Am I a feminist?
Before I start, a disclaimer: I have no academic background in gender studies, women's studies, sociology or anything that might qualify me to think I know what I'm talking about here. These are just my thoughts, I've tried to be as logical and rational as possible (although whether that's even the "right" thing to do, I'm not sure! you'll see why later) and if I'm misguided or I've misunderstood some academic point, I welcome attempts to correct me. Constructive criticism not flamewars, please. (I can be quite stubbornly stupid at times though, I admit.) So.
Prompted partly by recent discussions on mawaridi's journal, and also in response to some issues I came across in my work a few months ago, I've realised how much I just don't get modern academic feminism (not why it exists, but what it is).
Would I describe myself as a feminist? No. I believe in equal rights and opportunities for people of all genders, but I don't believe in having to call myself a feminist because of that, or in having to have a specific label for people who believe in equality. (Other than perhaps "normal" versus "narrow-minded moron".) If that sounds pretentious, naive and idealistic, consider this: I don't call myself a Chinesist or an Asianist because I believe in equality for people of all races but happen to belong to a particular one.
I was told recently (by a fellow female academic) that being a woman working in an academic environment automatically made me a feminist. But why? Because I dared to encroach on the hallowed turf of a historically male-dominated field? It never occurred to me not to - or at least, not because I happen to be a woman. Forcing me to call myself "feminist" for doing so reinforces the idea that it's something I, that "normal", unlabelled people, shouldn't do. By giving ourselves labels, we risk marginalising ourselves.
On the other hand, I wouldn't necessarily call myself Not-A-Feminist, because I think that doing so might be seen to devalue the enormously significant efforts of those thanks to whose accomplishments I can assume I'll be treated equally (and feel justified in being indignant if I'm not), who strove for equality at a time when it wasn't so easy to take it for granted - and when the feminist label was easier to apply and wear.
I know being equal and being identical are not the same thing, and perhaps modern feminism is about recognising difference and working with it, responding to the particular needs and perspectives of women because they are different to men and because the standard response is geared towards a male-dominated world. I have two problems with this definition, though. The first thing is a theoretical quibble: it doesn't seem to be (all of) what academic feminism is about. More on this later.
The second is a personal as well as an ideological objection: such a definition, and the way it shapes people's responses, fails to value us as persons and individuals, apart from our membership of the category "female". We may all be women, but that isn't ALL we are, and we are NOT all the same. I imagine what early proto-feminists were trying to say, in their protestations against inequality, was "I want to be recognised for myself as a person and for what I do, even though I happen to be a woman", not "I want to be recognised as a woman and for what I do because I am a woman". Surely a definition of feminism that involves stereotyping women - who they are, how they work, what they think - sends the opposite message?
To expand on the above objections, I want to explore some further issues. When we categorise something as feminist (feminist law, feminist bioethics, feminist literature...) what do we mean by that? To be "feminist", does a piece or body of work have to a) deal with issues specific to women, b) reflect a characteristically female perspective, c) reflect a (single) woman's perspective, or d) be authored by a woman?
Now, I understand that A is too narrow a definition. Feminist law and bioethics, although they may have their roots in topics that specially concern women such as family law and reproductive issues, specifically disclaim this limitation.
At the other end of the spectrum, D seems like a spurious definition. I've listed C separately because I think it illustrates the main difficulty I have with B, which corresponds with the second of my general objections above: responding to a person's work as if it reflects the perspective the author has because she is a woman risks overlooking the importance of her work independent of what gender the author is. I am minded here of something in one of the posts that sparked this train of thought, in which cupidsbow commented on the way that women's works are often lumped together under one category because their authors are female, thereby ignoring the significance of these works to their proper (presumably male-centred) genre. And yet, this is what academic feminism seems all too often to do. In my own field, I know a number of academics who are labelled "feminist bioethicists". And yes, they are women, and yes, they have written on topics that require special attention to women (reproductive technologies being an obvious example); but they have also written on topics of universal applicability, and have done so from perspectives that, while particular (because we all have our own unique way of seeing things) are not particular in a uniformly female way. So, can someone explain what the term "feminist" in this sense means?
If we are to reject definitions A, C and D as I have argued for above, then we are left with B: feminism and feminist works reflect a characteristically female perspective. But what is that, exactly? When cupidsbow says: 'the hierarchy of art is skewed so that the "masculine" values are at the top, all others at the bottom' and goes on to cite Russ' examples of 'science, logic, creativity, action' for masculine, 'sensuality, pleasure, decadence, chaos' for other values, I want to know why that should be the case. Why are science, logic etc masculine values? Similarly in philosophy, why should objective rationality be categorised as patriarchal, while feminism is about... something else? I have always been interested in science, been a devotee of logic and favoured the objective and the rational even before studying philosophy in any sense; does this make me not feminine or not a woman somehow? Feminism is disenfranchising me from my gender identity! Or maybe I've just been brainwashed by this patriarchal world, inculcated into a masculine value system, and once I liberate my mind I'll be free to pursue my true interests of "carpets, weaving [and] wallpaper" and write subjective, irrational treatises on philosophy.
My response to this is: that's crap [1]. Sure, some of the things that are less valued are specific to women by virtue of our different physiology - children, child-rearing and the domesticity that goes along with it being a good example. And some of the things that are more valued are more suited to men. But by buying into the idea that all the "top" values are masculine, all the "bottom" values are feminine and in order to value women properly we need to change that hierarchy around - ie, come to value weaving and wallpaper equally with science and spiritual transcendence - what we're really doing is subscribing to a hierarchy that says men are at the top and women are at the bottom. It may be wrong in other ways to value science over weaving [2], but men can be weavers and women can be scientists; the hierarchy shouldn't have to change to achieve that. Put another way, it's the perception that the "low arts" are for women and the "high arts" for men which is unfair to women, not the perception of these arts as "low" or "high" per se.
Perhaps it is the case that women on average tend to think in a particular way or be attracted to certain artistic pursuits or ways of doing things. I'm certainly guilty of saying to various male friends of mine, in particular contexts, "you think like a girl" or "that's such a male-brained thing". And studies have shown differences between the sexes beyond the obvious biological ones, in the realms of neurophysiology and behaviour, based of course on samples designed to give a picture of men and women on average. But is "feminism" really a definition of averages? Because I don't want to be defined in terms of averages. I may be average in some ways and far from average in others, but even if I were exactly average in all ways, I wouldn't want that to be what defined me.
Or is it about exploring our identity, wondering who we are as women? Because I'm me, and while I do plenty of wondering about who I am, being a woman is just part of who I am. But because it's part of who I am, it means I need to wonder about all of the above.
So, please tell me: What is feminism? What does it mean to you? Would you say you are a feminist? If so, what do you mean by that, and if not, why not?
[1] I do not mean the essay I referred to is crap. It was insightful and well-written, and besides the academic point quoted is from Russ anyway and is not the main point of what cupidsbow was saying; but it did provoke this line of thought.
[2] Perhaps we should start a new ideology of "weaverism"? I thought mawaridi made an excellent point here about it being the values of minorities, not just women, that are belittled. The example of the way the male-dominated roleplayers' subculture is treated was particularly a particularly apt illustration.
Prompted partly by recent discussions on mawaridi's journal, and also in response to some issues I came across in my work a few months ago, I've realised how much I just don't get modern academic feminism (not why it exists, but what it is).
Would I describe myself as a feminist? No. I believe in equal rights and opportunities for people of all genders, but I don't believe in having to call myself a feminist because of that, or in having to have a specific label for people who believe in equality. (Other than perhaps "normal" versus "narrow-minded moron".) If that sounds pretentious, naive and idealistic, consider this: I don't call myself a Chinesist or an Asianist because I believe in equality for people of all races but happen to belong to a particular one.
I was told recently (by a fellow female academic) that being a woman working in an academic environment automatically made me a feminist. But why? Because I dared to encroach on the hallowed turf of a historically male-dominated field? It never occurred to me not to - or at least, not because I happen to be a woman. Forcing me to call myself "feminist" for doing so reinforces the idea that it's something I, that "normal", unlabelled people, shouldn't do. By giving ourselves labels, we risk marginalising ourselves.
On the other hand, I wouldn't necessarily call myself Not-A-Feminist, because I think that doing so might be seen to devalue the enormously significant efforts of those thanks to whose accomplishments I can assume I'll be treated equally (and feel justified in being indignant if I'm not), who strove for equality at a time when it wasn't so easy to take it for granted - and when the feminist label was easier to apply and wear.
I know being equal and being identical are not the same thing, and perhaps modern feminism is about recognising difference and working with it, responding to the particular needs and perspectives of women because they are different to men and because the standard response is geared towards a male-dominated world. I have two problems with this definition, though. The first thing is a theoretical quibble: it doesn't seem to be (all of) what academic feminism is about. More on this later.
The second is a personal as well as an ideological objection: such a definition, and the way it shapes people's responses, fails to value us as persons and individuals, apart from our membership of the category "female". We may all be women, but that isn't ALL we are, and we are NOT all the same. I imagine what early proto-feminists were trying to say, in their protestations against inequality, was "I want to be recognised for myself as a person and for what I do, even though I happen to be a woman", not "I want to be recognised as a woman and for what I do because I am a woman". Surely a definition of feminism that involves stereotyping women - who they are, how they work, what they think - sends the opposite message?
To expand on the above objections, I want to explore some further issues. When we categorise something as feminist (feminist law, feminist bioethics, feminist literature...) what do we mean by that? To be "feminist", does a piece or body of work have to a) deal with issues specific to women, b) reflect a characteristically female perspective, c) reflect a (single) woman's perspective, or d) be authored by a woman?
Now, I understand that A is too narrow a definition. Feminist law and bioethics, although they may have their roots in topics that specially concern women such as family law and reproductive issues, specifically disclaim this limitation.
At the other end of the spectrum, D seems like a spurious definition. I've listed C separately because I think it illustrates the main difficulty I have with B, which corresponds with the second of my general objections above: responding to a person's work as if it reflects the perspective the author has because she is a woman risks overlooking the importance of her work independent of what gender the author is. I am minded here of something in one of the posts that sparked this train of thought, in which cupidsbow commented on the way that women's works are often lumped together under one category because their authors are female, thereby ignoring the significance of these works to their proper (presumably male-centred) genre. And yet, this is what academic feminism seems all too often to do. In my own field, I know a number of academics who are labelled "feminist bioethicists". And yes, they are women, and yes, they have written on topics that require special attention to women (reproductive technologies being an obvious example); but they have also written on topics of universal applicability, and have done so from perspectives that, while particular (because we all have our own unique way of seeing things) are not particular in a uniformly female way. So, can someone explain what the term "feminist" in this sense means?
If we are to reject definitions A, C and D as I have argued for above, then we are left with B: feminism and feminist works reflect a characteristically female perspective. But what is that, exactly? When cupidsbow says: 'the hierarchy of art is skewed so that the "masculine" values are at the top, all others at the bottom' and goes on to cite Russ' examples of 'science, logic, creativity, action' for masculine, 'sensuality, pleasure, decadence, chaos' for other values, I want to know why that should be the case. Why are science, logic etc masculine values? Similarly in philosophy, why should objective rationality be categorised as patriarchal, while feminism is about... something else? I have always been interested in science, been a devotee of logic and favoured the objective and the rational even before studying philosophy in any sense; does this make me not feminine or not a woman somehow? Feminism is disenfranchising me from my gender identity! Or maybe I've just been brainwashed by this patriarchal world, inculcated into a masculine value system, and once I liberate my mind I'll be free to pursue my true interests of "carpets, weaving [and] wallpaper" and write subjective, irrational treatises on philosophy.
My response to this is: that's crap [1]. Sure, some of the things that are less valued are specific to women by virtue of our different physiology - children, child-rearing and the domesticity that goes along with it being a good example. And some of the things that are more valued are more suited to men. But by buying into the idea that all the "top" values are masculine, all the "bottom" values are feminine and in order to value women properly we need to change that hierarchy around - ie, come to value weaving and wallpaper equally with science and spiritual transcendence - what we're really doing is subscribing to a hierarchy that says men are at the top and women are at the bottom. It may be wrong in other ways to value science over weaving [2], but men can be weavers and women can be scientists; the hierarchy shouldn't have to change to achieve that. Put another way, it's the perception that the "low arts" are for women and the "high arts" for men which is unfair to women, not the perception of these arts as "low" or "high" per se.
Perhaps it is the case that women on average tend to think in a particular way or be attracted to certain artistic pursuits or ways of doing things. I'm certainly guilty of saying to various male friends of mine, in particular contexts, "you think like a girl" or "that's such a male-brained thing". And studies have shown differences between the sexes beyond the obvious biological ones, in the realms of neurophysiology and behaviour, based of course on samples designed to give a picture of men and women on average. But is "feminism" really a definition of averages? Because I don't want to be defined in terms of averages. I may be average in some ways and far from average in others, but even if I were exactly average in all ways, I wouldn't want that to be what defined me.
Or is it about exploring our identity, wondering who we are as women? Because I'm me, and while I do plenty of wondering about who I am, being a woman is just part of who I am. But because it's part of who I am, it means I need to wonder about all of the above.
So, please tell me: What is feminism? What does it mean to you? Would you say you are a feminist? If so, what do you mean by that, and if not, why not?
[1] I do not mean the essay I referred to is crap. It was insightful and well-written, and besides the academic point quoted is from Russ anyway and is not the main point of what cupidsbow was saying; but it did provoke this line of thought.
[2] Perhaps we should start a new ideology of "weaverism"? I thought mawaridi made an excellent point here about it being the values of minorities, not just women, that are belittled. The example of the way the male-dominated roleplayers' subculture is treated was particularly a particularly apt illustration.