Once, when I was
studying philosophy, during a seminar on feminism, one female coursemate, who
had been presenting one of the mandatory texts on the topic, openly expressed surprise
at the fact that the text she had read did not appear to be as bad as she
thought it would. And she added that feminism, in her opinion, is the worst
thing in the world – after Marxism and postmodernism… In recent times, being
‘against feminism’, however one would look, has become popular in more and more
social groups. Maybe feminism has indeed reached its limit – either every goal
has been reached, or feminism has always been a dubious thing, only that now
its shortcomings have become more clearly visible? I will not be analysing this
question as thoroughly as I perhaps should. Instead I will try to present my
own vision of what feminism should be and what should its goal be.
I think that the
main tenet of feminism should be equality of the sexes: men and women are equal
and should enjoy equal opportunities to strive for the same things. In my
understanding this thesis is based on a hypothesis that has become unpopular
these days – that gender [1] is a ‘social construct’. Gender is a concept that
is literally driving people mad. Critics of feminism refuse to accept that sex could
have a social dimension [2] – they
insist there is only ‘biological sex’ [3]. Girls like pink, whereas boys like
blue, girls like to play with dolls, whereas boys like to play with toy cars,
girls like to cook, whereas boys like to construct. Such is ‘Nature’, critics
of feminism say, and one cannot fight against Nature – however, paradoxically,
they themselves insist feminism is bad precisely because it ‘fights against
Nature’… Anyway, if we agree that human sex as a fact of nature constitutes
itself for our consciousness only socially, that as a naked fact it ‘does not
mean anything’, is unintelligible, before it is understood through culture, it
is obvious that girls and boys understand themselves as girls and boys only with the aid of society and not ‘of their
own accord’. Gender roles are not innate and do not directly flow from sex. During
the aforementioned seminar, another female coursemate said that girls, even if
they are not given dolls, cover knives with towels as if with blankets, whilst
playing mothers. Thus, girls supposedly as ‘simply’ ‘caring’ and ‘sweet’. Back
then I thought that such facts are worthless, since there is no neutral environment,
where it would be possible to find out whether boys and girls, raised in the
same way, will behave in the same way. If we want to pursue the goal of equality
of the sexes – and this is what justice demands us to do – we must accept the
presupposition that men and women are equal. Arguments that ‘scientists have
found’ that the brains of men and women differ or that there exist ‘male’ and
‘female’ brains, should not bother us.
But the latter
idea has nowadays regained traction – it is foundational for the trans movement. The statement that a man
‘feels’ that he is a woman (or vice versa)
problematize gender and solidify the match of sex and gender as an ideal to be
pursued. But radical feminists, who reject the trans movement as ‘directed against women’ and one that puts female
‘safe’ spaces in jeopardy, do exactly the same. So, transwomen claim that they
are ‘just as much women’ as ‘biological’ women, i.e. women born as women. But
the problem is that both sides depend on a certain presupposition of ‘eternal
femininity’, only transgender people try to detach it from sex and attach it to
self-identification, whereas radical feminists seek to continue associating it
with sex and to deter ‘men’ from ‘attacking’ it. My argument that gender is a
social construct precisely was meant to reject an essentialist concept of
gender. A feminism that defends ‘eternal femininity’ is merely a movement
seeking segregation and ghettoization. Such a position creates the conditions for
questioning the very basis of granting women equal rights. Such a feminism
seeks to blow the difference between men and women out of proportion, as if
there lays a void between them, any understanding is impossible, there are no
common interests, only ‘the war of the sexes’. It is ironic, but such a view is
not that different from the conservative position that claims differences
between men and women and natural and speaks about ‘complementarity of the
sexes’. ‘Eternal femininity’ imprisons a woman in her sex, to which contingent
qualities, that have emerged throughout history, are ascribed. Feminism should
seek to liberate people from gender [4]. Sex should not shackle a person but
should be just another fact of nature, whereas the trans movement turns gender into a central concept, that determines
the whole of human existence. This movement does not transcend gender but
solidifies gender stereotypes that feminism has long fought against. Gender should
cease to be a political issue and become a private matter.
The goals of
feminism, in my opinion, ought to be the abolition of gender as a criterion,
based on which people are categorised. This looks like a goal that is hard to
reach, but it is worth pursuing. If the reader would say that this is absurd,
that sex is a biological fact, and that men fundamentally differ from women, I
may respond that a person’s height, the colour of his/her eyes or hair, the
form of his/her ears or nose, left-handedness or right-handedness are also
biological facts but people usually are not categorised, based on these facts,
except in specific cases. But sex is still considered a fact of such tremendous
importance that the whole social reality is delineated based on it. It is
precisely this that feminism should strive to abolish. Differences between the
sexes should become no longer relevant.
But a feminism
that accentuates peculiar female ‘experience’ that is supposedly accessible to
women only, tries to turn these differences into a problem. But is this
experience really transparent to the subject? And what does it mean to feel like being a man or a woman
anyway? I think it is nothing more than empty talk. That gender can be
irrelevant in no way runs counter to everyday experience. I find it hard to
say, whether I eat like a man, count like a man, think like a man – or maybe
like a woman… Do you look at the sky like a man or like a woman? Only overtly
feminine women, macho men and
transgender people identify with their gender roles all of the time. If you are
not transgender, that does not necessarily mean that you are a masculine man or
a feminine woman.
A feminism that
states that we should fight for gender equality by seeking arithmetical
equality in all spheres of life, also makes a mistake, since it solidifies the
present situation of women as a given, that can only be regulated. Thus such
feminists wish that in the Seimas [5] or in the Government at least half the
seats would be held by women. The competence, political positions, ideas and
human qualities of concrete female politicians are irrelevant to these
feminists. If half of the Seimas would be comprised of women like Agnė
Širinskienė [6], Vilija Aleknaitė-Abramikienė [7] and so on, the conditions of
women (and men) in Lithuania would hardly improve. Also, an influx of such
politicians could cause citizens’ discontent with women’s rights overall. On
the other hand, a woman who had formally
reached the heights of her career because of gender quotas, could legitimately
feel humiliated. ‘She became Director only because she’s a woman’, subordinates
would say quietly. That she became Director since she was the most competent
applicant and surpassed all her male rivals, will not matter to anyone. If
people and not men or women would be assessed, a competent woman would have the
same chances to reach a top position in one or another sphere of life as a man
would. But – feminists would reply – it is not like that, since sexism is
rampant in our society. But can we change this situation, if we consider sexism
a ‘natural’ position? Such feminists themselves do not believe that someone could support a woman – only under
pressure. Besides, an attempt to impose such equal representation presupposes
the potential of the individual to fit in anywhere, assuming that women, if only given the chance, would
definitely choose a ‘manly’ profession and that they must do that for it to be possible to talk of gender equality.
With the
imposition of quotas for women, their lower status would be legally recognized.
A woman would once again be a creature in need of care, support and help, that
is not able to free itself from the manifold problems it itself has created.
And how could conservatives not agree with this? But here ‘feminine writing’ is
already being celebrated and female writers lauded – for being female. Such a
feminism, instead of unmasking the sexism that had long been hiding behind
evaluations of achievements in culture and science and seeking to open the
fields of art, politics and science to women too, tries to secure a patch of
land in each of them, where all the women who have gotten in anyway would be driven,
and where a place would be reserved for those taken in simply to make the
numbers look better, with all of them being treated equally as merely women.
The culture of previous epochs is ‘unmasked’ as sexist, its universalism – as
male. Such a feminism too renders sexual difference a wall between people no
one can climb that runs right through the fields of culture, politics, science,
philosophy – it only matter that it should run in the middle, so that nowhere
an ‘all male panel’ [9] would emerge. An ‘all female panel’ [9] can exist. And
why – because the weak, the weaker sex should be given priority – something
that the man who learned the lessons of patriarchy, whom the aforementioned
feminists deride, and who gives way to a woman, understands. Such a feminism
promotes considering women victims, potential or such that are yet to learn
they are victims – something that supposedly only the control of all spheres of
life could save from: as Slavoj Žižek notes, in the era of #MeToo sexual intercourse has become the subject of a contract,
just like any other transaction in the age of neoliberalism. A feminism that
demands to see the person and not gender, cannot support gender quotas or
assuming women to be inherently in need of care.
Anyway, is not
contemporary feminism identifying with the status quo too much, simply hoping
to accommodate itself to it? Feminism often is used to defend the existing
order. Instead of questioning militarism, women are urged to serve in the army,
female generals, who are in charge of the bombing of some remote country, are
lauded without asking whether these actions are right; instead of questioning
liberal democracy, the rise in the number of female politicians is sought
without asking whether they are good politicians; instead of questioning
capitalism, it is sought that women would fill top positions in corporations without
asking is what they are doing right. Those asking are labelled sexist, since
who else could not support a woman?
Justice is
impossible without equality between the sexes. To reject feminism as such,
ignoring its achievements, used by its critics, like the coursemate I
mentioned, as well, would be a mistake, just like it would be to say that wishing
people to be evaluated not according to their gender but according to general
human criteria is absurd. As long as this goal is not reached, there will have
not been enough feminism. But it is questionable whether contemporary feminism
is pursuing this goal. Ignoring growing resistance and being naively
self-assured, it risks paving the way for the triumph of a new ‘common sense’
sexism. Feminism must again prove itself necessary. The wish to underline
differences and the refusal to see the commonalities that are precisely what
allows us to understand each other, is what is actually absurd.
2018, translated
from the Lithuanian by the author in 2018-2019.
Endnotes:
[1] In Lithuanian
the concept of ‘gender’ is nearly always expressed as, literally, ‘social sex’
(socialinė lytis) as opposed to
‘biological sex’ (what would be simply ‘sex’ in English). Note that throughout
the text the Lithuanian word lytis is
translated as ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ based on context (whilst trying to avoid
automatically reducing ‘sex’ to ‘gender’ as is often the case in English), and socialinė lytis as ‘gender’ except in some
cases. (All notes by the Translator)
[2] In other
words, that what can be broadly called ‘sex’ (Lithuanian lytis), has an element that is social, i.e. ‘gender’.
[3] I.e. ‘sex’.
[4] Both ‘sex’ and
‘gender’ could be used here but note that the Lithuanian lytis (used here) designates ‘sex’ in a broad sense.
[5] The Lithuanian
Parliament.
[6] A Lithuanian
MP (b. 1975) from the ruling Lithuanian Peasants and Greens Union, chair of the
Committee of Legal Affairs, known for her homophobic statements and hard-line
traditionalist stance on issues such as abortion, IVF, sex education, alcohol
consumption and so on.
[7] A former
long-time Lithuanian MP (b. 1957) from the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian
Democrats party (the main conservative party, currently the biggest opposition
party), known for her anti-feminist, homophobic and reactionary statements and
hard-line traditionalist stance on abortion, sex education, same-sex
partnership; a proponent of ‘family values’ and ‘Law and Order’ policies.
[8] English in the
original.
[9] English in the
original.