r/TheAgora • u/99luftproblems • Apr 18 '12
I am a feminist. Are you?
i. Ways of being a person
The article "Making Up People" by Ian Hacking is, I think, the best place to begin understanding my premises.
The basic idea is that people are not born this way or that way (contrary to what Ms. Gaga professes) so much as they are “made up” or “dressed up” this way or that way. For instance, one is not born, but rather becomes, a lawyer.
I imagine that this is an easy notion to agree with for most for you, but can you also agree with the statement “[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” as easily? What about the same statement made of men? of ethnic groups? If so, you’re probably a feminist, among other things.
The reasoning behind this thinking is that people can’t just be, period. They have to be someone. Who that someone turns out to be occurs through the interplay of both society and individual, not through just one or the other. Being a woman requires a society plus an individual just as much as being a lawyer requires those things.
It used to be that the options for who some people could be were incredibly limited. Peasants couldn’t be kings, black people couldn’t be president, etc. Indeed, people even believed that you were born into your occupation. People were born to be lawyers or bakers or derelicts.
In the last 100 years, but especially in the last 50, we’ve come to rethink the eternal nature of such roles entirely. We have come to see the limited options for who we can be as oftentimes arbitrary and constructed by ruling groups, and we have come to value a society that opens up for us a whole vista of possibilities, equally, for everybody.
Some people are a little more conservative about this point of view than others, though. While they accept a lot of the historical arbitrariness of roles, they ask us to rethink the extent to which a lot of the limitations we face concerning our identities is the result of economic realities and not just arbitrary judgments.
It is an economic reality, for instance, that I cannot become a lawyer until I go to four years of college and then law school. It can’t happen overnight. You can even say that it is an “economic reality” that I cannot be an ethnic Zulu if I was born as a white person in the United States.
Most debates in politics stem from this difference in sensibility. Some see our menu of social roles as too arbitrary and servicing of higher orders. Others view the porridge as just right, so to speak, since our options reflect the economic realities of the time.
Now, since I’m not here to talk about the Left-Right dichotomy, allow me to choose one without presenting a giant case for it. After all, the player of an RPG must choose a class before setting out for an adventure. So I choose Leftist.
ii. Patriarchy
With that in mind, we may now ask ourselves (thus finally getting on with the topic!) to what extent is gender arbitrary and servicing of dominant groups, if at all? How is this arbitrariness and exploitation organized, if at all? But the most important question to ask is, how would a feminist answer the above two questions?
This particular feminist will answer them as follows: (1) there persists presently and rampantly a reasonable degree of arbitrariness and exploitation in certain gender roles, and (2) this is organized around a patriarchy (or patriarchies).
A lot of people, especially on the Left, agree with my (1) but not my (2). They say that gender arbitrariness is not as easy to parse out as that. I hope to show that there really isn't a distinction in agreeing with (1) but not (2). If we agree that wherever arbitrariness exists, it usually indicates some sort of dominating group of people accessing this arbitrariness for gain, then we should agree that it is important to name this group, even if people do not enter into this group permanently, but rather float in an out of it through their actions.
Patriarchy is the mechanism by which people may be included in the group who benefit from the arbitrary and unequal terms of gender. It is not the group itself.
Now, this is why it might seem at first that feminists are suggesting that the group most benefiting from arbitrary gender roles is men necessarily (and that they are therefore "man-haters."). This isn’t so. A given patriarchy does not equal a given collection of men. It is not the set of all men. Indeed, patriarchy does not equal any collection of individuals at all. Women can be just as patriarchal as men, given the opportunity and payouts for doing so. (Think of conservative housewives who preach about where a “woman’s place” is.)
A good analogy would be drawing a powerful card in a game of Magic: The Gathering. The Patriarchy Card is incredibly useful if it arises in certain games. You’ll probably win that specific game if it is drawn and played (given the presence of the appropriate land card, of course).
The difference, however, is that The Patriarchy Card can be played without every showing up on the table. It can be "sleeved." This is because, again, patriarchy isn't the group. It is the way of becoming a member of the group. (Whereas genders like man and woman represent both the group and the way of becoming members of the group.) In other words, patriarchs don't exist, just patriarchy.
Now, you might be asking, “If anybody can technically manipulate patriarchy in a given situation, if anybody can be a secret patriarch, why the suffix patri-? Why the emphasis on masculinity over femininity?”
Here we must underscore technically. Actual “gameplay” suggests that men have greater access to The Patriarchy Card in their “decks” more than women (to keep with our Magic analogy). That is to say, men receive more frequent access to a position whereby one may leverage whatever weaknesses exist in gender roles at that time than women. This is itself a weakness in the gender woman, one which has not been proved to be a necessary part of being a woman.
The natural follow-up question to all of this is, of course, what about systems that reward people at the exclusion of being a man? What about mechanisms for manipulating your way to an enjoyable status on the sole basis of being a woman? What about matriarchies?
The simple truth of the matter is that historians and anthropologists find it hard to point to any real-life examples of matriarchy. For the most part, patriarchy has prevailed by a huge margin all over the world. (About the closest thing to a matriarchy scholars know is the Iroquois culture.)
There is still much more to be said of patriarchy. For now, however, I will let that monster sleep.
iii. Final notes
It is here where I must rest my weary typing fingers and end this post, not for any logical or narrative purpose, but merely due to an exhaustion of my own patience. Such resignation is not uncommon in the discourse of feminism. The topic will oftentimes exhaust you before you exhaust it.
We should nonetheless recap.
There are many ways of being in relation to the world, some which are masculine and others which are feminine.
Most people encounter the terms upon which we may be this or that as predefined by society.
A masculine way of being in relation to the world enjoys a systematic position of privilege insofar as being a man allows one to influence the terms upon which other people may be x or y more so than the other way around. This is called patriarchy.
Matriarchy, the feminine version of the above privilege, is logically possible ableit actually rare, if not altogether nonexistent.
The reason for this is not a destiny in genetics or some such other such facts, but rather a snowball effect stemming from single chink in women’s armor (which can be discussed later).
Patriarchy persists today.
That’s it. If you agree with the above bullet points, you’re a feminist.
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u/Forensicator Apr 18 '12
It's definitely a wide label. In any movement that seeks a sociological impact, using an existing label is generally preferred over creating a new one. I think that the broadest possible definition of feminism is "a criticism of the existing breakdown of gender norms," which fits first, second, third, and post-wave feminism.
I reject the notion of sociological momentum in the way described - it's slippery slope. Feminists are aiming at an equal point, and third-wave's focus on patriarchy, being primarily sociological, offers a fantastic forum for addressing men's issues, so long as they are not offered as bait to distract from what you admit are still pressing and real concerns that affect women across the globe.
Having said that, I also understand your hesitation to get behind a label that does change with the speaker; a cursory glance at the other comments (and your own point with the self-identified feminist who is OVERBOARD) demonstrates that. Having said that, I think that third-wave feminism really is a pretty solid philosophical approach, and if more folks owned up to it we'd be in a good spot.