The musings of a feminist outsider...
Mar. 8th, 2011 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pheloniusfriarIn honour of Women's Day, here is my final short essay for the 3rd year Feminist Political Theory course I took last term. We were given four possible topics and had to pick one. While there were easier ones to tackle than the one I chose, I thought this was an important one for me to answer because it in some ways deals with the fact that I am male and am coming to the feminist project as an honourary "outsider". Regardless of my thinking on and participation in the subject, I have not lived the life and therefore cannot speak to it from the inside (nor would I try to). Therefore, the question of how to have a meaningful dialogue as an outsider (in the case of the essay question, as an outsider to a culture), is a very important one for me to come to grips with. The actual question was:
Towards A Feminist Framework Of Interpretation:
The Quandary Of Analysis In A Multicultural Context
In her essay, “Multicultural Education and Feminist Ethics”, Marilyn Freeman writes “There is a kind of emancipationist imperialism involved in freeing someone from conditions which she herself does not regard as seriously oppressive and would not, on her own, challenge” (Friedman 1995). As history has shown, for example in the deeply controversial matter of cliterectomies, no matter how unambiguous the situation may seem from an external perspective – for example, that of a white, middle-class, heterosexual US woman (Friedman 1995) – the situation is considerably more complex and profoundly personal and ambiguous for those living the supposed issue. If feminist writers wish to avoid imposing their particular flavour of oppression on those they are purportedly trying to liberate, it is imperative that they take this into account in their writings – otherwise they are just trading one tyranny for another that may have unexpected and insidious, if less overt, consequences of its own. The problem occurs that in attempting to avoid any possible generalizations or universalizations, a writer of even the slightest conscience would be irrevocably paralysed for fear of transgressing their desire to “do no harm”. When it is acknowledged that no two individuals have ever shared the same epistemology, it becomes obvious that the solution is more subtle, requiring effort on the part of both the writer and the reader to understand the context of any such dialogue. While there is no “how” to this – to attempt to find a universalization for avoiding universalizations is an fool’s quest – there are disclosure guidelines that can be instituted by those who are concerned about the interpretation of their ideas in a diverse multicultural environment, and a discipline required by those analyzing the works of others to ensure that the writer’s intellectual and ideological location is well understood. Sadly, mainstream feminist scholars and activist writers have not done a stellar job of making their standpoints clear – often deliberately as part of an effort to promote a particular strategic or tactical agenda – so, ironically, it may be the wisest course to turn to feminist critics of feminist ideology to find a viable framework to apply to the problem. One such promising framework with applicability to this challenge is the emerging interdisciplinary field of “feminist disability studies”.
With the advent of the human rights movement in the West, especially during the 1960s, it became evident that mainstream feminism did not speak for all women. In fact, it could be argued that it spoke for a relatively small group of well situated women who wished to be freed from the oppressions of a male dominated Western society. Cries were loud and clear that even in the West, these feminists did not speak for the poor, for women of visible minorities, for those of varied sexual and gender orientations, and for women of non-Western societies (Tong 2009). Some of these voices were particularly well organized and persuasive – such as the lesbian and “black”communities – and could not be ignored. Their critical perspectives on feminist thought laid the foundations for the very notion of considering multicultural sensitivities in feminist writing – after all, if large numbers of women stepped up to indicate that they felt oppressed and excluded from the larger feminist project, there was obviously something profoundly in need of redress. It was through this challenge that feminist theoreticians were able to construct the profoundly powerful notion of using “intersectionality” as an tool to understand the complex interrelated forces that acted on the various communities that feminists wanted to be inclusive of. It also made it clear that while one group could theorize about another, any activism of value had to be informed and guided by members of the affected community with support as needed from the broader community of women. As each oppressed group rose up as “outsiders” to demand entrance into the club of feminism, new issues had to be addressed in feminist thought that challenged the universalizations that had been made over and over in order to gain the leverage needed for the least marginalized (and therefore, most powerful) of women’s groups to effect change. The work of inclusion has continued unabated since the floodgates of “identity” were opened, and now any public feminist that does does not acknowledge the importance of gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic standing, culture, ethnicity, urban/rural lifestyle, and geographic locale – to name a few intersecting identities – risks immediate accusation of being exclusionary.
But what if the feminist promise of equality is an empty one? What if the rallying cry of “we can do it!” is simply not true for some women? What if “our bodies, ourselves” is a euphemism for a eugenics programme directed squarely at people that believe they have the right to live? The deeply ambivalent world of “disability” comes into violent conflict with the foundations of feminist thought and activist agendas. Can feminist thinking be reconciled with what, on the surface, may seem like the most extreme of “other”? How can the lofty intellectual, emotional, and spiritual creations of feminism apply to someone paralysed from the neck down? Someone with an IQ of 36? Someone who may not be capable of consistent rational behaviour due to a congenital or traumatic brain impairment? Someone with a crippling or deadly genetic disease that will likely be passed to her children? The answer was, as it stood, that feminist analysis did not apply well to those cases. But the proof of a belief system is in how it deals with the “edge cases”, and the bulk of feminist thought did not fare so well in that respect. However, what once seemed like an impossible project is turning into a great boon for inclusionist feminist theory and politics. When considering the notion of multiculturalism, we are asking ourselves how to be inclusive of people whose ways are different from our own, and to understand and accept the value and validity of their standpoints. By attempting to include women that not only differ from the white, middle-class, heterosexual “classic” feminist woman in terms of culture, but differ as far as presenting different morphologies from those in the able-bodied “centre”, new ways of looking at identity and even the meaning of “woman” is required.
Feminist disability studies provides powerful critical analysis tools that can be applied to any feminist discussion. In addition to the key use of deep understanding of the centrality of intersectionality and interactionism in developing an understanding of any group, and the acceptance of the irreconcilable ambiguities and ambivalence generated in facing disability as a “cultural third term” from a feminist perspective, it demands a precision of terminology that forces a clarity of communication of one’s perspective (Kelly 2010).
What is problematic for those with a Western attitude is there is no answer to this Gordian Knot of a problem. By its nature, there is no way for it to be a destination, but rather it is a process in a journey that will never end. This sort of open-ended dilemma tends to be profoundly disturbing or even disheartening to members our Western culture that teaches that any problem can be solved if sufficient resources are thrown at it, and that the challenge is simply to get those resources to throw. But this is a drama that isn’t going to be resolved at the end of the one-hour episode as we have been pop-culture imbued to believe. To apply the tools offered by the emerging field of feminist disability studies requires an unprecedented level of diligence and effort on the part of both those speaking and those listening. While there is much to recommend it, this path does not come without risk. Of particular concern is the danger of placing such excessive burden on any attempt at communication, that it will render it impossible for all but the most elite and accomplished of feminist scholars to have a conversation that meets the standards of avoiding any form of imperialism or false universalization. It is also the case that a profoundly post-modernist ideological construct is not going to find traction with a general public where an understanding of the issues is, to put it politely, far from ubiquitous. As St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote in the 17th century, “ L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs”, or the more modern aphorism “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. In trying to avoid “emancipationist imperialism” and the misinterpretation of the nature of cultural oppression in cultures that are not one’s own – for instance, not everyone with a “disability” considers their impairment as something they would ever want to be freed from – feminist disability studies provides valuable analysis tools and standards of terminological rigour that can be applied in a broad range of situations, and particularly to that of creating feminist works in the profoundly multicultural environment we exist in.
References
Friedman, Marilyn. 1995. “Multicultural Education and Feminist Ethics.” Hypatia 10(2): 56–68.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2005. “Feminist Disability Studies..” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 30(2): 1557 - 1587.
Kelly, Christine. 2010. “Charting Feminist Disability Studies (class presentation slides for WGST2804A).” Carleton University.
Tong, Rosemarie. 2009. Feminist Thought : A More Comprehensive Introduction. 3rd ed. Boulder Colo.: Westview Press.
In her essay, “Multicultural Education and Feminist Ethics,” Marilyn Friedman identifies a dilemma involved in undertaking multicultural projects. She writes that “There is a kind of emancipationist imperialism involved in freeing someone from conditions which she herself does not regard as seriously oppressive and would not, on her own, challenge.” (p. 64). Should feminist writers take account of this in their writings? If so, how? If not, why not?The writing of the essay was particularly challenging in that it posed an unanswerable question (well, presuming one answered "yes" to "should"... the "how" has no direct answer). It also needed to be between 6 and 8 pages double spaced, and it was challenging to tackle such a broad topic in a relatively short space. To that end, and for what it's worth, here is my essay:
The Quandary Of Analysis In A Multicultural Context
In her essay, “Multicultural Education and Feminist Ethics”, Marilyn Freeman writes “There is a kind of emancipationist imperialism involved in freeing someone from conditions which she herself does not regard as seriously oppressive and would not, on her own, challenge” (Friedman 1995). As history has shown, for example in the deeply controversial matter of cliterectomies, no matter how unambiguous the situation may seem from an external perspective – for example, that of a white, middle-class, heterosexual US woman (Friedman 1995) – the situation is considerably more complex and profoundly personal and ambiguous for those living the supposed issue. If feminist writers wish to avoid imposing their particular flavour of oppression on those they are purportedly trying to liberate, it is imperative that they take this into account in their writings – otherwise they are just trading one tyranny for another that may have unexpected and insidious, if less overt, consequences of its own. The problem occurs that in attempting to avoid any possible generalizations or universalizations, a writer of even the slightest conscience would be irrevocably paralysed for fear of transgressing their desire to “do no harm”. When it is acknowledged that no two individuals have ever shared the same epistemology, it becomes obvious that the solution is more subtle, requiring effort on the part of both the writer and the reader to understand the context of any such dialogue. While there is no “how” to this – to attempt to find a universalization for avoiding universalizations is an fool’s quest – there are disclosure guidelines that can be instituted by those who are concerned about the interpretation of their ideas in a diverse multicultural environment, and a discipline required by those analyzing the works of others to ensure that the writer’s intellectual and ideological location is well understood. Sadly, mainstream feminist scholars and activist writers have not done a stellar job of making their standpoints clear – often deliberately as part of an effort to promote a particular strategic or tactical agenda – so, ironically, it may be the wisest course to turn to feminist critics of feminist ideology to find a viable framework to apply to the problem. One such promising framework with applicability to this challenge is the emerging interdisciplinary field of “feminist disability studies”.
With the advent of the human rights movement in the West, especially during the 1960s, it became evident that mainstream feminism did not speak for all women. In fact, it could be argued that it spoke for a relatively small group of well situated women who wished to be freed from the oppressions of a male dominated Western society. Cries were loud and clear that even in the West, these feminists did not speak for the poor, for women of visible minorities, for those of varied sexual and gender orientations, and for women of non-Western societies (Tong 2009). Some of these voices were particularly well organized and persuasive – such as the lesbian and “black”communities – and could not be ignored. Their critical perspectives on feminist thought laid the foundations for the very notion of considering multicultural sensitivities in feminist writing – after all, if large numbers of women stepped up to indicate that they felt oppressed and excluded from the larger feminist project, there was obviously something profoundly in need of redress. It was through this challenge that feminist theoreticians were able to construct the profoundly powerful notion of using “intersectionality” as an tool to understand the complex interrelated forces that acted on the various communities that feminists wanted to be inclusive of. It also made it clear that while one group could theorize about another, any activism of value had to be informed and guided by members of the affected community with support as needed from the broader community of women. As each oppressed group rose up as “outsiders” to demand entrance into the club of feminism, new issues had to be addressed in feminist thought that challenged the universalizations that had been made over and over in order to gain the leverage needed for the least marginalized (and therefore, most powerful) of women’s groups to effect change. The work of inclusion has continued unabated since the floodgates of “identity” were opened, and now any public feminist that does does not acknowledge the importance of gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic standing, culture, ethnicity, urban/rural lifestyle, and geographic locale – to name a few intersecting identities – risks immediate accusation of being exclusionary.
But what if the feminist promise of equality is an empty one? What if the rallying cry of “we can do it!” is simply not true for some women? What if “our bodies, ourselves” is a euphemism for a eugenics programme directed squarely at people that believe they have the right to live? The deeply ambivalent world of “disability” comes into violent conflict with the foundations of feminist thought and activist agendas. Can feminist thinking be reconciled with what, on the surface, may seem like the most extreme of “other”? How can the lofty intellectual, emotional, and spiritual creations of feminism apply to someone paralysed from the neck down? Someone with an IQ of 36? Someone who may not be capable of consistent rational behaviour due to a congenital or traumatic brain impairment? Someone with a crippling or deadly genetic disease that will likely be passed to her children? The answer was, as it stood, that feminist analysis did not apply well to those cases. But the proof of a belief system is in how it deals with the “edge cases”, and the bulk of feminist thought did not fare so well in that respect. However, what once seemed like an impossible project is turning into a great boon for inclusionist feminist theory and politics. When considering the notion of multiculturalism, we are asking ourselves how to be inclusive of people whose ways are different from our own, and to understand and accept the value and validity of their standpoints. By attempting to include women that not only differ from the white, middle-class, heterosexual “classic” feminist woman in terms of culture, but differ as far as presenting different morphologies from those in the able-bodied “centre”, new ways of looking at identity and even the meaning of “woman” is required.
Feminism challenges the belief that femaleness is a natural form of physical and mental deficiency or constitutional unruliness. Feminist disability studies similarly questions our assumptions that disability is a flaw, lack, or excess. To do so, it defines disability broadly from a social rather than a medical perspective. Disability, it argues, is a cultural interpretation of human variation rather than an inherent inferiority, a pathology to cure, or an undesirable trait to eliminate. In other words, it finds disability’s significance in interactions between bodies and their social and material environments. By probing the cultural meanings attributed to bodies that societies deem disabled, feminist disability studies does vast critical cultural work. First, it understands disability as a system of exclusions that stigmatizes human differences. Second, it uncovers communities and identities that the bodies we consider disabled have produced. Third, it reveals discriminatory attitudes and practices directed at those bodies. Fourth, it exposes disability as a social category of analysis. Fifth, it frames disability as an effect of power relations. Feminist disability studies shows that disability – similar to race and gender – is a system of representation that marks bodies as subordinate, rather than an essential property of bodies that supposedly have something wrong with them. (Garland-Thomson 2005)Embarking on the bold project to include people with impairments of all sorts, physical and mental, forces a profound re-examination of basic principles – all of which implicitly and sometimes explicitly apply to the notion of multiculturalism and how to address concerns related to it in the ongoing work of creating an inclusive feminist movement. The notion that “[d]isability [...] is a cultural interpretation of human variation rather than an inherent inferiority, a pathology to cure, or an undesirable trait to eliminate” (see above) also attacks the notion of “emancipationist imperialism” head on by forcing the acknowledgement of the broad diversity of human form and capability that is much more profound than a purely “cultural” view of “person”. Ironically, in its critique of the damage done by the feminist tendency to look for universalizations, or at least group identities that can be catalogued and leveraged, feminist disability studies may have stumbled upon a true universalization: that even the currently able-bodied, are only temporarily so. Even those who are “healthy” throughout their lives are not able-bodied when they are born and are ultimately not when they are very old (should they live that long), and virtually everyone suffers from debilitating illnesses (physical and possibly mental) at least some time in their lives. By pointing this out, it becomes obvious that we were or will be “disabled” at some point ourselves, and when we ask how we should look at “disability” we are asking how we should some day look at ourselves.
Feminist disability studies provides powerful critical analysis tools that can be applied to any feminist discussion. In addition to the key use of deep understanding of the centrality of intersectionality and interactionism in developing an understanding of any group, and the acceptance of the irreconcilable ambiguities and ambivalence generated in facing disability as a “cultural third term” from a feminist perspective, it demands a precision of terminology that forces a clarity of communication of one’s perspective (Kelly 2010).
Disability proves to be an especially useful critical category in three particular concerns of current feminist theory. First is probing identity; second is theorizing intersectionality; third is investigating embodiment. Feminism questioned the coherence, boundaries, and exclusions of the term woman – the very category on which it seemed to depend. Consequently, it expanded its lexicon beyond gender differences to include the many inflections of identity that produce multiple subjectivities and subject positions. Our most sophisticated feminist analyses illuminate how gender interlocks with the race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class systems. This focus on how identity operates prompted an interest in the relation between bodies and identity. As a category of analysis, disability provides fresh ways of thinking about the complexity of embodied identity. Feminist disability studies defines disability as a vector of socially constructed identity and a form of embodiment that interacts with both the material and the social environments. Considering disability sheds light on such feminist concerns as the politics of appearance, the ethics of selective abortion and genetic testing, the relation between femininity and embodiment, the commercialization of health and fitness, issues of caretaking and caregiving, the surgical normalization of bodies, the ideology of normalcy, reproductive rights and responsibilities, the stigmatizing of age, and the politics of access and inclusion. Feminist disability studies questions the dominant premises that cast disability as a bodily problem to be addressed by normalization procedures rather than as a socially constructed identity and a representational system similar to gender. (Garland-Thomson 2005)Through its almost post-modernist approach to category and identity, it pronounces that all of these are cultural artifacts and perspectives and not some form of objective reality. “Feminist disability studies is not just about gender/disability. [It] is a complex, critical perspective that deconstructs these very concepts and can be used to analyze political action, cultural representation, as well as individual experiences” (Kelly 2010).
What is problematic for those with a Western attitude is there is no answer to this Gordian Knot of a problem. By its nature, there is no way for it to be a destination, but rather it is a process in a journey that will never end. This sort of open-ended dilemma tends to be profoundly disturbing or even disheartening to members our Western culture that teaches that any problem can be solved if sufficient resources are thrown at it, and that the challenge is simply to get those resources to throw. But this is a drama that isn’t going to be resolved at the end of the one-hour episode as we have been pop-culture imbued to believe. To apply the tools offered by the emerging field of feminist disability studies requires an unprecedented level of diligence and effort on the part of both those speaking and those listening. While there is much to recommend it, this path does not come without risk. Of particular concern is the danger of placing such excessive burden on any attempt at communication, that it will render it impossible for all but the most elite and accomplished of feminist scholars to have a conversation that meets the standards of avoiding any form of imperialism or false universalization. It is also the case that a profoundly post-modernist ideological construct is not going to find traction with a general public where an understanding of the issues is, to put it politely, far from ubiquitous. As St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote in the 17th century, “ L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs”, or the more modern aphorism “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. In trying to avoid “emancipationist imperialism” and the misinterpretation of the nature of cultural oppression in cultures that are not one’s own – for instance, not everyone with a “disability” considers their impairment as something they would ever want to be freed from – feminist disability studies provides valuable analysis tools and standards of terminological rigour that can be applied in a broad range of situations, and particularly to that of creating feminist works in the profoundly multicultural environment we exist in.
References
Friedman, Marilyn. 1995. “Multicultural Education and Feminist Ethics.” Hypatia 10(2): 56–68.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2005. “Feminist Disability Studies..” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 30(2): 1557 - 1587.
Kelly, Christine. 2010. “Charting Feminist Disability Studies (class presentation slides for WGST2804A).” Carleton University.
Tong, Rosemarie. 2009. Feminist Thought : A More Comprehensive Introduction. 3rd ed. Boulder Colo.: Westview Press.
