For anyone who thinks that “feminism” as a practiced theory is narrow in either scope or defintion and that “feminists” are pretty much six-of-one-half-a-dozen-of-the-other—not even clooooose. F’rinstance, recently on another feminist blog, one of the posters told off Yours Truly during a discussion about the disapproval I was expressing towards a woman who had had an affair with a prominent married politician:
…I don’t think in the context of feminist blogging and critique that shaming these individuals is either valuable or appropriate…I also tend to believe there isn’t a lot of room for shaming in feminist ethical critique in general, particularly when we’re talking about women who are already shamed by society. It’s just incredibly easy for that sort of criticism to support the patriarchal narrative, even unintentionally.
Hmm…
What is feminism, anyway? Most simply, it’s the dictionary definition of the word: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes . I take this very much to heart, especially the equality part. I believe that women are just as “good” as men…and just as “bad.” They’re just as smart, and caring, and responsible, and mentally and emotionally capable as men; there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between the innate and inborn capacity of all the preceding adjectives and adverbs in any average, random sampling of men and women all around the world.
Now, unfortunately, it is a man’s world. If you don’t believe me, look at the numbers; see who has the overwhelming lion’s share of the power, money and influence worldwide. What that means literally is that while we are all born with the same moral and mental capacities, the expression and the suppression of selected traits is quite different depending on the gender of the person being born. Both the expression and suppression are implemented at birth and continue throughout the individual’s entire lifetime, exacerbated even more by physical impositions. For example, if you are a single woman who has an affair with a married man, the impositions range from the unpleasant (say, having to listen to social gossip painting you as a loser for being a woman who had an affair with a married man) to the fatal (say, a court-imposed death sentence for being a woman who had an affair with a married man). If you are a single man having an affair with a married woman, very little is said about you or to you at all; your sexual morals are shrugged off with a “boys will be boys! whenever those women give ‘em the chance!” and in countries where such behavior is technically just as illegal for men as it is for women, somehow the men just aren’t the ones getting stoned to death, though presumably somebody had to be committing adultery with all those women who are.
And this, of course, was the other poster’s whole point–because there is a strong patriarchal bias against women who behave immorally while men are getting a free pass in much the same situation, it should be the desire, nay, the duty, to cut women the same amount of slack that men have been traditionally cut. I could certainly agree that this is a form of implementing equality between the sexes…holding EVERYONE to the same low standards! Because people basically suck! YEAH! (This is very bad for my incipient misanthropy. Down, Fido!)
However, I prefer to implement my feminism in terms of holding everyone to the same high standards, and I prefer to believe that the spirit of feminism is such an uplifting, best-of-humanity ideal, rather than a lowest-common-denominator one. Therefore, I reject attempts to enable women to behave like pieces of crap because men have historically gotten to…and I really, really reject attempts to excuse women who actively harm other women for the benefit of men. Of course, the fact that it is, as I said, a man’s world (and an adult’s world, and a white person’s world, and a rich person’s world) must be taken into account–this is where that finely honed moral judgement, the kind that, yes, women are just as capable as men of making regardless of what Lawrence Kohlberg thinks, comes in. Let’s have an exercise of this kind of judgement right now!
Situation A: Jane lives in a country where girls are routinely sold off as wives to other men by their fathers long before the age of eighteen with full legal and societal consent. She herself was sold to a man thirty-five years her senior at age fifteen and was regularly beaten and impregnated by him until he mercifully kicked the bucket five years later. However, he left her with no money and three children under the age of five to feed and clothe, and neither his family nor hers is willing or able to help her out. She is approached by a friend of her late husband’s, a married man, and told that he will give her some money every week if she will have sex with him on a regular basis. She agrees.
Situation B: Jane lives in a country where girls marry on average in their late teens to early twenties and the amount of parental involvement is varied, though it’s accepted that your parents will have at least some say in who you marry if they don’t outright arrange it for you, and they usually won’t beat you or kick you out for refusing someone. Jane is twenty-five and single because she is not very pretty and her family is poor; she has a menial job, the only one she can really get, as unemployment is endemic in her country, and the job has no real future. Jane meets a man, a married man, who tells her she’s beautiful and charming and intelligent. He then tells her he will help her find a better job and that he really likes her and then suggests that they start having sex on a regular basis. She agrees.
Situation C: Jane lives in a country where women don’t marry on average til their mid-twenties and selling your daughter to anyone for any reason whatsoever is generally considered outrageous, not to mention being highly illegal. She is a single, good-looking, well-educated woman of forty with a successful career. She is approached by a married man, who tells her how attractive she is and offers her an even nicer job than the one she has now and suggests that they start having sex on a regular basis. She agrees.
Now, feminism as defined as the pussy pass would suggest that you immediately excuse all three women from any real expectation of moral behavior, as they are all living in societies with some degree of embedded patriarchy and to do otherwise is to support said patriarchal narrative,, and places any blame only on the man. The patriarchal societies each woman lives in, on the other hand, demands that you immediately castigate each woman for having sex with a married man and either somewhat exonerates the man (”boys will be boys, you know, bad as it is, they’re just wired that way”) or completely exonerates him, depending on the degree of patriarchy that society supports.
I reject both options equally. True morality, I believe, involves first having a set of firm principles, and second being able to apply them in a proportional fashion to any number of wildly varying situations. Feminism as defined by some appears to be trying to skip step one and the patriarchy outright skips step two, but both steps are absolutely vital to the process. Women are both just as capable of men of abstract reasoning and just as capable of rising above a reasonable amount of handicaps and hardships to sometimes choose to take the harder path because it’s the right one–it is incredibly demeaning to even suggest that women can and should do the easiest thing as if they’re not capable of anything better. And it’s inexcusable to exonerate a woman who hurts another woman in the interests of pleasing a man when she has no real physical or financial pressure to do so in the name of feminism, of all things. And since when are feminists, especially ones such as ourselves who have absolutely zip influence or power to worry about, supposed to start censoring themselves out of fear of what the patriarchy might think, for good or for ill?
So: Compassion, understanding, a realistic view of the lives of women both in our own country and in others abroad, yes PLEASE! Proceeding from the assumption that all women, regardless of socioeconomic status, cultural opportunity and age are mental and emotional children in terms of what moral expectations can be set for them..? No thank you. Believing that monogamy in of itself is a zero-sum game that human beings regardless of gender are simply psychologically incapable of consistently practicing..? Sure, why not. It’s got a lot more evidence in its favor than some of the notions about human sexuality and psyche that are currently in popular circulation. Believing that engaging in completely consensual behavior in a narcissistic and self-delusional fashion that ends up hurting any number of other people probably including oneself is really excusable based on the fact that the one happens to be female? NO thank you. Unless I see it in Teh Feminist Blogger Rulebook, I ain’t never buyin’ it.
