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Feminism. Is she dead?

  
  

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Thjatsi
11:27 / 15.07.02
I have never ever met a man who took his wife's name.

Just for the record, if I ever get married and my wife has a more interesting last name than I do, I'm taking it.
 
 
Gibreel
15:55 / 15.07.02
[b]Now, one thing that I am finding interesting here is that, albeit with the proviso "in the UK and the US" stated earlier, [i]we are completely ignoring pretty much the entire population of the world[/i], and assuming that the remit of feminism, if it still lives, is to police secular democracies with high standards of living.[/b]

I took that to mean an international angle. Which 'other cultures within the West' did you have in mind?

[b]examining, critiquing and dismantling the gender power structures which oppress both men and women.[/b]

There are somethings about this phrase that worries me.

1. You move from "examing, critiquing" to "dismantling" in one fell swoop. To my mind there's been a lot of "examing, critiquing" (esp. within the academic human sciences) but this hasn't led to much "dismantling" per se. Some parts of feminism (esp. the forms that aer epistemologically radical and are the favorites of many on this board) seem to be mired in academia and will pretty much stay there for the foreseeable future. This is because they simply do not match with the vocabulary and lived experience of most women. Is this an unfair comment?

2. There will always be gender power structures between men and women (c.f. Foucault and power). Dismantling them means we have to replace them with something else. What is this 'something'?
 
 
A Haus of Minions
(prev. Jenna Elfman's Hollywood Haus)
16:32 / 15.07.02
Why, another power structure, of course. Which sort of answers your first question. On one level, albeit an apparently rather dry one, to examine and critique is to dismantle, because to expose a power structure is to make it unable to function in the fashion it previously did, just as queer theory, whether or not it reflects the vocabulary and lived experience of most queer peopl, does affect the dialogues of "queerness".

To put it another way, one is bound by the laws of one's land, even if you do not understand them very well and have rarely needed to deal with the consequences of breaking them. However, there exists a stratum of people whose only function is to examine and interpret the law, and in doing so create new precedents and new interpretations that affect the structures around your behaviour.

And you are quite right. What I should have said was that I was not concerned *universally* with the international perspective, as a fair chunk of my post was also devoted to looking at the existence within the secular democracies of the West of societal groupings which adhere to codes of conduct which, while inimical to what our western liberal feminist might perceive as the quality and liberty of life, are not in fact against the law of the land - such as denying a wife access to the resources needed to learn the language of her new home nation. This is not illegal, so to what extent is it a feminist issue, and what part could legislation be advocated to play in a feminist context, if any? I suspect it may be very similar, in fact, to the work done in Northern India, but to what extent might that be seen as culturally imperialistic?

Personally, I am interested suddenly in the idea of the Monolithic Feminist - SMS's idea that there are certain kinds of things that feminism seems to promote, and a list of "feminist principles". This strikes me as one of those true/not true wavicle statements...
 
 
grant
20:42 / 15.07.02
Thiazi: I have never ever met a man who took his wife's name.

Just for the record, if I ever get married and my wife has a more interesting last name than I do, I'm taking it.

My cousin's web page. The family (German aristocrats) are all up in arms, since the commoner she married is now, technically titled - just like a woman would be if she married a male relative.
Apparently, though, it's a tradition that has a long history in Germany - just not often practiced in the present day.

I also have friends who both took a new name when they got married. Razee. It's the detachable upper deck of a battleship. When the Enterprise detaches the saucer section, it's razeeing. They just liked the sound of the word as a name, though.
 
 
Gibreel
06:54 / 16.07.02
"I suspect it may be very similar, in fact, to the work done in Northern India, but to what extent might that be seen as culturally imperialistic?"

I can only answer part of this question for the moment - as it's one I've been struggling with myself.

The feminist/development work in Northern India carried out by local people and centres on encouraging them to think about their environment and their needs and then do things around that.

It does not (or should not) hand down a prescribed perspective or set of actions.

It's heavily informed by Paulo Freire's work:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0826412769/qid=1026794940/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-4807687-7405635

I hope it avoids the imperialism charge thru its local and specific nature.

Of course, this means that it comes up with a different set of questions (and solutions) to UK/US-style feminism. And most of its practitioners would not recognise the label "feminism" as such.

If someone wants to play devil's advocate and draw me out on this, that might be useful.
 
 
grant
17:57 / 16.07.02
To what extent are efforts in Northern India (along with similar programs in sub-Saharan Africa) crippled by being limited to "women's things" (like good water for cleaning & cooking).
I know in South Africa a lot of feminist (neo-feminist? world-feminist?) stuff is tied in with AIDS activism, both limited by women being subject to men, but also with certain ideas of independence/responsibility spreading rapidly because it has become a life-or-death matter (since men are expected to philander, and don't like wearing condoms, natch).
 
 
alas
19:37 / 16.07.02
i agree that we need to be international in our perspective, but it's also true that in the US there are pockets of 3rd world living conditions in every state--poverty, violence, lack of health care and safe drinking water. Farm workers in Washington state have an average life-expectancy of 49 years. 1 in 5 children is impoverished in this country; most of the adults on welfare are women, and welfare "as we knew it" ended in the punitive 1996 reform, which has left many women in truly desperate situations. Women of color in the US are more likely than white women to suffer from poverty, including having a much lower standard of living. Another statistic: the average white family in the us has a net worth of about $40,000; the average african american family has a net worth of about $4,000.

Meanwhile, middle- class women are still told--not so much by government agencies, although there are some benefits available to middle-class and wealthy stay at home moms (tax benefits and retirement benefits) that are not available to impoverished women--that to be a "good" mom you should stay at home. And it's logical that the male of the family continues working, continues being promoted during the time the woman stays at home, and so, voila, still most positions of power are held by men. And the women who do move up often do so by adopting pretty whole-heartedly the masculinist attitudes typical, at some level, of almost all hierarchical insitutions. The governmental and the cultural are intertwined, here. And in the US the ERA was defeated by a carefully orchestrated use of legislative procedures that had never been used for other amendments to the constitution, so there's still no basic constitutional protection of women's rights in this country. Admittedly, constitutional protections are not a panacea, but the defeat of the ERA in the US, within the past 20 years, still suggests to me that the simple statement: "women deserve equality before the law" is still a radical one.

(Just a quibble with an implied premise of the initial postings: Feminism has never ever been strictly about enacting legislative change--it's always been working on both governmental and non-governmental, cultural fronts. And it's always been derided and ridiculed as unnecessary.)
 
 
Gibreel
07:33 / 18.07.02
grant> the activities that are going on are very diverse so I'm reluctant to put forward my own experiences as definitive but...

To what extent are efforts in Northern India (along with similar programs in sub-Saharan Africa) crippled by being limited to "women's things" (like good water for cleaning & cooking).

Western NGOs and aid organisations tend to be ordered around single issues (women's rights, children's rights, TB, HIV, malaria, malnutrition, etc). On the ground, in the villages and slums, people don't think that way. They think in terms of their immediate problems ("we have no food" or "my husband is beating me") connected to their immediate communities.

Women's rights tend to arise because women are key members of communities that are systematically undervalued. Hence women's empowerment occurs when communities recognise issues associated with them as being important (such as sanitation and cooking hygiene) and women use this recognition and peer support to build their self-confidence.

Women's rights didn't feature much in 'old' (but still in use) models of development that centre on dams and factories. But when you talk about sustainable development, they come into focus more readily.
 
 
xenoglaux
02:35 / 23.06.07
To Lurid Archive's original question, I would say that:

A) no, feminism is not dead, but continues to be usurped by well-meaning people who don't have quite the right idea.

B) there is no end to what feminism has yet to achieve, and positive discrimination is not the only slayer of sexism's many-headed beast (nor necessarily one of them).

C) Studies show (in the U.S., and I have reason to believe the situation similar in the U.K.) that women are not absent from work any more than men are, even counting maternity leave. Incredible, isn't it? The argument that women miss more work than men is just a false justification for paying women less.

D) men have a role to play in feminism. In fact, I believe strongly that without all men working to eradicate women's oppression (and I only generalize for simplicity's sake here), 50% of the battle is not being fought.

A friend and colleague of mine in the Women & Gender Studies department once told me that it is much easier to change the law than to change people's minds. I conceded that this was probably true. But does this mean that changes in society must proceed in a "top-down" fashion? Many people complain away about affirmative action laws in the U.S., but no one is providing a better answer to sexist oppression.

Here in the U.S., women get paid $.75 on the dollar. The statute of limitations for rape is only five years. Is there not more work to be done?
 
 
A Haus of Minions
(prev. Jenna Elfman's Hollywood Haus)
01:18 / 24.06.07
Studies show (in the U.S., and I have reason to believe the situation similar in the U.K.) that women are not absent from work any more than men are, even counting maternity leave. Incredible, isn't it? The argument that women miss more work than men is just a false justification for paying women less.

Ah! This is really interesting stuff - because, yes, we have this idea that maternity leave is the reason why women so rarely reach senior management positions in tradiitional industries, which for some reason is not applied when men take a year off to yacht around the world or find themselves... are any of these studies online, by any chance?
 
 
alas
19:46 / 24.06.07
Studies show (in the U.S., and I have reason to believe the situation similar in the U.K.) that women are not absent from work any more than men are, even counting maternity leave.

Hmmmm....I wish this were so/would love to believe it, and maybe it is over a lifetime somehow?, but the most recent stats from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on worker absenteeism seem to paint a different picture, with women being absent more frequently than men particularly for reasons "other" than illness or injury, but also for those reasons. Help?
 
 
xenoglaux
00:00 / 26.06.07
Oh, just look at me, using the old "studies show" without looking at any studies. Pathetic. I did find this on the internet, which applies only to the U.S. It shows that as of (the most?) recent statistics, women are indeed absent from work more often than are men. However, the statistics these studies provide don't say under what conditions data was collected. Furthermore, the absence rate falls under only two categories: "illness or injury" or "other reasons." Is it just me, or could the data be a bit skewed considering the vague wording of the results and the probably dubious methods of data collection?

In any case, let's say it were true that women were more likely to be absent from work than men because many of them bear children. I can easily see how one could start from an essentialist view of women's contributions to society and end up in a place where women are justifiably oppressed and confined to mothering duties.
 
 
kan
00:18 / 26.06.07
Sorry to butt in, but could you clarify your closing sentence about seeing how women could end up "justifiably oppressed" from an essentialist reading of the statistics about absence from work due to maternity leave.

Could someone not also read the data and think "Oh goodness, look the women are doing most of the work bearing and raising the children, let's make it much easier for the men to help out."

Perhaps it's because I don't know exactly what an essentialist viewpoint means, will go and look it up. Probably should have done that first. Apologies.

Have I misread it completely?
 
 
kan
00:38 / 26.06.07
OK fascinating, just read a bit on essentialism on wikipedia, big topic.
From what I gather, an essentialist view here
would see gender roles predetermined by nature, therefore only right the woman should do most of the childcare but does the oppression justifiably follow?

I like the idea of refining the survey to define more specifically the reasons for absence. But to be honest I think when you go down the route of measuring someone's value purely in hours spent present in the workplace it misses something. Too essentialist?
 
 
xenoglaux
01:25 / 26.06.07
Right. Essentialism is basically the view that all women, for example, are maternalistic simply by virtue of being women. Of course, this is a bit problematic when one considers all the possible variables: some women do not want children, some women are not able to have children, some women don't have any idea how to interact with children and would much rather devote themselves to their careers. So the argument that women are best suited for mothering duties leaves out many factors.

And yes, I absolutely think that a better interpretation of the current data is that men should be sharing more in home and childcare responsibilities. If men started taking paternity leaves, allowing women to not be absent from work as much, wouldn't the numbers begin to even out?
 
 
zute_justzute
04:29 / 28.08.07
Essentialism is basically the view that all women, for example, are maternalistic simply by virtue of being women.

There's this game that I found on the Internet called "Virtual Villager." (This doesn't look like it fits with the discussion yet, but stay with me. ) In this game, you have a small group of people on an island who need to learn to survive. When they learn to do something, they get skill points. They get farming points when they pick berries, building points when they work on building a hut, breeding points when they make a baby, etc. They can also gain skill points by going to a table in the middle of the village and studying. When you start the game, there's already a character who has some building points. This character is male. When a male and female character have a baby, the female character has to walk around nursing the baby for awhile. She can't put the baby down for a minute or anything like that, she just walks around carrying it until the baby turns two. You can't make the father character carry the baby for a bit so the mother character can go get more skills. So if you want to build your population you end up with a bunch of women who have no skills except for "breeding."

Anyway, going back to luridarchive's question: More importantly, how should the struggle for gender equality be realistically and effectively pursued. I don't claim to actually know the answer, all I have are suggestions. Maybe when we see a game like Virtual Villager, we should write to the game developers and say something about it. Same with any type of medium that reflects gender stereotypes like this. Maybe part of the answer is not to keep your mouth shut.

Once I was working with a group of people and my friend said that her boyfriend shaves his armpits. One of the guys said, "Ugh, that's gross!" I said that I don't shave my armpits and the same guy said, "Ugh, that's gross!" People think that men should be big and hairy and women should be small and smooth, even though both naturally have body hair. There's the idea that men are one thing and women another. Maybe when people tell us this so matter-of-factly, we should speak up and tell them that's not always the case.

Feminism is not dead. It's already been said in this thread that it's attitudes that need to change, but attitudes are hard to change. Feminism still exists because even though it's hard, we at least have to try.
 
 
alas
23:44 / 28.08.07
I applaud the practice of taking on the daily, banal instances of sexism. I hope you will write that Virtual Villager program and complain. How annoying!
 
  

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