On Friday night I attended a debate put on by the Oxford Radical Forum, entitled “Feminism: Radical or Socialist?”. It was a really lively, engaging and em-passioned debate, and it really got me thinking…hence i’m putting up a few thoughts that i’ve had time to crystallise since Friday.
The debate – although it became pretty wide-ranging in the end - was between two ’socialist’ feminists – those who believe that transcending capitalist society is the most important factor in ending the oppression of women – and two ‘radicals’ – those who believe that while capitalism perpetuates female oppression, it is not the fundamental problem, and the root causes go far, far deeper; that if socialist society were achieved tomorrow women would still be on an unequal (moral) footing with men. (I am not going to defend the claim that women are oppressed in modern, Western societies. I take that claim to be quite obviously true to anyone who bothers to think and look hard enough).
The first thing that hit home for me in the course of the discussion came from the radicals, who responded to a question I posed about the limits of feminism, and whether it really just becomes ‘compassionate humanism’, i.e. something that any well brought up, morally well-balanced person should be getting behind – male, female or whatever.
What was really interesting was that both radicals agreed in principal, but pointed out to me something that I had completely overlooked: in my question i discussed the issue of rape and sexual violence (originally raised by the radicals) and said that it was a problem for everyone in society – and they agreed with that. But what they pointed out was the levels to which violent crimes are a product of social attitudes and environment. That is, I was unquestioningly thinking of rapists as ‘isolated psycopaths’ - what the radicals pointed out really well was that the levels of rape in western societies are greater than can plausibly be allowed for by a percentage of violent ‘unreasonables’ that will exist in any society, and will always be a problem. Rather, it has to be the case that there is something wrong with society as a whole which leads to so many men (and we’re talking here about 80,000 rapes a year in the UK, with - believe or not – barely 5% of reported cases ending in prosecution) being disposed to act violently towards women, including but not limited to rape. And for that reason, feminism has a part to play over and above humanism, because it is addressing a problem facing specifically women, because they are women.
For me this was compelling because not only have I decided that the radicals were right, but it made me realise to what extent i’d gotten comfortable in my academic, ivory-tower thinking about ethical issues, and had ceased to look at, for example, the levels to which violent and ‘unethical’ behaviour is not only socially determined, or constructed, but also socially accepted (think about the fact already noted that a mere 5% of rapes end in prosecution).
(A similar realisation occurred to me when there was a short tangential discussion about uses of the word ‘natural’, particularly in relation to homosexuality. I have in the past scoffed at arguments that homosexuality is ‘un-natural’ because it seems such an irrelevant point: driving cars is ‘un-natural’, so is wearing clothes, nothing follows about the status of these human practices. What the radicals pointed out was that the fight over homosexuality being considered ‘natural’ or otherwise is important for practical reasons. That is, if the idea that homosexuality is natural can be sufficiently established, then many reflexive homophobic attitudes are cut off at the root. For sure, it may be the case that naturalness is in truth irrelevant conceptually, but practically it is a live, and very much an important, issue).
The second thing I walked away from the debate thinking was that ’socialist feminism’ in a fairly untenable position. To see this, consider that they appear to me very much to be in a dilemma. On the one hand the socialists wanted to say that the main problem facing women was class-based gender inequality, and that if we progressed towards a classless society, women would be immeasurably better off – hence transcending capitalism should be the number one concern for feminists. Yet they were of course forced to admit that gender inequality – and the resultant oppression of women – had existed before capitalism, and that (for example) power-relation within, say, families that led to female oppression would not disappear simply because the means of production and wage-earning cease to be predicated upon class stratification. But it seems to me that given these two facts, ’socialist feminism’ either dissolves into something which isn’t really feminism, or if it remains feminist, fits the ‘radical’ label far better.
For if it is maintained that transcending capitalism is the most important thing, then the feminism starts to look like an added incentive for transcending capitalism, rather than the fundamental motivating factor. On the other hand, if it is conceded that capitalism is only one problem facing women, and that many other equally and perhaps more important ones exist, then it becomes unclear what ’socialist feminism’ is, and why one should not just be a ‘radical’, or some other brand of, feminist. Now of course, one could be a radical feminist whilst also being a socialist – that is, wishing to transcend capitalist society and holding radical feminist attitudes, indeed both ‘radicals’ on the night described themselves as such – but the point is the feminism doesn’t get defined through the socialism, so to speak. Both are kept sufficiently separate as political goals and commitments. And that to me seemed the overwhelmingly more tenable (as well as attractive) position.
Thirdly and finally, what really hit me was the extent to which in certain respects ‘radical’ feminism isn’t really radical at all. Of course, that needs to be qualified: I take the ultimate aim of radical feminists to be a society in which gender ceases to be any more a defining characteristic of individuals than is, say, height or hair colour. That is, we transcend the ‘gender binary’ that dictates that all human beings must be ‘men’ or ‘women’, and that along with that division (which I am increasingly convinced is socially imposed rather than simply biological, as the intuitive reaction would suggest) the social expectations and pressures associated with being a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ are left behind. Of course, that is pretty radical – but that’s radicalism at the end-goal, conceptual level. What interested me was the extent to which the radicals practicalproposals – about the fair treatment of women, attitudes and stances to issues such as prostitution, the treatment of women in all professions, social attitudes towards sexuality, the frankly appalling treatment of women by the judicial system in all cases of (especially sexual) violence, the changing of prevalent attitudes to women as sex objects and correspondingly to attitudes about rape, etc – are if anything a straightforward, simple and logical extension of the moral compassion that we (by which I mean society, and in particular well-brought up men, i.e. not pig-headed selfish bastards) already claim to adhere to. And what this comes to is the realisation that in many ways ‘radical feminism’ is radical only because society is so far behind where it should be. I take that to be both an interesting – as well as a deeply worrying – conclusion.
Real Life Moral Dilemma – can you help? Thursday, Feb 28 2008
Politics and Sagar's Social Commentaries and Stuff only I know why is here Paul Sagar 12:55 am
As those who know me personally will attest, I have not eaten meat for what is going on for 6 years, and quite possibly longer. For a good 3 of those I was vegan, as opposed to just vegetarian. The thing is, I’m starting to have some seriously challenging thoughts about this particular practical ethical stance of mine. Here’s the reasoning leading me to think I should just pack it in…
To begin, note that my not eating meat has made absolutely zero difference to any animal, ever. I never killed my own meat, so my going vegetarian didn’t stop any animals from dying at my own hands. My objection has always been to modern high-intensity agri-business farming methods. Indeed my objections to that still stand: I think that the way we use and abuse animals in modern industrialised society, the way we raise and kill them, is morally indefensible. I’m not going to tell anyone that what we do to animals is OK – I think it clearly isn’t.
Yet nothing I have done for the past 6 years has saved a single animal life. Those who say that vegetarians save animals lives are living in a sort of Sorites Cloud Cukoo Land. For while it might be true that given the total number of vegetarians in, say, the UK, the corresponding decline in market demand has led to X number of cows not being born and therefore not being reared for slaughter. This X can then be aggregated out amongst the number of vegetarians, concluding that each vegetarian saved (or rather, prevented the creation and then destruction of) X/n number of cows. This might be true (though I suspect it’s actually uncalculable due to limited information). The point is it has made no difference whether I was a vegetarian or not: my impact on market demand is far too small to make any difference – either in the past or if I start buying steak tomorrow. Thus my not eating meat has saved no cows’ lives, and if I start eating meat, the same number of cows (or whatever) will die.
Which leads to another point. If I really did care about saving animals lives, I should have done far more: for example I should have bought cows and a field to put them in, or barricaded the gateways to slaughterhouses, or at the very least given out leaflets in the street encouraging people to go veggie, thus potentially altering market demand. The fact is I have done nothing of these things – and i’d be lying if I said I care enough to start now.
So why be vegetarian? I think we get to the heart of the issue when we turn reflection towards me and why I want to do or not do certain things. Part of the sentiment here is, I think, laudable: the meat industry is morally abhorrent; I cannot justify it, and so want no part in it. That is a sort of ‘clean hands’ argument against meat-eating. The other part is less laudable: it comes down to quite liking the smug superiority of being a non-meat eater, and feeling great about the fact that I have the moral wisdom and strength of character to do what I see to be right. I don’t like that thought about myself, because it is massively egotistical and thoroughly self-interested: the animals aren’t the issue here, my ego is.
Given that those are the things which seem to really matter, ethically speaking, as to whether I should be vegetarian, I can pose a neat question. Firstly, I want to get rid of the ego stuff: I don’t want to keep endorsing moral principles which at root I know to be motivated by self-flattery not genuine ethical sentiments. So we can chuck all that stuff out. All that remains is the ‘clean hands’ considerations, and it seems we then have a clear confrontation. For what matters more to me? That I keep my hands clean? Or that I live a less inconvenienced life, where I can eat the same food as my friends, not worry about ingredients in prepared foods or when going to restaurants, make my Mum’s life less difficult, make my Gran happy and relieved (she thinks i’ll die young and soon if i keep not eating meat), not have to make a scene every time I go round to other people’s for dinner, and generally just be normal?
Right now, i’ve got to be honest and say the latter things are pressing more strongly than the clean hands considerations. Part of me just doesn’t care if my hands are clean – after all, the rest of me is pretty dirty already.
So what should I do? I’m giving 48 hours for anybody to come up with a solidly convincing reason why I should stay vegetarian. And don’t talk to me about consequences unless you’ve got some really nifty moves lined up. I want to know why I, an individual moral agent with projects, commitments, life-plans and designs upon the world, should for the sake of my soul (as you might like to think of it) not eat meat. After 48 hours, if no good arguments are forthcoming, I’m eating steak.
Secondly, is this a paradigmatic case of clear eyed akrasia? I can’t decide, but i’m tempted to think that it might very well be…
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