Woman as Object
Sep. 6th, 2007 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheIt seems so timely.
Woman as Object: The Circumambulatory Ideology of Radical Feminists
INTRODUCTION
The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself.1
Simone de Beauvoir opens The Second Sex with the assertion that women have been systematically oppressed by the manner in which all Western societies treat the males as "the positive and the neutral" and the females as peculiar and imperfect. The crux of her claims rests of on the idea that society divides itself into dualities, particularly that of Self and Other.2 As the Other, women are seen as "inessential" and are thus kept in submission. Women even have come to see themselves as the Other. Radical feminists, such as Catharine A. MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and Marilyn French, among others, have taken this a step further, contending that masculinity and femininity constitute the overarching duality and it is this dichotomy that keeps women submissive, positioned as the eternal victim. As radical feminists, they urge women to shed this gender construction and to assume, one could say, the position of Self. However, in doing so, these feminists have neglected the philosophy of their stance and have fallen into the very construction they insist others reject.
SUBJECT AND OBJECT: THE FUNDAMENTAL DUALITY
To examine this circular ideology, one must first consider the philosophy on which de Beauvoir rested her theory, that of Hegel. According to de Beauvoir, Hegel believed that all consciousness experiences "a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness; the subject . . . sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object. But the other consciousness, the other ego, sets up a reciprocal claim."3 Every consciousness necessarily sets itself up as the subject, except in the peculiar case of woman, who accepts "this alien point of view" of seeing herself as the object. De Beauvoir dismisses the obvious paradox and instead focuses on how this could have come about.
Radical feminists loosely expand this view of subject and object, often claiming that men as a rule objectify women, keeping women as objects (and themselves as subjects), never regarding women as their equals. In her attack on human sexuality, Catharine MacKinnon claims that pornography "connects the centrality of visual objectification to both male sexual arousal, and male models of knowledge and verification, objectivity with objectification."4 Berger, Searles and Cottle, in Feminism and Pornography, state that radical feminists generally believe that pornography "objectifies, dehumanizes, and degrades women."5 Marilyn French says in The War Against Women that "even mild pornography degrades women and teaches men to see them through a distorted, deforming lens."6 All of these critiques advance the idea that women are seen though men's eyes as objects, something "lower than human."7 Perhaps Andrea Dworkin expresses it best when she asserts that, during the sex act, "when [a man] enters [a woman], he confirms for himself and for her what she is: that she is something, not someone; certainly not someone equal."8
RADICAL FEMINISM AND THE OBJECT AS VICTIM
The logical leap from object to victim is not a large one. If women are always objectified during sex (as Dworkin states), and if all forms of sex involve some sort of coercion (as MacKinnon states), then a woman is not able in any circumstance to give her consent to sexual relations.9 The absence of consent in sexual matters, by definition, creates a perpetrator and a victim.
Many radical feminists have been labeled "victim feminists" because of their emphasis on the victimhood of all women under patriarchal systems. In Who Stole Feminism?, Christina Hoff Sommers highlights Sandra Bartky, who claims that "[f]eminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization . . . to come to see oneself as a victim."10 Nadine Strossen says that, just as radical feminists claim that women are victims in sexual matters, the same feminists perpetuate the idea of women as victims in a more general sense.11 Victims, understood here to be women, retain their victimhood because they are viewed to be helpless; the corresponding view of this is that women cannot consent to sexual relations or expression because they are so powerless that they cannot help but to be coerced. According to Dworkin, a woman is victimized during sex "even if there has been no resistance, no force; even if the occupied person said yes please, yes hurry, yes more."12 A woman's consent does not affect her victim status; overt (individual men's) or covert (patriarchy's) coercion has deprived her of her free choice.
SUBJECT AND OBJECT: RESOLVING THE PARADOX
This view of women, men and sexuality brings up a philosophical problem insofar as it reinforces the idea that women are the Other; in fact, as long as radical feminists view women inherently submissive or always victimized, they are still seeing women—themselves—as the Other, the object. They have accepted the lopsided dichotomy.
Turning back to Hegel, we again see that the subject sets himself to be essential and all others as the object. Given time and thought, one can see how a woman, in a particular way, can situate herself as the subject, even in this patriarchal society. Through the monologue of his main character in The Kreutzer Sonata, Leo Tolstoy presents an engrossing if not persuasive view of women's power in man's society:
Whether or not this view is perverse, whether or not it is a distorted male view of woman in society, it does constitute an alternative viewpoint of women's power in patriarchal institutions. Even if one is feminist and finds this depiction of women's subjectivity unfounded and offensive, one must still concede that this may be a popular perspective, a perspective that should be deconstructed, not dismissed.
CONCLUSION
If feminists are interested in eradicating gender discrimination, should they not attempt to assert that women can indeed be subjects? The current ideology of the radical feminists seems not only counterintuitive, but counterproductive. Woman as the eternal victim, always submissive and unable to consent, does nothing to further the cause of extending to women equal rights. No matter how one views this ideology, its very application forces it to circumambulate, to come around to its base, which implicitly is the belief that women are incapable of autonomous, free thought. As Wendy McElroy states,
If radical feminists follow MacKinnon's lead and continue to maintain that inherently women are submissive and men dominant,15 they only underscore the current power structure and do nothing to dismantle it. They, in actuality, damage their own attempts to empower women as a group.
ENDNOTES
1 de Beauvoir, Simone. From "'Introduction' to The Second Sex," printed in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, p. 13.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., p. 14.
4 MacKinnon, Catharine A. From "Sexuality," printed in The Second Wave, p. 166.
5 Berger, Ronald J., Patricia Searles and Charles E. Cottle. Feminism and Pornography, p. 36.
6 French, Marilyn. The War Against Women, p. 166.
7 MacKinnon, op. cit.
8 Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse, p. 141. Emphasis added.
9 "Both Dworkin and MacKinnon . . . have argued that, in light of society's pervasive sexism, women cannot freely consent to sexual relations with men." Strossen, Nadine. Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, p. 109; see also p. 181.
10 Sommers, Christina Hoff. Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, p. 42. Emphasis in the original.
11 Strossen, Nadine, op. cit., p. 117.
12 Dworkin, op. cit., p. 133. Emphasis added.
13 Tolstoy, Leo. The Kreuzter Sonata. From The Kreuzter Sonata and Other Stories, p. 49.
14 McElroy, Wendy. XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography, p. 107.
15 see MacKinnon, op. cit., pp. 161, 164, 165.
Works Cited
Berger, Ronald J., Patricia Searles and Charles E. Cottle. Feminism and Pornography. 1991. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse. 1987. New York: Free Press Paperbacks.
Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. 1991. New York: Anchor Books.
French, Marilyn. The War Against Women. 1992. New York: Ballantine Books.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. "Sexuality." In The Second Wave: A Reader of Feminist Theory. Linda Nicholson, editor. 1997. New York: Routledge.
McElroy, Wendy. XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography. 1995. New York. St. Martin's Press.
Sommers, Christina Hoff. Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women. 1994. New York: Touchstone.
Strossen, Nadine. Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights. 1995. New York: Anchor Books.
Tolstoy, Leo. The Kreutzer Sonata. In The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories. David McDuff, translator. 1985. London: Penguin Books.
September 17, 1997
INTRODUCTION
The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself.1
Simone de Beauvoir opens The Second Sex with the assertion that women have been systematically oppressed by the manner in which all Western societies treat the males as "the positive and the neutral" and the females as peculiar and imperfect. The crux of her claims rests of on the idea that society divides itself into dualities, particularly that of Self and Other.2 As the Other, women are seen as "inessential" and are thus kept in submission. Women even have come to see themselves as the Other. Radical feminists, such as Catharine A. MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and Marilyn French, among others, have taken this a step further, contending that masculinity and femininity constitute the overarching duality and it is this dichotomy that keeps women submissive, positioned as the eternal victim. As radical feminists, they urge women to shed this gender construction and to assume, one could say, the position of Self. However, in doing so, these feminists have neglected the philosophy of their stance and have fallen into the very construction they insist others reject.
SUBJECT AND OBJECT: THE FUNDAMENTAL DUALITY
To examine this circular ideology, one must first consider the philosophy on which de Beauvoir rested her theory, that of Hegel. According to de Beauvoir, Hegel believed that all consciousness experiences "a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness; the subject . . . sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object. But the other consciousness, the other ego, sets up a reciprocal claim."3 Every consciousness necessarily sets itself up as the subject, except in the peculiar case of woman, who accepts "this alien point of view" of seeing herself as the object. De Beauvoir dismisses the obvious paradox and instead focuses on how this could have come about.
Radical feminists loosely expand this view of subject and object, often claiming that men as a rule objectify women, keeping women as objects (and themselves as subjects), never regarding women as their equals. In her attack on human sexuality, Catharine MacKinnon claims that pornography "connects the centrality of visual objectification to both male sexual arousal, and male models of knowledge and verification, objectivity with objectification."4 Berger, Searles and Cottle, in Feminism and Pornography, state that radical feminists generally believe that pornography "objectifies, dehumanizes, and degrades women."5 Marilyn French says in The War Against Women that "even mild pornography degrades women and teaches men to see them through a distorted, deforming lens."6 All of these critiques advance the idea that women are seen though men's eyes as objects, something "lower than human."7 Perhaps Andrea Dworkin expresses it best when she asserts that, during the sex act, "when [a man] enters [a woman], he confirms for himself and for her what she is: that she is something, not someone; certainly not someone equal."8
RADICAL FEMINISM AND THE OBJECT AS VICTIM
The logical leap from object to victim is not a large one. If women are always objectified during sex (as Dworkin states), and if all forms of sex involve some sort of coercion (as MacKinnon states), then a woman is not able in any circumstance to give her consent to sexual relations.9 The absence of consent in sexual matters, by definition, creates a perpetrator and a victim.
Many radical feminists have been labeled "victim feminists" because of their emphasis on the victimhood of all women under patriarchal systems. In Who Stole Feminism?, Christina Hoff Sommers highlights Sandra Bartky, who claims that "[f]eminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization . . . to come to see oneself as a victim."10 Nadine Strossen says that, just as radical feminists claim that women are victims in sexual matters, the same feminists perpetuate the idea of women as victims in a more general sense.11 Victims, understood here to be women, retain their victimhood because they are viewed to be helpless; the corresponding view of this is that women cannot consent to sexual relations or expression because they are so powerless that they cannot help but to be coerced. According to Dworkin, a woman is victimized during sex "even if there has been no resistance, no force; even if the occupied person said yes please, yes hurry, yes more."12 A woman's consent does not affect her victim status; overt (individual men's) or covert (patriarchy's) coercion has deprived her of her free choice.
SUBJECT AND OBJECT: RESOLVING THE PARADOX
This view of women, men and sexuality brings up a philosophical problem insofar as it reinforces the idea that women are the Other; in fact, as long as radical feminists view women inherently submissive or always victimized, they are still seeing women—themselves—as the Other, the object. They have accepted the lopsided dichotomy.
Turning back to Hegel, we again see that the subject sets himself to be essential and all others as the object. Given time and thought, one can see how a woman, in a particular way, can situate herself as the subject, even in this patriarchal society. Through the monologue of his main character in The Kreutzer Sonata, Leo Tolstoy presents an engrossing if not persuasive view of women's power in man's society:
[I]t's perfectly correct to say that a woman has been brought to the lowest degree of subjugation, but from another point of view it's equally true to say that she's the dominant one . . . . "Aha, you just want us to be the objects of your sensuality, do you? All right, then, it's as the objects of your sensuality that we'll enslave you," say women. Women's lack of rights has nothing to do with them not being allowed to vote or be judges—those matters don’t constitute any sort of right. No, it has to do with the fact that in sexual relations she's not the man's equal. She doesn't have the right to avail herself of the man or abstain from him, according to her desire, to select the man she wants rather than be the one selected . . . . The way things are at present, the woman is deprived of the rights possessed by the man. And, in order to compensate for this, she acts on the man's sensuality, forces him into subjection by means of sensuality, so that he's only formally the one who chooses—in actual fact it's she who does the choosing. And once she has mastered this technique, she abuses it and acquires a terrible power over men.13
Whether or not this view is perverse, whether or not it is a distorted male view of woman in society, it does constitute an alternative viewpoint of women's power in patriarchal institutions. Even if one is feminist and finds this depiction of women's subjectivity unfounded and offensive, one must still concede that this may be a popular perspective, a perspective that should be deconstructed, not dismissed.
CONCLUSION
If feminists are interested in eradicating gender discrimination, should they not attempt to assert that women can indeed be subjects? The current ideology of the radical feminists seems not only counterintuitive, but counterproductive. Woman as the eternal victim, always submissive and unable to consent, does nothing to further the cause of extending to women equal rights. No matter how one views this ideology, its very application forces it to circumambulate, to come around to its base, which implicitly is the belief that women are incapable of autonomous, free thought. As Wendy McElroy states,
[a]ccording to radical feminists, even if a woman in pornography signed a contract with full knowledge [of both her and the pornographer's actions], she can sue on the grounds of coercion. What legal implications does this have for women's right to contract? What legal weight will future negotiators give to a woman's signature? Women's contracts will become legally unenforceable; their signature will become a legal triviality.14
If radical feminists follow MacKinnon's lead and continue to maintain that inherently women are submissive and men dominant,15 they only underscore the current power structure and do nothing to dismantle it. They, in actuality, damage their own attempts to empower women as a group.
ENDNOTES
1 de Beauvoir, Simone. From "'Introduction' to The Second Sex," printed in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, p. 13.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., p. 14.
4 MacKinnon, Catharine A. From "Sexuality," printed in The Second Wave, p. 166.
5 Berger, Ronald J., Patricia Searles and Charles E. Cottle. Feminism and Pornography, p. 36.
6 French, Marilyn. The War Against Women, p. 166.
7 MacKinnon, op. cit.
8 Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse, p. 141. Emphasis added.
9 "Both Dworkin and MacKinnon . . . have argued that, in light of society's pervasive sexism, women cannot freely consent to sexual relations with men." Strossen, Nadine. Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, p. 109; see also p. 181.
10 Sommers, Christina Hoff. Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, p. 42. Emphasis in the original.
11 Strossen, Nadine, op. cit., p. 117.
12 Dworkin, op. cit., p. 133. Emphasis added.
13 Tolstoy, Leo. The Kreuzter Sonata. From The Kreuzter Sonata and Other Stories, p. 49.
14 McElroy, Wendy. XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography, p. 107.
15 see MacKinnon, op. cit., pp. 161, 164, 165.
Berger, Ronald J., Patricia Searles and Charles E. Cottle. Feminism and Pornography. 1991. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse. 1987. New York: Free Press Paperbacks.
Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. 1991. New York: Anchor Books.
French, Marilyn. The War Against Women. 1992. New York: Ballantine Books.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. "Sexuality." In The Second Wave: A Reader of Feminist Theory. Linda Nicholson, editor. 1997. New York: Routledge.
McElroy, Wendy. XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography. 1995. New York. St. Martin's Press.
Sommers, Christina Hoff. Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women. 1994. New York: Touchstone.
Strossen, Nadine. Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights. 1995. New York: Anchor Books.
Tolstoy, Leo. The Kreutzer Sonata. In The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories. David McDuff, translator. 1985. London: Penguin Books.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 02:30 am (UTC)Inherently? Which part of under the current patriarchal paradigm indicates inherent? The only way to get that radical feminist believe that men are dominant and women are submissive in any essential or inherent way is to believe that current contructs of gender are essential are inherent. Which is the total opposite of the radfem stance.
Woman as the eternal victim, always submissive and unable to consent, does nothing to further the cause of extending to women equal rights.
This entire paper is constructed around the fallacy of blaming the messenger for delivering the message, of conflating pointing out how things currently are with the idea that pointing out means supporting or upholding. The paper is based on the same sort of tripe arguements used by people who oppose equal workplace opportunity laws, equal housing protection laws, affirmative action, and other civil rights programs. They argue that the need and working for "special" (special being code for different that how things currently work) programs are laws MAKES people be victims. When the truth is that these "victims" are already being oppressed under current society and the creation of the "special victim creating" laws and programs is the is fighting that oppression. Anyone who says that pointing out the victimhood of the oppressed is the same as creating victims has a vested (whether concious or not) interest in keeping the oppressed helpless, as it silences the voices and denigrates the work done to change and remove the oppression.
engrossing if not persuasive view of women's power in man's society
Power? If self-determination is a measure of power then this view has nothing to do with woman's power. Which part of basing one's actions to reflect the needs and sensual tastes of another (instead of on one's own ideas of sensuality) is a sign of determining for oneself what is sensual, what type of sex or sensuality one would like? This passage basically says female power is submission. Or in other words, no power arrived at through self-determination at all, but rather power handed over as approval gift from the class of people allowed by society to be self-determined.