In her masterpiece 'the Second Sex', Simone de Beauvoir, a French feminist, analysed women's roles and positions in the society from an existentialist point of view. "She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other", she perceptively wrote. "Now, woman has always been man’s dependant, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shared the world in equality", she wrote in 1949, heralding the age of second-wave feminism. Fifty-eight years later, are the two sexes sharing the world in equality today?
The progress feminism has made in last sixty years, at least in the Western world, has been nothing less than phenomenal; feminist thinkers and activists, such as Betty Friedan and Kate Millet, transformed our thinking and started to shift the very basic paradigm of the society. We had Roe v. Wade. And now, in 2007, I'm writing this from a country where the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Parliament, and the Chief Justice are all women.
However, we shouldn't get too illuminated and blinded by the brightness of feminism's success; it would be wrong to assert that feminism has achieved its goals, even in the West. The two sexes have never shared the world in equality, and aren't sharing the world in equality, in 2007. Women haven't even achieved the equal political representation (if you doubt it, try to name a country that has 50% representation of women in Parliament, or a female Prime Minister of Sweden, which is undoubtedly one of the most feminist countries in the world), and this fundamental structure of the society which de Beauvoir depicted, designation of women as the Other, is yet to be broken down.
"She appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex – absolute sex, no less", she wrote in 1949. Her account has never been more relevant than in now. As you can see, women are depicted as sex objects, everywhere, in media. Everywhere. Sexualisation of women, and recently young girls, gravely harms their mental health and self-esteem, the crucial factor in their Mind and well-being. (I recommend you to read a full report of the American Psychological Association on this topic, at here.) This dogma that the main source of a woman's worth is her sexual or physical attractiveness. This ideology that the kindness and intelligence are less important for women; Body above Mind. The indoctorination that women should pursue the 'ideal' body image that is digitally enhanced and a total illusion, or otherwise she is not as worthy. This relationship between the One and the Other.
It is ironic that sexual liberation was one of the main themes of the sixties, and one of the main goals of feminism. Feminists fought to break the old, hypocritical sexual chastity imposed only on women, virginity worship, and constraints that deprived women of sexual pleasure. Now, the sexual revolution seems to have been successful; and women are still treated as the Other and the Object. Why has this happened? I think one of the answers is that the sexual revolution ended up far more successful than feminism. When sexual freedom is introduced into a society that hasn't deconstructed the patriarchy, the outcome would be a grim one; from this unholy union of sexual freedom and patriarchy, it is natural that pornography and sexist advertising are born. I am not saying depicting sex or naked bodies is inherently sexist or objectifying; the real problem is how we treat them, how we depict them. Or rather, how the media depict them.
Why was the sexual revolution so successful, then? Because the sex revolution met the needs of the capitalist society; businesses loved it. The commercial media loved it. Sex sells. In a capitalist society, what contributes to the interests of business-owners survives. In a society where the media is privately owned by a company whose sole motive is the profit, anything serves the profit-maximising crusade of the media owners flourishes. Rupert Murdoch must love the sexual revolution because that's why he could make millions or billions of pounds from the Sun, which shamefully has the highest circulation of any English-language paper in the world. Obviously, no matter how just it is, the commercial media isn't interested in shifting the paradigm of the patriarchal system. And how can an agenda be successful when it isn't even reported well by the dominant media (which is mostly dominated by men)?
8 comments:
Wow, Atsushi, thanks for your post. I really enjoyed your thoughts on feminism. We have just covered feminist law at uni. Do you ever think in some ways that feminism may have gone too far? For example, it is perceived that it is more difficult for men to gain custody of their children than for women.
Hi liz thanks for the comment! I don't think feminism is going too far, as the patriarchy is so deeply embedded feminism can never go too far, at least in a foreseeable future. For the custody issue I don't even know if it is true or not (it may be just the whole Men's Rights propaganda), but if it is true it may be another form of patriarchy that dictates childcare is a woman's job.
I agree that feminism has not "gone too far". I think there's a lot of propaganda out there (like whenever a business creates a Ladies Only thing, for heaven's sakes they're doing it for profit not rights!).
One other myth is that somehow the feminist movement has swung society from a patriarchy all the way past equality and into a matriarchy. This is patently untrue, firstly for all the reasons listed above in this post, and also because as a group women have never treated men as poorly as they have been treated by men.
The women's movement has responded to violence with non-violence, to state control with words and civil society, to stupidity with thoughtfulness. And we haven't gone far enough.
Concerning custody of children and Men's Rights (and responding to comments only and not the post):
There's no doubt in my mind that it is significantly more difficult for a father to gain custody of his children than for their mother.
In a split, unless some kind of possibility of negligence or maltreatment exists or will potentially (drugs, violence, neglect) children pretty much belong to their mums by default. Thus the men's rights movements at present.
No man is allowed a seat next to an unaccompanied minor on any airline (because we're a bunch of perverts) and their have been numerous journalistic examples of men being asked to move away from their own children (mistakenly) to that effect.
We have a huge dis balance of male primary (and in fact intermediate and to an extent secondary) school teachers to female, the ratio of which is becoming more alarming to government each year.
Personally, I don't consider Men's Rights to be a kind of propaganda. I'm not saying that we're in some kind of battle, but it sometimes feels like the white, heterosexual male is the only social sect of society not protected in some way from abuse.
I certainly am not trying to imply that this is some kind of battle - and I hope that isn't what's come across. I'm a strong believer in the values of feminism:
Fairness and equality for BOTH sexes.
Thanks rainbow girl and scot for your comments.
I definitely support fairness and equality for both genders. However, the examples of alleged discrimination against men, presented by Men's Rights activists, are not as grave as discrimination against women. There are dozens of jobs that are dominated by men (including the powerful ones). And to me, a right to sit next to an unaccompanied minor doesn't seem to be of any importance at all; compare that to the right to equal pay, for example. As rainbow girl pointed out, society is million miles away from a matriarchy, and hasn't even reached equality yet.
For the custody issue, I couldn't find the statistics but if women are unfairly advantaged as you say, it is because of the system of gender roles that assigns child-care to women. So breaking gender stereotype approach, not 'Men's Right's' approach, is the way to achieve the true equality.
The problem with Men's Rights movement is that it is more of an attempt to preserve patriarchy under the name of equality. Some men may support Men's Rights movement from genuine desire to support gender equality, but their proposals, such as the stablishment of Ministry of Men's Affairs (why do we need one?), men's eproductive rights (which undermine eproductive rights of women who actually reproduce), just strengthen the status quo or shifts the society backward.
There are no 'white's rights' or 'heterosexual's rights' groups (except racist/homophobic ones) because white, heterosexual people already have equal (or more than equal) rights. It is not that white heterosexual male isn't entitled to protection from discrimination; they are already (over)protected without any kind of activism.
Touche LL.
great post LL.
I wanted to touch on the point you made in your post about how the sexual revolution has been more successful than feminism. I think this is absolutely and completely true, and much for the same reasons as you used to respond here to Scot: "it is an attempt to preserve patriarchy under the name of equality."
I remember reading something Andrea Dworkin wrote about sexual freedom - that it served both left and right wing politics because the underlying message is the same. Forgive the lengthy quote, but it really connected with what you said: she says, "The right-wing ideology claims that the division of mother and whore is phenomenologically real... The left-wing ideology claims that sexual freedom is in the unrestrained use of women, the use of women as a collective natural resources, not privatized, not owned by one man but instead used by many. The metaphysics is the same... the sexuality of the woman actualized is the sexuality of the whore [...] on the left... the word freedom is used to capture the loyalties of women who want, more than anything, to be free and who are then valued and used as left-wing whores: collectivized cunts... on the right... good is used to capture the loyalties of women who want, more than anything, to be good and who are then valued and used as right-wing whores: wives, the whores who breed." (Dworkin, 1989, "Whores" in Pornography, 207, New York: Plume)
Andrea Dworkin was so brilliant for drawing out the point that "women" have been constructed under patriarchy so as not to be able to be mistreated - abuse, domination, rape, violence, and exploitation of women is only using women in the way patriarchy has intended and constructed "women" to be used. And here, the use of women by left-wing politics has advanced "sexual freedom" not really for women, but for men to be able to use women more freely.
Feel free to edit Dworkin's words with symbols or something if you like, it's your blog of course - but know that her method was to use these words "whore" and "cunt" in order to shock women, to highlight exactly what patriarchy thinks about us.
Thanks TG for your comment and support, and I published the words as you wrote, as I know Andrea Dworkin used the words to promote women's rights, not to denigrate women.
It is true that some left-wingers ignored women's rights and were misogynists, but I don't know if left-wing movements have advanced sexual freedom in order to exploit women; in general the left-wing movement supported sexual freedom as women's rights and worked for deconstruction of patriarchy as well, though the latter wasn't as successful as the former, as I wrote above.
I agree that as patriarchy is the matrix of the society it affects everyone including left-wingers, but I believe right-wing traditionalists, religious reactionaries and capitalist fundamentalists are far bigger threats to women's rights than any left-wing movement. They are the forces that subordinate and exploit women, the left may be guilty of negligence, but not of the crime itself... but having said that, I haven't read Dworkin's work properly, so please point out if I'm wrong.
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