"I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is: I only know
that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that
differentiate me from a doormat"
--Rebecca West, The Clarion 1913
Most people in the current anarchist milieu -- female or male -- would
disagree, at least in principle, with most of the following statements: there
are two immutable and natural categories under which all humans are
classified: male and female. A male human being is a man, and a female human
being is a woman. Women are inherently inferior to men. Men are smarter and
stronger than women; women are more emotional and delicate. Women exist for
the benefit of men. If a man demands sex from his wife, it is her duty to
oblige him, whether she wants to or not. A man may force a woman to have sex
with him, as long as he has a very good reason for making this demand. Humans
are to be conceived of, in the universal sense, as male ("man"), and only
referred to as female when one is speaking of particular individuals. Women
are a form of property. To demand rights for women is tantamount to demanding
rights for animals and just as absurd.
As ridiculous as most of these statements may seem, every one of them has
been considered obvious and natural by most of the West at one point or
another, and many are still more the rule than the exception to this day. If
most of them seem a little strange, jarring, or just plain wrong, that is not
because they contradict some vague notion of justice or common sense that we
have all been born with. To the contrary, the change in attitude that allows
most of us to claim a more enlightened, seemingly natural viewpoint, is
actually the concrete result of an ongoing struggle which has claimed many
reputations, relationships, and lives over the last 200 years and which, like
all struggles for liberation, has been discredited, slandered, and
marginalized since its inception. Although this struggle has been, and still
is, strategically diverse and conceptually multifarious and hence hard to
define, it is not hard to name: I am, of course, referring to feminism.
Feminism has changed our culture to the point where it is at least a
common idea that women are fully human. If most people today claim to agree
with this idea, this is not because society is becoming more benevolent, or
evolving naturally into a more egalitarian state of affairs. Those who hold
power do not simply decide to grant equal status to those who do not; rather,
they only yield power when they are forced to. Women, like every other
oppressed group, have had to take everything they have gotten, through an
arduous process of struggle. To deny this struggle is to perpetuate a myth
similar to that of the happy slave. Yet this is precisely what we do when we
speak of feminism as somehow perpetuating a gender divide, or hindering our
progress away from identity politics. Feminism did not create the conflict
between genders: patriarchal society did. It is important not to forget that
the aforementioned idea that women are fully human is not common sense but
absolutely, emphatically, a feminist notion. To pay lip-service to women's
liberation while denying the historical struggle of women to achieve this for
themselves is paternalistic and insulting.
Not only has Western society overtly relegated women to a subhuman role
throughout its history, but, until recently, most liberatory movements have
as well. This has often been partially unconscious, as a reflection of the
mores of the dominant culture. Just as often, however, this has been fully
conscious and intentional (cf. Stokely Charmichael's famous quote that
the "only position" for women in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commitee
[SNCC] was "prone"). Either way, people who purported to be working for the
emancipation of all humans were really just working for the emancipation
of "man," which until quite recently, is exactly how it was usually phrased.
Women who complained about this state of affairs were (and are)
condescendingly told to wait until the more important struggle was won before
they demanded their own liberation. This has been true of abolition, civil
rights, the anti-war movement, the New Left, the anti-nuke movement, radical
environmentalism and, obviously, anarchism. Women have been criticized for
pursuing feminist aims as if these were wrong-headed, counterrevolutionary,
or unimportant. Anarchists did not simply wake up one morning with more
enlightened views of women, nor did patriarchy suddenly reveal itself
as "just another form of domination." Feminist theory and practice brought to
light the oppression of women that often manifested itself in otherwise
revolutionary milieus.
This is not to say that all feminists were/are not anarchists, or all
anarchists were/are not feminists. But feminism is often criticized within
the anarchist milieu, from several different angles. I will try to discuss
the most common criticisms I have heard voiced, both publicly and privately,
in anarchist circles. It has been suggested that feminism is essentialist. It
has also been suggested that feminism, in keeping with its essentialist
views, is a philosophy that asserts the superiority, in one way or another,
of women to men. Finally, the charge has been made that feminism perpetuates
gender categories, whereas the revolutionary task is to move beyond gender
altogether. In other words, feminism is accused of being a kind of identity
politics that perpetuates harmful and divisive societal roles that ultimately
oppress everyone.
The one thing that all of these allegations have in common is that they
posit a single, more or less univocal entity named "feminism." However,
anyone who studies feminism soon learns that there has always been a fair
amount of diversity within feminist theory, and this has never been more true
than it is now. No single set of ideas about sex and gender represents
feminism; rather, feminism is a loose category that encompasses just about
all forms of thought and action which are explicitly concerned with the
liberation of women.
Although feminism has often been accused of essentialism, the critique of
essentialism is particularly strong within feminism, and has been for quite
some time. Essentialism is the idea that there is an unchanging substance or
essence that constitutes the true identity of people and things. In this
view, a woman is somehow truly, deep in her core, identifiable as a woman;
being a woman is not simply the result of different attributes and behaviors.
This is seen as a politically backward stance by many, because it implies
that people are limited to certain capabilities and behaviors that are
somehow dictated by their nature.
When we examine the range of ideas that has emerged from second wave (post-
1963 or so) feminism, however, a different picture comes into focus. Probably
the most famous quote from The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir's seminal 1940s
work, is the following: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." The
book goes on to argue that gender is a social category, which individuals can
reject. The influence of The Second Sex was enormous, and Beauvoir wasn't the
only feminist to question the naturalness of the category of gender. Many
feminist writers began to draw a distinction between sex and gender,
asserting that the former describes the physical body, while the latter is a
cultural category. For instance, having a penis pertains to sex, whereas how
one dresses, and the social role one fills, pertains to gender.
This is a distinction that some feminists still make, but others have
questioned the use of supposedly pre-cultural categories like sex altogether.
Colette Guillamin has suggested that sex (as well as race) is an arbitrary
system of "marks" that has no natural status at all, but simply serves the
interests of those who hold power. Although various physical differences
exist between people, it is politically determined which ones are chosen as
important or definitive. Although people are divided into supposedly natural
categories on the basis of these marks, there is nothing natural about any
category; categories are purely conceptual.
Building on the work of Beauvoir and Guillamin, among others, Monique
Wittig has argued that the feminist goal is to eliminate sex and/or gender as
a category entirely. Like the proletariat in Marx's philosophy, women are to
constitute themselves as a class for the sake of overthrowing the system that
allows classes to exist. One is not born a woman, except in the same sense
that one is born a proletarian: being a woman denotes a social position, and
certain social practices, rather than an essence or true identity. The
ultimate political goal of a woman, for Wittig, is to not be one. More
recently, Judith Butler has predicated an entire theory of gender based on
the radical rejection of essence.
Of course, there have been a number of feminists who, disturbed by what
they saw as an assimilationist tendency in feminism, asserted a more positive
notion of femininity that was, at times, undoubtedly essentialist. Susan
Brownmiller, in her important book Against Our Wills, suggested that men may
be genetically predisposed to rape, a notion that has been echoed by Andrea
Dworkin. Marxist feminists like Shulamite Firestone sought the material basis
of gender oppression in the female reproductive role, and several feminist
theorists -- Nancy Chodorow, Sherry Ortner, and Juliet Mitchell among others -
- have examined the role of motherhood in creating oppressive gender
roles. "Woman-identified" feminists like Mary Daly embraced certain
traditional notions of femininity and sought to give them a positive spin.
Although woman-identified feminists have, at times, taken essentialist
positions, this brand of feminism has redressed some of the imbalances of
that strain of feminist thought that rejects femininity altogether as a slave-
identity. This has always been the dichotomy that has troubled feminist
thinkers: either to assert a strong feminine identity and risk legitimizing
traditional roles and providing fodder to those who employ the idea of a
natural difference in order to oppress women, or to reject the role and the
identity women have been given, and risk eliminating the very ground of a
feminist critique. The task of contemporary feminism is to find a balance
between viewpoints that risk, on the one hand, essentialism, and on the other
the elimination of women as the subject of political struggle altogether.
The goal of feminism, then, is the liberation of women, but what that
exactly means is open to dispute. For some feminists, this means that women
and men will coexist equally; for others, that we will no longer see people
as women and men. Feminism provides a rich panorama of views on gender
problems. One thing all feminists can agree on, though, is that gender
problems exist. Whether as a result of natural differences or cultural
construction, people are oppressed on the basis of gender. To go beyond
gender, this situation needs to be redressed; gender cannot simply be
declared defunct. Feminism can perhaps be best defined as the attempt to get
beyond the state of affairs where people are oppressed because of gender.
Thus, it is not possible to go beyond gender without feminism; the charge
that feminism itself perpetuates gender categories is patently absurd.
Since anarchy is opposed to all forms of domination, anarchy without
feminism is not anarchy at all. Since anarchy declares itself opposed to all
archy, all rulership, true anarchy is by definition opposed to patriarchy,
i.e. it is, by definition, feminist. But it is not enough to declare oneself
opposed to all domination; one needs to try to understand domination in order
to oppose it. Feminist authors should be read by all anarchists who consider
themselves opposed to patriarchy. Feminist critiques are certainly just as
relevant as books about government oppression. Ward Churchill's excellent
Agents of Repression is considered essential reading by many anarchists, even
though Churchill is not an anarchist. Many feminist works, on the other hand,
are neglected, even by those who pay lip service to feminism. Yet, while FBI
repression is a real threat to anarchists, the way we inhabit our gender-
roles must be dealt with every day of our lives. Thus, feminist literature is
more relevant to the daily fight against oppression than much of the
literature that anarchists read regularly.
If anarchism needs feminism, feminism certainly needs anarchism as well.
The failure of some radical feminist theorists to address domination beyond
the narrow framework of women being victimized by men has prevented them from developing an adequate critique of oppression. As a prominent anarchist
writer has correctly pointed out, a political agenda based on asking men to
give up their privilege (as if that were even possible) is absurd. Feminists
like Irigaray, MacKinnon and Dworkin advocate legislative reforms, without
criticizing the oppressive nature of the state. Female separatism
(particularly as enunciated by Marilyn Frye) is a practical, and perhaps
necessary, strategy, but only within the framework of a larger society that
is assumed to be stratified on the basis of gender. Feminism is truly radical
when it seeks to eliminate the conditions that make gender oppression
inevitable.
Anarchism and feminism clearly need one another. It is all well and good
to say that once the primary source of oppression (whatever that is) is
removed, all other oppressions will wither away, but what evidence is there
for that? And how does that keep us from oppressing one another now, while
we're waiting for this great revolution? Conversely, it is important to
recognize that the oppression of women is not the only oppression. Arguments
about which forms of oppression are more important, or more primary, are
unresolvable and silly. The value, and the danger, of anarchism is this; it
seeks to eliminate all forms of domination. This goal is valuable because it
does not lose sight of the forest for the trees, getting caught up in
distracting reformist battles and forgetting its trajectory toward total
liberation. But it is also dangerous because anarchism continually runs the
risk of ignoring real-life situations in favor of abstractions, and
underemphasizing or dismissing movements that seek to address specific
issues. Let's have an anarchist feminism and a feminist anarchism!

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