Feminism and Philosophy

Margaret Cavendish - Project Vox

During the formative years of the discipline of philosophy there were many women who contributed to the body of philosophical works. In the 20th century and now in the 21st century, very few women have been recognized among the influential philosophers of their century. The reason for this is that women's philosophical contributions were first focused on women's issues specifically and then rebranded as its own "ism" in the form of feminism.

Mary Wollstonecraft

This shift excluded women from the company of philosophers and segregated them once more. Instead of a woman being seen as a female philosopher speaking from the feminine perspective or a broader human perspective on the same level as the male philosophers of her time, she is labeled a feminist instead and her observations are feminist rather than philosophical. She is considered part of a political movement and to be speaking for that objective rather than having what she says taken seriously as a philosophical contribution. The label of feminism has, ironically, robbed women of their voice in a greater discussion and it has robbed us of credibility in the sense that we are not taken seriously. Other than being included in the history books as feminists and radicals, women of intelligence are excluded. They get written off as having a self-interested political agenda and an emotional investment which precludes reasonable discourse.

I'm not entirely sure whether this was part of an organized campaign to marginalize women's voices in the intellectual field or if it was the product of culture and consensus once the dust had settled following the first political assertion of first the suffragist movement and later the women's rights movement. Perhaps it was a little bit of both, because it was one thing to accept the votes of women as representing equality on paper, quite another to put it into practice and actually listen to those voices and what they were saying. Including women in the intellectual sphere whose ideas are taken seriously and applied in society was a bridge too far.

Women got the vote, but they were not going to be allowed to influence the hegemony. To accept women as intellectual equals with men or give them any representative power in their own governing was to risk ignoring St. Paul's admonition against allowing women to teach men or have authority over them. While women may have gained the vote, they were still restricted to voting for men. Their vote was used to reinforce the status quo with the excuse that the country or the world was not ready to accept women in positions of power. Since then there have been women in positions of political authority in many countries, but the highest positions are not accessible to women in America.

St. Paul's Admonitions Against Women In Positions of Authority

In a previous post I talked about educational segregation. It takes the form of racial school segregation and gender segregation and class segregation. For the longest time in human history it was not considered necessary or even desirable for girls to be educated. School and education were for boys. For girls it was a waste of money and it wasn't necessary for girls to be able to read when they were only good for marriage and childbearing. To educate them would make them dissatisfied with their lot and give them dangerous ideas. That or they'd waste the ability to read on romance novels and get silly ideas. Either way, educating girls was seen as a waste of time.

Phillis Wheatley

This attitude was extended to slavery in early America. The education of slaves was resisted using the same excuses. Their brains weren't the same as those of a white, upper-class male. They wouldn't understand it and in doing so would form dangerous and wrong ideas. They could get hold of books of Enlightenment philosophers, for example, and make the mistake of thinking the ideas of universal rights and equality and dignity applied to them. That could be dangerous. They might come to think that they had a right to some say or representation in decisions being made about them. When they did get education, it was segregated and they did not receive the same education as the controlling demographic on the grounds that they weren't capable of understanding more complex ideas. If the theory is never tested objectively, it can never be proven wrong.

Ideas about who was superior and who was inferior had become developed and fixed in this time. Women were naturally inferior and here was a body of scientific and philosophical proof. Non-white people and people of other cultures and foreign countries were inferior because all of the accepted intellectual authorities said so. The fact that they all happened to belong to the same gender and social demographic as the people in charge wasn't mentioned. The fact that philosophers of different countries or gender or other demographics were never acknowledged. Their absence was taken to mean that they didn't exist or else according to the circular reasoning of Enlightenment thinkers, thinkers from different backgrounds were naturally inferior and so they shouldn't be listened to. They were good apologists for maintaining the status quo which supported their ideas of superiority. Which supported their authority. It failed also to take into account the fact that large segments of the population were kept effectively illiterate for centuries. Because how would that affect intellectual potential?

Sextus Impericus

Women's voices in philosophy were relabeled as feminism and got lost in the volumes of feminist pronouncements and political philosophy. It was a masterstroke of removing credibility from women. If women advocated for inclusion or political representation or any kind of equality in society, they were branded feminists and disregarded. Louder, more radical voices drowned out the serious intellectual voices of women. It made women out to be emotional and irrational and therefore not to be taken seriously. Sooner or later the accusation of a feminist political agenda would sidetrack any real discussion and the real feminists would argue about how many feminists could dance on the head of a pin and discuss plans for separatism and police each other's feminist credentials. We ended up both shooting ourselves in the foot and fighting among each other about what constitutes a real feminist. At this point feminism is more about internal political struggle than it is about doing real things to achieve equality in representation and under the law. It's more about ideology than positive change to address material problems facing women. It has also led to the accusation that women want to invert the hierarchy and place themselves at the top of it rather than simply wanting to have a share in making decisions or having just one set of rules apply to everyone.

Infographic: Inequality of Women In Science

Instead we got fobbed off with some minor concessions and concessions that only existed on paper and not in practice. We were told that we were getting equality and once we had it we weren't going to like it. Because "equality" as defined by the controlling demographic, white men, decided that women must rise to the implicitly superior standard of men in order to have equality. Women must meet the same expectations as men and meet the expectations society had of women in order to be considered equal. In order to be taken seriously. Equality wasn't about moving into the middle and making things fair for everyone. It accepted the standard set by men for men and expected equality to use that standard as the baseline.

Everything was based on the assumption that men were superior and women had to rise to that level in order to have earned equality. It was based on the assumption that equality must be earned. Instead of arriving at a new consensus and a new definition of the status quo, we relied on the assumptions of the old status quo to define the terms of equality. It's still using the same old framework of assumptions. If we wanted equality we'd have to keep up with them in a world designed by them. There was little talk of changing the framework and discarding the false assumption of superiority. It still appeals to men and puts them in the position of being the ultimate authority in deciding whether women deserve equality. It's basically the same as asking the person in charge if they feel that they deserve to keep being in charge. It's pretty absurd when looked at from that perspective to even ask the question about whether they believe their authority is legitimate or not. It's another example of circular reasoning. They are always going to believe that they belong in control and that all of their own thinkers and writers and intellectual authorities say so. They are never going to deny that they belong in authority because they believe in their own superiority. They've produced their own rationalizations for being in power and they've internalized those as their beliefs.

Until women's contributions to philosophy and intellectual discourse are separated from feminist ideology and taken seriously on their own intellectual or academic merits, women don't have equality. We don't get to influence the thoughts of our age in a way that actually affects policy or lets us participate as equals. Until we can have our ideas considered seriously as philosophy separated from gender politics, we will not have a voice in our own government. Equality as an ideal is not something that is earned or given. It is a natural state which is supposed to exist at birth. If you have to ask for equality, you aren't going to be given equality. Equality is something that is asserted, insisted upon as a right. Asking for it is the same as tacit acknowledgement of the superiority of those given the power to bestow it. It's buying into the idea that it is theirs to give, that their position of authority is legitimate. It's accepting the premise of your inferiority as a given. The very idea that equality could be open to debate or that it has to be qualified according to the standard set by those claiming superiority is kind of crazy. It's an internalized denial of your own equality.