Feminism

Phil Sheridan e-mails:

Thanks for your blog; it's been many years since I studied Philosophy as an undergrad, but I've enjoyed your writing.

You cover many topics, but I'm curious why you haven't touched on feminism. You would seem to be well suited to offer a solid critique, and I get the sense that philosophers still in academia mostly don't want to touch it. David Benatar is one exception, and Roy Baumeister is another, although he is a psychologist.  Of course being independent you get to think and write only about those topics that interest you. Maybe feminism isn't interesting, but I thought I'd ask.

Thank you for reading! Actually, feminism is touched upon (exactly the right word) in the following posts:

The Absurdity of Gender Feminism

Feminism as Masculinism

Puellafication

Promiscuous Post-Modern PC Prudes

Although I am a conservative, I am not a 'throne and altar' conservative. Nor am I the sort of conservative who thinks that everything traditional trumps everything newfangled.  (The conservative's presumption in favor of the traditional is defeasible.) And of course it is silly to think that conservatives oppose change; it is just that we don't confuse change with change for the better.

Traditionally, women were wives and mothers whose place was said to be the home.  (Either that, or they lived with their parents or entered a nunnery.)  Now the traditional wife and mother role is a noble one, and difficult to fill properly, and I have nothing but contempt for the feminazis who denigrate it and those who instantiate it.  May a crapload of obloquy be dumped upon their shrill and febrile pates.   But surely women have a right  to actualize and employ their talents to the full in whichever fields they are suited to enter, however male-dominated those fields  have been hitherto.  They must, however, be suited to enter those fields: no differential standards, no gender-norming,  no reverse discrimination.

Simone Weil, Edith Stein, and Elizabeth Anscombe are wonderfully good philosophers, and much better than most male philosophers.  I know their works well and consider them to be my superiors both intellectually and morally.  (And I don't think anyone would accuse me of a lack of self-esteem.)  It would have been a loss to all of us had these admirable lights been prevented from developing their talents and publishing their thoughts.

This makes me something of a liberal in an old and defensible sense.  But I don't use 'liberal' to describe my views because this word has suffered linguistic hijacking and now is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable in sense from 'leftist.'  Anyone who reads this site soon learns that one of my self-appointed tasks is to debunk the pernicious buncombe of the Left.  As someone who maintains a balanced and reasonable position -- does that sound a tad self-serving? -- I am open to attack from the PC-whipped leftists and from the reactionary, ueber-traditionalist, 'throne and altar' conservatives.  To my amusement, I have been attacked from the latter side as a 'raving liberal.'  (I respond in the  appropriately appellated Am I a Raving Liberal?)

So much for a brief indication of where I stand wth respect to feminism.

Addendum (12/13).  Phil Sheridan responds:

David Benatar in The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys makes a distinction between egalitarian feminism and partisan feminism that I believe is similar, if not identical, to Sommers's distinction between equity and gender feminism.  He goes a step further than Sommers, however, and observes that, while egalitarian feminism exists as an idea, it is difficult to actually find it in the real world.  He doesn't quite say it explicitly, but he implies that all feminism is partisan, meaning that it is always advocating for women without regard for the ideal of equality, and without regard for the impact on men, children or society at large.

 

I think he is correct, and there are countless examples of this.  One is feminist opposition to equal child custody for fathers in the event of divorce.  NOW has been steadfast on this since the late 70's for primarily because it provides a better divorce outcome for women.  Feminists typically claim that the best interests of the child trumps equality in custody cases. They sometimes also make the absurd claim that fathers are often dangerous and might harm their children. In other cases, feminists cite historic injustice against women as a valid reason for sidestepping the ideal of equality in the here and now.  And women outnumber men at American universities now, but instead of a call for re-balancing, we hear the argument that perhaps women have qualities that make them better candidates for jobs in the current economy.  

 

You mention that women should not be prohibited from pursuing education/work that they are suited for, that we would have been denied the talents of Weil et al if we had not overturned the old sex restrictions.  You're right, of course; no reasonable person could disagree with that.

 

BV comments:  I would count The Thinking Housewife as a reasonable person, but she would seem to disagree with your agreement with me.   See, for example, her Why We Must Discriminate.   Here as elsewhere in the kingdom of ideas we find an astonishingly broad spectrum of opinion, from the gender feminist loons on the one end, to ultratraditionalists like our housewife on the other.

 

Feminism today goes far, far beyond that, however.  I think Sommers's distinction is not enough -- it's making a cautious point when a thorough and aggressive assessment of the deep flaws in feminist theory and the advocacy it has spawned are required.  At this point in our history it's like spitting into a hurricane, but it must be done.