Читать книгу Feminism: The Ugly Truth - Mike J.D. Buchanan - Страница 21

The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks, and extremists this side of the giggle house.

William F Buckley Jr 1925-2008 American conservative author and commentator: ‘On The Right’ 17 January 1967

Militant feminists of the American persuasion take some beating. To illustrate the point let’s consider a book written by four of them: three are (or at least were at the time of their book’s publication) academics, indeed professors. The book is Women’s Ways of Knowing, first published in 1986, and is said by some feminists to be central to many feminist theories of the modern era. After reading comments on the book by the psychologist Steven Pinker I was intrigued to buy a copy, and duly bought the tenth anniversary edition. To give you a flavour of the book’s content I selected a page at random. From page 54, in a section titled, ‘The Emergence of Subjective Knowing’:

‘The kind of change that Inez experienced is the center of our discussion in this chapter: from passivity to action, from self as static to self as becoming, from silence to a protesting inner voice and infallible gut.

For many of the women, the move away from silence and an externally oriented perspective on knowledge and truth eventuates in a new conception of truth as personal, private, and subjectively known or intuited; thus, we are calling this next position subjectivism or subjective knowing. Although this new view of knowledge is a revolutionary step there are remnants of dichotomous and absolutist thinking in the subjectivist’s assumptions about truth. [Author’s note: are you losing the will to live yet?] In fact, subjectivism is dualistic in the sense that there is still the conviction that there are right answers; the fountain of truth simply has shifted locale. Truth now resides within the person and can negate answers that the outside world supplies.’

I’d like to invite you to join the four authoresses of Women’s Ways of Knowing and myself on a journey. We’re strapped into our seats in a plane just before a flight from London to New York. A young actress – playing the role of a pilot – emerges from the cockpit and announces breezily to the passengers:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, good morning! My name’s Candy. [Author’s note: she seems to be of the American persuasion.] I shall be your captain on today’s flight, and I’ll be responsible for taking off and landing the plane. I’ve had little flying training but I’ve read lots of books about flying planes, and with my woman’s ways of knowing I’m sure we’ll all be just fine. Now, let’s get this baby into the air! Stewardess, why are the four ladies over there screaming hysterically?’

For a more sophisticated critique of ‘women’s ways of knowing’ than I can muster, we turn to Christina Hoff Sommers, an American former professor of philosophy, and a self-described ‘equity feminist’. You may recall that in her book Who Stole Feminism? (1994) she distinguished between equity feminists and gender feminists, the latter being feminists who believe in creating privileges for women. We turn to the start of a chapter titled ‘New Epistemologies’ in Ms Sommer’s book:

‘Some gender feminists claim that because women have been oppressed they are better ‘knowers’. Feeling more deeply, they see more clearly and understand reality better. They have an ‘epistemic’ advantage over men. Does being oppressed really make one more knowledgeable or perceptive? The idea that adversity confers special insight is familiar enough. Literary critics often ascribe creativity to suffering, including suffering racial discrimination or homophobia. But feminist philosophers have carried this idea much further. They claim that oppressed groups enjoy privileged ‘epistemologies’ or ‘different ways of knowing’ that better enable them to understand the world, not only socially but scientifically.

According to ‘standpoint theory’, as the theory of epistemic advantage is called, the oppressed may make better biologists, physicists, and philosophers than their oppressors. Thus we find the feminist theorist Hilary Rose saying that male scientists have been handicapped by being men. A better science would be based on women’s domestic experience and practice. Professor Virginia Held offers hope that ‘a feminist standpoint would give us a quite different understanding of even physical reality.’ Conversely, those who are most socially favored, the proverbial white, middle class males, are in the worst epistemic position.

What do mainstream philosophers make of the idea of ‘standpoint theories’? Professor Susan Haack of the University of Miami is one of the most respected epistemologists in the country. She is also an equity feminist. In December 1992 she participated in a symposium on feminist philosophy at meetings of the American Philosophical Association. It was a unique event. For once, someone outside the insular little world of gender feminism was asked to comment on gender feminist theories of knowledge. Watching Professor Haack critique the ‘standpoint theorists’ was a little like watching a chess grandmaster defeat all opponents in a simultaneous exhibition, blindfolded.

Haack told the audience that she finds the idea of ‘female ways of knowing’ as puzzling as the idea of a Republican epistemology or a senior citizens’ epistemology. Some of her arguments are too technical to review here. I cite only a few of her criticisms:

I am not convinced that there are any distinctively female ‘ways of knowing’. All any human being has to go on, in figuring how things are, is his or her sensory experience, and the explanatory theorizing he or she devises to accommodate it; differences in cognitive style, like differences in handwriting, seem more individual then gender-determined.

She pointed out that theories based on the idea that oppression or deprivation results in a privileged standpoint are especially implausible: if they were right, the most disadvantaged groups would produce the best scientists. In fact, the oppressed and socially marginalized often have little access to the information and education needed to excel in science, which on the whole puts them at a serious ‘epistemic disadvantage’. Professor Haack also observed that the female theorists who argue that oppression confers an advantage are not themselves oppressed. She asks: if oppression and poverty are indeed so advantageous, why do so many highly advantaged, middle-class women consider themselves so well situated ‘epistemically’?

Ms Haack identifies herself as an ‘Old Feminist’ who opposes the attempt of ‘the New Feminists to colonize philosophy’. Her reasons for rejecting feminist epistemologies were cogent and, to most of the professional audience, clearly convincing. Unfortunately, her cool, sensible admonitions are not likely to slow down the campaign to promote ‘women’s ways of knowing’.

The gender feminists’ conviction, more ideological than scientific, that they belong to a radically insightful vanguard that compares favourably with the Copernicuses and Darwins of the past animates their revisionist theories of intellectual and artistic excellence and inspires their program to transform the knowledge base. Their exultation contrasts with the deep reluctance of most other academics to challenge the basic assumptions underlying feminist theories of knowledge and education. The confidence of the one and the trepidation of the other combine to make transformationism a powerfully effective movement that has so far proceeded unchecked in the academy.’

In an effort to learn more about militant feminism in the United Kingdom I googled the keyword ‘feminism’. It resulted in ‘about 114,000’ website hits. I gained the firm impression after just a few website visits that militant feminism is well and truly the product of, and sustained by, academics; and therefore financed by long-suffering British taxpayers. Almost all these academics are women, it need hardly be said. From the website of the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association, Fwsa.org.uk:

‘The FWSA is a UK-based network promoting feminist research and teaching, and women’s studies nationally and internationally. Through its elected executive committee, the FWSA is involved in developing policy on issues of central importance to feminist scholars in further and higher education, supporting postgraduate events and enabling feminist research. Committed to raising awareness of women’s studies, feminist research and women-related issues in secondary and tertiary education, the FWSA liaises regularly with other gender-related research and community networks as well as with policy groups.’

In a later chapter we shall read of a curious seminar advertised on the FWSA website, ‘Experiencing and Celebrating Fatness’. For the purpose of this chapter let’s consider another:

‘Celebrating the feminist within

22nd September 2010 – University of East Anglia

July 30, 2010

Feminist academics in leadership positions report difficulty pursuing feminist ideals [Author’s note: at last, some positive news…], often preferring to leave their ‘radical’ feminist identities at home with some professing desires to unite their dual identities of scholar and activist. Black feminists are particularly marginalised within academia, although the increased diversity of the student population in the UK brings hope for a new generation of black feminists entering the academy. To counter the apparent attitudes in academia that are suspicious of feminists and feminism, the Centre for Diversity and Equality in Careers and Employment Research (Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia) is holding a one day free networking event for up to 40 female and male feminist academics, research staff and PhD students on the 22nd September, 2010. The day will:

- promote wider debate of what feminism can mean in academia and research;

- provide a platform for feminist academics from a range of backgrounds (age, class, gender, ethnicity, discipline) to share their experiences;

- bring discussions about feminism in universities into the open;

- provide networking opportunities to help reduce feelings of isolation and possibly lead to future collaborative projects, particularly for early career researchers, and;

- act as a pilot event for similar events in other regions in the UK.’

We couldn’t ask for clearer evidence that the militant feminist world is a closed one. The term ‘male feminist’ is enough to make any man shudder, but the FWSA had posted a message from one such person on its website, so presumably believed it had some merit:

‘I wonder if your research and curiosity ever brings you to look at our understanding of nuclear power and the Atomic World. Our knowledge of this subject derives entirely from a masculine way of looking and thinking about the already invisible world of the atomic particles. Our knowledge is consequently overlain with patrician and misogynist perceptions. No wonder it creates such messy issues.

I’ve gone some way towards developing a more balanced account. There’s some surprising things to see. Nuclear fission is essentially a story of passion and romance, and finally despair. Impossible for our physicists to understand. Oh! [Author’s note: a nice dramatic touch, that ‘Oh!’ Nurse, fetch the smelling salts…] This whole subject dearly needs feminine insight and values, to make it whole. Please don’t pass it by.

Thanks and good wishes,

<name supplied>’

This perspective was so reminiscent of those found in Women’s Ways of Knowing that I felt compelled to post the following reply:

‘I was interested to read your post about the Atomic World. I have a number of questions:

- in what sense is our knowledge of atomic particles ‘overlain with patrician and misogynistic perceptions’?

- when I graduated with a science degree over 30 years ago, nuclear fission was already very well understood. Sorry to learn that is it now ‘impossible’ for physicists to understand. Do you happen to know how this unfortunate turn of events has come to pass?

- in what sense does the subject dearly need feminine insight and values to make it whole?’

A year after posting my questions I was still awaiting a reply. But maybe, just maybe, the man was smarter than we might otherwise have given him credit for. For an interesting perspective on male feminists we turn to an extract from a book published in 2008, Men are Better than Women, penned by the American author Dick Masterson. Let’s leave the last words in this chapter to the estimable Dick:

Manginas are my heroes

Male feminists, or ‘manginas’ as they prefer to be called, are so misogynistic they make Andrew Dice Clay [Author’s note: a notably politically-incorrect, i.e. funny, American comedian] look like The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid is the seashell-on-the-boobs cartoon character from Disney.

Not all men have money, good looks, talent, wit, charm, charisma, interesting stories, cultural insights, skills, athletic abilities, political acumen, macho attitudes, an ability to eat an inhuman amount of food or other non-toxic products, a sense of style, an easygoing demeanour, video games, a sweet car, a spa, or an in-depth knowledge of everything. All men, however, are still men. That means they need to get laid and will always find a way. How do these men attract women, then? I’ll tell you how – by taking charge where women have failed for the last thirty years: by being feminists.

Manginas are my heroes. They fight the fight that women declared for absolutely no reason and then completely failed at. Who else but a man could convince a woman that being a male feminist is not only possible, but also not the most chauvinistic thing anyone has ever done in the history of the world?

I’ll tell you who, fucking no one! But men have done that shit. Men are like hypnosis masters when it comes to telling women what they want and what they should think about everything. Manginas are the biggest and most ingenious misogynists. It’s perfectly natural and perfectly manly for a man to stoop so low as to cheapen his entire gender just to get laid. Men don’t need a collective pat on the ass for everything we do in life. We’re born with dicks and dignity, and neither can be taken away. We don’t need a sash that counts up all our achievements and chafes our necks. That’s for Girl Scouts, and the only thing I want to know about Girl Scouts is when they sell their cookies.

On a personal note, I have nothing against misogynism, or whatever it’s called. I wouldn’t call myself a misogynist, but that’s a little like not calling a square a rectangle. Manginas are some of the manliest men on earth, because they know deep down within their stomachs that women can’t stand up for themselves without a firm hand firmly supporting them by the ass. It’s a throwback to chivalry that says, ‘Sweetheart, if you want anyone to take your rights seriously, shut up and let a man do the talking’.