Feminist Thought

A More Comprehensive Introduction

Rosemarie Tong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429974878
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A classic resource on feminist theory, Feminist Thought offers a clear, comprehensive, and incisive introduction to the major traditions of feminist theory, from liberal feminism, radical feminism, and Marxist and socialist feminism to care-focused feminism, psychoanalytic feminism, and ecofeminism. The fifth edition has been thoroughly revised, and now includes a new chapter on Third Wave and Third Space Feminism. Also added to this edition are significantly expanded discussions on women of color feminisms, psychoanalytic and care feminisms, as well as new examinations of queer theory, LGBTQ and trans feminism.

Learning tools like end-of-chapter discussion questions and the bibliography make Feminist Thought an essential resource for students and thinkers who want to understand the theoretical origins and complexities of contemporary feminist debates.

1

Liberal Feminism

Liberal feminism originated during the “first wave” of feminist activity, roughly from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1950s; came into full flower in the so-called “second wave” of feminist activity, roughly from the 1960s through the 1980s; and began to transform and restructure itself at the start of the so-called “third wave” of feminist activity, approximately from the 1990s to the present. The first wave of liberal feminism centered on women’s suffrage; the second wave concentrated on gender equity and equal opportunity for women; and the third wave shifted focus to egalitarian concerns, equality of outcome, and intersectionality theory.

Conceptual Roots

In Feminist Politics and Human Nature,¹ Alison Jaggar observed that liberal political thought generally locates our uniqueness as human beings in our capacity for rationality. The belief that reason distinguishes us from other animals is, however, relatively uninformative, so liberals have attempted to define the concept in various ways, stressing either its moral or its prudential aspects. A definition of reason as the ability to comprehend the rational principles of morality stresses the value of individual autonomy. In contrast, defining reason as the ability to determine the best means to achieve some desired end emphasizes the value of self-fulfillment.²

Whether liberals define reason largely in moral or prudential terms, they nevertheless concur that a just society allows individuals to exercise their autonomy and to pursue their conceptions of the good life. Liberals justify the Western system of individual rights as constituting a framework within which each person can choose a particular set of goods, provided one does not deprive others of theirs. Such a priority defends religious freedom, for example, not on the grounds that it will increase the general welfare or that a godly life is inherently worthier than a godless one but simply on the assumption that people have a right to practice or not practice their own brand of spirituality. The same holds for all rights liberals generally identify as fundamental.

The idea that the right takes priority over the good complicates the construction of a just society. For if it is true, as most liberals claim, that resources are limited and each individual, even when restrained by altruism, has an interest in securing as many available resources as possible, then creating political, economic, and social institutions that maximize the individual’s freedom without jeopardizing the community’s welfare poses a challenge.

When it comes to state interventions in the private sphere (family or home), most liberals agree that the less the state intrudes into our bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, recreation rooms, and nurseries, the better.³ The thinking is that all people need a place where, among family and friends, they can shed their public personae and be themselves. When it comes to state intervention in the public sphere (civil or political society),⁴ however, a difference of opinion emerges between classical liberals on the one hand and egalitarian liberals on the other.⁵

Classical liberals think the state should limit its intrusions or interventions to protecting civil liberties or fundamental rights (e.g., property and voting rights; freedom of speech, religion, and association). They also think that the state should let individuals earn as much as they want within the free market. Classical liberals believe we achieve the ideal of equality through equality of opportunity. In contrast, egalitarian liberals believe the state should focus on minimizing economic disparities as well as protecting civil liberties. As they see it, differences based on initial advantage, talent, and sheer luck influence individual participation in the market. At times, these differences are so great as to constitute liabilities, and in the absence of offsetting adjustments, some individuals cannot earn their fair share of what the market has to offer. On this view, egalitarian liberals call for state intervention in the economy, for instance, by providing legal services, school loans, food stamps, low-cost housing, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The idea is to prevent the market from inhibiting access to basic social goods for those at a disadvantage through no fault of their own. For egalitarian liberals, therefore, we achieve the ideal of equality through equality of outcome.

Most contemporary liberal feminists favor egalitarian over classical liberalism. In fact, when feminist Susan Wendell described contemporary liberal feminist thought, she stressed its “commit[ment] to major economic reorganization and considerable redistribution of wealth.”⁶ Very few, if any, contemporary liberal feminists favor the elimination of state-funded safety nets for society’s most vulnerable members, for example.

Because it would be impossible to discuss all liberal feminist movements and organizations in a single book, we focus here on a representative set of classical and egalitarian liberal feminists. More specifically, we present Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor, the women’s suffragists in the United States, Betty Friedan, and the members of the National Organization for Women (NOW) as examples of classical liberal feminists. In contrast, we present Martha Nussbaum and Elizabeth Anderson as egalitarian liberal feminists. We aim to accurately characterize the overall goal of liberal feminism, which, like Nussbaum, we view as the creation of “a just and compassionate society.”⁷

Before the “First Wave”: Equal Education

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1799) wrote at a time when the economic and social position of bourgeois (upper- and middle-class) European women was in decline. Up until the eighteenth century, women as well as men had done productive work (work that generated income to support a family). But then the forces of industrial capitalism began to draw labor out of the private home and into the public workplace. This industrialization moved slowly and unevenly, having the greatest impact on working-class white women who needed to work outside the home to survive. In contrast, bourgeois white women had little incentive to work outside the home or, if they had servants, even inside it. They relied on their well-to-do husbands or fathers to support them. African American women were generally already in the workforce, laboring as slaves.⁸

In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,⁹ Mary Wollstonecraft compared women of privilege to members of “the feathered race,” birds confined to cages with nothing to do but preen and “stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch.”¹⁰ Bourgeois white ladies were, in Wollstonecraft’s estimation, kept women who sacrificed health, liberty, and virtue for whatever prestige, pleasure, and power their husbands (or fathers or other male relations) could provide. As she saw it, these women, not allowed to exercise outdoors lest their skin tan, lacked healthy bodies. Not permitted to make their own decisions, they lacked liberty. Discouraged from developing their powers of reason, they lacked virtue.

Although Wollstonecraft did not talk about socially constructed gender roles per se, she denied that women are, by nature, more pleasure seeking and pleasure giving than men. She reasoned that if confined to the same cages as women, men would develop the same kind of “female” characteristics.¹¹ Denied the chance to develop their rational powers, to become moral persons with concerns, causes, and commitments beyond personal pleasure, men would, like women, become overly “emotional,” a term Wollstonecraft associated with hypersensitivity, extreme narcissism, and excessive self-indulgence.

Accordingly, Wollstonecraft abhorred philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile.¹² In this classic of educational philosophy targeting the literate bourgeoisie, Rousseau portrayed the development of rationality as the most important educational goal for boys but not for girls. He was committed to sexual dimorphism, the view that rational man is the perfect complement for emotional woman, and vice versa.¹³ As he saw it, men should be educated in such virtues as courage, temperance, justice, and fortitude, whereas women should be educated in patience, docility, good humor, and flexibility. Thus, Rousseau’s ideal male student, Emile, studies the humanities and the social and natural sciences, whereas Rousseau’s ideal female student, Sophie, dabbles in music, art, fiction, and poetry while refining her homemaking skills. Rousseau hoped sharpening Emile’s mental capacities and limiting Sophie’s would make of Emile a self-governing citizen and a dutiful head of family and of Sophie an understanding, responsive wife and a caring, loving mother.

Wollstonecraft agreed with Rousseau’s projections for Emile but not with those for Sophie. Drawing on her familiarity with bourgeois white women, she predicted that, fed a steady diet of “novels, music, poetry, and gallantry,” Sophie would become a detriment rather than a complement to her husband, a creature of poor sensibility rather than good sense.¹⁴ Her hormones surging, her passions erupting, her emotions churning, Sophie would show no practical sense in performing her wifely and, especially, her motherly duties.

Wollstonecraft’s cure for Sophie was to provide her, like Emile, with the kind of education that permits people to develop their rational and moral capacities, their full human potential. At times, Wollstonecraft constructed her argument in favor of educational parity in utilitarian terms. She claimed that unlike emotional and dependent women, who routinely shirked their domestic duties and indulged their carnal desires, rational and independent women tended to be “observant daughters,” “affectionate sisters,” “faithful wives,” and “reasonable mothers.”¹⁵ The truly educated woman would be a major contributor to society’s welfare. Wollstonecraft’s line of reasoning in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is remarkably similar to that of eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals—namely, that unless people act autonomously, they act as less than fully human persons.¹⁶ Wollstonecraft insisted that women as well as men deserve an equal chance to develop into autonomous agents.

Repeatedly, and somewhat problematically, Wollstonecraft celebrated reason, usually at the expense of emotion. As Jane Roland Martin said, “In making her case for the rights of women . . . [Wollstonecraft] presents us with an ideal of female education that gives pride of place to traits traditionally associated with males at the expense of others traditionally associated with females.”¹⁷ Wollstonecraft never questioned the value of traditional male traits. On the contrary, she simply assumed that they were good and traditional female traits were rationally and morally deficient.

Throughout the pages of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft urged women to become autonomous decision makers. But beyond insisting that the path to autonomy passes through the academy, she provided women with little concrete guidance.¹⁸ Although Wollstonecraft toyed with the idea that women’s autonomy might depend on their economic and political independence from men, in the end she decided welleducated women did not need to be economically self-sufficient or politically active to be autonomous. In fact, she dismissed the women’s suffrage movement as a waste of time because she saw the whole system of legal representation as merely a “convenient handle for despotism.”¹⁹

Despite the limitations of her analysis, Wollstonecraft presented a vision of a woman strong in mind and body, a person who is not a slave to her passions, her husband, or her children. For Wollstonecraft, the ideal woman is less interested in self-indulgence than in exercising self-control.²⁰ To liberate herself from the oppressive roles of emotional cripple, petty shrew, and narcissistic sex object, a woman must obey the commands of reason and discharge her wifely and motherly duties faithfully.

Wollstonecraft most wanted personhood for women. She claimed that a woman should not be reduced to the “toy of man, his rattle,” which “must jingle in his ears whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused.”²¹ In other words, a woman is not a mere instrument of a man’s pleasure or happiness. Rather, she is, as Kant would say, an end in herself, a rational agent whose dignity consists in having the capacity for self-determination.²²

“First Wave” Liberal Feminism: Equal Liberty and the Suffrage

Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill

Writing approximately one hundred years later, Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill joined Wollstonecraft in celebrating rationality. But they conceived of it not only morally, as autonomous decision making, but also prudentially, as calculative reason, or the use of the mind to achieve goals. Unlike Wollstonecraft, Taylor and Mill claimed that permitting individuals to pursue their own preferences maximized liberty, provided the individuals did not hinder, obstruct, or harm others in the process. Taylor and Mill also departed from Wollstonecraft in insisting that to achieve equality between the sexes, society must provide women with the same political rights and economic opportunities (as well as the same education) enjoyed by men.

Taylor and Mill authored, either separately or together, several essays on equality between women and men. Scholars generally agree that the two coauthored “Early Essays on Marriage and Divorce” (1832), that Taylor wrote “Enfranchisement of Women” (1851), and that Mill w...