Feminist Political Theory

Valerie Bryson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781350313811
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Sozialarbeit

Feminist theory is a challenging and often deeply divided body of thought that raises issues which affect us all. In this, her third edition of the highly successful Feminist Political Theory, Valerie Bryson provides both a wide-ranging history of Western feminist thought, from medieval times to the present day, and a lucid analysis of contemporary feminist politics and debates. Fully updated to cover the latest feminist scholarship throughout, this timely new edition provides an accessible and thought-provoking exploration of complex theories related to 'real-life' issues such as sexual violence, political representation, transgender rights, cyberfeminism and globalisation. With unrivalled scope, depth and accessibility, this new edition of Valerie Bryson's Feminist Political Theory is set to be the go-to text on feminism for students and researchers – or indeed anyone interested in gender justice.

1

EARLY FEMINIST THOUGHT

We have little direct access to what women may have thought in the early years of recorded history, as they were excluded from education and public debate; indeed, the classical scholar Mary Beard (2014) has found the first example of women being told that they should ‘shut up’ in public in Homer’s Odyssey, probably composed in the eighth century BC. Nevertheless, it seems likely that wherever women have been subordinated some have resisted, and it is possible to trace elements of feminist consciousness in Europe back to written expressions of women’s thought in the seventh century AD. At this early period, any woman who claimed the ability to benefit from education, or who tried to contribute to theological, philosophical and political debate, or who simply put pen to paper, was challenging her society’s teaching about women’s God-given intellectual inferiority and their propensity for sin. It is therefore unsurprising that an identifiable theme in early writing by women is the attempt to re-interpret the scriptures to challenge such beliefs (Lerner, 1993).

By the beginning of the fifteenth century, women’s claims were sufficiently established for a significant number of men to educate their own daughters, some of whom were then able to contribute to a European-wide public debate, which came to be known as the Querelle des femmes, over the nature of women and their portrayal in literature (Ross, 2010). Of the pro-women writers, the best known is the Frenchwoman Christine de Pizan (1365–c.1430), who appealed to the authority of women’s own experiences and to the record of ‘great women’ in history to assert her sex’s innate intellectual equality with men and to defend women against the misogyny of contemporary literature and religious authority. Pizan and her contemporaries used the traditional vocabulary of domesticity while making their claims, and they did not produce any kind of political programme or analysis of power. However, this can be seen as a strategic response to their marginalized status, a way of ‘making the unusual seem acceptable’, rather than support for the status quo (Ross, 2010:18; see also Chance, 2007), and their work shows that debates over women’s role in society that include a recognisably feminist perspective go back much further than has until recently been assumed. While it is important not to impose current preoccupations on earlier periods, it is also possible to identify in this period an early version of the difference/equality debate which recurs throughout this book, as some writers asserted women’s equal worth with men, while others demanded respect for their alleged sex-specific virtues, such as piety. In addition, some commentators have suggested that early critiques of misogynistic literature and male violence anticipate recent feminist arguments against pornography (Case, 1998; Classen, 2007. For discussion of early feminism and the situation of women in this period, see Lerner, 1993; Akkerman and Stuurnam, 1998b. On de Pizan, see also Altman and McGrady (eds), 2003; Desmond (ed.), 1998; Forham, 2002; Nowacka, 2002).

Seventeenth-century feminism in Continental Europe and Britain

The Querelle had been primarily concerned with education, morality and manners, and participants frequently based their arguments on interpretations of the Christian bible. Feminist theological arguments were further elaborated in the seventeenth century: for example, some writers used the creation story to argue that Eve was superior to Adam because she was created last, or because she was created out of Adam’s rib rather than out of mud and slime (Stuurnam, 1998:72). By this period, ‘[t]he learned woman was no longer a startling figure’ (Ross, 2010:13), and some writers were also engaging directly with the increasingly secular arguments of mainstream philosophical and political debate, appealing to reason rather than to existing authorities when making their claims, and employing concepts and terminology around ‘rights’ and ‘equality’ that are still with us today.

The inspiration for these new ways of thinking was the revolution in western philosophy which had been started in the first half of the seventeenth century by Descartes. According to Cartesian philosophy, all people possess reason, and true knowledge, which is based on experience and self-discovery rather than study of the classics or sacred texts, is in principle available to all. This means that traditional authority is rejected in favour of rational analysis and independent thought, and that customs and institutions which are not in accordance with reason should be rejected. Although, as we shall see, the focus on reason has been criticised by some later feminists, at the time it provided inspiration for many feminist writers, for it implied that women’s exclusion from classical education need not also exclude them from philosophy, for what is important is good ideas, and not ‘what fanciful people have said about them’ (Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, in Ferguson, 1985:188). It also meant that the questioning of authority could be extended to that of men over women, and that ‘unreasonable institutions’ might include those, such as seventeenth-century marriage laws, that perpetuated women’s subordination.

Akkerman and Stuurnam (1998b) have described the seventeenth century as the age of ‘rationalist feminism’ in Europe, as writers such as the Frenchwoman Marie de Gournay and the Dutchwoman Anna Maria van Schurman used Cartesian principles to make increasingly egalitarian claims. Such continental feminism was probably given its most systematic and radical philosophical exposition during this period by the Frenchman François Poulain de la Barre in his three famous treatises on sexual equality, first published in the 1670s. In these, Poulain not only claimed that, since ‘the mind has no sex’, women are as capable of reason as men, he also argued that women are as capable as men of gaining the skills and knowledge that would enable them to participate equally in virtually all economic and social activities, including government and military command. Perhaps even more importantly, he suggested that because belief in male superiority was the most basic, widespread and deeply entrenched form of prejudice, a challenge to this could make other forms of prejudice questionable too (de la Barre, 1990; see also Stuurnam, 1998; La Vopa, 2010; Clarke, 2013).

Early British feminism and the ideas of Mary Astell

The impact of continental debates extended to Britain where, by the second half of the seventeenth century, they had combined with more local influences to produce ‘the first sizeable wave of British secular feminist protest’ (Ferguson, 1985:15; see also Ross, 2010), with significant numbers of women using pamphlets and books to challenge received ideas about their sex.

Any attempt to ‘read off’ feminist theory from the social situation of women should be approached with extreme caution. However, it does seem that the increased scale and intensity of the debate in Britain stemmed at least in part from changes in gender roles that occurred in its early years of capitalist development, as well as from the political upheavals of this ‘century of revolution’ (for an overview, see Kent, 1999). Changes in agriculture were creating a new and growing class of wage labourers, while the old system of family-based domestic industry was in gradual decline. Meanwhile, women were progressively excluded from trades and professions in which they had previously been active, such as brewing, printing and medicine, and aristocratic women, who had formerly played an important role in running their husbands’ estates, were increasingly restricted to the domestic sphere. As it became increasingly difficult for women to earn their own living, marriage became an economic necessity, and wives became increasingly dependent on their husbands for financial support. Demographic factors were, however, increasing the numbers of ‘surplus women’ unable to find a husband, while the sixteenth-century English reformation meant that the option of entering a convent was no longer available. In this context, it is not surprising that the role of women should have been debated. Moreover, it was only now that the public and the private could be clearly distinguished that it made sense to ask about the appropriate sphere of women’s activity; this distinction was alien to medieval society, but remains central to many discussions of feminism today.

Politically, the seventeenth century was one of the most turbulent periods of British history because, for a time, the country was engulfed by civil war and all political and religious authority was thrown into question. It was almost inevitable that many women as well as men would become politicised and, in addition to the traditional ‘behind the scenes’ involvement, there is evidence of women demonstrating, rioting and petitioning parliament; these activities included a demonstration by ‘Shoals of Peace Women’ wearing white ribbons, who mobbed Westminster demanding an end to the civil war (Davies, 1998:2). Meanwhile, religious debates stimulated new ideas around moral renewal and social justice (Apetri, 2010) and, even more subversively, a number of the radical religious sects that sprang up challenged received notions as to appropriate sexual roles and behaviour: for example, the Ranters preached extreme sexual permissiveness, while the Quakers argued that men and women were not only equal in God’s eyes, but were equally eligible for the ministry.

Questions of authority in state and family were, moreover, intimately linked in the political theory of the time. Conservative defenders of absolute monarchical power argued that the authority of the king over his people was sanctioned by God and nature in exactly the same way as that of a father over his family; this meant that ‘patriarchy’ (the rule of the father) in the home was used as justification for a parallel power in the state. Opponents of such state power, who argued that authority was not divinely ordained but must rest on reason and consent, were therefore forced to re-examine arbitrary power within the family as well: logically, it seemed, patriarchy in state and home must stand or fall together. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this logic was not pushed to its conclusion by male writers. Although Hobbes and Locke, the foremost political theorists of the century, did examine relationships within the family at some length, they fell back on arguments of social convenience and men’s superior strength to justify the continued subordination of women. This meant that while they saw men as independent and rational individuals capable of perceiving and pursuing their own self-interest, they saw women as wives and mothers, weak creatures unable to escape the curse of Eve, whose interests were bound up with those of their family, and who therefore had no need for independent political rights.

At first sight, this appears to be the kind of inconsistency that a more rigorous application of the underlying principles could rectify; however, some recent theorists have suggested that, despite their universalistic pretensions, the basic premises of early liberal writers were inherently biased against women. Here it is argued that they were based on an essentially male view of human nature that ignored human interdependence and attributes such as nurturing that have traditionally been associated with women; that denied any value to subjective, intuitive or emotionally founded knowledge; and that perpetuated a view of rationality that excluded women, because it defined reason in terms of overcoming femininity (identified with nature, particularity, biology, passion and emotion). Some also claim that the whole approach was predicated upon a distinction between the public and the private, which involved the exclusion of women from the former and a devaluation of the latter. These are complex and contested arguments, which will recur throughout the book: at this stage it is important to note simply that the extension of traditional theory to include women may not be as unproblematical as it at first sight seems, and that the concepts and assumptions made by male theorists are not necessarily adequate when it comes to expressing female needs and experiences (Lloyd, 1984; Coole, 1993; Nye, 1990a; Bordo, 1994; Springborg, 1996; Pateman, 1998a; Waters, 2000; Prokhovnik, 2002, 2007; Brace, 2007).

As in earlier periods, mainstream political and philosophical debates in the seventeenth century were conducted almost exclusively by men. There were, however, exceptions, of whom the most important is probably Mary Astell (1666–1731). Although she has been written out of histories of political thought, in her lifetime Astell was widely seen as a serious contributor to mainstream political theory; she has more recently been described as ‘The First English Feminist’ (Hill, 1986, the First English Feminist) and ‘arguably the first systematic feminist theoretician in the west’ (Catherine Stimpson, Introduction to Perry, 1986:xi. See also Smith, 1982; Kinnard, 1983; Browne, 1987; Waters, 2000; Springborg, 2005; Duran, 2006; Kolbrener and Michelson (eds), 2007).

In Astell’s writings on women, we find the new approach to philosophy and knowledge being used to produce a classic early statement of the core liberal feminist belief that men and women are equally capable of reason, and that therefore they should be equally educated in its use: ‘Since God has given to Women as well as Men intelligent Souls, why should they be forbidden to use them?’ (A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, in Ferguson, 1985:188). Here, Astell anticipated the arguments of Mary Wollstonecraft and other later writers, by arguing that although women in the society of her day appeared frivolous and incapable of reason, this was the product of faulty upbringing rather than any natural disability, evidence of the need for improved female education rather than its impossibility. However, although Astell based her arguments on the liberal idea of rationality, she did not accept the liberal idea of political rights. Like most of the seventeenth-century feminists, she was a staunch Tory and defender of the monarchy; as such, she was more concerned to deny political rights to men than to attempt to extend them to women. Indeed, the logic of her conservatism led her to a seemingly very unfeminist conclusion: accepting the parallel between authority in the state and in the home, she argued that a wife must obey her husband just as a subject must obey the king; when a woman enters marriage, she argued, she has chosen a ‘monarch for life’, and must therefore submit to his authority (for fuller discussion, see Springborg, 2005).

Astell’s writings are at times heavily ironic, so that not everything she says should be taken at face value; nevertheless her conservatism does seem genuine enough. It has, however, more radical implications than first appear, and in many ways she was carried beyond liberal feminist demands to a broader analysis of the relations between men and women. First, she insisted that a woman’s duty to obey her husband did not involve any recognition of his superiority; indeed, there is throughout her writings a marked tone of barely disguised contempt for the male sex (for example, she said that men are not fit to educate children, for ‘precepts contradicted by example seldom prove effective’; quoted in Kinnard, 1983:37). Secondly, she argued that submission to male authority could not extend to single women, whether ‘poor fatherless maids’ like herself or ‘widows who have lost their masters’ (Reflections Upon Marriage, in Ferguson, 1985:195). This meant, thirdly, that an educated woman should choose to reject the domestic slavery involved in marriage, and she therefore advised women to avoid matrimony (while cheerfully admitting that if they all followed her advice, then ‘there’s an End to the Human Race’; quoted in Perry, 1986:9). From this it followed, fourthly, that women’s activities need not be limited by the need to attract a husband, and they could therefore concentrate on improving their minds rather than their beauty: ‘Were not a morning more profitably spent at a Book than at a Looking Glass?’ (quoted in Perry, 1986:92). Finally, as a practical means of freeing women from marriage and dependence on men, she advocated the establishment of female communities, rather like secular nunneries, where women could live and learn together without men, knowing themselves ‘capable of More Things than the pitiful Conquest of some Wretched Heart’ (quoted in Perry, 1986:102). This idea excited considerable interest; however, it failed to attract sufficient financial support, not so much because of its feminism, but because of its dangerous associations with Roman Catholicism.

All this means that, despite her political conservatism, Astell’s work contains in embryonic form some of the core ideas of late-twentieth-century radical feminism: the idea that man (whether as sexual predator or tyrannous husband) is the natural enemy of woman; the idea that women must be liberated from the need to please men (which Perry [1986:103] sees as an early form of ‘consciousness raising’); the belief that this liberation can be achieved only if women are enabled to live separately from men; the perception that men have controlled and defined knowledge (‘Histories are writ by them, they recount each others great Exploits and have always done so’ [quoted in Perry, 1986:3]); and the understanding that women’s experiences can give them a valuable and distinctive perspective on the world (which Waters [2000] argues makes Astell a precursor of late-twentieth-century standpoint feminism). Underlying all this, there is a clear rejection of the whole scale of values in which man is the unquestioned measure of human worth in favour of a celebration of women: it was not for nothing that Astell’s major work on education was entitled A Serious Proposal to the Ladies … by a Lover of her Sex.

While Mary Astell may have been the most radical and systematic feminist of her time, she was, as has already been said, certainly not an isolated voice. This means that by the early eighteenth century we have a quite widely established perception of women as a group in society whose situation is in need of improvement, and it is this consciousness of women’s group identity which Smith thinks distinguishes writers of this period from their predecessors (Smith, 1982; Ross, 2010). What we do not yet find, however, is any direct challenge to women’s social or economic position or to the sexual division of labour, nor do we find any coherent political programme or demand that the rights of male citizens be extended to women. For the most part socially and politically conservative, these early feminists addressed themselves almost exclusively to women of the upper and middle classes and there were few attempts to link the situation of women to other disadvantaged groups in society. For these writers, it was through education and the exercise of reason that women could be made independent of men; it was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that feminism was to become associated with wider demands for change.

The Enlightenment and early liberal feminism

In some ways, the middle years of the eighteenth century seem to represent a retreat from feminism, as arguments for women’s rationality became less fashionable than belief in their innate weakness and dependence on men, and the ideas of Astell and her contemporaries fell into disrepute. Nevertheless, although there was no systematic analysis of women’s situation or any organised women’s movement, individual complaints about their lot continued, as did discussion of women’s abilities and social roles, and Karen Offen has argued that ‘… there was clearly a full-blown feminist consciousness in existence among some privileged women and men [in Europe], in dialogue with a mounting backlash’ (Offen, 1998:98. See also Offen, 2000; Rogers, 1982; Spender, 1983a).

In Britain, many women continued to write and publish throughout the period; most famously, the ‘bluestocking’ group of ‘salon intellectuals’ debated and wrote on a range of contemporary issues. The bluestockings, whose best known member was Hannah More, have usually been seen as anti-feminist: they stressed the importance of women’s domestic role, particularly their responsibility for nurturing virtue within the family, and they argued that, to a greater extent than men, women were motivated by ‘sensibility’ rather than reason. However, they also argued that if women were to become good wives and mothers, they must be educated, while arguments about women’s greater emotional sensibility were used to justify women’s involvement in movements for moral and social reform, such as temperance and anti-slavery campaigns. Moreover, the very existence of the bluestockings as a group of intellectual women, publicly discussing and publishing from the 1750s onwards, could be seen as a statement about women’s ability and role in society: no longer a silenced majority, women could not be entirely excluded from public debate (see Midgley, 1995; Caine, 1997; Kent, 1999; Richardson, 2000; Stott, 2000; Guest, 2002). It is in this context that the ideas of the late-eighteenth-century feminists must be understood; although the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Some notes on terminology
• Introduction
• 1. Early Feminist Thought
• 2. Liberalism and Beyond: Mainstream Feminism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
• 3. The Contribution of Marx and Engels
• 4. The Vote and After: Mainstream Feminism in the United States and Britain from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Second World War
• 5. Left-Wing Feminism in Britain and the United States from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Second World War
• 6. Marxist Feminism in Germany and Russia
• 7. Feminism after the Second World War
• 8. Liberalism and Beyond: Feminism and Equal Rights from the 1960s to the 1990s
• 9. Radical Feminism and the Concept of Patriarchy
• 10. Radical Feminism: Patriarchy in Private and Public Life
• 11. Marxist and Socialist Feminism from the 1960s to the 1990s
• 12. Theoretical Developments: Postmodern Feminisms and Beyond
• 13. Theoretical Developments: Postcolonial Feminism, Black Feminism and Intersectionality
• 14. Western Feminist Theory in the Twenty-First Century: Developments in Liberal and Socialist Thought
• 15. Western Feminism in the Twenty-First Century: Continuities, Challenges and Change
• Conclusions: Feminist Political Theory Today
• Bibliography
• Index