Discourse

‘…Listen,’ he uttered, pulling his chair closer to the other man. ‘But this is so interesting!’

The other one only sighed, content.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said with a grin, ‘very interesting…’

But the other didn’t wish to remain entrenched along the lines of these rather abstract words, so he again opened his mouth, two or three times kind of hesitated as if the sounds surrounding them, that were henceforth seemingly unnoticeable to him, began to threaten the empty space, surrounding the two of them, the space he believed to be reserved for his voice; anyway he finally started:

‘Listen…’ he began, dragging his chair closer, even closer than before. ‘But here’s the thing – I wanted to tell you about an altogether different matter.’

The other one sighed, yet this time – not content at all; however, he sighed quieter, without as much pomp, without noticing, as if off-guard.

‘Listen…’ (this word started to get into even his nerves already) the other said. ‘Maybe we could go out for a while, because I don‘t hear anything here…’

‘Right, hmm…’ his interlocutor muttered, stood up, stroke his crumpled trousers with his hands, as if feeling in need of being dusted after such a prolonged period of monotonous sitting. The other one stood up too, somewhat clumsily, as if it was an irritating wish of his interlocutor that forced him up to his feet and not his own suggestion. All around a crowd was making a lot of noise. Well, to call that group of persons, less than twenty of them, ‘a crowd’ would be perhaps an overstatement, yet they managed to cause some noise: music on, a TV set sadly kept broadcasting – sadly, because it was forgotten, like some old and unwanted acquaintance. Someone switched it on and forgot what he or she wanted to watch… It was pitch-dark outside and inside there was a twilight of sorts in places, yet in other places, on the contrary, a kind of exaggerated lighting that seemed to indicate that ‘something is about to happen’, because usually no one feels a need for such intense lighting when they are simply biding their time. The crowd amassed here consisted of less than twenty persons: lads and girls, part of them already soundly boozed; the voices of some were constantly echoed in all of the rooms, and another part seemed to be innately mute and born to listen.

The two men went out to the staircase, the one who was asked to go out didn’t close the door completely; the steel door, it’s cross-section now exposed, looked like a hatch in a spacecraft, hermetic and commanding respect. The man, as it were, seemed not to expect a long exchange and to show his determination he held the doors with his hand, even slightly swinging it, just like he had been playing with his glass, when he was sitting in the armchair, almost right in front of the TV set…      

‘What did you want?’ He said now, and when uttering ‘want’, his eyes touched the face of his interlocutor, touched even somewhat indecently, too rudely even. Sensing that, his interlocutor cringed, but, was he to be questioned on the spot, he would have certainly testified, without any confusion whatsoever, that it was the cold, nothing else but the cold that made him cringe.

‘Eh, I don’t even know…’ he began; it was evident that this signified a beginning of a long speech; he seemed by now to have retained his humours, though, when he just got out of that strange flat, he seemed somewhat confused, perhaps due to a sudden change of temperature and lighting. ‘Paulius,’ he continued, ‘don’t you know that I feel uncomfortable here – there’s plenty of people who are so alien to me, I don’t know anyone here, do you know them – this I don’t know as well, and, then again, they are so noisy and get drunk way too soon, before I manage to find a way to get acquainted with them, they’re already unable to get acquainted with’ he paused and then went on. ‘But you’ve got to understand: I came here only to talk to you, even if I regret it now…’      

The last phrase came across almost arrogant and the man now stood on tiptoe, drew himself up, reclined his head a bit, his hand brushing off a lock of hair off his forehead, and then began to rub his nose somewhat hysterically. He behaved as if the words – here, on the staircase, under a dim lamp, just now – fell out of his mouth unwittingly, involuntarily; thus, he wasn’t to be judged…

‘And so?’ Paulius said. His interlocutor, it seemed, was now confused. At that very moment, beyond the slightly opened door a new wave of screams could be heard, accompanied by an increase in the volume of the music; both unwittingly turned towards the door, but Paulius didn’t open it any more than previously.

‘Could we go outside?’ His interlocutor proposed, even somewhat bravely, this time braver than before. Paulius sighed, as if the man had profoundly bothered him by now. But quickly said: ‘Alright, alright, let’s go.’ 

He almost grabbed his interlocutor, who again seemed stupefied, by the hand; the man, having asked and having received a positive answer, now stood frozen to the spot, like it all had nothing to do with him. He instinctively escaped Paulius’s hand and they both went down the staircase; it had gotten colder noticeably, and so it was a good idea to first stay for a while upstairs, otherwise the cold would overwhelm them even. Simply as a matter of surprise. Since the two of them sat here throughout the evening whilst the public amassed here gradually got drunk; first there was much talking, then talking gravitated towards certain spots throughout the flat, so that one common discourse disappeared without a trace… 

‘So, after all, what did you want?’ Paulius inquired. Then added, after a moment: ‘So cold here.’

His interlocutor indeed had just felt the bitter cold. Queuing at the staircase, as it seems, did not at all amortize the sudden blow of cold that awaited them. Paulius lighted up a cigarette. The other one stood frozen to the spot, his eyes fixed on the already heavily trodden snow; he suddenly felt nausea rising in him, some kind of unpleasant sense of nonsense, as if he had forgotten something – something very important – and spent the whole evening in a dubious company doing dubious stuff; indeed, he was rarely a guest at such parties and the mere fact that he knew next to no one here confused him greatly; one thought didn’t leave him alone: if he was to end his existence in one of the rooms of this noisy flat, drenched in twilight and sounds of music, no one – it seemed to him – would miss him, save for the true owners of the place or their parents… And even that after some time.        

‘What is it that interests you here?’ he asked Paulius. Having exhaled the smoke, radiating total self-assuredness, total peace of mind and calm, Paulius answered: ‘Here’s lots of action, lots of activity.’

‘There isn’t any activity here whatsoever, Paulius!’ his interlocutor almost yelled. The other one laughed, combing his hair with his fingers, that were stiffened by the bitter cold, then inhaled some cold air.

‘Everything’s here, just not for you, Tomas,’ he uttered. Tomas felt like just having received a blow to the nose – just a moment and he felt like breaking down in tears. As if it would be a rather efficient tactic, he raised his eyes to Paulius, like he could suddenly make him change his mind about the whole world.  

‘And for whom then?’ he asked quietly.

‘For all of us, the ones who can accept life as it is, for goodness’ sake,’ Paulius swallowed the excess of saliva in his mouth and resumed. ‘You, you don’t understand a thing, you’re rigid, dull – fuck, how does anybody even put up with here, I wonder… You’ve got to understand,’ he continued, whilst Tomas was futilely trying to interfere, his mouth open in an awkward way, ‘that it’s not for you that everything here takes place and there’s no reason to be so pompous. Sitting in the corner, like some sulking child, for goodness’ sake…’  Paulius said, while Tomas again desperately yet awkwardly tried to interfere. ‘Like some sort of personified reproach, you piss everyone off here…’  

‘But it’s not this that I wanted to talk about!’ Tomas shouted out, instantly looking around, was there anyone around – there was no one. 

‘And about what?’ Paulius laughed and his eyes sparkled.

‘About life – about what I feel, what I think, what I see around – there is so much!’ Tomas cried almost hopelessly in a squeaky voice… 

‘Listen, man,’ Paulius patted him on the shoulder with his fat rough hand, slowly and patronizingly. ‘I’m going and you – do as you please, if anything, we’ll meet at the exams.’  

He turned around and went away, slowly and graciously, like some sort of huge majestic animal, that isn’t bothered by those lesser than it. Tomas stood frozen to the spot and only when the code door was slammed and closed, did he wake up.

2015, translated from the Lithuanian by the author in 2017, translation revised in 2019 (Original can be found here)

How Much More Feminism is Needed?

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.