orichalcum

I've been meaning to write this post for some time, inspired by a variety of things - interrogation by interviewers about what kind of feminist I was, contrariety's comment that she hates feminist theory, the shock and awe expressed by nearly everybody at the thought that A. was willing to move for my career prospects, the whole Lawrence Summers mess, and, oddly enough, reacting to accusations that Pope Benedict was anti-feminist.

So, the short version: I am a proud feminist in two ways, personally and professionally.



    Feminism is a creed that's gotten a bad rap in my generation, partially because of statements of people within the movement and partially because of characterizations from outside the movement. Professionally, as a scholar of ancient gender and sexuality, I use feminist theory as one of many lenses with which to examine my subject material. It would be narrow and lazy not to use the tools feminist theory has given me, although also I must measure it against other theories and methodologies.


But, more practically, let's talk about how I'm a feminist in my personal life. We need, of course to start with definitions.

Feminism, in my mind, has two major components:

1. The belief that women and men are entitled to equal opportunities in every sphere of life: equal pay for equal work, equal educational opportunities, equal chances to advance in one's chosen career, equal health care, equal rights and responsibilities with regard to parenting and marriage, equal athletic opportunities, and so forth.

This is the statement that it seems that most women, at least, of my generation that I know agree with, even and including the many ones who will say "But I'm not a feminist." So what else makes a feminist? In my mind, it is this second corollary:

2. Historically and currently, our social system has not allowed women such equal opportunities, and it is our duty and responsibility to work actively to make the playing field more level and to open up those opportunities and chances to all women.

This falls, unfortunately, into what I might call the affirmative action problem - that women who have not personally experienced discrimination or restriction on account of gender often tend to assume that it is merely a lack of assertiveness and deliberate choices that are holding back other women from achieving their goals. This is what has recently been called the Larry Summers argument - that most women don't really want to be high-powered full-time professionals.

It's because I agree with both #1 and #2 that I consider myself a feminist, one who has the responsibility both to set an example to other women by my own career and my own management of family and career responsibilities, to teach young women about the opportunities and potential available to them and to fight for their right to pursue their dreams, and to vote for candidates who will expand, for instance, anti-discrimination laws, childcare programs, the educational system, and defend Title IX.

The other major issue in current feminism, and the one which marks a dividing line for a lot of people, is the question as to whether or not men and women are intrinsically different in terms of their mental and emotional capabilities. (We can all agree, mostly, that there are physical differences between men and women, both in terms of sexual characteristics and in terms of, say, average lifting capacity.) It's on this side of the debate, for instance, that people have attacked Pope Benedict, who believes that there are such differences, but is also the first Pope both to directly argue for women's equal compensation under the law and to advocate the Biblical exegesis of the Adam and Eve story which presents Adam not as the first male originally, but as the first ambiguously gendered human, who is then split into _two_ to create Adam and Eve, a common modern feminist reading.

The great danger, of course, with saying that there are such differences, that women are biologically more compassionate and community-oriented, for instance, whereas men are more individualistic and ambitious, is that it's very easy to project that onto arguments that restrict both genders' opportunities to pursue lives that do not fit those patterns - for straight men to be elementary school teachers, say, or for women to be physicists and engineers. It's for this reason that my current position is that we should absolutely continue doing extensive research into the biological nature of gender differences, but that we need to be very, very careful with extrapolating out from such research into statements about what men and women ought to be doing with their lives. Women are not cookie-cutter versions of each other any more than men are, for instance.

So now I'd really like to throw this open for discussion. Do you consider yourself a feminist? Do you think there are intrinsic mental differences between the genders? Do you agree with #1, #2, or both?