>How would you (Anthony) react to the following proposition: "I am not
>equal to a woman, better than a woman, less than a woman. I am a man,
>and that is not defined by a presence or absence of womanhood."?
>
>What do you (Anthony) think "manhood" is defined by?
>
>Carrol
I am rather surprised that you ignored the racism in the original post! Anthony hardly needs a lecture on feminism. The statement was forwarded here b/c it is an example of the way radical feminism remains a dominant force among feminist bloggers and activists. If you noticed, her argument was classical radical feminism:
-- The root oppression is the oppression of women, as a class, by men as a class. All other forms of oppression, but especially racism (which was the focus of her post), must be understood as derivatives of women's oppression.
-- The political focus of any practical political activity must be the elimination of 'The Patriarchy' and no other work is as important.
-- Analysis proceeds by showing that the oppression of women as a class by men as a class is primary and that any other differences between men are mere illusions that can be explained, in the final analysis, by the way they reinforce the oppression of women, as a class, by men as a class.
Practically speaking, her statement doesn't make sense. If she defines women as a political category -- -POLITICAL -- and not an ideational category existing in some Platonic heaven, then indeed, she will likely end up defining women in terms of their relationship to men. In practice, that is precisely how she defines woman -- as a political category.
On a radical feminist view, women's identity is constituted by women's victimization by men -- women's victimization as individuals by individual men and women's victimization as a class by men as a class. MacKinnon doesn't mean that women are passive since women, even in a position of victimization can fight oppression, plan, strategize, organize, and negotiate the conditions of their oppression. However, these efforts must always be understood as possible because they are conditioned by a fundamental powerlessness. As MacKinnon writes:
"perhaps it would help to think of women's sexuality as women's like Black culture is Blacks': it is, and it is not. The parallel cannot be precise in part because, owing to segregation, Black culture developed under more autonomous conditions than women, intimately integrated with men by force, have had. Still, both can be experienced as a source of strength, joy,expression, and as an affirmative badge of pride. Both remain nonetheless stigmatic in the sense of a brand, a restriction, a definition of less. This is not because of any intrinsic content or value, but because the social reality is that their shape, qualities, texture, imperative, and very existence are a response to powerlessness. They exist as they do because of a lack of choice. The are created out of social conditions of oppression and exclusion. They may be part of a strategy for survival or even of change. But, as is, they are not the whole world, and it is the whole world that one is entitled to. This is why interpreting female sexuality as an expression of women's agency and autonomy, as if sexism did not exist, is always denigrating and bizarre and reductive, as it would be to interpret Black culture as if racism did not exist. As if Black culture just arose freely and spontaneously on the plantations and in the ghettos of North America, adding diversity to American pluralism."
While this particular writer wants a world where women are defined in terms of a self-same womanness that has no relation to manness. This is rather silly. If you have two words that refer to two different categories of human, then they necessarily refer to one another.
I bring this up because, if you are at all interested in the dynamics of feminist politics and activism as they exist among young people, this is the kind of thing that's out there.