I’ve been re-reading Andrea Dworkin’s ‘Woman Hating’, one of my Top-3-Feminist-Reads-Of-All-Time (So-Far) (the other two being Angela Davis’ ‘Women, Race & Class’, and Adrienne Rich’s ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality & Lesbian Existence’).
Reading Woman Hating for the first time a couple of years ago turned out to be a pivotal moment in my feminist development, at both a theoretical and personal level. Dworkin’s critique of the beauty practices women in the Western world are expected to adhere to, validated and encouraged my further rejection of such practices; her exposure of ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ for the social constructs they are and her analysis of how they maintain the systems of patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, as well as her humorous deconstruction of the gender roles we learn from childhood fairy tales such as Snow White and Cinderella, all shed new light on things.
In addition to liking what Dworkin actually had to say, I also liked the way she said it. Her eloquence; her powerful rhetoric; the uncompromising and forthright approach she took to her subject matter which imbued her work with integrity; her belief that writing is action- I found all this hugely enriching and inspiring.
Unfortunately, I was to discover that I was about 30 years too late in deciding to fall for Andrea. Once I’d embarked on my MA, it soon became clear that the sort of radical feminist theory contained in books such as Woman Hating was officially deemed passé in the contemporary postmodern academy.
Here, radical feminism was dismissed as something belonging to a bygone era, it didn’t exist anymore, it’s not what you should quote unless you do so in order to criticise it because the views of radical feminists are too ‘totalitarian’, ‘essentialist’, and ‘universal’ for these supposedly more ‘multi-vocal’ and ‘contradictory’ theoretical times (as if contradiction and difference were not features of previous feminisms – I’ll think I’ll elaborate on this in another post).
Bizarrely, I was being told that the idea that ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ are social constructs arrived with Judith Butler’s ‘Gender Trouble’ in 1990- Butler was who we were supposed to be lovin’ now, not the likes of Dworkin. In fact, Dworkin’s theory on gender and sexuality wasn’t even on the syllabus; she only appeared when it came to discussing pornography, because that’s the topic on which radical feminist theory had something to say, decrying all men as rapists and brutal objectifiers of women. It didn’t have anything to say about anything else, and even if it did, you shouldn’t be taking it seriously because it is ‘too simplistic’ for the purposes of higher-level academic study.
Fucking bollocks.
I wasn’t about to start cheating on Dworkin with the likes of Butler et al; I might flirt with them, test the water, see what they had to offer, but I wasn’t ready to swap one completely for the other. But then I also knew that my forays into postmodern feminist academic thought were showing up gaps and issues in the radical feminist theory I so adored, making it increasingly difficult to continue to completely align myself with that body of thought either.
So, I decided to return to Woman Hating to see what my new theoretical insights would bring to a re-reading of it, and see if perhaps for the purposes of my future theorising, rather than having to choose The One, (radicalDworkin or pomoButler?) to approach things with, I could instead hold onto some key elements of Dworkin but also recognise where others needed to come in. I mean, if we want to be all ‘multi-vocal’ and ‘contradictory’, it makes more sense to me to do things this way, rather than feeling like we should replace the old stuff completely with the new.
Here then are some of the things I picked up on in my re-reading:
- An intersectional analysis is present in Woman Hating, contrary to claims that radical feminism only reflected the concerns of white and middle-class women.
While Dworkin does see sex/gender as the root oppression – she doesn’t explicitly say this, but reading the book you interpret it as much – that’s not to say she’s completely oblivious to how race and class are tied up with sex/gender oppression. In the Introduction, she’s hugely critical of the women movement’s failure to address the class system and argues that the middle-class lifestyle is antithetical to women’s liberation:
“The women’s movement has not dealt with the bread-and-butter issue, and that is its most awful failure. There has been little recognition that the destruction of the middle-class lifestyle is crucial to the development of decent community forms in which all people can be free and have dignity. There is certainly no program to deal with the realities of the class system in Amerika. On the contrary, most of the women’s movement has, with appalling blindness, refused to take that kind of responsibility… middle-class women have absolutely refused to take any action, make any commitment which would interfere with, threaten, or significantly alter a lifestyle, a living standard, which is moneyed and privileged.” (p. 22, her emphasis)
There’s recognition of how women can oppress other women:
“Because of our participation in the middle-class lifestyle we were the oppressors of other people, our poor white sisters, our Black sisters, our Chicana sisters- and the men who in turn oppressed them. This closely interwoven fabric of oppression, which is the racist class structure of Amerika today, assured that wherever one stood, it was with at least one foot heavy on the belly of another human being.” (p. 21)
She acknowledges other facets to women’s social position which negate the notion that all women are primarily oppressed because they are women:
“The analysis in this book applies to the life situations of all women, but all women are not necessarily in a state of primary emergency as women. What I mean by this is simple… As a Native American, I would be oppressed as a squaw, but hunted, slaughtered, as a Native American. That first identity, the one which brings with it as part of its definition death, is the identity of primary emergency.” (pp. 23-24)
‘Consideration of race and class! Sex/gender isn’t always the primary oppression! Where’s the pornography, goddamnit?! I’ve been told Dworkin was a universalising, unreconstructed, man-hater! Someone’s obviously not been paying close enough attention.’
Too right.
Sure, her analysis could be improved. These hints at an intersectional approach to explain women’s oppression are not always extended to the rest of the text; for example, in her critique of beauty practices, she doesn’t discuss how they are as much racialised and classed as they are gendered, and there’s only a passing acknowledgement to how racial difference is eroticised – as well as sex/gender difference – in pornography.
But to say that she does not acknowledge other oppressions, unconsciously reflects the concerns of the white and middle-class, sees all women as primarily oppressed by virtue of their sex/gender, is inaccurate.
- While reading the sections on fairy tales and beauty practices, I swayed between two lines of thought.
The first was the realisation that the bulk of her critiques are only applicable to white, Western women, as the notion of romantic love and the nuclear family which she attacks are quite racially, economically, culturally, and historically specific, and I could only end up agreeing with those that suggest radical feminism’s tendency to assume that everyone is raised in nuclear families and expected to find The One to settle down with, is inaccurate and universalising.
However, as a white woman from a middle-class background, I did recognise the endurance of her critiques of romantic love, of the competitive jealousy that exists between women bred out of their socialisation that teaches them to gain the utmost approval from men, of the dream of a man coming along to take us away from all *this*, only to end up in a stifling monogamous relationship, with 2.4 children & the imperative to needlessly consume. I find these critiques still applicable because I’ve heard women my own age say that all they want is to find a man, get married, and settle down. My mum and one of my sisters still believe in that notion of ‘The One’. My youngest sister reads ‘More!’, a teen girls’ magazine, which is a bastion of compulsory heterosexuality, mocking men but also hankering after them, hailing the model of celebrity heterosexual romance as something to aspire to in all its vacuous glory.
I know these come across as very stereotypical, old-hat, Feminism 101 complaints, but they still apply because what they refer to still exists, still forms a large component of women’s lives. No, they’re not every woman’s experience, but the myth of happy-ever-after heterosexual romance and the standards of feminine attractiveness women are expected to conform to in order to secure that happy-ever-after still endure; and radical feminist theory such as that of Dworkin’s here, still has immense value in demystifying all this bullshit, and affords us the opportunity to conceive of some alternatives to how we live and love.
- One thing that really struck me on re-reading Woman Hating was how close Dworkin comes to positing people with ‘false consciousness’, particularly in terms of how we come to learn our sex/gender roles.
Now, while I share Dworkin’s social constructionist stance on the origin of patriarchal gender roles and forms of sexual expression, I did jerk at her absolutist approach to this. For example, she writes:
“We are programmed by the culture as surely as rats are programmed to make the arduous way through the scientist’s maze, and that programming operates on every level of choice and action.” (p. 155, her emphasis)
“As individuals, we experience ourselves as the center of whatever social world we inhabit. We think that we are free and refuse to see that we are functions of our particular culture… That culture no longer organically reflects us… it possesses and rules us, reduces us, obstructs the flow of sexual and creative energy and activity…” (p. 157, her emphasis)
I understand what she’s saying- that socialisation plays a key role in determining our traits and behaviours, and that when that socialisation occurs in a patriarchal culture, the effects of that socialisation can be stifling and non-conducive to individual expression, more authentic forms of being, and the full liberation of our desires and selves.
However, noting the language she uses to get this point across – talking about us being ‘ruled’ and ‘programmed’ by culture- I can see where the charges made against radical feminism for stripping women of their agency and treating them as ‘dupes’ come from. If we’re all just “functions” of our culture, completely possessed and reduced by it, then it leaves little room for any of us to deviate and make a break from it. Which clearly isn’t the case- people are capable of seeing through, and acting out against, The Bullshit. It also begs the question- if we’re all supposed to be mere tools of patriarchal culture how come Dworkin got away with it? What did she have that the rest of us don’t, that allowed her to shake off the shackles of patriarchal culture and it’s programming of us all into submissive, unquestioning automatons?
- Now, to the most radical and interesting section of the book, entitled ‘Androgyny’.
Pomo feminist academics take note:
This is where Dworkin says that gender is a social construct:
““man” and “woman” are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs… Culture as we know it legislates those fictive roles as normalcy.” (p. 174)
This is where Dworkin says that in order to maintain these “fictions”, two sexes have also had to be arbitrarily created:
“If there are two discrete biological sexes, then it is not hard to argue that there are two discrete modes of human behavior, sex-related, sex-determined… Hormone and chromosome research, attempts to develop new means of human reproduction… work with transsexuals, and studies of gender identity in children provide basic information which challenges the notion that there are two discrete biological sexes… That is not to say that there is one sex, but that there are many.” (p. 175)
This is where Dworkin says that it is culture that has defined heterosexuality as the ‘natural’ mode of sexuality, and therefore anything to the contrary as a “perversion”:
“Heterosexuality, which is properly defined as the ritualized behavior built on polar role definition, and the social institutions related to it… are “human nature”. Homosexuality, transsexuality, incest, and bestiality persist as the “perversions” of this “human nature” we presume to know so much about.” (p. 174)
This is where Dworkin says that, overall, sex and sexuality are multi-faceted and liberation would include recognition and realisation of this:
“We are, clearly, a multi-sexed species which has its sexuality spread along a vast fluid continuum where the elements called male and female are not discrete” (p. 183, her emphasis)
“If human beings are multisexed, then all forms of sexual interaction which are directly rooted in the multisexual nature of people must be part of the fabric of human life, accepted into the lexicon of human possibility, integrated into the forms of human community. By redefining human sexuality, or by defining it correctly, we can transform human relationship and the institutions which seek to control that relationship.” (p. 183)
“We must move away from the perverse, two-dimensional definitions which stem from sexual repression, which are the source of social oppression, and move toward creative, full, multidimensional modes of sexual expression.” (p. 157)
Dworkin is supposedly one of those rigid, prudish, fascistic radical feminists; essentialist, seeing everything in an either/or binary, obsessed with keeping the demarcations between the sexes intact, so that women can then claim their ‘difference’ from men.
But here, I think her writing is more reminiscent of queer and postmodern feminisms that call for the emergence and acceptance of more fluid, diverse, open, and libratory forms and expressions of sex/gender and sexuality.
There’s also a small section on transsexuality. Again, Dworkin’s thoughts on this are not reminiscent of the dominant radical feminist line (that associated with Janice Raymond/Sheila Jeffreys/Julie Bindel and oft-repeated in the blogosphere).
Firstly, she argues for trans people to have the surgery they want, and that it “should be provided by the community as one of its functions” (p. 186). She seems to reject the way transsexualism is pathologised, and says that stigmatisation and oppression of trans people is wrought by a society hell-bent on maintaining rigid sex/gender categories and roles.
Overthrowing these dictates would be liberation for cis and trans people alike:
“Transsexuality can be defined as one particular formation of our general multisexuality which is unable to achieve its natural development because of extremely adverse social conditions” (p. 186)
“by changing our premises about men and women, role-playing and polarity, the social situation of transsexuals will be transformed, and transsexuals will be integrated into community, no longer persecuted and despised” (p. 186)
Thinking about what Dworkin is saying here, I see the necessity for radical feminism to integrate trans issues and advocate for the rights of trans women as part of its wider project. In working to create a world in which trans people have rights, agency, and are spoken about and treated with humanity, we simultaneously tackle the arbitrary gender roles a patriarchal gender system assigns to us all, which it expects us to conform to, and discriminates against and punishes us when we don’t.
Perhaps more contentious is her premise that transsexuality would no longer exist following the eradication of patriarchally-defined polar gender roles:
“Either the transsexual will be able to expand his/her sexuality into a fluid androgyny, or, as roles disappear, the phenomenon of transsexuality will disappear and that energy will be transformed into new modes of sexual identity and behavior.” (p. 187)
Though, I think she makes a valid point here. I don’t think she’s suggesting that the desire to change one’s body and sex/gender identity would disappear – which is what society currently labels as ‘transsexuality’ – post-revolution; just that it wouldn’t be called ‘transsexuality’. The same could be said about any category of gender and sexual expression we’re currently bound up in – heterosexual, woman, lesbian, queer. Would these identifications and expressions also disappear post-revolution? There’s no clear-cut answer, but I think what Dworkin’s getting at, is that what are currently deemed ‘perversions’ no longer will be post-revolution, because the cis male/masculine + female/femininity = heterosexual ‘gender norm’ will no longer be the norm against which every other expression of sex/gender and sexuality is currently juxtaposed.
Overall then, her denouncement of the fictional & rigid sex/gender roles created by patriarchal society, of compulsory heterosexuality, and her calls for more open-minded and full conceptions of sex and sexuality in this chapter, bear no resemblance to the caricatures of Dworkin constructed in contemporary feminist academia and even here in the blogosphere. Whereas those caricatures often portray Dworkin as a representative of radical feminism’s supposed staid approach to sex and sexuality, comparing them to what she has actually written here… and well, it doesn’t quite add up. I don’t see any declarations from her of what a ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ female sexuality ‘should’ look like and be; which are the sort of charges made against Dworkin, that she conceives of female sexuality in a very narrow way (a charge I think is more accurate when directed at Sheila Jeffreys, but not Dworkin). But here Dworkin has deconstructed the very notions of what is ‘authentic’ and ‘female’, and the idea that a person does harbour a single sexuality.
Not that I want to appropriate Woman Hating by deeming its content ‘Queer’; that would be inaccurate and entirely subjective. I acknowledge that my own recent investment in other modes of feminist theory traditionally placed in opposition to radical feminism has prompted this reading- others may interpret it differently.
She does condemn models of sexuality based on dominant/subordinate identification and expression – such as they are bound up with patriarchal notions of masculinity and femininity, respectively – so while her ideas about sexuality here are less rigid than usually given credit for, she’s still going to be quoted by those who denounce, for example, BDSM, and to do so wouldn’t be a misappropriation of Dworkin’s words.
In essence, I may have come away from this second reading feeling a little less enamoured with Dworkin than I had been previously, but I’ve still found what she has to say here incredibly inspiring and life-affirming, freeing from the dictates of patriarchal femininity and heterosexuality.
No, I don’t agree with everything she says, and in light of my new knowledge, I think lines such as this (talking about the pressure to fit the feminine mould, particularly via participation in beauty rituals): “It forces women to be a sex of lesser accomplishment, weaker, as underdeveloped as any backward nation” (p. 116), are a little over-wrought.
But then, I think it’s important to be critical and point out the flaws in our favourite feminists, as opposed to just treating them as Goddesses. Feminist texts aren’t meant to be uncritically devoured, to be spat back out verbatim by their readers & unquestioningly quoted on protest banners.
Ideas and arguments are presented to us to be weighed up, measured against our experiences and ideas about the world, and then confirmed, amended, and improved accordingly. This is a form of feminist theorising. This is a form of feminist practice. Feminist theorising is feminist practice. If we critique, as well as applaud, the feminist theory we read, it means we can extend and improve future feminist theories, rather than continually regurgitating what’s already been written and seeing feminism stale and stagnate in the process.
But I don’t just think radical feminists should be more critical of radical feminist theory; I also think the absolute dismissal of radical feminist theory by some should also be pulled up. Radical feminist theory should not be uncritically dismissed as something belonging to a bygone era, essentialist, totalitarian, entirely focused on pornography. That is both factually and herstorically inaccurate, and means the foundational elements of such theory go unacknowledged only for the wheel to be unnecessarily re-invented a few years down the line. If you’re going to dismiss or agree with something it needs to be on the content of the argument, not on the label attached to that argument, and all feminisms have things we can find to agree and disagree with.
Ultimately, re-reading Woman Hating has further stressed to me the importance of feminism – and particularly radical feminism – to not make universal assumptions about women and their oppressions; but it also confirmed that there’s still a lot in radical feminist theory that remains relevant for contemporary debates about sex, gender, and sexuality, and that it can’t always be wheeled out to demonstrate the negative and rigid opinions that exist around this.
I also found its form & style all the more invigorating after my time spent ploughing through more Academically-inclined texts. Woman Hating isn’t dense, distant, academic prose written for the purposes of achieving academic credentials, but a text composed of radical phrases and thoughts delivered directly to the reader, no bullshit, allowing her to envision a world post women’s revolution. That’s reason enough for me to continue lovin’ Dworkin and taking inspiration from radical feminist writing.
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