On not being a feminist
Nov. 12th, 2004 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livA few months back, I wrote a post about why I don't get Christianity. And it worked out really well, it generated loads of interesting discussion and I learnt a whole lot. I've been meaning to do something similar about why I don't consider myself as a feminist. Because I find feminism both fascinating and repulsive, so I'm hoping to get a similar level of discussion going.
I want to start with a lot of the same stuff from the intro to the old post. If you want to be offended, be my guest; I'm not going to mince words here. At the same time, this is by no means directed at any individual who identifies as a feminist. I am aware that 'feminism' is not entirely monolithic, and not all the criticisms here apply to all feminists, so don't bother calling me on that one. Do, however, feel more than free to correct me otherwise, because I have not made a detailed study of feminism, and it seems likely that many of my problems with the movement stem from ignorance. I should point out that I am in sympathy with some feminist aims; I would not bother writing an essay about why I am not a neo-Nazi, for example!
When I was a kid, feminists were rude people who came into my house and made my mother cry. Most people would express gratitude for her excellent hospitality and the delicious meals she would provide, but feminists would criticize her for spending so much time in the kitchen. As often as not, they would go on to tell her she had wasted her life and betrayed the Cause because she had left her high-powered professional job when I was born to become a full-time housewife.
I try not to be prejudiced by that negative first impression, but it does lead on to a more general point. Feminism seems to be extremely concerned with telling people how to live their lives. To take a trivial example, I've never come across any sexist man criticizing me for not making enough effort with my appearance (the way sexist men are apparently prone to do), but I've very often been taken to task by feminists for wearing long skirts and keeping my hair long, because apparently I'm promoting sexist stereotypes of femininity. And that's direct, personal, in-my-face criticism, not even counting all the articles that have been written complaining about women who dye their hair, or wear makeup, or revealing clothes, or have cosmetic surgery.
I agree with the feminist view that women should not be forced to conform to certain patterns of behaviour, but I do not agree that women should be forbidden from those lifestyles. I think people should be able to dress how they like, and do the jobs they want and are capable of, and make personal choices about whom to sleep with and how they want to structure their families, and so on. I honestly can't see how someone (like my mother) choosing to be centred on the domestic sphere and local community rather than the professional sphere is harming women who want highly paid and highly respected city jobs.
Then there's the obsession with oppression and persecution. I mean, I'm rich, I have skills that society values, I have good health, I'm white (I tend to hope that doesn't make too much difference, but as far as it does, the difference is in my favour). I've always been able to get whatever I want in life. The idea of considering myself oppressed or persecuted is pretty much ridiculous. Yet, most (not all, I know there are some exceptions) feminists are people like me; they are among society's most privileged people, yet their whole philosophy is centred around how much they, as women, get discriminated against.
Women in affluent western societies earn, on average, 10-20% less than men over their working lives. This is a bad thing, it's discriminatory, and something should be done about it. Thus far I agree with feminists. However, it's hard for me to get extremely worked up about it when those women are still part of the 20% of the world's population controlling 80% of the world's resources. It's a problem if a businesswoman is passed over for promotion on grounds of gender, and reaches a glass ceiling so that she can never exceed her five-figure salary when her male colleagues are earning far more. But it's pretty insignificant compared to a billion people who earn less than a dollar a day. And even if you only care about this country, there are a lot of people (of both genders) who are far worse off than typical feminist causes célèbres.
The narrowness of this view reminds me of another bugbear: women who wear the various forms of traditional Muslim dress are automatically regarded as victims of terrible oppression by their evil patriarchal religion. At the same time, female circumcision is absolutely fine and dandy, because it's "culturally determined" and often practised by women.
I don't like being told what to think. Every time I've observed feminists, they seem to be accusing someone or other of not being a real feminist because they don't hold the right beliefs. For my part, I'd rather define myself as not a feminist, so that feminists will try to persuade me why their cause is right, rather than defining myself as a feminist and being told I'm not good enough because I don't agree with someone's pet theory. Also, a lot of feminist theory is presented in a way that makes it totally unfalsifiable; there's this whole 'if you don't accept this view, you must be collaborating with the patriarchy' sort of approach, and I really hate that.
Then there's all the jargon and shibboleths, which again focus energy on deciding who gets to be counted as a feminist, rather than actually doing anything to improve women's situations. Sometimes it seems to me that feminism is mostly a branch of post-modernist literary theory. I find any kind of literary theory only of limited interest as an intellectual discipline, and really completely useless as a tool for political change. So I can't be a feminist because I know next to nothing about post-modernism.
The other consequence of this sort of approach is the emphasis on gender-inclusive language. I don't care about gender inclusive language. I'm not violently against it, it's not a sinister force destroying the purity of communication, or something. I also don't base this opinion on the ridiculous examples of 'political correctness' which are all too easy to mock. If some gender-inclusive language is kind of clunky and awkward right now, that's just because people aren't used to it yet, and I'm sure it will sound much nicer if becomes habitual. It just seems rather pointless. It takes a lot of effort to make people change the way they speak, and I'm really unconvinced that the effort is justified. It's really hard to get any sensible answers out of feminists on this issue - I've tried - because either they accuse me of being sexist myself if I don't support feminist language change, or they go off into flights of post-modernism and I really can't follow. So I remain unconvinced.
I find myself disagreeing with feminists even on some of what you would think would be absolutley no-brainer questions. Rape is bad, duh. Except that a lot of feminist rhetoric seems to imply if not actually state outright that rape of women by men is the only serious problem. I don't care if men are a thousand times less likely to be raped than women (I think that's highly unlikely, but anyway, hypothetically); it's still an absolutely terrible thing and should in no way be condoned. The feminist view on this seems to fall on a spectrum from trivializing rape of men and same-sex rape, which is pretty bad, to accusing anyone who cares about these issues of being evilly anti-feminist, which is just disgusting. Exactly the same argument applies to domestic violence which is not sexual in nature.
I'm not happy about what I perceive as the attitude of feminism towards men. Now, feminists are always loudly declaring that they don't really hate men, that's just an evil caricature by anti-feminists. OK, so I'm prepared to believe that feminists don't hate men, but I'm still going to take issue with the way feminism portrays and interacts with men. For a start, the idea of a 'patriarchy' sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, and I am automatically hugely skeptical about conspiracy theories. I really can not believe that all or most men actively collude to retain power and suppress women. Also, my observation of the world does not suggest that most men even have power over most women.
The corollorary to this is the view that men can not possibly ever be feminists. And if they try to be feminists, they are going to be constantly acting against their own interests which is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Thus, any man who claims to be a feminist is either actively lying (see above re the patriarchy theory), or at best is automatically suspect. I can't believe that. I think if feminism is genuinely about justice and equality for women, then it is just as much in men's interests as women's. And if feminists persist in declaring that men can't be feminists, it makes me suspect that their aims are not really to do with justice, but something else, and I'm not sure if I want to buy into that something else.
I've tried to be fairly balanced up to now, but one thing that makes me absolutely spitting furious is the hate speech that comes from some feminists against transsexuals. I know that not all feminists are prejudiced, but there are far too many who go about saying the sorts of things that I would expect from thugs, not serious scholars, and the fact that such people are still accepted as part of the mainstream feminist community is enough to put me off the whole movement. Apart from a small minority, even those feminists who are not spouting sick, disgusting, dehumanizing crap tend not to see the rights of transsexuals as important, whereas I would say that transsexuals suffer from much, much worse discrimination than born women. Obviously some transsexuals are also women (or if you want to look at this way, all transsexuals are women at some point in their lives), so if feminism really cares about women's rights, then those transsexuals should be included in their cause.
I don't want to associate myself with a group that turns a blind eye, much less contributes, to violent hatred of a particular minority. Even apart from that, I think these kind of attitudes betray a serious underlying problem. Male-to-female transsexuals seem to be villified because they're "really" men. Now, the obvious part of this assumption is just ignorant, it wouldn't take very much reading to find out that this is not in fact the case. But the less obvious assumption is that they are men therefore it's ok to hate them, which tends to belie the feminist claim about not hating men in the first place. Likewise, if feminists don't hate men, why should they have such a problem with someone born biologically female choosing to become a man?
To take another emotive point (and I'm expecting to get absolutely jumped on here), there's the abortion issue. While I believe abortion should be legal, I can't call myself pro-choice. I don't think women have a "right" to abortion, because I don't think abortion is a good thing. There may be limited circumstances where abortion is the least bad of several bad options, but that doesn't mean I see abortion as desirable. I've repeatedly heard feminists say, if you're not pro-choice you can't be a feminist; ok, so I'm not a feminist.
The other reason I have a huge problem with the pro-choice movement is their tendency to use arguments along the lines of, well, obviously abortion must be legal, because no sane person could possibly expect a woman to give birth to a disabled child! And that slips frighteningly fast into, disabled people have no quality of life, so it's kinder to kill them. No, I'm not entirely objective about this. I'm the daughter of a disabled mother, and the sister of a severely (by any definition) disabled brother, so it's not something I can regard in a purely theoretical light.
I think my major problem with feminism as an approach (rather than particular individual aspects of the feminist movement as it actually is) is that it genders things that don't need to be gendered. I see people as people first, not men and women. I want to make the world better for people, not for women (particularly not if improving things for women is at the expense of men). I don't want to see more women in positions of power and influence, I want to see better systems to ensure that the best people are rewarded and have the most say in running things. That means that if in a particular circumstance, women are being discriminated against, I would want to do something about that discrimination, but I don't want to start from the assumption that in every situation, increasing female representation is the most important issue. Likewise, I want to encourage people to behave more compassionately and less aggressively; I don't think this corresponds to with 'promoting feminine values'.
Even on its own terms, I'm not entirely convinced that feminism is actually the best way to make things better for women. It's good for a particular subset of women, but my feeling is that it's doing far too little (and in some cases is actually harming) for some of the women who most need it. Feminism sometimes seems to be promoting the rights of women as long as they're not too traditionally feminine, not poor or uneducated, or foreign, or Muslim, or transsexual, or disabled, and most certainly not if they're critical of feminism. I'm overstating my case here, but I do feel that feminism is a bit of an interest group for a particular crowd of people. I have no problem with that as a cause, but it's not a cause that I feel much obligation to commit myself to.
I want to start with a lot of the same stuff from the intro to the old post. If you want to be offended, be my guest; I'm not going to mince words here. At the same time, this is by no means directed at any individual who identifies as a feminist. I am aware that 'feminism' is not entirely monolithic, and not all the criticisms here apply to all feminists, so don't bother calling me on that one. Do, however, feel more than free to correct me otherwise, because I have not made a detailed study of feminism, and it seems likely that many of my problems with the movement stem from ignorance. I should point out that I am in sympathy with some feminist aims; I would not bother writing an essay about why I am not a neo-Nazi, for example!
When I was a kid, feminists were rude people who came into my house and made my mother cry. Most people would express gratitude for her excellent hospitality and the delicious meals she would provide, but feminists would criticize her for spending so much time in the kitchen. As often as not, they would go on to tell her she had wasted her life and betrayed the Cause because she had left her high-powered professional job when I was born to become a full-time housewife.
I try not to be prejudiced by that negative first impression, but it does lead on to a more general point. Feminism seems to be extremely concerned with telling people how to live their lives. To take a trivial example, I've never come across any sexist man criticizing me for not making enough effort with my appearance (the way sexist men are apparently prone to do), but I've very often been taken to task by feminists for wearing long skirts and keeping my hair long, because apparently I'm promoting sexist stereotypes of femininity. And that's direct, personal, in-my-face criticism, not even counting all the articles that have been written complaining about women who dye their hair, or wear makeup, or revealing clothes, or have cosmetic surgery.
I agree with the feminist view that women should not be forced to conform to certain patterns of behaviour, but I do not agree that women should be forbidden from those lifestyles. I think people should be able to dress how they like, and do the jobs they want and are capable of, and make personal choices about whom to sleep with and how they want to structure their families, and so on. I honestly can't see how someone (like my mother) choosing to be centred on the domestic sphere and local community rather than the professional sphere is harming women who want highly paid and highly respected city jobs.
Then there's the obsession with oppression and persecution. I mean, I'm rich, I have skills that society values, I have good health, I'm white (I tend to hope that doesn't make too much difference, but as far as it does, the difference is in my favour). I've always been able to get whatever I want in life. The idea of considering myself oppressed or persecuted is pretty much ridiculous. Yet, most (not all, I know there are some exceptions) feminists are people like me; they are among society's most privileged people, yet their whole philosophy is centred around how much they, as women, get discriminated against.
Women in affluent western societies earn, on average, 10-20% less than men over their working lives. This is a bad thing, it's discriminatory, and something should be done about it. Thus far I agree with feminists. However, it's hard for me to get extremely worked up about it when those women are still part of the 20% of the world's population controlling 80% of the world's resources. It's a problem if a businesswoman is passed over for promotion on grounds of gender, and reaches a glass ceiling so that she can never exceed her five-figure salary when her male colleagues are earning far more. But it's pretty insignificant compared to a billion people who earn less than a dollar a day. And even if you only care about this country, there are a lot of people (of both genders) who are far worse off than typical feminist causes célèbres.
The narrowness of this view reminds me of another bugbear: women who wear the various forms of traditional Muslim dress are automatically regarded as victims of terrible oppression by their evil patriarchal religion. At the same time, female circumcision is absolutely fine and dandy, because it's "culturally determined" and often practised by women.
I don't like being told what to think. Every time I've observed feminists, they seem to be accusing someone or other of not being a real feminist because they don't hold the right beliefs. For my part, I'd rather define myself as not a feminist, so that feminists will try to persuade me why their cause is right, rather than defining myself as a feminist and being told I'm not good enough because I don't agree with someone's pet theory. Also, a lot of feminist theory is presented in a way that makes it totally unfalsifiable; there's this whole 'if you don't accept this view, you must be collaborating with the patriarchy' sort of approach, and I really hate that.
Then there's all the jargon and shibboleths, which again focus energy on deciding who gets to be counted as a feminist, rather than actually doing anything to improve women's situations. Sometimes it seems to me that feminism is mostly a branch of post-modernist literary theory. I find any kind of literary theory only of limited interest as an intellectual discipline, and really completely useless as a tool for political change. So I can't be a feminist because I know next to nothing about post-modernism.
The other consequence of this sort of approach is the emphasis on gender-inclusive language. I don't care about gender inclusive language. I'm not violently against it, it's not a sinister force destroying the purity of communication, or something. I also don't base this opinion on the ridiculous examples of 'political correctness' which are all too easy to mock. If some gender-inclusive language is kind of clunky and awkward right now, that's just because people aren't used to it yet, and I'm sure it will sound much nicer if becomes habitual. It just seems rather pointless. It takes a lot of effort to make people change the way they speak, and I'm really unconvinced that the effort is justified. It's really hard to get any sensible answers out of feminists on this issue - I've tried - because either they accuse me of being sexist myself if I don't support feminist language change, or they go off into flights of post-modernism and I really can't follow. So I remain unconvinced.
I find myself disagreeing with feminists even on some of what you would think would be absolutley no-brainer questions. Rape is bad, duh. Except that a lot of feminist rhetoric seems to imply if not actually state outright that rape of women by men is the only serious problem. I don't care if men are a thousand times less likely to be raped than women (I think that's highly unlikely, but anyway, hypothetically); it's still an absolutely terrible thing and should in no way be condoned. The feminist view on this seems to fall on a spectrum from trivializing rape of men and same-sex rape, which is pretty bad, to accusing anyone who cares about these issues of being evilly anti-feminist, which is just disgusting. Exactly the same argument applies to domestic violence which is not sexual in nature.
I'm not happy about what I perceive as the attitude of feminism towards men. Now, feminists are always loudly declaring that they don't really hate men, that's just an evil caricature by anti-feminists. OK, so I'm prepared to believe that feminists don't hate men, but I'm still going to take issue with the way feminism portrays and interacts with men. For a start, the idea of a 'patriarchy' sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, and I am automatically hugely skeptical about conspiracy theories. I really can not believe that all or most men actively collude to retain power and suppress women. Also, my observation of the world does not suggest that most men even have power over most women.
The corollorary to this is the view that men can not possibly ever be feminists. And if they try to be feminists, they are going to be constantly acting against their own interests which is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Thus, any man who claims to be a feminist is either actively lying (see above re the patriarchy theory), or at best is automatically suspect. I can't believe that. I think if feminism is genuinely about justice and equality for women, then it is just as much in men's interests as women's. And if feminists persist in declaring that men can't be feminists, it makes me suspect that their aims are not really to do with justice, but something else, and I'm not sure if I want to buy into that something else.
I've tried to be fairly balanced up to now, but one thing that makes me absolutely spitting furious is the hate speech that comes from some feminists against transsexuals. I know that not all feminists are prejudiced, but there are far too many who go about saying the sorts of things that I would expect from thugs, not serious scholars, and the fact that such people are still accepted as part of the mainstream feminist community is enough to put me off the whole movement. Apart from a small minority, even those feminists who are not spouting sick, disgusting, dehumanizing crap tend not to see the rights of transsexuals as important, whereas I would say that transsexuals suffer from much, much worse discrimination than born women. Obviously some transsexuals are also women (or if you want to look at this way, all transsexuals are women at some point in their lives), so if feminism really cares about women's rights, then those transsexuals should be included in their cause.
I don't want to associate myself with a group that turns a blind eye, much less contributes, to violent hatred of a particular minority. Even apart from that, I think these kind of attitudes betray a serious underlying problem. Male-to-female transsexuals seem to be villified because they're "really" men. Now, the obvious part of this assumption is just ignorant, it wouldn't take very much reading to find out that this is not in fact the case. But the less obvious assumption is that they are men therefore it's ok to hate them, which tends to belie the feminist claim about not hating men in the first place. Likewise, if feminists don't hate men, why should they have such a problem with someone born biologically female choosing to become a man?
To take another emotive point (and I'm expecting to get absolutely jumped on here), there's the abortion issue. While I believe abortion should be legal, I can't call myself pro-choice. I don't think women have a "right" to abortion, because I don't think abortion is a good thing. There may be limited circumstances where abortion is the least bad of several bad options, but that doesn't mean I see abortion as desirable. I've repeatedly heard feminists say, if you're not pro-choice you can't be a feminist; ok, so I'm not a feminist.
The other reason I have a huge problem with the pro-choice movement is their tendency to use arguments along the lines of, well, obviously abortion must be legal, because no sane person could possibly expect a woman to give birth to a disabled child! And that slips frighteningly fast into, disabled people have no quality of life, so it's kinder to kill them. No, I'm not entirely objective about this. I'm the daughter of a disabled mother, and the sister of a severely (by any definition) disabled brother, so it's not something I can regard in a purely theoretical light.
I think my major problem with feminism as an approach (rather than particular individual aspects of the feminist movement as it actually is) is that it genders things that don't need to be gendered. I see people as people first, not men and women. I want to make the world better for people, not for women (particularly not if improving things for women is at the expense of men). I don't want to see more women in positions of power and influence, I want to see better systems to ensure that the best people are rewarded and have the most say in running things. That means that if in a particular circumstance, women are being discriminated against, I would want to do something about that discrimination, but I don't want to start from the assumption that in every situation, increasing female representation is the most important issue. Likewise, I want to encourage people to behave more compassionately and less aggressively; I don't think this corresponds to with 'promoting feminine values'.
Even on its own terms, I'm not entirely convinced that feminism is actually the best way to make things better for women. It's good for a particular subset of women, but my feeling is that it's doing far too little (and in some cases is actually harming) for some of the women who most need it. Feminism sometimes seems to be promoting the rights of women as long as they're not too traditionally feminine, not poor or uneducated, or foreign, or Muslim, or transsexual, or disabled, and most certainly not if they're critical of feminism. I'm overstating my case here, but I do feel that feminism is a bit of an interest group for a particular crowd of people. I have no problem with that as a cause, but it's not a cause that I feel much obligation to commit myself to.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-12 07:37 pm (UTC)Part of the problem is that we all joke a little bit about the things we love, and to outsiders or people dubious about those categories it can come across as a serious problem. I don't really think that it interferes with my self-identification as a Jewish feminist when I lay tefillin in public mostly on the mornings I get to watch my boyfriend daven Pesukei d'Zimra; I just think it's funny. If I weren't dating someone who'd do the same for me (and he's less of a morning person than I am!), that might be a problem.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-12 07:45 pm (UTC)I see feminism as about promoting equality between men & women and nothing more. I don't subscribe to the 'all sex is rape' line. Like sexuality this is another area where getting caught up in labels isn't particularly helpful.
I'm (by my own definition) pro choice. I might well prefer it if women choose not to abort unwanted foetuses, but what I think doesn't matter - a pre-viable foetus is in many respects a parasite (in that s/he is incapable of living without being inside the woman's body). Who am I to tell someone 'You must keep this parasite inside you, even though you don't want it?'
I don't like sex neutral language, it sounds forced & false - particularly the substitution of 'they' for 's/he'. I subscribe to the argument that says the masculine includes the feminine.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-12 07:53 pm (UTC)Reponse, part 1
Date: 2004-11-12 08:00 pm (UTC)I'd argue that forbidding women from any lifestyle is a phenomenally anti-feminist stance. One of the aims of feminism is to create a world in which women can choose the lives we want as easily as men can; it shouldn't matter what we choose. Anyone who says otherwise is misinterpreting feminism, if you ask me.
Yet, most (not all, I know there are some exceptions) feminists are people like me; they are among society's most privileged people, yet their whole philosophy is centred around how much they, as women, get discriminated against.
I'd reframe: I'd say our whole philosophy is centered around how women get discriminated against (and, by extention, how discrimination plays out in the lives of other communities -- genuine feminism isn't solely woman-focused). How women get discriminated against -- not how we ourselves specifically get discriminated against. That's a relevant distinction.
The narrowness of this view reminds me of another bugbear: women who wear the various forms of traditional Muslim dress are automatically regarded as victims of terrible oppression by their evil patriarchal religion. At the same time, female circumcision is absolutely fine and dandy, because it's "culturally determined" and often practised by women.
Most of the feminists I know are wrangling, or have wrangled, with the difficult question of how to react to women who veil/cover their hair/dress in religiously-mandated "modest" ways -- both in traditional Muslim circles and in some ultra-religious Jewish circles, for that matter. On the one hand, we want to respect their choices; on the other hand we want to be aware that those "choices" may not actually be choice, as we understand the term, if they're in a situation in which no viable alternatives exist. To me the real question has to do with cultural imperialism -- if we want all women to have power over their own bodies (expressed via how they dress and via how they live in the world), are we imposing our own liberal western views on them? I can't imagine not addressing that question, though I also can't imagine a satisfying answer to it. *g*
For what it's worth, I don't know a single feminist who's comfortable with the practice of clitoridectomy. We acknowledge that trying to stop it places us in the position of imposing our liberal western values on a traditional society, and that's not something to be done lightly -- but I don't know anyone who blithely says, "Oh, it's okay, it's women doing it, so no big deal."
On the question of gender-inclusive language -- the place where this matters most to me is in my own liturgy, because I have strong feelings about God-language. Specifically, I favor using a variety of terms (with a variety of gender connotations) because I want to avoid the pitfall of concretizing my notion of the sacred in any particular direction. But that's only tangentially related to what you're talking about here, so I'll save it. *g*
Rape is bad, duh. Except that a lot of feminist rhetoric seems to imply if not actually state outright that rape of women by men is the only serious problem.
Er. May I ask where you're getting this impression? Because, again, it doesn't jive with my experience of feminism. It sounds appallingly first-wave to me. That may be where feminism started, lo these many decades ago, but my experience is that we've moved well beyond that into an understanding that sexual violence harms everyone, and that it's incumbent on us to work to stop it in all of its forms, regardless of the gender of the participants.
(con't)
Reponse, part 2
Date: 2004-11-12 08:01 pm (UTC)I wouldn't say that they do...but I would say that patriarchy has been a factor in the way the last several centuries of history have played out. It wasn't that long ago that women were considered property, and to me that's a clear sign of power imbalance. That we've moved well beyond that is an excellent sign, but I'd say we still have a ways to go in creating the world I want to live in.
And again, to me the notion that men can't be feminists is old-fashioned, first-wave, and frankly stupid. My husband is a feminist, and I applaud him for it. Anyone who says otherwise is misinterpreting the term and, honestly, missing the point of the whole movement.
I've tried to be fairly balanced up to now, but one thing that makes me absolutely spitting furious is the hate speech that comes from some feminists against transsexuals.
Agreed -- though I'd personally rather rage against the hate speech that comes from some people against transfolk, because I don't think feminists have any kind of lock on that kind of bigotry. Again, I'd argue that the point of feminism is liberation of all marginalized communities, and that hatespeech against anyone on account of their gender or gender-expression is absolutely antithetical to what feminism is about.
Like
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-12 08:40 pm (UTC)But I've recently started studying for a course called Gender in Philosophy. The course isn't exactly focussed on feminist philosophy, but of course, a lot of the philosophical work on gender has historically been done by feminists. And reading some feminists works has been a real eye-opener.
[gender-inclusive language]
This term we've been looking at feminist philosophy of language, and one of the topics we've covered has been gender-inclusive (or exclusive) language. Like you, I hadn't been that bothered about it, but reading some of the philosophical arguments about the problems with gendered language and the benefits of using gender neutral language I completely changed my mind.
It takes a lot of effort to make people change the way they speak, and I'm really unconvinced that the effort is justified. It's really hard to get any sensible answers out of feminists on this issue
I'd never heard any good arguments for this until I read some of the articles on the reading list this term. I'm beginning to think that a lot of the typical feminist positions do have underlying philosophical or theoretical arguments to support them, it's just that people are no longer familiar with them, so just sound off about the issues without really understanding why they're saying what they're saying.
I don't have the references on me right now, but if you're interested I could point you towards some interesting articles of feminist philosophy on gendered language.
one thing that makes me absolutely spitting furious is the hate speech that comes from some feminists against transsexuals.
Interestingly, I noticed you used the term "hate speech" here (and yes, I completely agree, I find the attitude of some feminists towards transsexuals to be absolutely offensive and thoroughly deplorable). Again, one of the things I realised through beginning to study some feminist philosophy of language is that the concept of 'hate speech' wouldn't exist if it weren't for feminism. It was the feminist philosophy of language that argued that use of language itself can be considered a violent act.
Feminism did a lot more than I normally think of it as being able to take credit for. And the kind of feminist philosophy I'm studying is interesting because it's provided the tools for many different groups to begin to bring issues that affect them to light. The work that feminists did with gender is now being done with race, sexuality, class, disability, etc. using the techniques and theories that feminism pioneered.
feminists
Date: 2004-11-12 09:37 pm (UTC)I don't know where to begin.
Well, maybe with: but which feminists are you talking about, exactly?
It's not like feminism is a monolithic entity. Feminists have names, and opinions, and individual prejudices of their own, and human qualities, and lives. This should go without saying.
What you describe seems like the worst side of some feminists' prejudices combined with a heaping dose of backlash propaganda and outright ignorance about feminists themselves.
Allow me to quote some feminists by name:
"I feel, therefore I can be free." -- Audre Lorde
"If you're really doing coalition work ... you feel threatened to the core and if you don't, you're not really coalescing." -- Bernice Johnson Reagon
"Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working class women, poor women, disabled women, lesbians, old women - as well as white, economically privileged, heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandisement." -- Barbara Smith
"First you have to liberate the children because they're the future. Then you have to liberate the men because they suffer so. Then if there's any liberation left, you can go in the kitchen and eat it." -- Judith Long Laws
"Our own history, where we have been able to find it and put it together, tells us again and again that women have generated explanations about the world -- and about male power and how it is constructed and how it can be undermined -- and again and again those explanations have been edited out, erased, so that women are initiated into a society which convinces them that nothing has gone before and that they must start from scratch." -- Dale Spender
"Your trouble is you don't think enough. You take too much for granted without thinking about the politics." -- Dora Russell
"The fight is on until we have full economic, legal, occupational, moral, social and political equality." -- Hazel Hunkins Halliman
"...feminism is the study of the patriarchal system of unrecompensed labor and the politics and propaganda that maintain it." -- Joanna Russ
"Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units." -- Valerie Solanas
"We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it... but we have our labor.... Wherever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class uses women to reduce them." -- Lucy Parsons
"Judging from the struggles conducted by white working women -- their relentless defense of their dignity as workers and as women, their conscious as well as implicit challenges top the sexist ideology of womanhood -- they had more than earned the right to be lauded as pioneers of the women's movement. But their trail-blazing role was all but ignored by the leading initiators of the new movement, who did not comprehend that women workers experienced and challenged male supremacy in their own special way. As if to drive this point home, history has imparted a final irony of the movement initiated in 1848: Of all the women attending the Seneca Falls Convention, the only one to live long enough to actually exercise her right to vote over seventy years later was a working woman by the name of Charlotte Woodward." -- Angela Y. Davis
"White women -- feminists included -- have revealed a historical reluctance to acknowledge the struggles of household workers." -- Angela Y. Davis
"The woman's problem lies in the fact that her body, or more precisely, her womb, is the only receptacle within which human life can be reproduced. The state, in order to be in control of the means of reproducing human beings, and in order to submit those means to the interests of the economic system which happens to be in force at the time, has been obliged to extend its control and subjugation to that of women's bodies. She has therefore lost the real ownership of her body, it having been taken over by the state." -- Nawal El Saadawi
And that? Is just an infinitesimal fraction of the breadth of feminist thought, and I'm only quoting sources in English or in English translation. Feminism isn't limited to the English language any more than it is limited to the United States.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-12 10:18 pm (UTC)That is really all you are saying. Every movement has its lunatic fringe which tends to be vocal and judging any group by that lunatic fringe and the lunatic fringe alone is foolish. (On the other hand, including the lunatic fringe in the judgement of the group is common sense)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-12 10:29 pm (UTC)I'd say "feminism" is the desire for equality between the sexes, and last time I check dictionaries tended to agree with me. (If men were, on average, on the bum end of the deal then we'd presumably say "masculinism" instead.) You will notice that there is nothing about telling people what to think, not appeal to literary criticism, etc, in this definition; it's a straightforward (if slightly vague) statement about the organization of society.
Sure there are people with ridiculous opinions who call themselves feminists; but then, no cause is so good that an idiot won't follow it.
"pro choice" is a terrible term for the view that abortion shouldn't invariably be illegal; I think its use has done a tremendous amount of damage to the debate over the subject. I'm not sure what a better term would be though, unfortunately.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-12 11:19 pm (UTC)So your mother wasn't a feminist?
Feminism seems to be extremely concerned with telling people how to live their lives.
As opposed to the whole commercial industry selling women fashion, cosmetics, appliances, the institution of religion, the law, the state, and so on, and so forth.
I honestly can't see how someone (like my mother) choosing to be centred on the domestic sphere and local community rather than the professional sphere is harming women who want highly paid and highly respected city jobs.
What you can't seem to see either is how your mother and both the women who want highly paid and highly respected city jobs are harmed by the use of unpaid work to sustain the economic imbalance between men and women.
they are among society's most privileged people, yet their whole philosophy is centred around how much they, as women, get discriminated against.
Class and race-based oppressions do not negate sex-based oppression. Forms of oppression interact, and are used to keep the oppressed divided.
It's a problem if a businesswoman is passed over for promotion on grounds of gender, and reaches a glass ceiling so that she can never exceed her five-figure salary when her male colleagues are earning far more. But it's pretty insignificant compared to a billion people who earn less than a dollar a day.
Divide and conquer again: sexism also has an influence on racism, and racism does on sexism as well, and likewise both with class.
Third-world countries are exploited by first-world countries for their cheap labour, but, likewise, racism is used to justify wage reductions, and sexism as well. People are oppressed because they are exploited, and women are oppressed as women because they are exploited as women, be it within the higher circles of the capitalist empires or at the bottom of the rung in the tourist sex trade that caters to the wealthy.
women who wear the various forms of traditional Muslim dress are automatically regarded as victims of terrible oppression by their evil patriarchal religion. At the same time, female circumcision is absolutely fine and dandy, because it's "culturally determined" and often practised by women.
This preconception of yours completely denies the existence of Muslim feminists, as well as the history of clitoridectomy in the West, where it was used, in the 19th century, to treat "hysteria" and keep women in line, too.
Also, a lot of feminist theory is presented in a way that makes it totally unfalsifiable; there's this whole 'if you don't accept this view, you must be collaborating with the patriarchy' sort of approach, and I really hate that.
Any examples?
Sometimes it seems to me that feminism is mostly a branch of post-modernist literary theory. I find any kind of literary theory only of limited interest as an intellectual discipline, and really completely useless as a tool for political change. So I can't be a feminist because I know next to nothing about post-modernism.
Another ahistorical view, though I can't blame you if you've never heard of Emily Davison or Ida B. Wells, as I hadn't either, just a few months ago.
Academic feminism can be too hermetic, and this is a problem, but it isn't the whole of feminism, anymore than academia is the whole of humanity.
The other consequence of this sort of approach is the emphasis on gender-inclusive language. (...) It just seems rather pointless. It takes a lot of effort to make people change the way they speak, and I'm really unconvinced that the effort is justified.
Make something unspeakable, and you make it unthinkable. (Russ)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-12 11:29 pm (UTC)What is mostly under attack, in my experience, is the pull of the importance of men and male suffering in the discourse about these subjects, and away from women's concerns, which only perpetuates the suppression of women's lives from public discourse.
For a start, the idea of a 'patriarchy' sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, and I am automatically hugely skeptical about conspiracy theories. I really can not believe that all or most men actively collude to retain power and suppress women. Also, my observation of the world does not suggest that most men even have power over most women.
Most men do not need to actively collude to retain power and suppress women. They only need to keep the status quo as it is.
Thus, any man who claims to be a feminist is either actively lying (see above re the patriarchy theory), or at best is automatically suspect. I can't believe that. I think if feminism is genuinely about justice and equality for women, then it is just as much in men's interests as women's.
That depends entirely on where the men in question situate their interests.
I know that not all feminists are prejudiced (...) Apart from a small minority
Heh.
I don't want to associate myself with a group that turns a blind eye, much less contributes, to violent hatred of a particular minority.
There's no such thing as unconditional support.
While I believe abortion should be legal, I can't call myself pro-choice. I don't think women have a "right" to abortion, because I don't think abortion is a good thing. There may be limited circumstances where abortion is the least bad of several bad options, but that doesn't mean I see abortion as desirable. I've repeatedly heard feminists say, if you're not pro-choice you can't be a feminist; ok, so I'm not a feminist.
It is still possible to solve the problem by refusing its terms.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 12:25 am (UTC)The above statement pretty much contradicts your earlier disclaimer:
I am aware that 'feminism' is not entirely monolithic, and not all the criticisms here apply to all feminists, so don't bother calling me on that one.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 10:22 am (UTC)This is a very fair point. I think my problem is not so much with particular individual feminists who might have been rude, though those make more colourful examples for a blog post. It's more the general attitude that feminists seem to feel entitled to pontificate about things that I think should be up to each individual.
I do consider myself a feminist, and by my lights you'd be one too,
Well, thank you for that. I think one of the nice things about defining myself as not a feminist is that people fall over themselves to convince me that I am in fact one of them, I just don't know it yet. Whereas feminists always seem to be telling declared feminists that they're not feminist enough. I hold the views I hold, and if that happens to define me as a feminist according to some, well and good, but if not, I'm not going to pressured into changing my opinions so I can be part of the group.
how you define your position on abortion has little to do with it
I've read an awful lot of statements to the effect that a pro-life feminist is an oxymoron, though. The fact that there exist some pro-life feminists for other feminists to bitch about does suggest that such a position is at least possible, I admit.
we all joke a little bit about the things we love
Oh, this is absolutely reasonable, and I'm sure there are nuances I miss because I am after all looking in from the outside.
I lay tefillin in public mostly on the mornings I get to watch my boyfriend daven Pesukei d'Zimra
That's both funny and sweet! There seems to be an anti-feminist stereotype that feminists are serious all the time and have no sense of humour, but I've never seen that to be the case.
I also deliberately didn't mention in my post feminism as applied to Judaism and liturgical practice, because that's a very specialist area. FWIW I lay tefillin on the shamefully rare occasions when I actually manage weekday davening. And I would do it in public if I lived somewhere where communal weekday davening happened. So I'm not in a position to campaign loudly for the right of women to lay tefillin. My first goal is to work up to actually davening regularly in the first place, and then I can worry about whether people think I'm entitled to that mitzvah or not!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 10:34 am (UTC)Well, this is a reasonable definition of feminism, but it's not at all clear to me that this is what actual feminists spend their time doing.
Also, I'm not so convinced that equality between men and women is the best goal. It's not a terrible goal, it's certainly not one I would oppose. I want people to be better off, I want as far as possible to remove the obstacles that prevent them from fulfilling their potential. So if in a particular case, a woman was being passed over for a promotion she deserved on grounds of gender, I'd want to do something about that. But I'd equally want to do something about it if a man were being passed over for promotion on spurious grounds such as race. And I don't at all care whether there is a 1:1 ratio of men and women at all levels of the workforce.
Also, I very strongly oppose an attitude which says, men have these unfair advantages over women, so let's legislate or do whatever to take men's advantages away. I'm not saying that feminism generally tries to go about things that way. But it is a danger if your main goal is equality.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 10:42 am (UTC)From my own perspective, I have to say that I've deliberately avoided any involvement with anything that looks too close to defining itself as mainstream feminism, for fear of exactly the kind of hatred you mention. The problem is that anti-transsexual hate is actually rather mainstream, it seems, in being supported in the writings (and, sadly, also the actions) of people as prominent as Germaine Greer. You may know that Greer attempted to hound a transsexual fellow of Newnham College out of office, even to the extent of attempting to rally its students against her. I am very pleased to say that this attempt failed, resulting both in Greer's own departure from Cambridge and also in very strict statutes being imposed by the university outlawing any similar future transgressions.
I tend to keep my head down and try to avoid generating too much attention. I never attend any event that might be termed 'women-only space'. I don't feel that I have any less right to be there than any other woman, of course, but I also don't believe in starting fights unnecessarily. Perhaps I'm just too cowardly to take this kind of thing on.
One final thing. There is a feminist view that (male-to-female) transsexuals do not deserve inclusion because they have 'male privilege', and therefore are not deserving of support. In reaction to this, all I can say is that pretty much every MTF transsexual I've ever met, myself included, have spent much of their lives longing only to be discriminated against as much as born women. Just try walking down a street sometime, having 30% of people stare at you with a disgusted look. Try being thrown out of a PhD. Try finding it *much* harder (in some cases actually impossible) to find work. Try being beaten up, raped or murdered just for being who you are. Then, and only then, tell me I have any privilege whatsoever.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 10:55 am (UTC)Well, I think it's possible to frame that as a matter of courtesy between you and the people you interact with, rather than a general political principle. I'm quite happy to make sure I avoid referring to you in a gendered way; that's your choice and I would be rude if I didn't respect it. But that's a very long way from declaring that nobody should ever refer to anyone in a way that disambiguates that person's gender!
it matters to me to have a pronoun appropriate to that without having to resort to hideously ugly neologisms.
There are some words for which no gender-neutral term exists, though, so you're forced into either using gendered language or creating neologisms. And pretty much any neologism is going to sound ugly if it's not the way people are used to speaking. So you can want that, you can certainly defend its use where it is an option, but you might not always be able to have it.
singular "they" in English
I'm ok with it as a generic ("everyone and their dog"); I'm a lot less happy about using they for a particular, named, known individual. If I try to frame a sentence such as "I'm really pleased I got to see
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 12:14 pm (UTC)What gives them the right to ownership of the label?
Opps - was in a rush last night, I intended to write 'ensure equality of opportunity'. I don't think we should legislate to give women unfair advantages over men - because that defeats the very essence of ensuring equality of opportunity. I'd like to prevent discrimination on all grounds other than merit - so I wouldn't want a man to passed over for promotion on grounds such as race or sexuality, any more than I'd want a woman to be passed over for being female.
It's rather disengenuous to aim for a 1:1 ratio of men to women in all areas of the workforce - doing so entirely misses the point. I certainly want to make sure there aren't artifical barriers to people of either sex entering particular roles, but I don't see equality of numbers as necessarily desirable - I want the best person for the job in each role. Besides which, it's a fact that more women than men take time off work when they have small children. There is no way to avoid this slowing down their career progression (because they haven't spent the time in each role to gain the experience they need to move on to a higher role). It's just something we have to accept.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 12:31 pm (UTC)I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the 'they as sex-neutral singular' - I generally see people who use 'they' as being careless in their use - rather than doing it because they've deliberately chosen to use it as a sex-neutral singular, and careless grammar irks me.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 12:57 pm (UTC)forbidding women from any lifestyle is a phenomenally anti-feminist stance
OK, forbidding is probably going too far. But I've encountered a lot of criticism of women's choices as being anti-feminist or damaging to women's equality. I've even seen such things as expressing one's opinion politely criticized, because it's undermining women's right to be pushy and obnoxious "like men are".
How women get discriminated against -- not how we ourselves specifically get discriminated against. That's a relevant distinction.
It is a highly relevant one, and I do take that point. I think my perception of feminism as claiming victimhood may be unfair because of just this distinction.
Most of the feminists I know are wrangling, or have wrangled, with the difficult question of how to react to women who veil/cover their hair/dress in religiously-mandated "modest" ways
OK, this may be a UK-specific problem. I've met quite a few Muslims my age who want to identify as feminists, yet feel alienated by mainstream feminism because of the assumption that, as Muslims, they must be oppressed. This article is a very clear example of the kind of thing I mean.
The other thing, which actually gets into areas that can be quite distasteful, is that the political left in this country tends to be pro-Palestine in a rather gung-ho way. Fair enough, they're entitled to hold that view. But the only time I've ever seen some of these socialist types hesitate is when someone reminds them that in Palestinian culture, women have to cover their heads. These are people who are perfectly happy with Palestinians training teenagers (and occasionally women too) to blow themselves up in busy towns and kill lots of people, but making women cover their heads, that's a bit dodgy, maybe they're not quite as saintly as we usually portray them to be!
both in traditional Muslim circles and in some ultra-religious Jewish circles
I realize that other groups apart from Muslims do the modest dress thing, but in this country at least, Jews from that end of the religious spectrum tend not to mix very much in secular circles, so I don't know how they feel about the issue. And I've not encountered any Orthodox Christian women or veiled Christian nuns who also happen to be vocal feminists.
For what it's worth, I don't know a single feminist who's comfortable with the practice of clitoridectomy.
Again, this may be a difference in our cultures. Germaine Greer wrote a book expressing the kind of opinion that I'm mocking in my post. Well, fair enough, she's just one voice and she doesn't speak for all feminists. Except that she's such a big noise in the feminist world, I've come across quite widespread reluctance to criticize her. I'm interested that when I mentioned here that I don't like feminist support of female circumcision, lots of people have responded that I'm misrepresenting feminism, and feminists don't really support this practice at all. Yet, when I've said similar things in conversation with my feminist friends, I've quite often found that they will defend Greer's view. So I've come away with the impression that, rather than Greer being a lone lunatic (as I'd rather like to believe), she is quite well respected in feminist circles.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 01:14 pm (UTC)Or, more specificly, I'll say that personally I don't have time for labels like feminism because they mean so many different things to different people, and are therefore practically meaningless. The sort of behaviour you describe is inexcusable, but the sort of behaviour some people up-thread aspire to is laudable. Personally, I think that feminism is a bloody stupid name for "equality for everyone" though, so I tend to steer clear of it.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 01:23 pm (UTC)Oh, I have lots of views about gender-inclusive language in liturgy. But as I said to
I have strong feelings about God-language
I think we're largely in agreement about that one. I think there's a lot to be said for making it quite clear that God is Other than the conventional old-man-in-the-sky, and using abstract and non-standard language to refer to God is a good way to do that. I'm less certain about doing find-and-replace operations to change Abraham to Abraham-and-Sarah, but if it's important to a lot of people in the community I'm not going to speak against it.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 06:19 pm (UTC)I think many people identify as feminist but in a much more quiet way than the people that you encounter who call themselves Feminists and are, essentially, professional feminists who have gender inequality as their major issue. On balance, I probably identify as feminist but in the sense of wanting to give women choices. I also understand some of the extremist feminist stuff. With reference to your mother and staying at home to raise children - it is true that many women did not do this out of choice, even though your mother did, and so I entirely see why feminists get agitated about it. Even amongst educated people, I often hear the view expressed that women should stay at home with young children and that does make me cross. I also hear the view expressed that women are better with young children, which is something I really don't think is borne out by the facts. It's also still the case that marriage is unequal with the woman still changing her name in the vast majority of cases. This all bothers me. It doesn't bother me as much as other inequalities in the world, tis true, but it is a very real issue and in a way I'm glad that there are people who choose fighting it as their life's work because, without such women, we wouldn't have the vote or the right to a university education and many other such things. Yes, there are some lunatic feminists, but without them, we'd be much worse off.
rape of women by men
Date: 2004-11-13 08:36 pm (UTC)I think mainly from the handful of feminist blogs I read.
There seem to be an awful lot of articles like this one, or this one, which go to great lengths to prove that domestic and sexual violence are primarily problems for women perpetrated by men. Neither article is saying that violence against men is ok, but what I want to know is why feminists bother putting together these carefully argued essays about how women are the victims overwhelmingly more often? To me, that's offensive; any violence at all, however rare, is still too often.
Then you get things like this piece (from a UK 'young' feminist zine) on the prevalence of rape. It's a sensible article, on the whole, and makes a lot of reasonable suggestions about what can be done to prevent rape. But the blurb talks about: the female victims still being blamed, and the actions of male rapists ignored. Why bother making that point? It doesn't matter what gender the victims and rapists are.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 09:08 pm (UTC)I can agree with that. I think something that could probably be called feminism is needed. It's just that feminism as I see it doesn't always seem to be trying to change the world in what I see as a desirable direction, or when I do agree with the movement's aims, I am not sure their methods are effective.
the notion that men can't be feminists is old-fashioned, first-wave, and frankly stupid
The thing is, such a theory is actually held by quite a few feminist friends of mine. And again, it's very prevalent in the blogs I read, which are the easiest access I have to contemporary (as opposed to historic) feminism. Example here; or this debate on the issue.
Since you're a feminist yourself, you can reasonably say that people who disagree with your interpretation of feminism are stupid. As an outsider, I have a much harder time with that sort of critique. Instead, I'm inclined to respond to someone telling me that men can't be feminists by saying, well, in that case I'm not a feminist either.
I'd personally rather rage against the hate speech that comes from some people against transfolk, because I don't think feminists have any kind of lock on that kind of bigotry.
I am possibly being unfair in holding feminists to a higher standard than the population in general, even though I'm not a feminist myself. I mean, if someone is racist / sexist / xenophobic / bigoted etc, I'm not going to be surprised if they are also prejudiced against transsexual people. But when the same kind of stuff comes from feminists, who are supposed to be people who care about equality and protecting the vulnerable and not judging people by gender, it does somehow seem more shocking.
I would tend to read you as a feminist, given the positions you stated above...except that you stated them all as explicit opposition to feminism
Again, thank you. It's very encouraging to meet feminists who do agree with me on what seem to be commonsense issues. I don't think I mostly oppose feminism as such. I oppose the views of many of the feminists I happen to have encountered on certain issues, but it's more than likely that I've just been talking to the wrong feminists! Thank you for your different perspective, I really appreciate that.
gender in philosophy
Date: 2004-11-13 09:26 pm (UTC)reading some of the philosophical arguments about the problems with gendered language and the benefits of using gender neutral language I completely changed my mind
Wow. I'm really impressed to see an example of philosophy actually impacting your day-to-day opinions like that. Cool!
I don't have the references on me right now, but if you're interested I could point you towards some interesting articles of feminist philosophy on gendered language.
Sure, as long as they're not too too dense. I'm sorry if that comes across as lazy, but you have to remember, I have no background in philosophy whatsoever. So I'm quite likely to struggle with high-level philosophy articles. I am interested, and it might well be that reading some background would help me to see the point of the inclusive language thing.
This comment of yours does seem to tie in a bit with my view that you have to understand a whole load of high-level academic stuff to be effectively feminist, though. I don't know if this is analogous or not, but I would like to hope I could convince you that certain behaviours are desirable because they'll reduce your risk of cancer, without having to make you read technical scientific articles on the subject. I guess I want feminism to look convincing to an ordinary person, not just to a professional philosopher like yourself.
the concept of 'hate speech' wouldn't exist if it weren't for feminism
Now that's a very telling point. I can really see an argument which says, if I think that saying nasty things about transsexuals is a serious offence, I am already buying into a feminist view of the power of language, and logically, I should therefore also support things like gender-inclusive language. I guess I would still argue that the right of transsexuals not to get beaten up or excluded from society on grounds of gender is a whole lot more important than whether one uses the word transsexual or tranny or transperson or MtF or ladyboi or whatever. But I do think you make a very important point with this observation.
Feminism did a lot more than I normally think of it as being able to take credit for
Also an interesting thought. After I'd written the post it did occur to me that I maybe ought to have put more emphasis on the good things that feminism has historically achieved, rather than what I don't like about the current state of the movement.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 09:44 pm (UTC)There are Islamic feminists, like Nilüfer Göle and Yolande Geadah.
There are books about feminism and religion, like Walking on the Water: Women Talk about Spiriturality, edited by Jo Garcia and Sara Maitland, to name just one.
Benoîte Groult, a French feminist, wrote about clitoridectomy in 1975 and linked it back to European "medical" practices, in her book Ainsi Soit-Elle. Louky Bersianik also wrote about it in Pique-Nique sur l'Acropole (1992), and Alice Sheldon in Up the Walls of the World (a novel published in 1978). Waris Dirie told her own story in a book about her life published in 1998: Desert Flower. There have been feminist documentaries (http://www.dabla-excision.com/) about the subject, and the work currently being done to stop the practice.
You have a very, very narrow view of feminism.
Re: rape of women by men
Date: 2004-11-13 09:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 10:14 pm (UTC)Well, thank you very much for trying. I had no expectation that you would end up reading this post; from what I've seen of your stuff around on LJ, I do think of you as the kind of feminist I find very hard to understand, and your willingness to engage me on this subject is really very much appreciated. I actually came quite close to citing a post of yours as an example of how completely alienating I find some feminist discourse, but decided against it on the basis that the last thing I wanted was for my post to be read as a personal attack on an individual.
which feminists are you talking about, exactly?
The feminists I happen to have encountered. As I said, I certainly do not claim to be a scholar of feminism. Those of my friends who are feminists, for a start. People I know or am connected to through LJ. A handful of authors I happen to have read; mostly those who write relatively accessible stuff. The presentation of feminism I've picked up from the UK media; my preference tends to be for leftwing broadsheet newspapers and Radio 4. A bunch of self-declared feminist bloggers who also happen to write interestingly. (I've had quite a lot to do with feminists of various stripes working specifically in the Jewish sphere, but I'm not really talking about that very specialist aspect of feminism here.)
What you describe seems like the worst side of some feminists' prejudices combined with a heaping dose of backlash propaganda and outright ignorance about feminists themselves.
I agree that I am indeed ignorant about feminists. I had intended to make that clear; indeed, part of the point of writing this post was in the hope of picking up some ideas that would start to correct my ignorance.
I hope that I'm not judging all feminists by the worst of them, though as an ignorant outsider, I am aware this is a danger. I think one of my issues with feminism is its failure to condemn outright some views which I find utterly offensive. I can see the danger of that sort of criticism though, especially when (as I think we agree) feminism is not a monolithic body.
As for the 'backlash propaganda' point, this is a perfect example of one of my listed problems with feminism. Any possible criticism of feminism can be dismissed as 'backlash'; in that atmosphere, is feminism completely immune to criticism? To me, a movement which can not be criticized is pretty close to being a cult.
Re: feminists
Date: 2004-11-13 10:41 pm (UTC)Thanks very much for those examples. As I tried to explain in my earlier comment, I am aware that my knowledge of feminist thought is desperately patchy, so more examples I might not otherwise have come across is really helpful to me.
"Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working class women, poor women, disabled women, lesbians, old women..."
Pretty much anyone can say that their ideas benefit everybody. I mean, Bush may well declare that Republicanism benefits all Americans, regardless of wealth, gender, race etc; his actions just don't bear this out. But it is certainly heartening to see this kind of thing as an explicitly stated aim of feminism, yes.
"...feminism is the study of the patriarchal system of unrecompensed labor and the politics and propaganda that maintain it."
This is a better example than I could have come up with myself of a conspiracy theory about the mysterious patriarchal system engineering things to keep women down. Maybe such a system exists, but merely stating that it exists doesn't make it so.
women workers experienced and challenged male supremacy in their own special way
This is an interesting example of a feminist historian (?) who believes that feminism is not exclusively a middle-class movement. Though if I have understood the context correctly, she seems to be blaming feminism itself for ignoring its working-class roots?
And that? Is just an infinitesimal fraction of the breadth of feminist thought
Thank you again for those. It's clear I would have to do an awful lot of reading before I could claim to understand feminism thoroughly. At the moment, I don't feel much obligation to go through this self-education; I don't see how my reading lots and lots of different feminists would do anything to improve the situation of women. If I had time to go and teach myself an entire field from scratch, I'd be more inclined to start with something I find more interesting, such as linguistics.
Is it possible to contribute to feminism without having to read and understand the whole diverse literature on the subject? I'm only a humble scientist; I find academic history and literary theory pretty tough going.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 10:48 pm (UTC)I think you should probably be fairly careful whom you're calling a lunatic. Many of the opinions I've included in my post are things I've debated with mutual friends of ours, for example.
To me, it's pretty clear that someone like Germaine Greer is a raving nutcase. One of my problems with feminism is that the movement as a whole doesn't seem to see this, but continue to revere her no matter how extreme her opinions.
But hey, you're welcome to give me some examples of some feminists you would consider more moderate, who would be more likely to be appealing to me than the lunatics.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-13 11:23 pm (UTC)Going back a hundred years, there were differences between the Constitutionalists and the Suffragettes, but, as Constance Rover points out in Dale Spender's There's Always Been A Women's Movement This Century, both were necessary for the enfranchisement of women in England, and this diversity was a source of strength.
Feminists aren't closed off from outside criticism, either, far from it, but there's a huge difference between legitimate criticism and reactionary backlash against feminism. Backlash propaganda consists mainly of second or third-hand information passed on through various media by anti-feminists or people who unquestioningly believe what anti-feminists have said about feminists. Like the old canard (http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/LieDetect.html) about Andrea Dworkin claiming that all sex is rape, which I still see being passed on by those who are willing to believe the worst of feminists without seeking out first-hand information, even when they consider themselves feminists! And much of it is outright lies, and feminist-baiting, and a great many personal attacks seeking to discredit feminists without ever engaging with actual feminist ideas.
If you want to learn about recent anti-feminist backlash, Susan Faludi's book, Backlash, while USA-centric, is a good place to start, but certainly not the only place to learn about it. Assuming that "any possible criticism of feminism can be dismissed as 'backlash'" is yet another symptom of ignorance about both feminism and the causes of the backlash against it.
I think one of my issues with feminism is its failure to condemn outright some views which I find utterly offensive.
Well, there you go again, treating feminism as a monolithic entity...
Re: feminists
Date: 2004-11-13 11:50 pm (UTC)You need to do your own research to find out how the theory connects with your experience, and with the experiences of other women, and men. That's how consciousness raising works.
No-one can make the connections for you, but if you deny other women's experiences because they're not the same as your own, you will never form an accurate map of reality.
This is an interesting example of a feminist historian (?) who believes that feminism is not exclusively a middle-class movement. Though if I have understood the context correctly, she seems to be blaming feminism itself for ignoring its working-class roots?
That was a passage from a book I'm reading at the moment: Women, Race, and Class, by Angela Y. Davis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis).
At the moment, I don't feel much obligation to go through this self-education; I don't see how my reading lots and lots of different feminists would do anything to improve the situation of women. If I had time to go and teach myself an entire field from scratch, I'd be more inclined to start with something I find more interesting, such as linguistics.
"While Rebecca West has put so much energy into constructing women's meanings we have put very little into preserving them and have even run the risk of permitting her feminist analysis to pass from us. Are we going to let her be erased and leave it to future generations of women to reclaim her? (...) We need her words: we cannot afford to be accomplices in the act of erasing her from our traditions." -- Dale Spender, There's Always Been A Women's Movement This Century, pages 83-84.
Remembering is a radical act. What does it tell you about the culture you live in that even now, 212 years after Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, you still grow up learning so little about feminism?
Is it possible to contribute to feminism without having to read and understand the whole diverse literature on the subject? I'm only a humble scientist; I find academic history and literary theory pretty tough going.
Of course, if you fight for women's equality! But, as the saying goes, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat its tragedies, so allying yourself with women who do research it is one way to learn. Strength in diversity.
If you don't have the time or the energy to put into an extensive research about feminist history, no-one can blame you for it, but passing on lies and perpetuating the status quo is definitely something for which future generations can hold you responsible.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-14 12:04 am (UTC)That's a fine example of the kind of mystification whereby childrearing, as time-consuming, demanding, and vital as it is, isn't considered work. Which is very lucky, because it would seriously cut into the profit margins of capitalists if they had to pay for it!
Of course, women from lower classes do not have the luxury of "taking time off work" in the same numbers as women from higher economic classes. The same mechanisms which keep white middle-class women disenfranchised as unpaid workers in their own homes serve to keep white middle-class men up, and the lower classes down. The 1:1 ration of men to women in all areas of the workforce was present, for instance, among the slaves in the USA before their emancipation.
(Sources: Women, Race, and Class, by Angela Davis, and What Are We Fighting For? Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism, by Joanna Russ.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-14 12:18 pm (UTC)I'm not sure equality between the sexes is what I desire. I don't think such equality is a bad thing, but I certainly don't place that above all other possible aims. I want people in general to be better off more than I want them to be equal (which is always a difficult term to define).
dictionaries tended to agree with me
Appealing to a dictionary definition seems a little disingenuous here. I think there are relevant observations to be made about feminism as an actual political movement and the things that feminists are actually doing and talking about in reality. Otherwise it's a bit like saying, I agree with the dictionary definition of socialism, therefore I shall always vote Labour.
no cause is so good that an idiot won't follow it.
This is a very good point. I guess there are some kinds of idiots I'm pretty reluctant to make common cause with, but this is not a sensible approach, because if the cause is good I should still support it. I also haven't seen much evidence of the sensible, moderate feminists that everybody keeps telling me exist, but I may just not be looking in the right places, or I might be misled by my own prior biases and so on.
And it might be that if sensible feminists are in the minority then I should be defining myself as a sensible feminist rather than a non-feminist. Several feminists have popped up in this thread who don't seem to be saying things that run completely contrary to common sense, and I'm already feeling more positive towards the movement for having spoken to them.
"pro choice" is a terrible term for the view that abortion shouldn't invariably be illegal
I think my problem is not so much with the name, as with some of the rhetoric that comes from the pro-choice camp. I believe abortion should be legal; that doesn't make it a good thing. I also think a morally decent person can reasonably disagree with some of my views about abortion, but I am not prepared to countenance the view that it is better not to exist than to be disabled.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-14 08:41 pm (UTC)You're absolutely right that critiquing feminism from the outside is different than critiquing it from within. And honestly, "that's just stupid" -- while often satisfying to say -- isn't a helpful critique even from within.
I guess this is the mixed blessing of being a loose movement with no set defining principles. On the bright side, we can define the term in our own ways, which leads to a delightful rainbow of feminisms; on the less-bright side, we can define the term in our own ways, which leads to an annoying lack of commonality amongst people who claim the term for themselves...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-14 08:42 pm (UTC)I actually like adding the imahot, but it's the God-language that's most important to me. And as you say, I think we're basically on the same page, there. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-14 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-15 09:18 am (UTC)Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-15 09:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-15 04:02 pm (UTC)I'm not by any means arguing the second, just that I want the option of remaining.. it's not even being ambiguous, really, it's that it matters to me that gender should not matter in discussion unless one wishes it to.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-15 04:13 pm (UTC)I used to do that more often than I do now; but my first name is sufficiently non-standard that numerous people weren't finding it unambiguous anyway.
I've always assumed you're a man from seeing what you've written in livredor's journal.
It tends to split about sixty/forty that way among people who don't know me. Though mind you, I think that includes a fair number of people who see me visibly flirting with more women than men as an indicator of biological sex.
I like to build up a mental picture of who I'm talking to online, and knowing someone's sex is a part of that mental picture. It doesn't affect how I interact with him/her (at least not consciously), it's just there.
So far as I'm concerned, for the purposes of most of what I want to talk about, my body's not me, it's just where I happen to be living, and I might as well be an intellect vast and cool [ but not, I hope, unsympathetic ] running on a Babbage engine the size of Manhattan. And where the configuration of my chromosomes becomes relevant to a discussion I will raise it, but that does not often happen outside of circumstances involving personal attraction. I'm not in the business of hiding from my friends, nor is it anything that will be impossible to deduce for anyone who really cares about it, it's just very much not part of how I want to be present to casual acquaintances.
[ The imagined future where "So, you're a girl then ?" has exactly the same sort of weight as "Wow, you read Iain Banks as well !" is one I'd like to live in. ]
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-16 12:39 am (UTC)I have some sympathy for this point. The surest way for someone to annoy me is to treat women's rights as, effectively, not just the most important human rights issue in the world but the only human rights issue in the world. That way, it seems to me, madness lies.
My sf example of this is the Tiptree Award. It was started by feminists, and it often rewards feminist sf, but the award criteria state that it is for 'fiction that expands and explores our understanding of gender', and that's exactly as it should be. It's understandable (rather than having, as 'feminism' does, a different definition depending on who's saying it and when they say it and how they say it); and more importantly, it's broader. It provides context.
In the real world, my example would be prejudice against sexuality. You only have to look at the recent US election to see how much further there is to go on that front than there is on women's rights. Of course, the ideal solution is to fight for both ...
I also think too many discount the value of the successes feminism has already achieved. I'm not saying 'stop fighting', but there's a whole generation our age to whom things like the idea that a woman is just as capable as a man are literally axiomatic. They are uncontested assumptions in exactly the way that sexist assumptions were uncontested fifty years ago. That's a huge achievement. Yes, it's probably not true in all strata of society, and more true in my socioeconomic group than most ... but my group is the one that's going to be running the country in thirty years. So, don't stop fighting, but allow yourself a sense of optimism!
I don't want to see more women in positions of power and influence, I want to see better systems to ensure that the best people are rewarded and have the most say in running things.
Yeah, I agree with this, too. I don't buy the argument that says we need to overcompensate to achieve equality.
But for a lot of the rest of your post, I feel that the problem is that feminism has an image problem, not that feminism is a flawed ideology. Some of its advocates don't help themselves; I can't see how it does them any good to tell me I can't be a feminist because I'm a man (two people have done this so far). But mostly it seems to be a general cultural thing now, and that's a real shame. The language involved needs to be reclaimed, but many people don't realise it.
Oh, and on 'they': I was under the impression it was already accepted in the singular form because, well, it just Makes Sense. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-25 05:57 pm (UTC)Part of the problem that I've seen, at least, is that some (capital-F) Feminists tend to be rather incomprehensible to the casual reader. They have their phrases like "oppression by the patriarchy" and "male privilege" along with scores of others and seem to forget that those not in their circles may not agree with their definitions, commonly don't know what their definitions actually *are*, or don't agree that these things exist in the first place. (Those two aren't the best examples since it's usually obvious what they mean by them, but I'm having difficulty remembering others... which is part of the problem).
I read your link to the discussion about whether Ampersand doing the radio debate was bad, and from that I'd far rather read what he was saying than certain of his commenters because he was coming across as reasonable and understandable, and they simply weren't. Surely on any issue the trait you want is the ability to get it across to an uninformed audience clearly. This is worth far more in my opinion than the gender of the speaker. Oh well...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 06:13 pm (UTC)So your mother wasn't a feminist?
I think my mother would be fairly horrified to be described as a feminist! I think a feminism that had room for people like my mother would be a lot closer to a feminism that also had room for me.
Feminism seems to be extremely concerned with telling people how to live their lives.
As opposed to the whole commercial industry selling women fashion, cosmetics, appliances, the institution of religion, the law, the state, and so on, and so forth.
Well, good point. I don't like any institution that wants to dictate my lifestyle (beyond what is absolutely necessary for stable society).
I tend to be fairly oblivious to the fashion industry and its cognates, mainly because I don't read women's magazines. When I do come across this kind of stuff I quite happily ignore it; I mean, if some article tells me that I should dress a certain way in order to be considered beautiful or attract a man then I don't care, because I don't particularly want either of those things. But if an article tells me I should dress a certain way because otherwise I'm somehow harming women's rights, then I at least have to take the claim seriously, so I find myself more annoyed by the spurious interference in my life.
The law is a slightly different matter; it's pretty much the purpose of the law to tell people what to do. I'd be the first person to protest that the law, and by extension the state too, should restrict itself to matters of major public importance. I'm pretty liberal, even verging on libertarian, in my politics. It's not the place of the law to tell me how I should dress, or what opinions I should hold and express, or whatever.
Religion is a tricky example. I happen to follow a brand of religion, Reform Judaism, that places a lot of emphasis on autonomy and personal choice. My religion doesn't proselytize or otherwise put any pressure on anyone to follow its rules. And it is very light on telling its adherents what to think. Yes, it is true that I let my religion determine things like what I eat and how I structure my daily and weekly routine. But I chose that religion in the first place, and I chose to follow the rules because they're personally meaningful to me. The major difference with feminism is that it claims everybody should follow the feminist way of life, because otherwise they're contributing to the persecution of women.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 06:14 pm (UTC)Are you saying that unpaid work is automatically bad for women and anti-feminist? The fact that I do volunteer work (both in official capacities and just taking on tasks that need doing) in my spare time for causes I believe in is "sustaining the economic imbalance"? Is working for charities and non-profits harmful to women? What if the charities are specifically women-centred or feminist, such as rape shelters and women's support groups? What if it's men who do the unpaid work (as is the case in many of the organizations I'm involved with)? Is that also anti-feminist? What about doing favours for a friend who's going through a hard time? Would a feminist expect to get paid for things like that?
The way I see it, unpaid work is part of what sustains communities. I've been part of communities where everybody makes a financial contribution to pay a caterer to provide food for events, and I've been part of communities where everybody just brings something to eat, and the atmosphere is almost always better in the second kind of communities. Doing stuff with volunteers makes it possible for poorer people to contribute to and therefore feel part of their community alongside people who have more money; I can't see why this is a bad thing from a feminist point of view. Besides, the sort of culture where everyone sets out an exact itemized bill for every single minute of their time and refuses to do one whit beyond their job description can work in some circumstances, but there are other situations where it's not appropriate.
In your world view, who do you think should be paying my mother for being a housewife, for bringing up her children, for being a school governor and getting involved in PTAs, for organizing social events for all kinds of organizations she's involved with, for making sure people get visited if they're in hospital or bereaved? Her husband's employers, or the government, or the organizations she volunteers for, or a (charitably funded?) body dedicated for the purpose? I can see potential problems with any of those possibilities.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-28 07:36 pm (UTC)I don't think I was really claiming that they do.
Forms of oppression interact, and are used to keep the oppressed divided.
"Are used" by whom? This again seems to imply some sort of (international, given the context of the discussion) conspiracy where sexists collude with racists to somehow prevent black people uniting with women. And even that phrasing immediately exposes the flaw in that sort of thinking: half of black people are women, so it's impossible to keep the two groups divided even if this were anybody's goal.
I don't deny that there are lots of different forms of oppression, and that they sometimes interact. But I'm pretty cynical about feminists telling me that I'm oppressed because of my gender, when it's very obvious to me that I'm really not at all oppressed, and any slight disadvantages I might experience due to being female are far outweighed by all the types of privilege that I have.
Divide and conquer again: sexism also has an influence on racism, and racism does on sexism as well, and likewise both with class.
I'm not trying to divide anyone, much less conquer them! I'm not the one who's arguing that the anti-racist movement must necessarily harm women's interests because lots of the people it helps are male. I'm not the one who worries about who gets to be counted as a woman and who worthy of the support of feminists; I side-step the problem by working on the basis that people are deserving of respect and freedom and equality, so I don't have to worry about who 'counts'.
You might argue that a divide and conquer strategy would be vehemently opposing selective abortion as practised in China and India because it discriminates against female foetuses, while at the same time vehemently supporting selective abortion in the West because it discriminates against disabled foetuses. An argument which is not only deeply offensive, but completely ignores the fact that many disabled foetuses and disabled people are also female. But as a result of this kind of attitude, it becomes that much more difficult for anyone who cares about disabled rights to be a feminist. I don't think that's because the 'patriarchy' or the 'hegemony' are deliberately using oppression to divide disabled people from women; I think it's a problem that comes from within feminism.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-03 09:06 pm (UTC);-) I think theory in general is often useless as a tool for analysing literature. Don't get me started on post-colonial theory.
There have been some interesting ideas thrown up by feminist deconstructionist thinkers - I'm actually quite a fan of Helene Cixous and Julia Kristeva, simply because I think they have new and interesting things to say (I like the idea of ecriture feminine and "writing the body", and I do think there is a sense in analysing female practice as different to male because I believe it is, positively so).
I do think on should distinguish feminist theory from feminsit political action, in the same way that one should distinguish queer theory from political action for gay equality. I don't think the political fight for equality and justice has yet been won. I do not believe that "all men hate all women" (Germaine Greer) or that all sex is rape, but I still perceive that rape as a crime continues to go unpunished even where it is detected and prosecuted, due to outmoded attitudes still prevalent in the legal system. I do not believe that a woman who chooses to pursue a career receives the same salary as a man, despite the Equal Pay Act (1970) due to continuing legal loopholes which allow the same work to be defined differently. I do not believe that women are not passed over in favour of male colleagues for jobs they are capable and qualified for. I do not believe that women who choose career over family are not judged for this decision. Although a woman's right to her body is enshrined in law, I do not believe that women who choose not to have children are not judged for that decision.
I think there's a wider world politics issue (or rather, set of issues) to feminism as well. The US and UK may be slo-o-o-o-wly gearing themselves up towards equality, there are of course many nations in the world where this is very far from being the case, and where the essentially middle-class concerns of Western feminism pale into comparison besides the very basic failure to provide safety, security and healthcare for women. Nailing one's feminst colours to the flag inicates not only a support for the provision of equality in the West (in terms of legal, political, economic and social equality), but also support for equality worlwide (in terms of basic human equality - the right to be treated as human).
A very late response, as I think I was sans interne when you first posted this!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-03 09:14 pm (UTC)Yikes, you really think so? Cultural relativist though I often am, I don't think I've ever even heard such a viewpoint expressed. I don't think it makes a difference that the practioners themselves are often female - one would simply explain that they are themselves products of a brutal patriarchy that seeks to control women.
A similar example from India strikes me, in that following the death on her husband's funeral pyre of Roop Kanwar in Rajasthan in 1987, there was a lot of debate focussing on whether the action was "voluntary" or whether she was in fact murdered (in the sight of over 2,000 mourners). One feminist response at the time pointed out that, in a culture where a woman's life is viewed as so worthless as to be not worth living in the absence of the husband, there is no such concept as "voluntary" on the part of an agency-less and identity-less woman. "If a woman does not get to choose her stage of education and career, or whom and when she marries, how is that she can choose whether to live or die?" asked Femina magazine.
In a similar way, one cannot really regard female circumcision as a "choice" of practice chosen by women, because "choice" in such a context is not a concept that exists for women.
I may not in fact be disagreeing with you at all here, but I'm mystified as to where the idea you cite above comes from!
Re: Reponse, part 1
Date: 2005-10-20 02:52 pm (UTC)You've forgotten that there are also Christian women who choose to cover and/or to wear more modest clothing. In my own studies of this, I found that there are many who cover by their own choice, many who cover because that is their husbands' wish (wives who believe in submitting to their husbands' wishes), and many who cover because it is the practice of the faith community in which they live. There was no one reason for Christian women making the choice to cover and/or to dress modestly.
For me, the choice was my own. My husband voiced his thoughts on the matter but the choice to cover or not was my own, an issue of faith and of where I feel God is leading me. From my readings and my discussions with women of other faiths who cover, this is often the case; although not always. For devout Muslims I know, the women choose whether or not to cover based on their own studies of their holy texts. I've no Jewish acquaintances who cover, so I've not been able to have those discussions in relation to Judaism. For the most part, my discussions with people in the local Jewish community have been with respect to halal/kosher meats. (We raise sheep, goats, and poultry and sell at local farmers markets.)