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femtheology.bsky.social
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@femtheology.bsky.social
6 followers 1 following 27 posts
excerpts from feminist theory texts. tumblr and twitter: @femtheology
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femtheology.bsky.social
Feminism: History and Morality by Jean Grimshaw, published in Radical Philosophy Issue 30 (Spring 1982). A succinct critique in itself of how mere moralising fails to account for the historical and contextual forces that influence philosophical or moralistic concepts like justice and equality
I have picked these two chapters of Radcliffe Richards' book to illustrate what seems to me to be the fundamental weakness of the book, which is that, in conceiving of feminism simply as a moral fight about abstract and decontextualised and dehistori-cised issues such as that of 'sexual justice', it tends merely to recapitulate current terms and categories, and to fail to recognise how often many of the things which feminism is fighting against are expressed in precisely those terms. This is why I think that ultimately Radcliffe Richards' 'feminism' is often scarcely worth the name, and rarely transcends everyday commonsense in order to ask why things have become commonsense. In a way, the book, for all that it offers some useful ammunition to feminists at certain points, is another exemplification of the barrenness of moral philosophy or of moralising which fail to try and understand the history of the terms that they use, and fail to recognise that the terms of moral debate do not exist in a remote philosopher's heaven, but underpin and are underpinned by social structures which may themselves have an interest in concealing this fact.
December 16, 2024 at 3:43 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
Feminism: History and Morality by Jean Grimshaw, published in Radical Philosophy Issue 30 (Spring 1982). On the feminist objection to the sexual commodification of women, and why it is valid criticism because of how sexual relations between men and women function.
But I do not think that most feminists would want to express their objections to things like porn shops and strip shows or the Miss World contest in these sorts of terms. I think that most of them do not see sex as a special case in this sort of way at all; and one does not have to believe that sex should be sanctified by finer feelings in order to object to porn shops and the sexual exploitation of women, or the predatory way in which many men think of sexual relationships. The point is not that sex is a special case, but that sexual relationships often provide an extreme and striking example of the general 'commodification', as one might call it, of the relationships between men and women, in which women are expected to play the role of servicing men, whether it be sexually, or as secretaries or sock-washers, with little regard to their own human needs. The other problem is that if you put the matter in this sort of way, that is if you suggest that the trouble is simply that men do not treat women properly and that women should insist that they are treated properly, it makes it sound as if it was simply a question of getting individual men to behave them-selves. (What, incidentally, would Radcliffe Richards think was the 'proper' way to behave in a porn shop or at a strip show?) This leaves untouched the question of what 'proper' behaviour amounts to, or where we should move beyond commonsense notions to find some analysis of notions of proper behaviour which find the Miss World contest acceptable.
December 16, 2024 at 3:41 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
Feminism: History and Morality by Jean Grimshaw, published in Radical Philosophy Issue 30 (Spring 1982). On the task of feminists being to analyse essentially everything, including language, instead of merely giving up to “commonsensical” notions of justice and equality
But her arguments do not go far enough. The reason is that if one tries to arrive at a conception of 'the socially just way of going about things' (p.104) without some form of analysis or critique of the sorts of social processes that have produced current 'injustices', one is almost bound to reify current notions like 'suitability', 'fair shares', 'equal competition', and so on, as if they provided a sort of moral package to which one can appeal in a completely unhistorical way to provide answers to tricky questions like those about justice, and as if the answers merely lay ultimately somewhere in our moral intuitions. In fact, however, notions such as 'fair shares' or 'suitability' simply do not have a universal clear meaning which we can settle once and for all; - as if we can, in chronological order, first define our terms, and then look at social reality to see if it measures up to our definitions. Rather, the definitions are themselves part of current social reality; they have a history; they are tied to sets of social practices and institutions; and they may sometimes be implicitly used to support or buttress these, or to prevent critical questions being asked. It is not that we should stop bothering about whether our arguments are sound, and simply look at their history; it is rather that unless we take this history into account we are liable to fall into the trap of supposing that current 'common sense' dictates not merely the solutions of problems, but also the terms in which they are to be discussed. An essential task of feminism should be not simply to provide 'answers' to problems posed in commonsensical everyday language, but to look critically at that language itself, and trace its relationships to the sort of social and historical conditions that have led to its use. And this sort of criticism is not and cannot be politically neutral; or uncommitted to some attempt at explanation and analysis.
December 16, 2024 at 3:36 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
Feminism: History and Morality by Jean Grimshaw, published in Radical Philosophy Issue 30 (Spring 1982). On why merely using words such as equality and justice cannot serve feminist goals, as they are stripped to ahistorical and decontextualised philosophical exercises
Secondly, Radcliffe Richards writes as if the fight for justice was the goal of feminism, and all other things are simply means; such that it is an open question whether or not they will actually lead to justice - whether it is the family, or traditional sex roles, or conventional femininity or anything else that is the object of our attack. If we discover: for example, that traditional sex roles don't lead to injustice, then we must give up our attack on them. This implies that we first have to know what we mean by 'justice', and then look at social institutions to see if they are just; and the process of finding out what we mean by justice is simply one of armchair philosophical argument. This in turn implies that there is such a thing as a conception of 'justice', which is totally decontextualised and ahistorical, and whose validity has ultimately to depend on the moral intuitions of right-minded people, who have done a sufficient amount of clear thinking. The problem is that if you try to turn feminism into an abstract fight for 'justice' and 'fairness', which you conceive of in this ahistorical sort of way (or if you try to discuss 'femininity' without any discussion of the history of the notion, or the uses to which it has been put), then what you say will have an in-built tendency merely to recapitulate features and values of the current social order, and to lapse into an eclectic and uncritical common sense.
December 16, 2024 at 3:30 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
Feminism: History and Morality by Jean Grimshaw, published in Radical Philosophy Issue 30 (Spring 1982). Grimshaw is criticising Janet Radcliffe Richards’ book The Sceptical Feminist. On women’s oppression pervading almost all spheres of our existence.
For example, it has often been pointed out that it is not enough to challenge things like educational or job discrimination at the legislative level; women are oppressed by social institutions, by language, in their very psychology, in ways that legislation cannot touch.
December 16, 2024 at 3:25 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
Feminism: History and Morality by Jean Grimshaw, published in Radical Philosophy Issue 30 (Spring 1982). Grimshaw is criticising Janet Radcliffe Richards’ book The Sceptical Feminist. The argument in the picture is Richards’ argument that Grimshaw quotes
(p.43). Suppose, she suggests, that it were the case that men were in some sense naturally dominant? “Even if men are naturally inclined to dominate it does not follow that they ought to be allowed to run everything. Their being naturally dominant might be an excellent reason for imposing special restrictions to keep their nature under control ... one of the functions of society is to protect its weaker members.”
December 16, 2024 at 3:23 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 2) (1970). On “reformers” vs feminists.
Even worse than the conservative feminists were the increasing number of women who, with their new-found bit of freedom, jumped enthusiastically into all the radicalisms of the day, the various social reform movements of the Progressive Era, even when at odds with feminist interests. (Consider the old debate about discriminatory 'protective' labour laws for women.) Margaret Rhondda, Britain's leading post-First World War feminist, put it this way: “One may divide the women in the woman's movement into two groups: the Feminists and the reformers who are not in the least Feminists; who do not care tuppence about equality for itself ... Now almost every women's organization recognizes that reformers are far more common than Feminists, that the passion to decide to look after your fellowmen, to do good to them in your way, is far more common than the desire to put into everyone's hand the power to look after themselves.” These 'reformers', the women 'radicals' of their day, were at best influenced by feminism. They were neither true feminists nor true radicals because they did not yet see the woman's cause as a legitimate radical issue in itself. By seeing the WRM as only tangent to another, more important politics, they were in a sense viewing themselves as defective men: women's issues seemed to them ‘special', 'sectarian', while issues that concerned men were 'human', 'universal'. Developing politically in movements dominated by men, they became preoccupied with reforming their position within those movements rather than getting out and creating their own. The Woman's Trade Union League is a good example: women politicos in this group failed at the most basic undertakings because they were unable to sever their ties with the strongly male chauvinist AFL, under Samuel Gompers, which sold them out time and again.
December 16, 2024 at 12:22 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 2) (1970). On the reforms won by the first Woman’s Rights Movement being mostly a “new-fangled version of female ‘power’ of the usual sort”, where actual power still rested with white men.
By 1890, further legal reforms had been won, women had entered the labor force in the service capacity that they still hold today, and they had begun to be educated in larger numbers. In lieu of true political power they had been granted a token, segregated place in the public sphere as clubwomen. But though indeed this was a greater political power than before, it was only a newfangled version of female "power" of the usual sort: behind the throne—a traditional influence on power which took modern form in lobbying and embarrassment tactics. When, in 1890, with their leaders old and discouraged, the radical feminist National merged with the conservative American to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), all seemed lost. Conservative feminism, with its concentration on broad, unitive, single-issues like suffrage, with its attempt to work within and placate the white male power structure-trying to convince men who knew better, with their own fancy rhetoric yet—had won. Feminism, sold out, languished.
December 16, 2024 at 12:18 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 2) (1970). On the disproportionate violence faced by the first woman right’s movement and the reason being its revolutionary potential.
The first stirrings of this oppressed class, the first simple demands for justice, were met by a disproportionate violence, a resistance difficult to understand today when the lines of sexual class have been blurred over. For, as often happens, the revolutionary potential of the first awakening was recognized more clearly by those in power than it was by the crusaders themselves. From its very beginning the feminist movement posed a serious threat to the established order, its very existence and long duration testifying to fundamental inequalities in a system that pretended to democracy.
December 16, 2024 at 12:14 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 2). On the condition of the American women even after the Civil War
This radical movement was built by women who had literally no civil status under the law; who were pronounced civilly dead upon marriage, or who remained legal minors if they did not marry; who could not sign a will or even have custody of their own children upon divorce; who were not taught even to read, let alone admitted to college (the most privileged of them were equipped with a knowledge of embroidery, china painting, French, and harpsichord); who had no political voice whatever. Thus, even after the Civil War, more than half the USA's population was still legally enslaved, literally not owning even the bustles on their backs.
December 16, 2024 at 12:11 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 2) (1970). An argument in support of the notion that the early American Woman’s Rights Movement was radical.
The early American Woman's Rights Movement was radical. In the nineteenth century, for women to attack the Family, the Church (see Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Woman's Bible), and the State (law) was for them to attack the very cornerstones of the Victorian society in which they lived - equivalent to attacking sex distinctions themselves in our own time. The theoretical foundations of the early WRM grew out of the most radical ideas of the day, notably those of abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and such communalists as R. D. Owen and Fanny Wright. Few people today are aware that the early feminism was a true grass-roots movement: they haven't heard of the tortuous journeys made by feminist pioneers into backwoods and frontiers, or door to door in the towns to speak about the issues or to collect signatures for petitions that were laughed right out of the Assemblies. Nor do they know that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the most militant feminists of the movement, were among the first to stress the importance of organizing women workers, founding the Working Woman's Association in September, 1868. (Delegates to the National Labor Union Convention as early as 1868, they later fell out over the short-changing of women workers by the - hasn't changed - male chauvinist labour movement.) Other pioneer female labour organizers such as Augusta Lewis and Kate Mulaney were in the feminist movement.
December 16, 2024 at 12:08 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 2). On second wave feminism, its aim and describing feminism as a long struggle to overthrow the most rigid class/caste system in existence
In the radical feminist view, the new feminism is not just the revival of a serious political movement for social equality. It is the second wave of the most important revolution in history. Its aim: overthrow of the oldest, most rigid class/caste system in existence, the class system based on sex—a system consolidated over thousands of years, lending the archetypal male and female roles an undeserved legitimacy and seeming permanence. In this perspective, the pioneer Western feminist movement was only the first onslaught, the fifty-year ridicule that followed it only a first counteroffensive—the dawn of a long struggle to break free from the oppressive power structures set up by nature and reinforced by man.
December 16, 2024 at 12:04 PM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 1) (1970). An argument in support of how the sexual-reproductive organization of society is the real basis upon which the superstructure of economic, juridical and political institutions is based.
All past history [note that we can now eliminate "with the exception of primitive stages"] was the history of class struggle. These warring classes of society are always the product of the modes of organization of the biological family unit for reproduction of the species, as well as of the strictly economic modes of production and exchange of goods and services. The sexual-reproductive organization of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of economic, juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period.
December 16, 2024 at 11:53 AM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 1) (1970). On historical materialism from a feminist perspective.
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 labor based on sex which developed into the [economic-cultural] class system.
December 16, 2024 at 11:52 AM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 1) (1970). On how the “biological family” model must be uprooted to prevent further exploitation and oppression in society.
that the family contained within itself in embryo all the antagonisms that later develop on a wide scale within the society and the state. For unless revolution uproots the basic social organization, the biological family—the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled—the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated. We shall need a sexual revolution
December 16, 2024 at 11:51 AM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (chapter 1) (1970). On the revolt of women required for the elimination of the patriarchy, and on its potential path.
So that just as to assure elimination of economic classes requires the revolt of the underclass (the proletariat) and, in a temporary dictatorship, their seizure of the means of production, so to assure the elimination of sex- -ual classes requires the revolt of the underclass (women) and the seizure of control of reproduction: not only the full restoration to women of ownership of their own bodies, but also their (temporary) seizure of control of human fertility—the new population biology as well as all the social institutions of childbearing and childrearing. And just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.
December 16, 2024 at 11:50 AM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 1) (1970). On how removing the biological basis of oppression does not guarantee the end of patriarchal exploitation.
Though the sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women and children will be freed. On the contrary, the new technology, especially fertility con-trol, may be used against them to reinforce the entrenched system of exploitation.
December 16, 2024 at 11:49 AM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 1) (1970)
This in view of the fact that all cultural systems, including existentialism, are themselves determined by the sex dualism.
December 16, 2024 at 11:49 AM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 1) (1970). On Engels’ and Marx’s analysis of the patriarchy and where it falls short. On enlarging the analysis that is historical materialism.
But Engels has been given too much credit for these scattered recognitions of the oppression of women as a class. In fact he acknowledged the sexual class system only where it overlapped and illuminated his economic construct. Engels didn't do so well even in this respect. But Marx was worse: There is a growing recognition of Marx's bias against women (a cultural bias shared by Freud as well as all men of culture), dangerous if one attempts to squeeze feminism into an orthodox Marxist framework—freezing what were only incidental insights of Marx and Engels about sex class into dogma. Instead, we must enlarge historical materialism to include the strictly Marxian, in the same way that the physics of relativity did not invalidate Newtonian physics so much as it drew a circle around it, limiting its application—but only through comparison—to a smaller sphere. For an economic diagnosis traced to ownership of the means of production, even of the means of reproduction, does not explain everything. There is a level of reality that does not stem directly from economics.
December 16, 2024 at 11:48 AM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 1) (1970). On the patriarchy pervading all culture, history, economics and our understanding of nature itself. On the reaction of women to this.
This is painful: No matter how many levels of consciousness one reaches, the problem always goes deeper. It is everywhere. The division yin and yang pervades all culture, history, economics, nature itself; modern Western versions of sex discrimination are only the most recent layer. To so heighten one's sensitivity to sexism presents problems far worse than the black militant's new awareness of racism: Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that's how deep it goes they don't want to know. Others continue strengthening and enlarging the movement, their painful sensitivity to female oppression existing for a pur-pose: eventually to eliminate it.
December 16, 2024 at 11:46 AM
femtheology.bsky.social
The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (Chapter 1) (1970). On radical feminism, revolution and the limits of categories of thought.
That so profound a change cannot be easily fit into traditional categories of thought, e.g., "political," is not because these categories do not apply but because they are not big enough: radical feminism bursts through them. If there were another word more all-embracing than revolution we would use it.
December 16, 2024 at 11:45 AM