Gestation and Patriarchy - What If Men Could Give Birth?

"When men have babies, women and men will no longer exist."

     Though a startling proposition, the above statement from Deirdre M. Condit's article Reproducing Possibilities:  Androgenesis and Mothering Human Identity is certainly thought-provoking.  In the article, Condit tackles the controversial and fascinating idea of ectogenesis - reproduction outside of a woman's body - as proposed by Shulamith Firestone by comparing it with discussions of androgenesis - reproduction within artificial wombs in male bodies - by Mary O'Brien, Nancy Hartsock, and Margie Piercy.  Both Firestone and the androgenesis promoters believe that the material reality of gestation, birth, and lactation produce patriarchy.  However, while Firestone believes that the solution is women ceasing to give birth, O'Brien, Hartsock, and Piercy believe that the solution is men beginning to carry, birth, and nurse children.  Ultimately, Condit sides with androgenesis.

     In reading Condit's work, I was engaged by several of her ideas.  The belief that "one comes more easily to the domination of others when one has not nurtured beings in and with one's own self" was, at least at first, convincing.  I happen to be a fairly nurturing individual, and I do agree that Firestone's proposal of ectogenesis buys into masculinist norms by assimilating women to the male standard.  However, upon second thought I realized that this supposedly feminine aversion to "the domination of others" fails to apply to racism, heterosexism, ableism, religious discrimination, and every other -ism but sexism.  White women have had few qualms about dominating black women and men through slavery, segregation, and continual racial injustice.  Pioneer women in the US westward expansion had few qualms about the genocide of indigenous peoples.  Catholic women in Spain had few qualms about dominating, even eliminating, Muslim and Jewish people during the Inquisition.*

     If Condit is right, wouldn't these women have resisted the subjugation, oppression, and extermination of others due to their "sense of self-connection to the world"?  If "nurturing and caregiving are [the] most fundamental values" for those who gestate, why do women with privilege persistently oppress those whom they can?

     Here we come to my conclusion:  Biology is a part of our composition, and important; however, we are not purely biological creatures, and we cannot treat ourselves as such.  We exist in duration, space, and community, and this context is essential to our actions, ideologies, and institutions.  Though I have nothing against male pregnancy, I do not believe that men being able to carry out the same biological functions as women will eliminate patriarchy.  The system of female domination is far too ingrained in our collective psyches to alter with a voluntary medical innovation.  We need more.

*Obviously, these are blanket-statement examples, and some women did have qualms about the examples I mentioned.  However, my point is that the majority of women were not inhibited by their reproductive capacities from inflicting violence and oppression on others.

Blueprint Families - Heteronormativity and Queer Families

"Family" comes in all shapes and sizes.

     For Wednesday's class, we read "Queer Parenting in the New Millennium" by Rachel Epstein - a queer mother and acclaimed activist for queer parenting in Canada.  In this article, Epstein summarizes her experience, both personal and professional, with queer parenting and points out some major concerns with our formula for "family."

     Epstein begins her analysis of the state of "family" with a discussion about the movement for same-sex marriage.  She argues that "the struggle for and realities of same-sex marriage might be creating another 'blueprint,' a framework that privileges one way of parenting over another, that normalizes one way of parenting and marginalizes others" (91).  What Epstein is saying here is that the way we conceptualize families, not only in terms of heteronormative mother-father team, but also in terms of marriage as a precursor and legitimizer of families harms any family form that deviates from the norm.

     The position that Epstein takes is not a commonly-proclaimed stance.  Many people, especially those outside of the queer community, prefer to believe that queer couples want and ought to be just like 'straight' couples.  However, although it is comfortable to think that everyone wants to be like you, it is false, alienating, and oppressive.  Not all queer people want to be 'couples' and not all queer couples want to get married.  In fact, a significant part of the queer community identifies strongly in opposition to these very institutions.  Yet, campaigns towards Marriage Equality, like the Vote No campaign in Minnesota this last year, ignore that constituency.  Consequently, though the campaign succeeded in achieving its goal it failed to represent the full community and further marginalized queer people already on the sidelines (especially Trans* and Bi individuals, along with others).

     Epstein, on the other hand, believes that this effort to attain Marriage Equality results in a detrimental process of assimilation of queer families to a heteronormative 'blueprint'.  This blueprint is one that values two individuals of 'compatible' genders who are married before they biologically conceive their own children.  She argues that, "rather than aiming to win acceptance by the dominant culture," queer families ought to "aim to change the self-understanding of that culture - to broaden the range of sexualities and family forms that are recognizable and legitimate" (100).

     As a child of divorced (hetero) parents with joint custody - I have experienced some of the pains of not having a socially-recognized family structure.  Anything that doesn't meet the standard definition of "Mom, Dad, two kids, and a dog" doesn't 'count'.  I can only imagine what it would be like to have the stress of a 'non-conforming' family complicated by queer parents, 'artificial' insemination, and other characteristics typical of queer families.

     Will our culture ever be willing to challenge its adoration for marriage?  What will it take for singles to be able to parent without complication or stigma?  When will we come to realize that families really do come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and sexualities?

Revisiting Intersectionality and Reconstructive Feminism

Not to beat a dead horse, but I would like to revise my take on William's stance regarding intersectionality.

     In class today we reviewed her claims and where they originated from. I realized that my take on intersectionality came from a very different perspective - based on a manipulation of the original model. My experience with the concept of intersectionality began during a training on privilege. It was the first time that I had been made explicitly and consciously aware of my privilege as a white person in the United States over my oppression as a woman. Consequently, when I think of intersectionality, I think of challenging racism, sexism, heterosexism, and all the other "-isms" that we navigate daily.

     Due to my own background with the idea, I reacted viscerally and dramatically to Williams' claim that intersectionality might have "outlived its usefulness." Though I still disagree with that statement, I now have a much better understanding of where Williams is coming from. Intersectionality was a term originally coined by Kimberlé W. Crenshaw to describe the double-oppression of black women in the US. She compared their situation to an intersection of two roads of discrimination, racism and sexism. It is from this definition that Williams draws her claim that "intersectionality as a metaphor itself reinforces white privilege ... by erasing the fact that women of color are no more and no less at the intersection of race and gender than are white women." Because the model of an intersection deals only with oppression and not with privilege, it does ignore white people's race and men's gender.

     This history allows me to more generously engage with Williams' take on intersectionality. In the context of an intersection of oppressive forces, the tool has lost some of its worth - especially because multiple forms of oppression do not simply add up to a measurable sum.  However, the aim of the tool is still profoundly important in the attainment of equality of representation.  For this reason, the tool needs to be revised, re-imagined, and revitalized.

     When I conceptualize intersectionality, I imagine a system of overlapping spheres of influence.  In the drawing to the right, these spheres of influence appear like a Venn Diagram - do not be deceived!  The overlap is not to represent shared characteristics, but pluralistic influence.  Additionally, I chose the wording with great care. Rather than saying "Race," "Gender," "Age," and "Socio-economic Status," I chose to identify my own positions within those categories.  Thus, avoiding the fallacy that men are not implicated in gender, or that I am not implicated in race, etc.  In my position at the convergence of all of these categories (to which I could add many more) I experience the privilege and the oppression of each.

With this adapted model of intersectionality, I think Joan Williams might be more willing and able to accept that it has not "outlived its usefulness" but outlived its first manifestation.

Feminist Multiplicity - Is It Possible?

In the fourth chapter of her book, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate, Joan C. Williams delves into the history of feminisms in the United States and explains how her proposed form of feminism - Reconstructive Feminism - fits into that history and the future.  Throughout this exposition, Williams makes several claims about the four primary trends of feminism today and why they are inapplicable to her topic or no longer useful to the feminist cause.  I found her assertions to be incredibly problematic and narrow-minded.
 

First, Williams claims that although Queer Theory and Reconstructive Feminism share the "core insight that gender does not reside naturally in people's bodies," queer theory is irrelevant in work-family feminism.  She dismisses queer theory because of its focus on "the margins," without questioning why 'queer' folk make up the 'margins' rather than "the center" where her feminism resides.

Williams also says that "the distinction between sex and gender is vitally important on the work-family axis;" so queer theory cannot be applied.  If that is the case, do Trans* individuals not participate in the work-family axis of society?  What about Gender-queer folk, or Intersex individuals?  Are their experiences to be reserved for the sole domain of queer theorists and ignored by everyone else?

 

Second, Williams addresses Dominance Feminism, a movement spearheaded by Catharine MacKinnon, to address the way that masculinity is a form of social power and legitimizes violence.  Though Williams' critique of MacKinnon's narrow lens is legitimized, she somehow differentiates her own claim - that unspoken masculine norms disadvantage women and non-traditionally-masculine men in the workplace - from MacKinnon's primary claim - that masculinity creates social power.  I fail to see the incongruity between their two core arguments.

 

The third theory that Williams takes issue with is Anti-Essentialist Feminism, specifically the concept of Intersectionality.  This was the section that I was most bothered by, primarily because it seemed that she had a poor understanding of what intersectionality actually is.  Williams claims that the concept "reinforces white privilege and heteronormativity," when, in fact, the point is quite opposite.  I utilize intersectionality to analyze my white, Christian, US privilege as compared to my feminine/female oppression.  However, Williams never addresses, or even mentions, privilege, which is a fundamental concern of intersectionality.

Additionally, Williams makes the bold, false claim that "intersectionality is fine for consciousness-raising essays, but in other contexts, it may have outlived its usefulness." I profoundly disagree with this claim and cite Williams' own heteronormativity and white-bias as evidence.

 

Finally, Third-Wave Feminism comes under Williams' scrutiny as too internally-focused.  While the (supposed) Third Wave does turn the eye inward, it has also brought an official incorporation of oft-marginalized voices in the feminist community (women 'of color', trans* women, etc.).

 

Williams' analyses of these different feminisms and her strict separation of them make me wonder - is it possible to enact multiple or all of the aforementioned forms simultaneously?  I believe it is, but why does Williams seem to think it impossible?

 

Happy International Women's Day!

It's finally here, the day you've all been waiting for, 

International Women's Day!

     My first instinct, which I promptly acted upon, was to overwhelm my social media networks with information about the holiday:  pictures, videos, articles, songs, the whole shebang.  I wanted to make sure that no one could miss this day.  That no one I knew would go through March 8th, 2013 without recognizing the value and validity of women in their lives and society.

     My second impulse was to critically analyze the holiday - it's origins, events, and intentions.  International Women's Day began in 1911, and it was "International" because women in four different European countries participated.  Over time, the phenomenon grew to include women in countries literally all over the globe.  Women, and those who love women, celebrate this holiday on every continent in the world.

     However, this international participation is likely to paint an over-utopic picture of the day.  As I have been looking at news articles, blogs, and even social network posts, the Eurocentrism of 'International' Women's Day is evident.  One example, is an article on CNN by Melinda Gates.  Her opening is powerful, but as one reads on, it is clear that her lens is extremely hierarchical.  She sees Europe and the USA as the top promoters of gender equality, and consistently and exclusively uses the "developing world" for examples of "social norms that prevent women from realizing their full potential."

    This is not to say that there are not issues in countries other than the US and Europe.  However, she, and most other writers on this subject, are European or from the US and forget to look at their own societies' injustices, inequalities, and violence (physical, psychological, and symbolic) against women. Few mention that, although the Violence Against Women Act was passed, several influential Bishops opposed the bill because of its inclusion of LGBTQ women.

     One source that I thought was doing it right was the MSN Causes page and their slideshow of top images of women this year.  The photos range from Malala Yousafzai and protesters in India to Sandra Fluke and Licia Ronzulli.  They include devastation and optimism, activism and daily life.  These are the women of the world.  Diverse, capable, and taking action.

Precious Knowledge - Precarious Discourse

     Today I went to a screening of Precious Knowledge, the 2011 documentary by Eren McGinnis on the battle to save the Mexican-American Studies program in Tuscon High School.  This film chronicles the process through which racist political decision-makers were able to demonize  minority racial solidarity and dismantle one of the most successful elective programs in Arizona public schools.  What struck me about the story was how discourse played such an important role in the attack on and defense of the program.

     Despite never having visited the classes (Horne) or only having observed one class (Huppenthal), opponents to the program threw around words like "sedition," "resentment," "victim mentality," and even "communism" to describe the Mexican-American Studies program.  They called  the teachers "vehement anti-Americans" who conducted “propagandizing and brainwashing” in their classrooms.  Somehow these men and women convinced decision-makers that banning ethnic studies programs would promote "equality," "individualism," and other "American values."

     In an article for the LA Times, Rodriguez points out the irony in the conservatives' approach:  "the same Arizona Legislature that spearheaded a ruthless, racially charged campaign against illegal immigrants also banned K-12 ethnic studies classes on the grounds that they promoted hatred and division."  However, they did it - their ironic and contradictory rhetoric worked.  They successfully banned ethnic studies.  By utilizing pro-US, colorblind discourse, the opposition capitalized on white patriotism and manufactured its victory.

     This astounding use of discourse to dictate the future of the educational system jarred me.  How could such a successful program, with all the support, data, and experience behind it, be defeated by a series of ignorant appeals to ideology?  What other programs, even movements, have crumpled under the weight of words?  Which seemingly benign words dole out the hardest blows to the women's movement?

From Pioneers to Regressives – What happened to Womanpower in the Midwest?

I am a Nebraskan – bred, born, and raised.

The Heartland is my homeland, and I know what the state welcome sign means when it says:

“NEBRASKA … the good life.”

     In Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, she draws a parallel between the “strong capable women…needed to pioneer our new land” in the age of Manifest Destiny and those needed on “the American frontiers…of the mind, and of the spirit” in 1963.  Though this connection is far from crucial to her main premise, it ‘hit home’ with me because of my personal history in the heart of the Midwest.

     When the United States began its Westward expansion, women were crucial in the process.  In order to make permanent their establishments, communities and ‘civilization,’ as well as people, had to be spread to the West.  Unlike the exploration parties and single men who came before, women brought stability.  Women were the ones who created farms, ranches, churches, schools, and everything else that American society demanded.  As Friedan points out, “these women were respected and self-respecting members of a society,” and “independence, responsibility and self-confidence, self-discipline and courage, freedom and equality were part of the American character for both men and women.”  This was not only true during the first wave of settlers, but it continued on as the territories became communities, towns, cities, and states.  During the ‘First Wave’ feminist movement, the West ‘pioneered’ the right to vote.  Even universities, like the University of Nebraska, were coeducational from the beginning.

     With this history of women’s empowerment and inclusion so early on, it would seem that the Midwest ought to have advanced further than most other places in the U.S.  At the least, they should be on par with some of the most gender-progressive places.  Alas, this is not the case.  Contrary to their gender-inclusive history.  States in the Midwest, especially the "Heartland," have some of the most gender-regressive policies in the U.S.  From reproductive autonomy to work-family policy, the Midwest is lagging behind the rest of the country.  Most recently (yesterday), when the House of Congress voted to pass the new, inclusive, Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) all of my Nebraskan representatives voted No.

     How is it that the states which led the way for women to redefine themselves and femininity itself are now restricting their women to the most confining roles possible?  Where did the regressive strain in Midwestern politics come from?  And how can we reassert the independence, strength, and innovation of Midwestern women?

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As a post-script note:  I would like to explicitly acknowledge that this perspective is Europeanist: the very things that made the pioneering women ‘strong’ and ‘progressive’ were done to the detriment of Native peoples.  (The lands that my ancestors colonized belonged to the Pawnee, Ponca, and Omaha.)  I wish that I could address this issue from an inclusive perspective, but my knowledge of indigenous peoples – their histories and realities – is only just beginning, and my analysis would likely do more harm than justice.  If you want a brief, but insightful, article on Native American feminism, this is at least a start at unpacking the complexity.  Hopefully in the future I will know more and be able to fully explore the issue while radically checking my white, colonizer privilege.