Unit 7 Seminar

“I just want equal rights for boys and girls - finished. That's what feminism is to me. Not just legislate it - feel it. Do it. Accept it. Want it.”- Billie Jean King(American professional tennis player and sports commentator).

“Feminism - I myself have never known what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” -Rebecca West, (British Author and social critic, 1913)

“It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it. The woman is narrowed by the home and the man is narrowed by the woman.”

-Charlotte Perkins Gilman (American social critic).

“Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

-Rev. Pat Robertson (At the 1992 GOP Convention).

Societies have tended to establish the roles that women fulfill in a society. As the bearer of children, they often were seen as the one who maintained the home and raised the children.

While biology might have sharply shaped the creation of those roles, some have contended that requiring that women only place such a role (or a few others) denies women access to opportunities that were generally expected to be available only to men.

The so-called Feminist Rebellion focused on how the traditional views of women limited women’s access to higher social status, that through various means, societies have said that ‘a woman’s place is in the home’ (and implicitly, no where else). [Can you say, “glass ceiling?”]

Feminism in fact challenges the notion that a patriarchal society is inevitable because it is the best way to operate a society.

“We haven't come a long way, we've come a short way. If we hadn't come a short way, no one would be calling us 'baby.' “

-Elizabeth Janeway (American social critic), from speeches in the 1970s

While Janeway made this statement over 30 years ago, some argue that it is still true today.

Is society still a patriarchy?

Patriarchy: social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line ; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power

Feminists tend to agree that patriarchal governments continue to exist, where women are seen as second-class citizens.

Liberals would consider this to be discriminatory while radicals would consider this to be oppressive.

Discriminatory treatment would deprive some (women), but favors others (men). Oppressive treatment exists when a society is structured to perpetuate discriminatory practices.

Which view do you identify with?

Distinguishing between types of feminism may depend upon whether a patriarchy is still the dominant power structure and what the role is of government (if any) is in advancing and protecting the interests of women.

Liberals believe that patriarchy is basically gone, that there is equal treatment of men and women by government and that the government may only interfere in certain ways.

Radicals believe the opposite, seeing that government should intervene in many ways and that women should have a different standing as a matter of law.

Progressives aims for a middle ground between the previous views; they accept that patriarchy exists but that government’s role in changing that is limited.

Conservatives also occupy a mid point between the first two views, saying that patriarchy is eliminated, but that the government should play a stronger role in undoing the effects of a patriarchal society, perhaps resulting in woman gaining certain advantages.

In supporting a liberal interpretation of the concept of privacy, radical feminists contend that the state is too entangled in social institutions like marriage to say that marriage is ‘private’ and removed from societal scrutiny.

Further, within that ‘private sphere’, women are mistreated and society does nothing about it. They point to wife battering as an example of where the personal becomes political, where society needs to intervene in a ‘private’ matter.

“Woman lives her body as seen by another, by an anonymous patriarchal Other.”-(1988) Sandra Lee Bartky (American author and social critic).

Forget PRIVACY…give us EQUALITY! Radical feminists reject the logic used by the

US Supreme Court, that a constitutional right to privacy exists which would include the ability to terminate a pregnancy up to a point. They note that by making privacy ‘personal’, the government escapes any responsibility for helping poor women to get abortions.

Changes they’d want made would include those that punish women more than men, such as those that criminalized abortion. The radical feminists want control over their bodies, enough to decide whether they should bear children.

Radical feminists believe that the better arguments exist for equality, not for a distinct right to privacy.

Liberal feminists are more accepting of the logic employed by the US Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. The right to privacy should include a limitation on what society has to say about women’s choices and pregnancy. It should not provide a justification for wife batterers to resist society’s prohibitions, as privacy is rooted in a legal tradition.

Some do believe that an equality-based argument shores up a privacy-based approach to women’s choice about abortion.

Determining the superiority of either approach depends on the validity of the legal arguments, and the moral arguments, regarding abortion.

Radical feminists contend that any law in any form oppresses women, that society is permeated with messages describing what women should do and be. That’s especially the case with marriage, which they regard always as a coerced agreement.

However, few judges subscribe to this perspective, especially where there is no legal standard of what constitutes oppression. Most judges also would not invalidate laws that most of society approves of, either. So the liberal approach seems more palatable.

On the morality of abortion, radical feminists say that the anti-abortion movement only reinforces the patriarchal nature of society; it ignores whether the fetus is in fact a person.

A liberal perspective also sidesteps the issue of the value of a fetus by casting the issue in terms of the validity of state involvement in such matter.

Do you find that either approach seems necessarily morally superior to the other?

Great differences exist regarding First Amendment protections for pornography.

Radical feminists consider pornography to support oppression of women, since it devalues and objectifies women, allowing women to exist only as sex objects. They see pornography as perpetuating societal devaluation of women. Also, they point to studies which show that exposure to pornography alters men’s behavior and attitudes toward women.

Liberal feminists fear that censorship of pornography would cause greater harm to a freedom of expression. They see expression as something that doesn’t favor anyone’s perspective and that provides a mean for open discussion about a range of topics.

The City of Indianapolis enacted an ordinance (good only within city limits) outlawing pornography. Such arguments build on the notion that it is obscene, one of the areas not protected by the First Amendment. Some feminists found the ordinance acceptable because it ended government acquiescence to expression that oppressed women. But courts have generally allowed for ‘soft core’ pornography, which is presented in the context of literary and artistic expression.

A federal trial court found that the ordinance was unconstitutionally restrictive of free speech protected under the First Amendment. The federal appeals court acknowledged that pornography may continue to place women in a subordinate role but said that many speech affects society’s views of women. It upheld the trial court’s ruling because the ordinance was not viewpoint neutral, but would have society endorsing only one view towards pornography, and would amount to ‘thought-control’.

Feminist Catherine MacKinnon challenged the logic used by the appeals court. She noted that other laws also weren’t viewpoint neutral (such as a legally valid outlawing of child pornography).

Also, advancing notions of freedom of expression ignore the acknowledged harmful impact of pornography and ensures that bigots get to spread their biased opinions.

Finally, MacKinnon contends that traditional application of equal treatment protections in the Fourteenth Amendment do not take into consideration that free speech like pornography has a disproportionately and negative impact on women.

Is the kind of antipornography law supported by MacKinnon best understood as a civil rights law for women OR as a form of censorship?

What are your thoughts?

Past societies have been blind or indifferent to the injustices they perpetrated.

E.g. -It is a well-known, historical fact, that well into the 19th century, those in favor of abolishing slavery were viewed by mainstream opinion as “far-out and dangerous radicals.”

Also, most people—including women—saw no serious injustice in the denial of a woman’s right to vote, and those in favor of women’s suffrage were viewed as dangerous and irrational.

Thus, is it reasonable to believe that our current mainstream is blind to serious social injustices?

Some feminists claim to be the abolitionists and suffragists of our time. What do you think?