From Max:
> is not). I'm responding to the post-structuralist characterization of
> feminism as essentialist, in the sense of defining women as having a
> particular kind of innate nature. I find this problematic not because it's
> theory, but because it misinterprets feminist analysis as biological
> determinism and discounts the importance of reclaiming the power to define
> that which patriarchal culture has defined for so long.
>
> What I mean is that we've been taught that men have done all the important
> things in history, the sciences and arts, and that women are (explicitly
or
> implicitly) inferior, weaker, less creative. I don't find that is solved
by
> saying, "Women are just as good as men." Such a statement is not strong
> enough to counter all the conditioning that says otherwise.

Oh bless you. I get so SICK of bleatings about how women are doing something
men were doing or "just as good as".  I'm just as good as a car, fridge,
cat, book or rubbish bin but I don't keep defining myself in terms of those
things.

 It's still
> coming from relative powerlessness. When feminists rise up and say, what
> women have done is important, and female symbols have power, and let's
> recognize the contributions of mothers or the cooperative strategies and
> models of relationship which women have emphasized as a group (not always
> individually, again it's about patterns) then the charge of essentialism
> comes down the pike. But what is really going on is a redefinition of what
> is valued and a reconfiguring of human consciousness as longstanding
> structures of domination are broken down.

Yes (happily)

From Barbara:
>I was particularly intersted in your explanation of essentialism as it
relates to feminism. I very much share your view that it is a
problematic concept

Me too

>I think we may need to have the courage to say simply that there IS
no such thing as "the feminine essence". Or more precisely, there
is the feminine principle and the masculine principle (and one could
write books about what is what), and the two mix in each of us,

no no I don't follow you there.
I am a "moderate essntialist" I think. That means that I do think that it
means more than historical accident, accumulated socialisation or
performative utterances (ugh) to be one gender or the other.

When I look at the determining characteristics of the group "women" or "men"
I see reproductive function. Without a different set of reproductive
functions we wouldn't have gender. A great deal of what we think of as
belonging to women or men is actually highly fluid and can be reallocated at
another time or another place. But what isn't variable is who carries and
births the child and who doesn't.

I find it dangerous to overlook this and try to construct our world as
disconnected from biology. We are not disembodied.
OK some objections.
1) Some women do not choose to mother. True, but they have to live with the
syndrome "mothering" as vital to their options. Choosing celibacy,
sexuality, indifference, all involve dealing with the capacity that lies in
the body. No woman can live without dealing with it as an important, key
determinant of her life.
2) Some women cannot mother in the body. True, but their identity *as* women
derives from the mothering template. To be accounted women they must have
enough identifiers like breasts, menstruation, vagina, womb - not all, but
some, enough to qualify.
3) There are transgender people who wish to be called women and often are.
Yes, and the model they aspire to is shaped by reproductive function.
4) Many women who mother hate it/ don't do it well or happily. Yes. But I do
not claim that women *love* mothering, or are all by nature skilled at it. I
just say we are all built for it, with the usual range of variation you get
in any mass of examples of a crude model.

I would say that there is a strong tendency to behave (a disposition) in a
mothering way, because of hormones and other physical factors. Biological
dispositions like hunting and mothering need to be activated during early
socialisation or else they stay dormant. Once in place they can also be
largely but not completely overridden by powerful socialisation. (Chinese
policies to forbid more than one child have confronted huge levels of
extreme resistance. It is hard to see whether this is an older socialised
tradition assering itself, but I tend to think it is more than that.)
Interestingly Catherine Hakim of the LSE demonstrates that given access to
reliable birth control there is a 10% group of women who choose not to
mother, and anotrher 10% who will mother at any cost. The other 80% are more
or less variable and respond quite a lot to social engineering.

>some people (regardless of sex) being more attuned, by nature, to
masculine principles and others to feminine principles, but
everyone having some of each.

I don't like being categorised in terms of F or M. I find it simpler to just
see everything I am as feminine, and everything men are as masculine. This
creates a lot of mirroring, but some characteristics are distinct such as
basic reproduction and closely associated activities.

>I think that feminists who insist on the feminine essence, with a
"ne'er the twain shall meet" attitude to men, are repeating the sin
committed against us for centuries and imprisoning themselves
once again in the same prison.

I do separate the two but I don't hold them as remote, but as embraced. Some
kinds of femininity *is* remote from masc. as in separatist lesbians, and
mothers' clubs that ignore men, and vice versa in gay men who avoid women,
or hetero men who live club masculine. But in the main it is possible to
mirror the two. we see this in divinities - there is the Hunter, and the
Huntress, wargod and wargoddess, lovegod and lovegoddess. But I've never yet
seen a god of midwifery, a god of birth! A priapic goddess would be such a
contradictory creature we'd call it androgyne.

So in recognising a polarity I also recognise a beautifully chaotic realm
where the swirling around the poles meets in the middle and matters get
mixed. This doesn't invalidate the poles. In explaining my priapic goddess I
was using gendered language, which worked OK if a little stretched. So in
the overlapping realm we still define and explain in terms of the genders we
know.

>I, for one, try to cultivate both my
principles (and I have a lot of the male in me - as evidenced, among
others, by my affinity for classical philosophy), I try to validate the
female principle in the men I meet, and I regard our essence as
common: humanity.

I don't find anything unfemale about an interest in classical philosophy. I
share that! It's only the boys club that has tried to grab it greedily for
theor own playtime that has made it look superficially masculine. I do not
ignore the "man of reason" stuff here.

>About "normative", I take my definition from what I learned in
economic theory, where "normative" versus "positive" economics
means economics involving policy prescriptions versus pure
description. I never had much time for the latter. What do we study
economics for, if not in order to make policy prescriptions? (Not to
mention the hidden values influencing the descriptions.)

The Grail Question: Who does it serve?

>As for Aristotle - in spite of what he thought about women, I still
think he was (one of) the greatest! An excellent antidote, I think, to
everyone from Kant to the postmodernists. The big caveat with him
is not his attitude to women, but the Platonic deification of reason
(as against instinct and the mythos) which he, and most "male"
philosophy after him, subscribed to.

Oh yes. I move between loving reason dearly (I fell in love with Socrates at
19) and adoring intuition. But that's why I love magic best because it is
the marriage of the two.

Shan Jayran
ONLINE EVENTS NOTICEBOARD RELIGION & GENDER
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RELIGION & GENDER ONLINE FEB 15 -MAR 29
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Associate Lecturer, University College Chichester
Ovular - online education