This Ross Douthat piece is interesting. He sets out how American feminism has consistently resolved its internal disputes - disputes over issues such as surrogacy ("now only eccentric conservatives notice the weird resemblances between California-style surrogacy practices and the handmaids and econowives of Gilead") and pornography - by adopting the logic of capitalism.
Take a current dispute: feminists "were, and are, divided over prostitution, but it’s pretty clear that the version of feminism that supports the rights of sex workers to sell their bodies in the marketplace has the intellectual momentum."
I'd add another example: maternity leave. It's not a particularly feminist or left-wing idea on this side of the Atlantic that new parents, particularly mothers, should be allowed a few months off work when they have a new baby. It's the sort of common sense idea that anyone - social conservatives, fans of breast-feeding, feminists, responsible employers, just people - can get behind. You can get a debate going by talking about some 'extreme' Scandinavian 2-year period, or wondering about how very small businesses cope, or asking whether women on maternity leave should really be accruing holiday - but you're unlikely to find anyone who favours the US model. (Wikipedia: "The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 ... mandates ... 12 weeks unpaid leave to mothers for the purpose of attending to a newborn or newly adopted child. However, the act does not attain universal coverage as it includes several limiting stipulations. In order to receive maternity leave, employees must work in a firm of 50 or more employees, maintain employment with the same business for 12 months and have accumulated at least 1,250 working hours over those 12 months. As of 2012, 59% of American employees were eligible under the FMLA. // The FMLA is the only law that addresses family leave.")
American feminism seems to be more concerned with the (non-business-affecting) issue of whether people's genitals should restrict their choice of lavatories than by the (distinctly business-affecting) issue of maternity leave and maternity pay. But which issue is more likely to make a discernible improvement on the lives of women?
Indeed, this is a feature of American left-wing political thought that extends beyond feminism. Take immigration: there is a left-wing tradition, based in trade unionism and economic protection that seeks to reduce immigration, and a left-wing tradition, based in universalism and anti-nationalism, that seeks to increase it. Guess which tradition won? The one that big business and capitalism favour - i.e. free movement of labour.
One might go even further. Let's be terribly cynical and Marxist about it. Imagine those cigar-chomping capitalists were designing a set of political debates to suit themselves. Wouldn't they want them to consist of both right-wing and left-wing arguments for things they want (open borders, abortions rather than maternity leave) accompanied by loud and angry arguments about trivia to distract people from any economic left-wingery?
It's worth remembering that just because you are woke and right-on and progressive and all the rest of it, you are not necessarily any more antipathetic to capitalism than a crotchety old right-winger who forgets that he can't use that phrase about the woodpile any more. Equally, if you are a social conservative, it's worth remembering that capitalism is not necessarily your friend.
I noticed, taking a feminism class at Stanford, that feminists are constantly caught up in a bind: it is not coincidental that "empowerment" has in itself "power", and power in the west is almost exclusively modeled by capitalism and colonialism. Without meaning to, feminism ends up achieving empowerment via these two mechanisms, capitalism and colonialism. For instance, feminism tends to delete cultural practices in developing countries that it deems regressive (traditional masculinity, anti-abortion ideology, etc), via UNESCO and so forth—which is obvious neo-colonialism—and feminism tends to judge success by metrics like, "How many women CEOs are there?" rather than metrics like, "How many women plumbers or truck drivers are there?", which is craven obsession with capitalist power, with typical contempt for proletarian concerns. I think Christianity has a unique contribution, since it starts with the assumption that powervis best sought by relinquishing it, not grabbing it; and however much feminism insists that this is only a front for defending patriarchal forms of power, feminists themselves cannot seem to accomplish their ends without enacting the very kinds of "male" violence that they denounce. (Incidentally, I don't think most explicitly mean to, except in the case of someone like Margaret Sanger; but they do all the same.) -John Ahern
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. That prompts a few thoughts from me.
Delete1) There is an attitude (a timid, capitalism-friendly, accepted-in-polite-company attitude) that takes a 'feminist' to be someone who is quite happy with everything about society except for the genitalia of the people in charge. (Rather as if the only thing wrong with US slavery was the lack of black slave-owners and white slaves.) So, at a domestic level, 'feminism' means liberating upper-middle class women from the ‘drudgery’ of childcare and housekeeping so that they can join the interesting and well-paying professions of their fathers, brothers and husbands ... leaving all that drudgery to other women (poorer immigrants, most likely) who don't even get the satisfaction of caring for their own children or looking after their own house. This is the attitude that gets quite worked up about how many women are occupying niche positions such as CEOs of multi-national corporations.
2) More radical feminism is not happy leaving matters there: instead of asking why there are not more women running investment banks, it asks why society rewards people doing things that men seem to like doing (e.g. gambling with money) so much more than things that women seem to like doing (e.g. nursing).
3) That's not dissimilar to Christianity. Radical feminism and Christianity agree that if you think that the person most worthy of respect is the person with the most wealth or success according to the current value system of this world then you’re making a mistake: you should turn your value system upside down and start showing respect for the excluded, the marginal, the meek – including women.
4) Atheist feminism (as with other atheist left-wing concerns for oppressed peoples) and Christianity can part company. Christians are obliged to help people in the here and now, but they can also see the (eschatological) victory in someone whose whole life is one of poverty, oppression and failure. But if this world is all there is, then a concern for the oppressed class of (say) women entails grabbing a bigger share of the goods of this world (money, opportunity, respect, etc) for that oppressed class, and anything that seeks to console the oppressed or reconcile them to their lot, including Christianity, is potentially an obstacle to progress. Consolation is not conducive to revolution.
5) However, in day-to-day practical matters, Christianity and feminism shouldn’t be at odds. We’re on the same side on the question of stoning women caught in adultery! We’re on the same side on rape! We’re on the same side on oppressive polygamous marriage! But upper-middle class feminism, in addition to its pro-capitalist turn, appears more keen on picking fights on matters of principle than on emphasising commonality. For example, being a single parent is a tough job that disproportionately falls on women. So helping single parents should be a big feminist concern. You’d think Christianity and feminism would have a lot of constructive things to say to each other about the duties of fatherhood, about men having proper respect for women and taking responsibility for their acts, about society’s role in valuing motherhood. But instead we hear lots about abortion – but abortion is not the answer (by definition, given that the modern definition of ‘parent’ entails that a baby has already been born).
6) Why did this happen? Partly because feminism emerged at a time when Christianity was plausibly part of the established patriarchal power structures in society. Those times are going, if not gone. And I daresay Christians are also guilty of emphasising their theoretical differences from radical feminists rather than their striking similarities. I could speculate more but I’ve gone on too long already. I’ll conclude with another nod to Douthat: he often says that if you don’t like the Christian Right, just wait until you see the post-Christian Right; let me add add that if you don’t like the Christian Patriarchy, just wait until you see the post-Christian Patriarchy.