Dear all,
Thanks for allowing me to subject you to my thoughts on feminism. A good part of it is jargon that has to do with the piece of writing by Mary Wollstonecraft and the content of the class.
I haven't posted in forever so here goes. The link for the piece: https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Abv7vmrys1SgZGc0NmMyc2dfMTM5Y3IzZGhjbjY&hl=en
On another note, part of the reason I haven't posted is because I've began to loathe my own writing. It's strange and hopefully I'll get over it soon.
I hope all is well in your lives. If it's not, let me know.
Cheers,
Benji
Benjamin Fogarty
Wollstonecraft Response
Ryan D. Chaney
3/1/10
Third-wave Feminism's Curse: Socio-economically liberal notions of equality and freedom
Wollstonecraft’s arguments for equality have painted a clear picture of patriarchal tendencies in western society's history. It seems hard to debate the notion that there has been visible progress in gender equality since the days she wrote her vindication, yet in practice it's possible to see how the problem has been disguised in what seems to be a play of language. At the root, they are the exact same inequalities, but have been transformed into what seem to be advances. Today it's not a question of social inequality: women are looked at as the same as men in line to pay, at the restaurant and at the workplace. It's a question of a lack of freedom to escape the expectations that come with being a woman privately (as individuals), while being forced to be like men publically. This is most marked in socio-economics, where women, to date in America, still attempt to prove that they can work as much as men and limit themselves to meager vacation time when pregnant. Women are equal to men, but chained to being “woman” in man's demented terms.
There is still a clear difference between the role a woman has to play in American society and that a man does, although it's disguised behind a veil of social “equality.” This is what could be considered a liberal social and economic point of view. Rousseau proposed an equality of a sort that enables and emphasizes freedom. Following his logic that equality leads to freedom, women should have the freedom to act as they will. The problem is that the idea of what it means to be a woman is constructed by a male-dominated patriarchal society. Women gaining equality in liberal society has only come to mean that they are now free to try to occupy the same positions in society that men do. They are free to try to be like men. The newly acquired freedom leads women who know of the historically unequal male/female relationship to act unnaturally in the name of exerting their womanhood and establishing equality. They're never emancipated, however, from the heavy expectation on women to behave like women (i.e. feminine, sensitive, caring, motherly, beautiful, soft-spoken, hospitable). In the USA, equality is alive and well in the politically correct discourse of corporations, politics and common knowledge, but not in practice. In practice, in the name of equality, women are supposed to fit neatly into a predetermined female role (color associations, dress codes, behavioral codes, aesthetic codes), such that they seem to have freedom to be “feminine,” when in reality they are being robbed of any robust notion of freedom. This is where second wave feminism went wrong, however, it's been two decades and Americans still haven't realized that there's a third wave. Our inability to see through the watered down liberal notion of equality (amongst many other things) is precisely what's killing the third wave.
Being feminist today is still portrayed as women trying to take the power from men. This notion doesn't encourage a fundamental change in gender relations and male-dominated politics. Economically, women are socialized into unequal positions reinforced by both men an women who participate in that society. A middle class American woman would be indignant if she weren't allowed to wear female clothing to the work place. If a woman diverges from her expected role, she will suffer tremendous psychological suffering and be socially shunned. In this sense, women clamor for their own unfreedom in the name of equality of petty a-political freedom of choice and expression. This turns what seems to be freedom into its disguised opposite that reinforces itself with the very subjects it chains. Wollstonecraft would roll over in her grave.
Men need to accept that women don't want to be men, that's why they're women. They don't need to be “equal” to men. Equality only brings women down to the pitiful level of gender and power relations constructed around the “man” in American society. Women need to stop painstakingly avoiding the opposites of freedom, equality and emancipation in relation to men. They need to stop reacting to the terms that neoliberals leave behind for them and decide where they want these now empty terms to take them.
Last to consider is the tremendous potential of women to bring about structural changes in culture, society, politics and economics. There is much at stake in liberal society for women to continue being women. Behind this idea is the preservation of the institution of the family, part and parcel of the economy sustaining the liberal project. It would be as simple as escaping the stigma easily attached to the obstructive notion of feminism as unfeminine, which proves to be immensely difficult. In liberalism, just as the notion of equality is perverted, the barriers that seem the smallest are actually the biggest, and those that seem the biggest might actually be the smallest.
In conclusion, check it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oftOCN1jkNo&feature=player_embedded
