>> Common women are dealing with virulent forms of essentialism, and I don't
>> see feminist critiques of this fundamental patriarchal essentialism as
>> partaking of it.
>Now I'm lost.
What I mean is that the various brands of patriarchy put women in a narrow
box with few options and rights, saying this is your nature and you have no
choice but to live as we say. Feminists come along and say, that's a narrow
box and we are/want much more than that: we want a variety of choices and
we want rights, and furthermore the contributions that women have made
within that box have been devalued, the women themselves are in fact
devalued, and here are ways that the patterns of domination are acted out:
men beat and rape and underpay and appropriate the labor of and interrupt
women, etc, etc. Then, in the process of naming and describing that box, a
reaction sets in that says, oh, feminists are totalizing and essentialist,
they believe these patterns are innate and they automatically think all
women are better than all men. Well, some do, but most do not; we are
saying these are historical/culturally-engrained-and-enforced patterns, and
the patterns can only be changed by looking at and perceiving them. Then
the observer notices, wow, men in general have a strong tendency to
interrupt women or not to pay as much attention to what they are saying as
what other men say (most of all within a given social group). And further,
these patterns have to be understand multidimensionally because they
intersect with other patterns, so that a white female social worker will
feel entitled to talk over an Indian man, but not with her boss, and son
on.
>I *think* most of us can probably agree that rape is something uniquivocally
>evil, but I'm not sure that Annie Sprinkle would agree.
Oh I'm sure she does agree.
>I wanted to put something about abortion rights, but I have a friend who
>believes that abortion rights are actually a way for men to avoid
>responsibility, and she thinks that fetuses are full human beings and
>deserving of all human rights. Is there room for those ideas in feminism?
I would still call her a feminist at the same time I vehemently disagree
with her about abortion. She doesn't seem to believe that contraception
ever fails, among other things, or seems to believe it's OK to approach any
given sexual encounter as having the power to irrevocably change the next
20 years of a woman's life. I have no problem with her making that choice,
but unfortunately anti-abortion feminists are likely to support state
repression of other women's option to terminate pregnancies. Which in turn
constricts women's options down the line. Motherhood should be voluntary,
in my book.
But we can still provisionally work toward other common goals.
Max Dashu <[log in to unmask]>
<www.suppressedhistories.net>
30 Years of International Women's Studies
<www.maxdashu.net>
Paintings of bold and spirited women
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