, if women weren't doing it for free, someone would
have to be paid to do the shopping, cook, clean the house, and look
after the children, etc..
Some Marxist Feminists consider that women are oppressed because
they are seen as being basically parasitical, in that the work they
do (household work) is easy, and of little value. They have therefore
argued for the socialisation and collectivisation of women's household
work. What they want is for people to live communally, so that child-rearing,
cooking and housework are carried out on a large scale by paid workers.
This work will then acquire a monetary value and its worth will be thereby
officially acknowledged -- even if it is still mostly women who do it.
Other Marxist Feminists argue that a woman's household work in an
individual household should attract a wage. This wage should be paid
by the government. On the other hand, there is a further Marxist Feminist
point of view, according to which paying women to do housework has three
disadvantages:
1. It would make it more likely that women would be isolated in their
own homes. Their work would become increasingly trivialised, as more
and more labour-saving devices became available to them. They would
become more and more prey to suburban neurosis.
2. The relationship of the woman to the rest of her family would
be put onto a commercial footing, when many Marxists would like to get
away from what they see as Capitalism's tendency to commodify everything.
3. It would entrench the traditional sexual division of labour --
making it more likely that men would keep on working outside the home,
and women inside the home.
5. Existentialist Feminism
As stated above, de Beauvoir was an Existentialist, as well as a
Marxist. This leads authors such as Tong (1989) to classify her as primarily
an Existentialist Feminist, rather than as a Marxist Feminist.
"Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, probably the key theoretical
text of twentieth- century feminism, offered an existentialist explanation
of woman's situation. De Beauvoir argued that woman is oppressed by
virtue of 'otherness.' Woman is the Other because she is not-man.
Man is the self, the free, determining being who defines the meaning
of his existence, and woman is the Other, the object whose meaning
is determined for her. If woman is to become a self, a subject, she
must, like man, transcend the definitions, labels, and essences limiting
her existence. She must make herself be whatever she wants to be."
(op.cit., 6)
6. Cultural Feminism
Most Feminists have been at pains to show that women are equal to
men, in order to argue that they should have equal rights to men. This
has usually involved trying to prove that women are the same (or virtually
the same) as men in all relevant ways. Any significant differences were
attributed to the effect of the environment, rather than to genetic
factors. This was because it was feared that any actual differences
between men and women would be seized upon by anti-Feminists, and used
to prove that they were not equal to each other, after all.
Yet Cultural Feminism not only sets out to show that men and women
are different from each other -- it maintains that women's values are
actually superior to those of men. It argues that women's values should
replace those of men as the dominant ones in society.
Most Feminists have argued that what are seen to be the negative
aspects of women's behaviour are the result of socialisation, education
and upbringing. Surely, then, the supposedly "positive" aspects of "women's
values" must also be the result of such factors. This means that both
the positive and negative aspects of women's values and behaviour might
vanish as a result of the social engineering proposed by the Cultural
Feminists !
Nineteenth Century Liberal Feminists concentrated on political and
legal issues. Nineteenth Century Cultural Feminists were different,
in that they examined institutions such as religion, marriage, and the
home.
The latter type of Feminist looked beyond the achievement of political
and legal equality between women and men -- to the changes in society
that could, or should, result from such equality. The idea, simply,
was that men had been making a mess of things, and women would do a
better job of running, or helping to run the world.
Some Cultural Feminists believed in a myth of a past Matriarchy,
when pacifism, cooperation, nonviolent settlement of differences, and
a harmonious regulation of public life were the order of the day. This
was in contrast to the destruction, tyranny, and war which are supposed
to have characterised "Patriarchy". Margaret Fuller's Woman in the
Nineteenth Century (1845) was the first significant Cultural Feminist
work.
Social Darwinism was an important influence on Cultural Feminism.
This theory applied the quasi-Darwinian notion of the "survival of the
fittest" to human societies, races, and individual people. It implied
that any society that was "successful" had achieved that success because
it had characteristics that made it "fitter" than rival societies. It
tended to value highly male aggression and competitiveness. Some Social
Darwinists even favoured murderous competition and war as appropriate
selectional mechanisms.
However, another, less-publicised vein in Social Darwinist thought
foresaw a different trend. It considered that Humanity was evolving
towards a more collective organisation, which required more cooperation,
and less competition -- more altruism, and less egoism. This was the
aspect of Social Darwinism which was picked up by Charlotte Gilman's
Women and Economics (1898).
The aspect of Cultural Feminism which is still very controversial
today is its attitude towards contraception. This only became an important
issue at the beginning of the twentieth century, but in the 1870's Elizabeth
Stanton was already advocating birth control by abstinence as a means
by which women could get "control over their lives".
7. Psychoanalytic Feminism
"Psychoanalytic Feminists find the root of women's oppression
embedded deep in her (sic) psyche.... the Oedipus complex, the process
by which the boy gives up his first love object, mother, in order
to escape castration at the hands of father. As a result of submitting
his id (or desires) to the superego (collective social conscience),
the boy is fully integrated into culture. Together with his father
he will rule over nature and woman, both of whom contain a similar
irrational power. In contrast to the boy, the girl, who has no penis
to lose, separates slowly from her first love object, mother. As a
result, the girl's integration into culture is incomplete. She exists
at the periphery or margin of culture as the one who does not rule
but is ruled, largely because ... she fears her own power." (Tong
1989, 5)
Psychoanalytic theory, however, is highly speculative, and not disprovable
enough to rate (in my view, anyway) as a truly "scientific" theory.
In addition, I find aspects of the above picture somewhat implausible
-- particularly the notion that females are less integrated into culture
than males are. Females mature (socially, as well as sexually) earlier
than males, and females typically show a more complete internalisation
of cultural norms -- i.e. they are "better behaved" than males. The
idea that nature resembles women more than it resembles men is also
highly debatable.
8. Radical Feminism
Radical Feminism has tended towards what Coole (1988) calls "a sort
of romantic anarchism". In other words, Radical Feminists have tended
to reject the State itself (not to mention many institutions within
it), as being a patriarchal framework. They don't consider it to be
a neutral institution which mediates between forces, the manifestation
of a flexible consensus, or a forum within whose constraints women can
achieve their political goals (as Liberal Feminists see it).
This form of Feminism is a product of the Second Wave -- a form which
took over where the previous strands of Feminism left off. Fewer of
its ideas have so far been implemented than is the case with Individualist
Feminism or Socialist Feminism.
"... it is radical feminism which has been most theoretically
innovative, rejecting traditional definitions of both politics and
theory, while condemning all previous political theory as patriarchal.
Unlike the Marxist approach, it has not struggled to incorporate women
into a pre-existing political framework, but instead attempts to shift
our whole perception of society, to restructure it in terms of a radically
new set of woman-centred meanings. Its aim has been to recast political
identities; to reclaim language and culture from their masculine forms;
to relocate significant political power; to reassess human nature
and to challenge traditional values." (Coole 1988, 235)
The main difference between Radical Feminism and other types of Feminism
is that the former denies any psychological differences between the
sexes. Upbringing and education are claimed to be the causes of different
male and female behaviour-patterns, according to this view. And the
function of differential upbringing and education for men and women
is supposed to be to support the institution of male dominance (patriarchy).
Radical Feminists demand the abolition of all sexually differentiated
roles and the creation of an androgynous society.
"Some radical feminists ... pursue the logic of their analysis
to a point where a united women's movement of the broad left becomes
difficult to realize. In their view, women's physiological capacities
for reproduction are analogous to the material production of the working
class in traditional Marxism. Women, then, constitute a class in the
same way that workers do. Just as the working class must become a
class for itself by taking control of production, so, too, must women
take control of their reproduction in order to become free. An absolute
extension of the class analogy must lead to the idea of the destruction
of the previously dominant class -- men; or, at least, separation
from it. Radicals demand that lesbianism be considered not merely
a matter of freedom of choice but as essential political practice
for feminists." (Meehan 1990, 191-2)
One of the best-known Feminist works on sexuality is Germaine Greer's
"The Female Eunuch" (1971). This book is one of the classics
of Radical Feminism. It is radical in the sense that it maintains that
people such as Betty Friedan did not go far enough. Setting up a female
Establishment in opposition to the male Establishment, as Friedan suggested,
did not help most women, according to Greer.
Shulamith Firestone's "The Dialectic of Sex" (1970)
comes under the category of Socialist Feminism, as well as of Radical
Feminism. This book is unusually intelligent, clear, lucid, and thorough
in its approach, by the usual Feminist standards. This does not mean,
of course, that what it claims is necessarily true or undistorted.
Firestone bases her own analysis on the following, in part uncontroversial,
assertions to do with what she calls the "biological family":
-
That women throughout history before the advent of birth control
were at the continual mercy of their biology -- menstruation, menopause,
and 'female ills', constant painful childbirth, wetnursing and care
of infants, all of which made them dependent on males ... for physical
survival.
-
That human infants take an even longer time to grow up than
animals, and thus are helpless and, for some short period
at least, dependent on adults for physical survival.
-
That a basic mother/child interdependency has existed in some
form in every society, past or present, and thus has shaped the
psychology of every mature female and every infant.
-
That the natural reproductive difference between the sexes
led directly to the first division of labour at the origins of class,
as well as furnishing the paradigm of caste (discrimination based
on biological characteristics) (ibid, 8-9).
There is a crucial vagueness at the end of this fourth point. The
terms "at the origins of" and "paradigm" seem to imply that the sexual
division of labour was a precondition for the emergence of the phenomena
of class and caste. Firestone makes this claim explicit (though she
still provides no evidence for it), in her definition of historical
materialism:
"Historical materialism is that view of the course of history
which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historic
events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into two distinct
biological classes for procreative reproduction, and the struggles
of these classes with one another; in the changes in the modes of
marriage, reproduction and childcare created by these struggles; in
the connected development of other physically-differentiated classes
[castes]; and in the first division of labour based on sex which developed
into the [economic-cultural] class system."
Much to her credit, Firestone pooh-poohs the efforts of some Feminists
to attribute the causes of these facts to environmental factors. She
points to the near universality of such arrangements in mankind, and
other animals, as well. If the environment is the cause, why so few
exceptions ?
It is at this point that she ceases to be dispassionate or objective.
She talks of the "psychosexual distortions" in the human personality
that the above four points have brought about. She obviously has some
implicit utopian Feminist "psychosexual normality" in mind. Firestone
obviously considers that she is in a position to judge most personalities
to be "distorted". Other people, however, would not necessarily see
her as being particularly qualified to make such sweeping judgements.
She simply assumes that almost everyone's personality is "distorted",
and that only she (together with, perhaps, a few friends) is "normal".
As is typical of Feminists, she finds this superficial argumentation
sufficient basis upon which to start talking about the "tyranny (of
men, of course) over women and children". She sees this as being biological
in origin. Modern technology, however, makes it feasible, she thinks,
to overthrow the biological basis of the present sexual power-structure.
This is where her psychosexual utopia comes in. She argues that women
should take control of "the new population biology as well as all the
social institutions of childbearing and childrearing". More radically,
in her utopia,
"genital differences between human beings would no longer matter
culturally. (A reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality -- Freud's
'polymorphous perversity' -- would probably supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.)
The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both
would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction:
children would be born to both sexes equally, or independently of
either.... the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa)
would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group
of others in general.... The division of labor would be ended by the
elimination of labor altogether (cybernation)." (op.cit.)
A more traditional view of the physical differences between males
and females might be characterised as follows:
"...(1) people are born with the hormones, anatomy, and chromosomes
of either a male or a female; (2) females are destined to have a much
more burdensome reproductive role than are males; (3) males will,
other things being equal, exhibit 'masculine' psychological traits
(for example, 'assertiveness, aggressiveness, hardiness, rationality
or the ability to think logically, abstractly and analytically, ability
to control emotion'), whereas females will, other things being equal,
exhibit 'feminine' psychological traits (for example, 'gentleness,
modesty, humility, supportiveness, empathy, compassionateness, tenderness,
nurturance, intuitiveness, sensitivity, unselfishness'); and (4) society
should preserve this natural order, making sure that its men remain
'manly' and its women 'womanly'." (Tong, op.cit. page 3)
I am not a doctor or biologist, but it is generally accepted, I think,
that there is a wide range of "maleness" among men, and a wide range
of "femaleness" among women, as regards anatomical characteristics and
hormonal strengths. So it is not a case of people either being 100%
male or 100% female. There are gradations of maleness and gradations
of femaleness.
It is also possible to surgically alter people's anatomy, and to
alter their internal hormone balance artificially. Germaine Greer, for
example, said on television once that she was given the male hormone
testosterone as a treatment for menopause, and she then began to drive
her car aggressively -- like a man !
The most important issue that the Radical Feminists have raised (in
my view) is whether in fact society has a moral duty (a) to maintain
the socio-biological division between males and females, as being a
good thing in its own right; or (b) to use all biotechnological and
social engineering means at its disposal to reduce, or even eliminate
the physical and social differences between men and women -- on the
grounds that these differences have been outmoded by biotechnology and
lead to social inequities; or (c) to regard the division of its citizens
into males and females as being something of no moral significance whatsoever
-- it should neither be preserved for its own sake, nor demolished for
the sake of doing so.
I personally favour option (c). The human race has come to control
its environment to the extent that many people are worried that we are
in the process of destroying it. We may be about to reach the same turning-point
as regards our societies and our anatomies and physiologies. In areas
as diverse as animal and plant species and human cultures and languages,
the trend among the "politically correct" these days is towards the
preservation of diversity for its own sake. In the face of our growing
ability to eliminate the differences between the sexes, it may become
politically correct to want to preserve this type of diversity, as well
as the other types of diversity referred to above.
From my point of view, it is not so much that this is a moral imperative
in its own right. My point, really, is that, once humans have the power
to change more or less every aspect of themselves, as well as of their
environment, the very purpose of human existence is called into question.
One thing that we cannot create for ourselves scientifically is the
values we need to guide our actions -- so we may end up falling back
on traditional values, for lack of anything better.
We cannot trust Feminism alone to give us moral guidance, as we enter
this brave new world. One of the main fallacies of Feminism -- especially
Radical Feminism -- is the notion that there is something intrinsically
inferior about the woman's traditional role as housewife and mother.
I think it is partly the fact that it does not constitute paid employment
-- but it is not rational simply to assume that paid employment is necessarily
more fulfilling or valid than the family work role. Consider the value
that is being placed on longer holidays and shorter working-weeks in
some countries. If it is so desirable for working people to have less
time at work, how can it be so desirable for women to be in paid employment
? These seems to be a contradiction here.
One of the most influential Feminist works in recent times has been
Kate Millett's "Sexual Politics". Her central thesis
is that one can characterise the relationship between the sexes in political
terms. This insight apparently derives originally from Wilhelm Reich,
and it seems to me to be quite correct. However, it would be fairer
to be more balanced than the Feminists are about the actual political
relationships that exist between the sexes.
Millett starts from the following assumptions:
(a) that the United States (and similar countries) are "patriarchies";
(b) that this fact is evident from the fact that politicians are mainly
males;
(c) and that this rule by men over women applies to all components of
society, including the family.
She doesn't makes these claims very clearly or explicitly, but it
is evident that she believes them to be true. Nowadays, Feminism has
become established to such an extent that these tenets are popularly
regarded as virtually self-evident throughout the western world. And
Kate Millett sees them as applying to all existing societies, not just
the USA.
Two concepts that typify Radical Feminism are the theoretical maxim
that "The Personal Is Political" and its practical corollary, "consciousness-raising".
"Within the consciousness-raising group each person's experience,
each woman's life-story was a matter of interest. We understood that
through listening to an individual's experience we could draw a much
richer picture of how society was put together. Sexual politics provided
an understanding of how society works both at an ideological level
and at a material level and deepened the understanding the left had
of human experience. The Women's Liberation Movement built an analysis
of society founded on the nuts and bolts of individual life experience.
It enlarged and challenged previous understanding of the social, economic
and political basis of society." (Eichenbaum and Orbach: "Outside
In. Inside Out. Women's Psychology: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Account,"
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982, p. 12)
I would liken this process to the gathering of data to prove a scientific
hypothesis, with the major difference that consciousness-raising had
a built-in bias which can be quite easily be shown up by asking the
(rhetorical, of course) question,"How many consciousness-raising groups
did the Feminists hold to enable men to discuss how they had been oppressed
by women in their lives ?" In other words, "consciousness-raising" is
a near-synonym to "brainwashing" or "instruction" or "conversion". Radical
Feminist theory (Sexual Politics, as conceived of by Feminists) provided
the framework for women to reinterpret their lives -- much as religious
conversion provides a new "insight".
9. Postmodern Feminism/French Feminism
Postmodern Feminism arose in France, under the influence of the Deconstructionist
school of Philosphy. A cynic might characterise it as a stage or type
of Feminism that makes a virtue out of the necessity that contemporary
Feminism is splintered and apparently directionless.
"Postmodern feminists worry that because feminism purports to
be an explanatory theory, it ... is in danger of trying to provide
the explanation for why woman is oppressed, or the ten steps all women
must take in order to achieve true liberation." (Tong 1989, 217)
Feminism is in fact unable to do these things. Indeed, no Feminist,
to my knowledge, has actually demonstrated objectively that women are
(more) oppressed (than men), and, therefore, that "liberation" is a
relevant word in this context. Such an objective demonstration is a
precondition for the explanatory theory referred to above.
I would see the splintered nature of Postmodern Feminism as being
the result of the fact that none of the various types of Feminism discussed
earlier in this chapter has been able to construct such an explanatory
theory. In turn, this splintered condition has provided an atmosphere
in which the so-called "Backlash" has been able to emerge.
10. Women's Studies
"Women's Studies" is a curious sort of academic subject. Part of
its strangeness is its newness, of course -- but there is more to it
than that. It has more in common with theological or ideological training
than with other academic disciplines in (say) the Social Sciences area.
"Women's studies, like feminism itself, presents two approaches
to the question of inequality. One approach, using anthropological,
biological, historical and psychological evidence, argues that women
are essentially no different from men, and that therefore in a differently
structured society it would be possible for divisions based upon sex
or gender differences to disappear, leaving us with an equal society.
The other approach argues that women are essentially different from
men and that inequality results in an undervaluing of female activities
and characteristics.... Women's studies can thus be seen to be linked
to two concepts of equality, which we may call 'plain equal' or 'equal
but different'. The kinds of problems involved in trying to marry
the two approaches can be demonstrated by ...." (Ruth, "Issues
in Feminism: A First Course in Women's Studies." Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1980, p. 5)
It is a characteristic of the ideology of a social movement that
it tries to "marry together" contradictory tendencies, in an attempt
to maximise the political clout of the movement. More purely academic
subjects, on the other hand, tend to focus on contradictions in an attempt
to reach a conclusion as to which side of a controversy is correct,
and which is wrong.
It is because Women's Studies is not really an academic subject,
in this sense, that we cannot expect it to look objectively at such
questions as whether men are oppressed in society, whether they are
oppressed by women, and whether they are oppressed more than women are.
Women's Studies takes the oppression of women (by men or by "Society")
as a basic assumption or axiom which no right-thinking person would
even question.
This bias towards political action is admitted by Women's Studies
lecturers themselves:
"... the ideas, methods, curricula, and theories of Women's
Studies exhibit great diversity and resist easy definition. Those
now working in Women's Studies have called it variously a process,
a field of inquiry, a critical perspective, a center for social action,
and/or the academic arm of the women's movement. It is all of these
and more" (ibid, p. 3).
Ruth is aware of the charge that Women's Studies is biased. She responds
to this by claiming that male bias (which she calls "Masculine-ism",
"Masculism", or "Androcentrism") has always been a feature of Society.
This may well be so, but showing that many male academics have been
biased does not logically prove that Women's Studies is NOT biased --
nor does it justify Women's Studies being biased, if it is.
"Feminist criticism is revealing male bias, not creating a female
one, as charged. Women's Studies seeks to be the prophylactic of bias,
not the cause" (ibid, 9).
Masculists are not responsible for what male bias has existed and
does exist. Masculists do not need to defend male bias, where it exists.
If Feminists reveal male bias, then that is not a bad thing. However,
Feminists do more than just reveal male bias -- they also create female
bias. One of the main aims of this book is to reveal cases of female
bias.
It is also interesting to note what Ruth (1980) sees as being the
goals of her field:
"Women's Studies seeks ...
-
to change women's sense of ourselves, our self-image, our sense
of worth and rights, our presence in the world,
-
to change women's aspirations, based on an increased sense
of self-confidence and self-love,
-
to allow women to create for ourselves new options in our
own personal goals as well as in our commitments and/or contributions
to society
-
to alter the relations between women and men, to create true
friendship and respect between the sexes in place of "the war between
the sexes"
-
to give all people, women and men, a renewed sense of human
worth, to restore to the center of human endeavors a love for beauty,
kindness, justice, and quality in living
-
to reaffirm in society the quest for harmony, peace, and humane
compassion" (op.cit.,9).
Of these goals, I would characterize the first two as arrogant, and
the others as either naive or hypocritical. What the first two goals
imply is that most women have an "incorrect" sense of themselves, and
"incorrect" aspirations. Women's Studies lecturers are, it seems, a
superior breed of woman, and they alone know what women should feel
about themselves and what their aspirations should be ! It is hard to
think of anyone apart from a religious guru who would have the arrogance
to claim this sort of superior knowledge. The last two of the goals
are so naive and vague as to be absurd in any context except perhaps
that of a religious cult.
It is one thing to discover that a group is oppressed, in the sense
that they are deprived of things that they want, which other social
groups are permitted to enjoy. But it is quite another thing to be an
activist who wants something for themself, who discovers that other
members of the group don't have the same desires, and who then goes
about trying to persuade them to want the same things that he/she wants.
Where have Women's Studies lecturers acquired these "superior" values
that they want women to adopt ? The answer is that they have got them
from men. Feminists are intellectual tomboys. They have somehow internalised
the idea that what boys and men traditionally do/have done is somehow
superior to (rather than just being different from) what girls and women
traditionally do/have done. These Feminists are psychological transsexuals,
and they want to convert as many women as possible to their (i.e. men's)
way of thinking, so that they (the Feminists) will no longer seem to
be a peculiar minority. In Western countries, they have largely succeeded.
To claim that Feminists want to end the "war between the sexes" is
simply hypocritical: Feminists started the war, and the only conditions
under which they would be willing to end the "war" would be total victory
for themselves. In fact, I don't think there is a realistic possibility
of any society ever reaching a state of affairs which would satisfy
all Feminists.
2002 Version
CHAPTER 15
MANIFESTATIONS OF FEMINISM
Introduction
This chapter gives a brief survey of some historical forms of Feminism.
It is not intended primarily as an attack on Feminism, because that
has been the function of the rest of this book. Rather, it is to give
an historical account of the Feminist ideology and political movement,
which has also been known as the Women's Liberation Movement, or the
Women's Movement. The difference between these terms is that the word
"Feminism" is sometimes used to refer purely to a theory or
ideology, whereas the terms "Women's Movement" and "Women's
Liberation Movement" also refer to political activities.
Individualist/Liberal Feminism
Individualist Feminism received its first substantial formulation
in Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
This was in the tradition of 18th century Individualist social and political
theory, deriving ultimately from John Locke's Second Treatise of Government
(1689), according to which the supreme law was to be the welfare of
the people. It was a fairly small step from that stated principle to
looking at various categories of people – such as women –
and asking what the "system" was doing to or for them. From
our vantage-point, we might question the bias of the people who decided
what categories of people to investigate, but that is another issue.
Wollstonecraft noted that when people referred to "people"
or "humans," they almost always meant men. Women were viewed
principally in relation to men; i.e., as sexual partners and rearers
of men's children, and so on. She asserted women must be looked on primarily
as people in their own right, and only secondarily as the housekeepers
and wives, etc. of men.
An important contention in her book is that men used education to
train girls to play the dependent "womanly" roles men have
mapped out for them. This, indeed, is a recurrent theme throughout the
Feminist literature. Wollstonecraft demands equality of civil rights
between men and women. She does not say much about political rights
for women, though there are indications she intended to write something
on that topic, too.
John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women was an important 19th Century
Feminist work, written under the influence of his late wife, Harriet
Taylor. Mill's proposals are similar to those of Wollstonecraft. But
he goes further, saying that women should have the vote. As far as employment
is concerned, he too says women should be free to enter the occupation
of their choice (including marriage and child-rearing, if that is their
preferred option).
Fundamental to Mill's philosophy, Utilitarianism, is the idea of optimizing
the greatest good for the greatest number of people; that is, ethical
priority was accorded to the greatest good of the greatest number of
people. According to most authorities on Mill's works, the notion of
"equality," which is so basic to Feminist writings in general,
did not seem to obviously follow from Utilitarian principles. It is
not logically necessary that "equality" between different
groups or individuals in Society would inevitably be a means of producing
the greatest good to the greatest number of people.
It might be argued, for example, that some people are better at producing
wealth than others. Therefore, if you want to maximise the wealth in
a given Society, you have to accord special rights and privileges to
such people in order to attain your overall goal of maximising the material
well-being of the population as a whole. Mill had to add the principle
of equality on almost as an afterthought before he could construct his
Feminist argument.
Nevertheless, he does try to demonstrate how everybody would benefit
from granting women legal equality with men by arguing that the liberation
of women will result in a net gain in the quantity of happiness for
mankind. This is because, according to Locke's previous work, the "servitude"
of women in marriage makes many of them miserable. He also says that
mankind (by which he meant, in present day Feminist parlance, "humankind")
will benefit if woman's full potential is freed, educated, and employed
to the benefit of all. And marriages would be happier if men and women
were equally well educated. He believed happiness in marriage depended
on the partners being as similar and unified as possible.
In the course of the nineteenth century, Feminists obtained greater
educational opportunities in schools and universities and the admission
of women to the professions. Laws relating to divorce, the property
rights of married women, and control of children in marriage were also
modified in a direction that favoured women. Moreover, by the early
20th Century, at the latest, women gained the franchise in most western
countries. The first breakthrough for the Feminists came in 1869, when
women got the vote in the American State of Wyoming, and the first sovereign
state to grant women the vote was New Zealand – in 1893. However,
in no country did men force women to become liable to be drafted into
the front line, in return for getting the vote. This shows how little
thinking was done about equality of rights and responsibilities.
After the franchise for women had been achieved in many countries,
the Second World War intervened. This possibly caused a hiatus in the
Feminists' political struggles, perhaps because they did not want to
be forced to serve as front-line soldiers. Such an obligation might
reasonably be expected of them had they continued agitating during the
war. And when the war was over, people needed time to forget the men
who had lost their lives and/or limbs in the War.
But sure enough, after a decent interval, a peacetime mentality soon
evolved in western societies to which the hypocrisy of some of the Feminist
demands for "equality" did not seem so glaringly obvious.
This was no conspiracy – the process is a natural one, as most
people prefer to treat war as a bad dream they want to wake up from
as soon as possible! And from a Lesbian Feminist perspective, men are
always expendable.
This postwar period marked Feminism's true Second Wave, a time when
it seemed natural to focus more and more on the way women's role in
the family prevented them from having careers to the extent men did.
This attitude implied that the roles of wife and mother were somehow
inferior to that of income-earner in a workplace (or wage-slave in the
rat-race, as others might phrase it).
One book pushing this line within the Individualist Feminist tradition
was Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), which followed relatively
closely on the heels of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1953) (see
below). Friedan's aim was for society and women's lives to be organised
to maximise the ability of women to have a career as well as a family.
She thought that American middle-class, suburban, white, heterosexual
housewives were bound to feel unfulfilled and bored, unless they had
a full-time job outside the home:
“Science should not relieve housewives of too much drudgery;
it must concentrate instead on creating the illusion of that sense of
achievement that housewives seem to need.” (The Feminine Mystique,
4th Dell Printing, June 1964, p 172)
This would, of course, not be such a problem in countries and social
classes where labour-saving devices were unaffordable. But what is most
interesting here is how Friedan seems to take it for granted any sense
of achievement felt by housewives would be necessarily an "illusion".
This is a very subjective view. Obviously, Friedan obviously does not
feel that a sense of achievement in a career outside the home would
be illusory – either for men or women. Nor does she believe a
woman can be both feminine and fully human:
“(B)y choosing femininity over the painful growth to full identity,
by never achieving the hard core of self that comes not from fantasy
but from mastering reality, these girls are doomed to suffer ultimately
that bored, diffuse feeling of purposelessness, nonexistence, noninvolvement
with the world that can be called anomie, or lack of identity, or merely
felt as the problem that has no name.” (The Feminine Mystique,
4th Dell Printing, June 1964, p 172)
This is the same gender-role confusion which has affected many Feminists;
somehow, they manage to equate femininity with a lack of a identity.
What this really demonstrates is the frustration that bisexual middle-class
Feminist writers felt with the need to conform to "feminine"
role-models, and why they wanted to convert more women to their more
masculine personalities. They wanted to take power away from the feminine
and attractive women, whose personas were centred around cooperating
with men, and create a cohort of women whose personas would centre around
competing with men. Overtly Lesbian Feminists are merely at the extreme
end of this covertly Lesbian movement. From this perspective, Friedan's
famous "problem that has no name" is actually the "problem"
of heterosexuality – it couldn't be given a name because its true
name would repel converts. Despite this, some found her less radical
than her predecessors:
Betty Friedan's 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, was in some ways
less 'radical' than Wollstonecraft's, Taylor's or Mill's. Despite Friedan's
implicit understanding of woman as a powerless sex class, she often
wrote as if individual women can, through sheer effort, advance to the
ranks of the powerful sex class known as 'man'. Her tendency, at least
in The Feminine Mystique, was to forget that this is easier said than
done, so long as men are generally in charge of hiring and promoting.
(Tong 1989, 22)
Tong believes Friedan's emphasis on individual "self-improvement"
constitutes a diversion from radical activity aimed at changing society
through political means, and criticises Friedan for not being analytical
enough to look for barriers to women achieving careers outside the home.
Many years later, however, Friedan remedied this omission to some extent
with a second book, The Second Stage:
“In the first stage, our aim was full participation (of the
woman's movement), ... But we were diverted from our dream. And in our
reaction against the feminine mystique, which defined women solely in
terms of their relation to men as wives, mothers and homemakers, we
sometimes seemed to fall into a feminist mystique which denied that
core of women's personhood that is fulfilled through love, nurture,
home.” (Friedan, op. cit., 27)
So the main emphasis in Liberal/Individualist Feminism was on removing
barriers that prevent women from competing with men on an equal footing
in paid employment. And this remains its main emphasis, although many
of these barriers no longer exist. Ironically, a strict interpretation
of the Liberal/Individualist Feminists paradigm does not sit well with
the dominant Feminist thinking today: If women still don't achieve as
well in public life as men do, responsibility rests solely with the
individual (a Liberal Feminist would say). You can't just look at any
inequality between men's and women's achievement in the workplace and
deduce from it that there must still be some sexist barriers to women's
achievement.
This issue is relevant to such questions as what happens to women
when they return to the workforce after a break of several years, during
which they have been busy raising their children. Some Feminists argue
such women should reenter the workforce at the same level of pay and
seniority as enjoyed by their (male and female) colleagues who had a
continuous career throughout the period in question. I consider this
Feminist position unjust for three reasons:
First, the employer grants seniority (in theory, anyway) not on the
basis of age, but experience and skills gained. A person who has been
absent from the workplace has presumably not acquired the same level
of experience and skill. Feminists respond that being a mother provides
much relevant experience and skill – but this is a brain-dead
argument. It depends on what occupations are involved.
Obviously, being a mother is somewhat relevant to a career as an
au pair, nanny, cook, nurse, or childcare worker. However, it is irrelevant
to a career as an office-worker, laboratory technician, police officer
or miner! An analysis of the relevant job description can be conducted
by any halfway intelligent person, then compared with that of a housewife/mother.
Anyone who buys the blanket Feminist argument that being a mother is
equally relevant to any occupation should not be allowed to handle sharp
implements, operate a motor vehicle or occupy any position requiring
more than rudimentary reasoning ability. Their argument reeks of intellectual
incompetence.
Second, what about people who are absent from a certain workplace
for other reasons? It would be absurd and unjust to grant them the same
seniority and pay as their colleagues who had stayed in the same workplace
– yet it would be equally absurd and unjust to deny them this
while granting it to returning mothers.
Finally, women who have children (usually) do this voluntarily, and
bringing up children is a very rewarding occupation in its own right.
It is not as if anyone was forcing them to do it. Those Feminists who
believe all men are involved in a pervasive patriarchal conspiracy to
subjugate all women are paranoid.
Certainly, some men derive satisfaction from being the breadwinner
and being waited on hand-and-foot by women, and some men and women actively
promote this vision of Society. But that is a quid pro quo arrangement
– the man has burdens he must carry in wartime and other emergencies.
It is also true that men are usually not the ones who have to choose
between children and careers; on the other hand, men are also denied
some of the joys of motherhood, so it is only equitable that women should
be unable to have their cake and eat it too – especially as the
mothers are more likely to be granted custody of the children after
separation or divorce.
The time came when Individualist Feminism achieved most of its goals
in western countries. A cynic might add that Feminism was therefore
in need of new demands to make. Certainly, once a political movement
has achieved certain political gains, those gains become part of the
status quo and the political movement involved is at liberty to examine
the new status quo to see if it is completely satisfied with it, or
whether it thinks further "improvements" could or should be
made.
Generally, when activists achieve their political goals they tend
to rest on their laurels to some extent, and there is often a hiatus
until succeeding generations grow up taking these achievements for granted
and consider mounting new campaigns. However, the recent institutionalisation
and financing of perpetual Feminism through Women's Studies departments,
Ministries of Women's Affairs and state-funded and privately sponsored
women's organisations are countering this tendency.
Socialist/Marxist Feminism
Socialist and Marxist Feminism are very similar to each other as
Tong explains:
“Whereas socialist feminists believe that gender and class play
an approximately equal role in any explanation of women's oppression,
Marxist feminists believe that class ultimately better accounts for
women's status and function(s). Under capitalism, they say, bourgeois
women will not experience the same kind of oppression that proletarian
women will. What is distinctive about Marxist feminism, then, is that
it invites every woman, whether proletarian or bourgeois, to understand
women's oppression not so much as the result of the intentional actions
of individuals but as the product of the political, social, and economic
structures associated with capitalism.” (Tong 1989,39)
It was Socialist Feminism, together with Radical Feminism (see below),
which made up the vanguard of Feminism's Second Wave. Socialism (including
Marxist Socialism/Communism) has been a very diverse movement. Yet,
with few exceptions (such as the French writer Proudhon), Socialists
favoured Feminism from the outset. There were possibly two reasons for
this: First, Socialism arose at a historically later stage than Individualism,
when Feminism was already an up-and-coming ideology; second, Socialism
was generally antagonistic to the institution of the family. This was
attractive to those Feminists who wanted to disconnect women from their
role in the family.
In most forms of Socialism, there was to be no private property for
the family to own and pass on to later generations. So there would be
no need to rear children privately or tie women to the home.
One of the most important works in the Socialist Feminist tradition
was Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. Influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre,
she was an Existentialist as well as a Marxist. Juliet Mitchell's Woman's
Estate (1971) was another influential Marxist Feminist work. She agreed
with the efforts of the Radical Feminists (see below) to encourage women
to analyse their own situation, but she thought the results of this
process of analysis would need Marxist theory superimposed on it for
it to make any sort of sense.
One of the main issues concerning Marxist Feminists is household work.
They maintain that even when women have full-time jobs their household
workload remains both undiminished and undervalued: if women weren't
doing it for free, someone would have to be paid to do the shopping,
cook, clean the house, and look after the children, etc. But capitalist
societies, they contend, view women as mere consumers (using the money
their male partners earn as producers).
Some Marxist Feminists believe women are oppressed because they see
women as basically parasitical, the work of a housewife as easy, and
of little value. They have therefore argued for the socialisation and
collectivisation of women's household work. What they want is for people
to live communally, so child-rearing, cooking and housework are carried
out on a large scale by paid workers. This work will then acquire a
monetary value and its worth will be thereby officially acknowledged
– even if it is still mostly women who do it.
Other Marxist Feminists argue that a woman's household work in an
individual household should attract a wage. This wage should be paid
by the government. According to Tong (1989), however, there is another
Marxist Feminist point of view which has it that paying women to do
housework has three disadvantages:
1.It would make it more likely that women would be isolated in their
own homes. Their work would become increasingly trivialised, as more
and more labour-saving devices became available to them. They would
become more and more prey to suburban neurosis.
2.The relationship of the woman to the rest of her family would be put
onto a commercial footing, when many Marxists would like to get away
from what they see as Capitalism's tendency to commodify everything.
3.It would entrench the traditional sexual division of labour –
making it more likely that men would keep on working outside the home,
and women inside the home.
Existentialist Feminism
As stated above, de Beauvoir was both an Existentialist and a Marxist.
This leads authors such as Tong (1989) to classify her as primarily
an Existentialist Feminist, rather than as a Marxist Feminist.
To fully understand Existentialist Feminism, one would have to understand
Existentialism, and it would be outside the scope of this book to digress
into the details of Existential theory. However, the essential characteristic
of Existentialist Feminism is that it takes the positive, active categories
of Existentialism and applies them to men, and takes the negative, passive
categories and applies them to women – thus making women out to
be disadvantaged and oppressed.
“Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, probably the key theoretical
text of twentieth-century Feminism, offered an existentialist explanation
of woman's situation. De Beauvoir argued that woman is oppressed by
virtue of otherness. Woman is the Other because she is not-man. Man
is the self, the free, determining being who defines the meaning of
his existence, and woman is the Other, the object whose meaning is determined
for her. If woman is to become a self, a subject, she must, like man,
transcend the definitions, labels, and essences limiting her existence.
She must make herself be whatever she wants to be.” (Tong, op.
cit., 6).
Cultural Feminism
Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) was the
first significant Cultural Feminist work. Cultural Feminism sets out
to persuade us that men and women are not only different from each other,
but that women's values are superior to men's and women's values should
supplant men's values. In other words, this is Female Supremacism.
What about women who behave badly? Most Feminists insist such are
the result of socialisation, education and upbringing in a patriarchal
society. By the same logic, however, the supposedly "positive"
aspects of "women's values" must also derive from the same
source. This means both the positive and negative aspects of women's
values and behaviour might vanish as a result of the social engineering
proposed by the Cultural Feminists!
Where 19th century Liberal Feminists concentrated on political and
legal issues, Cultural Feminists examined institutions such as religion,
marriage, and the home. They looked beyond the possibility of political
and legal equality between women and men to the changes in society they
believed could or should result from such equality. The idea, simply,
was that men had been making a mess of things and women would do a better
job of running, or helping to run the world.
Some Cultural Feminists believe in the myth of a primordial matriarchy,
when pacifism, cooperation, nonviolent settlement of differences, and
a harmonious regulation of public life were the order of the day --
in contrast to the destruction, tyranny, and war which are supposed
to have characterised patriarchy. By using the word myth, I don't mean
this belief is necessarily incorrect – just that it is an unproved
tale about historical events which is central to a particular explanation
of Society.
Unable to find any "Matriarchies" in the present day, many
Feminists resort to inventing an idyllic Lost Matriarchal Paradise in
the dim mists of prehistory. Even though there is no acceptable scholarly
evidence for this, it has become an accepted fact in 'Women's Studies'.
(www.patriarchy.com/~sheaffer/patriarchy.html)
Social Darwinism (Spencer, 1851) was an important influence on Cultural
Feminism. This theory applied the quasi-Darwinian notion of the "survival
of the fittest" to human societies, races and individual people.
It implied that any successful society achieved its success by virtue
of characteristics that made it "fitter" than rival societies.
Societies could be "fitter" in various ways, including:
1. birthrate;
2. infant mortality rate;
3. longevity;
4. food production;
5. total population;
6. total land area;
7. success in warfare, etc.
Social Darwinism placed high value on male aggression and competitiveness.
Some Social Darwinists even favoured murderous competition and war as
appropriate selective mechanisms. However, another, less-publicised
school of Social Darwinist thought, such as Charlotte Gilman's Women
and Economics (1898), foresaw a different trend. They believed Humanity
was evolving toward a more collective organisation, requiring more cooperation
and less competition, more altruism and less egoism.
Psychoanalytic Feminism
The core thinking of Psychoanalytic Feminism goes something like
this:
“Psychoanalytic Feminists find the root of women's oppression
embedded deep in her (sic) psyche.... the Oedipus complex, the process
by which the boy gives up his first love object, mother, in order to
escape castration at the hands of father. As a result of submitting
his id (or desires) to the superego (collective social conscience),
the boy is fully integrated into culture. Together with his father he
will rule over nature and woman, both of whom contain a similar irrational
power. In contrast to the boy, the girl, who has no penis to lose, separates
slowly from her first love object, mother. As a result, the girl's integration
into culture is incomplete. She exists at the periphery or margin of
culture as the one who does not rule but is ruled, largely because ...
she fears her own power.” (Tong 1989, 5)
Psychoanalytic theory, however, is highly speculative, and not disprovable
enough to rate (in my view, anyway) as a truly "scientific"
theory. In addition, I find aspects of the above picture somewhat implausible
-- particularly the notion that females are less integrated into culture
than males. Females mature (socially, as well as sexually) earlier than
males, and females typically show a more complete internalisation of
cultural norms – i.e., they are "better behaved" –
than males. Society really reflects female values more than male values
and directs male behaviours toward supporting and protecting females.
The idea that nature resembles women more than men is also highly debatable.
Radical Feminism
Radical Feminists tend to reject the State itself, not to mention many
institutions within it, as a patriarchal framework. They believe it
is neither a neutral institution which mediates between forces –
the result of a flexible consensus – nor a forum within whose
constraints women can achieve their political goals (as Liberal Feminists
see it).
Radical Feminism is a product of the Second Wave and took over where
previous factions left off. Fewer of its ideas have been implemented
than is the case with Individualist Feminism or Socialist Feminism,
however:
“(I)t is radical feminism which has been most theoretically
innovative, rejecting traditional definitions of both politics and theory,
while condemning all previous political theory as patriarchal. Unlike
the Marxist approach, it has not struggled to incorporate women into
a preexisting political framework, but instead attempts to shift our
whole perception of society, to restructure it in terms of a radically
new set of woman-centred meanings. Its aim has been to recast political
identities; to reclaim language and culture from their masculine forms;
to relocate significant political power; to reassess human nature and
to challenge traditional values. (Coole, D. H., 1988: Women in Political
Theory, p. 235)”
The main difference between Radical Feminism and other types of Feminism
is that the former denies any Psychological differences between the
sexes. Upbringing and education are claimed to be the causes of different
male and female behaviour patterns, according to this view. And the
function of differential upbringing and education for men and women
is supposed to be to support the institution of male dominance (patriarchy).
Radical Feminists demand the abolition of all sexually differentiated
roles and the creation of an androgynous society. Needless to say, this
is a philosophy created by lesbians to suit Lesbians.
“Some radical feminists ... pursue the logic of their analysis
to a point where a united women's movement of the broad left becomes
difficult to realize. In their view, women's physiological capacities
for reproduction are analogous to the material production of the working
class in traditional Marxism. Women, then, constitute a class in the
same way that workers do. Just as the working class must become a class
for itself by taking control of production, so, too, must women take
control of their reproduction in order to become free. An absolute extension
of the class analogy must lead to the idea of the destruction of the
previously dominant class – men; or, at least, separation from
it. Radicals demand that lesbianism be considered not merely a matter
of freedom of choice but as essential political practice for feminists.”
(Meehan, Elizabeth (1990): British Feminism from the 1960s to the 1980s.
pp. 191-2)
One of the best-known Feminist works on sexuality is Germaine Greer's
The Female Eunuch (1971). This book is one of the classics of Radical
Feminism. It is radical in the sense that it claims that people such
as Betty Friedan did not go far enough. Setting up a female Establishment
in opposition to the male Establishment, as Friedan suggested, did not
help most women, according to Greer.
Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex (1970) comes under the
category of Socialist Feminism as well as Radical Feminism. This book
is unusually intelligent, clear, lucid, and thorough in its approach,
by Feminist standards. This does not mean that what it claims is true
or undistorted. She eventually ended up in a psychiatric institution,
and I don't find this very surprising.
Shulamith Firestone is one influential Feminist writer who used Marxism
as a starting-point. She begins by citing the 19th Century German Communist
theorist Engels with approval, though she thinks he did not go far enough:
Engels did observe that the original division of labor was between
man and woman for the purposes of child-breeding; that within the family
the husband was the owner, the wife the means of production, the children
the labor; and that reproduction of the human species was an important
economic system distinct from the means of production. (Firestone, The
Dialectic of Sex, 1971, New York: Bantam, pp. 4-5)
Even if we take a narrow, purely physical view of reproduction, Engels'
analysis is very distorted. The male, along with the female, is part
of the means of sexual production. And many acts of sexual intercourse
are usually required for each fertilisation. Moreover, the male usually
expends much more energy in these acts of coitus than does the female.
If there is foreplay, the man is typically much more energetic in this
phase of intercourse as well as in the actual coitus.
Additionally, the ultimate "owner" of the children varies
greatly from culture to culture, and time to time. The ultimate test,
I would say, is who gets custody of the children in cases of separation
or divorce. In the western world, this is almost always the mother.
Thus, in the contemporary western world, at least, women are the real
"owners" of the "product." In about ninety percent
of cases, according to the consensus of fathers' rights activists on
the Internet, mothers gets sole custody of their children after a divorce
or separation. This bias against fathers often takes the form of the
"Natural Caretaker Doctrine" – the belief that the person
who has the most day-to-day contact with children is the person best
suited to have custody after separation or divorce.
It is a well documented fact that fathers have a very difficult time
obtaining custody due to the pervasive anti-father prejudice that still
exists in many parts of the Family Court system. (www.deltabravo.net/custody/index.shtml).
What's more, reproduction properly includes all the years devoted
to rearing (feeding, housing, educating, etc.) the children. Typically,
as the primary breadwinner, fathers expend a substantial proportion
of their time and income for that purpose. If, as argued above, it is
the mother who is the real "owner" of the children, then it
is really the mother who is exploiting the father in this particular
economic system. When you get right down to it, men are an oppressed
minority in western society today. They are a genuine minority, unlike
women, who are a privileged majority dressed up by Feminists as an oppressed
minority.
Firestone thought that where Radical Feminism and human biology disagreed,
it had to be human biology that gave way! In other words, she was lucid
enough to see some conflicts between Radical Feminist theory and reality,
but like so many other ideologues tilting at windmills, she didn't let
that stop her. More recent Feminists have solved such problems by lying
about the facts and bullying entire societies into believing arrant
nonsense (as we have seen in previous chapters). When entire societies
believe lies, this is called "ideology," "superstition"
or "religion".
Firestone bases her own analysis on the following, in part uncontroversial,
assertions to do with what she calls the "biological family":
1.That women throughout history before the advent of birth control
were at the continual mercy of their biology – menstruation, menopause,
and 'female ills', constant painful childbirth, wet nursing and care
of infants, all of which made them dependent on males ... for physical
survival.
2.That human infants take an even longer time to grow up than animals,
and thus are helpless and, for some short period at least, dependent
on adults for physical survival.
3.That a basic mother/child interdependency has existed in some form
in every society, past or present, and thus has shaped the psychology
of every mature female and every infant.
4.That the natural reproductive difference between the sexes led directly
to the first division of labour at the origins of class, as well as
furnishing the paradigm of caste (discrimination based on biological
characteristics) (ibid, 8-9).
The terms "at the origins of" and "paradigm" seem
to imply the sexual division of labour was a precondition for the emergence
of the phenomena of class and caste. Firestone makes this claim explicit
(though she still provides no evidence for it) in her definition of
historical materialism:
Modern technology makes it feasible, she thinks, to overthrow the
biological basis of the present sexual power-structure. This is where
her psychosexual utopia comes in. She argues that women should take
control of "the new population biology as well as all the social
institutions of childbearing and child rearing." More radically,
in her utopia there would be no such thing as family or community, but
only disconnected individuals toiling for the moment:
“(G)enital differences between human beings would no longer
matter culturally. (A reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality -- Freud's
'polymorphous perversity' – would probably supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.)
The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would
be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children
would be born to both sexes equally, or independently of either....
the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa) would give
way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group of others in
general.... The division of labor would be ended by the elimination
of labor altogether (cybernation).” (op. cit.)
One of the most influential Feminist works in recent times has been
Kate Millett's Sexual Politics. Her central thesis is that one can characterise
the relationship between the sexes in political terms. This insight
apparently derives originally from Wilhelm Reich. It would be fairer
to be more balanced than the Feminists are about the actual political
relationships that exist between the sexes. Millett starts from the
following assumptions:
a) the United States (and similar countries) are "patriarchies";
b) this is evident from the fact that politicians are mainly males;
c) this rule by men over women applies to all components of society,
including the family.
She doesn't makes these claims very clearly or explicitly, but it
is evident she believes them. And Feminism has become established to
such an extent that these tenets are popularly regarded as virtually
self-evident throughout the western world.
Two concepts that typify Radical Feminism are the theoretical maxim
"the personal is political" and its practical corollary, "consciousness-raising".
“Within the consciousness-raising group each person's experience,
each woman's life-story was a matter of interest. We understood that
through listening to an individual's experience we could draw a much
richer picture of how society was put together. Sexual politics provided
an understanding of how society works both at an ideological level and
at a material level and deepened the understanding the left had of human
experience. The Women's Liberation Movement built an analysis of society
founded on the nuts and bolts of individual life experience. It enlarged
and challenged previous understanding of the social, economic and political
basis of society.” (Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach: Outside
In. Inside Out. Women's Psychology: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Account,
Harmondsworth:Penguin,1982,12)
I would liken this process to the gathering of data to prove a scientific
hypothesis, with the major difference that consciousness-raising has
a built-in bias which can be easily demonstrated by asking the (rhetorical,
of course) question, "How many consciousness-raising groups did
the Feminists hold to enable men to discuss how they had been oppressed
by women in their lives?" In other words, "consciousness-raising"
is a near-synonym to "brainwashing," "instruction"
or "conversion." Radical Feminist theory (sexual politics,
as conceived of by Feminists) provided the framework for women to reinterpret
their lives much as religions do for converts.
Postmodern Feminism / French Feminism
A cynic might characterise Postmodern Feminism as a stage or type
of Feminism that makes a virtue of the fact that contemporary Feminism
is splintered and apparently directionless:
Postmodern feminists worry that because feminism purports to be an
explanatory theory, it ... is in danger of trying to provide the explanation
for why woman is oppressed, or the ten steps all women must take in
order to achieve true liberation. (Tong 1989, 217)
Feminism is unable to do these things. Indeed, no Feminist has objectively
demonstrated that women are (more) oppressed (than men) and, therefore
need to be "liberated." Such an objective demonstration is
a precondition for the explanatory theory they lack. The splintered
nature of Postmodern Feminism is the inevitable result of the fact that
none of the various factions of Feminism have been able to construct
an explanatory theory. In turn, these schisms have created an environment
in which the so-called "backlash" has been able to emerge.
Women's Studies
"Women's Studies" is a curious academic subject. Partly
because it is new, but mostly because it has more in common with theological
or ideological training than with other academic disciplines in (say)
the Social Sciences.
“Women's studies, like feminism itself, presents two approaches
to the question of inequality. One approach, using anthropological,
biological, historical and psychological evidence, argues that women
are essentially no different from men, and that therefore in a differently
structured society it would be possible for divisions based upon sex
or gender differences to disappear, leaving us with an equal society.
The other approach argues that women are essentially different from
men and that inequality results in an undervaluing of female activities
and characteristics.... Women's studies can thus be seen to be linked
to two concepts of equality, which we may call 'plain equal' or 'equal
but different'.” (Ruth, Issues in Feminism: A First Course in
Women's Studies, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980, p. 5)
It is a characteristic of the ideology of a social movement that it
tries to "marry" contradictions in an attempt to maximise
the political clout of the movement. Purely academic disciplines, on
the other hand, tend to focus on contradictions in an attempt to reach
a conclusion as to which theory is correct.
Because Women's Studies is not really an academic subject, however,
we cannot expect it to objectively examine such questions as whether
men are oppressed in society, whether they are oppressed by women, and
whether they are oppressed more than women. Women's Studies takes the
oppression of women (by men or by "Society") as a self-evident
truth which no right-thinking person would even question. Even Women's
Studies lecturers admit this bias toward political action rather than
rigorous scholarship:
(T)he ideas, methods, curricula, and theories of Women's Studies exhibit
great diversity and resist easy definition. Those now working in Women's
Studies have called it variously a process, a field of inquiry, a critical
perspective, a center for social action, and/or the academic arm of
the women's movement. It is all of these and more. (ibid, p. 3).
Ruth is aware of the charge that Women's Studies is biased. She responds
by claiming male bias (which she calls "Masculine-ism," "Masculism"
or "Androcentrism") has always been a feature of Society.
This may well be so, but proving many male academics have been biased
does not prove Women's Studies is not biased, nor does it justify Women's
Studies being biased, if it is.
Masculists/Men's Rights activists are not responsible for what male
bias has existed and does exist. We do not need to defend male bias,
where it exists. If Feminists reveal male bias, that is not a bad thing.
However, Feminists do more than just reveal male bias, they also create
female bias. One of the main aims of this book is to reveal cases of
female bias. Here are some of the examples covered in this book:
1. the definition of political power and identifying who has it;
2. attitudes toward male as against female circumcision;
3. evaluating male and female courtship roles in the context of rape
legislation;
4. the dissemination and interpretation of the facts of domestic violence;
5. the dissemination of information on various types of child abuse;
6. the evaluation of the legal system's treatment of men and women;
7. the evaluation of employment issues involving men and women;
8. the compilation and dissemination of UN and other statistics on gender
equity;
9. the choice of issues where gender equity is demanded;
10. the definition of gender equity.
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Latest Update |
15 August 2015 |
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