In what ways have feminists challenged conventional thinking about politics?

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The rise of the feminist movement in the last century and its focus on the general inequity between the two sexes, has significantly targeted what conventional thought deems as normative in the political world. Whilst attempting to define “one feminism” is problematic, this essay’s focus will lie on examining the postmodern-feminists’ and radical-feminists’ challenges to conventional thinking about politics.
I shall argue that these feminist challenges have beleaguered a wider scope for observing the prevailing social inequalities, by asserting that all aspects of interaction between the two sexes have a patriarchic/hierarchic agenda. Therefore throughout this essay I intend to defend and explore what the radical and post-modern feminists’ challenges to conventional thinking about politics are. Concurrently I will examine the Liberal and Socialist-feminist critiques, maintaining that they are outdated and lacking in posing relevant challenges to conventional political thought of the 21st century.

Radical feminism’s most valid and well-recognised contribution to the field of political thought was coined in the title of Carol Hanich’s essay The Personal is Political (1969), which argued that the classical liberal division between the public as political and the private as personal, in fact is an unfounded and discriminating division, excluding an analysis of women’s concerns in political thought.
The tradition of conventional political thought was initially challenged in the dawning days of liberalism by liberal feminists such as Mary Wolstecraft (1759-1797) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), who both argued that society (referring to laws and education) was structured in an unequal and “unliberal” manner which favoured a male oppression of women.
By laying the foundation for feminist awareness, parts of this feminist movement later came to branch off into Socialist and Marxist feminism, arguing that the prevailing inequality between the sexes was firmly rooted in “capitalist” means of production. Therefore as was argued women could never truly be freed (materially) from the constraints of the patriarch, without an abolition of the capitalist society.
In the post-World War period two new feminisms developed, challenging these previous feminist understandings, namely radical and post-modern feminism. They argued that the predeceasing feminist ideas, whilst posing valid critiques to conventional thinking, did not challenge the full extent of the framework of society. This was a male dominated framework that radical feminists referred to as patriarchy . These feminists’ agenda therefore turned into a deconstruction of the patriarchy, with the goal of a new “political organization, which aspires to non-hierarchic structures”

As an example of these structures we can observe the post-modernists’ challenges to a domain supposedly so apolitical as language. Through the post-modern feminist analysis, basic terms and definitions came to be scrutinised, and a totally new consideration as to the agenda underpinning language, came into focus. Post-modern feminists argued that in the west the language used when talking about the two sexes tended to be conceptualised- as a set of polarised binary oppositions in which one term is always privileged over the other. French radical feminist asserted this point Hélène Cixous in her essay Sorties

Father / Mother
Head / Heart
Man / Woman
Speaking / Listening

All these prove as examples in her argument that language is constructed thought “dual hierarchical oppositions” and that a false and oppressive link is drawn between certain words and sexes. Such a hierarchically structured discourse comes to value terms defined as male over those related to female, thus underpinning the patriarchy in society.
Moreover common discourse and literature has most often been written from perspectives that assume the white male to be the norm against which all others should be measured and which see all women as deviating from this norm in ways that fit them for domesticity and motherhood. Norwegian feminist Gerd Brantenberg challenged this conventional norm within language, in her publication of the novel The daughter’s of Egalia (1977), which satirised a fantasy country “Egalia” where the women have the power and oppress the men. By delving into the normative assumptions of language, this oppression was reflected when Brantenberg reinvented words such as: woman= wym, man= menwym, history= herstory and hysterical= testerical. Such word games may seem banal to many, but are highly relevant in highlighting the radical feminist claims that a socialisation of gender inequality exists, far beyond the public sphere and deep into what conventional political thought does not explore.
Counter arguments (including those from many socialist and liberal feminists) to the post-modern feminist attacks, that language underpins a patriarchal agenda, state that the linguistic characteristics prescribed to women and men are in fact not a reflection of “dual hierarchical oppositions” but a reflection of the "true” nature of gender. Popular books such as John Gray’s Men are from Mars Women are from Venus are vivid reflections of these reactionary forces, that look back in history rhetorically asking, why would it be so that women and men are reflecting these genders in language, if it is not a “true and natural” state of being?
Post-modern and radical feminists oppose this by pointing to the relativity of female and male characteristics in different societies. I.e. In India women are traditionally tied to the production and carving of boats, whilst in the west this would be considered unfeminine . Hence “It is true that every society uses biological sex as a criterion for the ascription of gender but... no two cultures would agree completely on what distinguishes one gender from another.” This in my view undermines the counter arguments to “dual hierarchical oppositions” and strengthens the post-modernists’ claim that language is in fact hierarchical.

Sexuality is another dominant area that the radical feminists point to as “silenced” by the patriarchal structures of conventional political thought. English Radical feminist Germaine Greer highlighted this phenomenon in her book “The Female Eunuch” (1970) which chartered the female “castration” achieved through the male-female polarity imposed by the patriarchal society. She argued that our understanding as to what is sexually desirable in women is formed by male lusts and requirements, whilst those aspects of the women’s sexuality that are not linked to male desire, such as menstruation, are treated as secrete and shameful. Radical feminists such as Greer lay much focus on stereotypes of the “eternally feminine” and explored the paradoxes of the lustless image imposed on women, forcing them to deny their true female sexuality, thus diverting and deforming women’s energy . This image of “femininity”, Greer argued, lies at the very heart of maintaining the “middle-class myth of love and marriage” which she ultimately saw as structures aimed at maintaining women in an oppressed position.
Counter arguments to these attacks on traditional political thought, refer yet again to a “natural” or “biological” order of sexuality, claiming that this is the manner things have always been and hence is irrelevant in the political discourse. Man is by “natural instinct” the provider and the sexually assertive, biologically being driven to “spread his seed” to various partners. Whilst women opposedly are the more sexually passive, since it is in their nature to be selective in the choice of the “one” partner they can allow to fertilise their eggs .
In my view, arguments such as these see themselves flawed in their ontological assumption. What they are observing is not which are the existing gender patterns in society, but instead, why do these gender patterns exist?
These biologically motivated arguments justifying the privileged roles that men hold in society go much in line with the Darwinist justification of the Aryan race’s supremacy over Blacks and Jews. By reducing humans to either race or sex they deny them their very humanity and merely categorise them as non-thinking animals. Even by looking at the diversity of human beings and human cultures that exist, these Darwinist assumptions fail, since gender patters are by no means proven to be universal, nor do they ever apply to all units of society. In all cultures there can be found both men and women that differ from this biological “fact” having totally different relations to gender and sexuality than is prescribed by nature i.e. transsexuals or people indulging in SM-sex. This is in my view a valid critique to these biological assumptions that fail to recognise these people in society. Finally it must be pointed out that the use of these biological understandings to explain society has in fact always been generated from a privileged group to justify their own position. Or as 17th century philosopher Poulain de la Barre stated “All that has been written about women by men should be suspect, for the men are at once judge and party to the lawsuit”

Observing the Liberal and Socialist feminists’ way of thinking about feminism, we can hitherto understand that these feminisms still are greatly limited in their egalitarian aspirations. By merely analysing equality through the eyes of the “public sphere”, a world of hierarchic structures is left unexplored. The liberal focus on legislation and education or the Marxist focus on class and production leaves no room for an analysis of the male-female polarity that exists in the private sphere. This sphere is both scrutinised and challenged by the post-modern and radical feminists’ in their hierarchic analysis of language and sexuality.
Whilst these controversial ideas are often countered by reactionary forces, dismissing their relevance and referring to biological explanations to the relationship between the sexes, it can hardly be denied that the challenges from the radical and post-modern-feminisms to the male dominant structures in the private sphere, have widened the scope of what we view as conventional political thought of the 21st century.


Max da Rocha
Word count: 1594


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