The politically liberal, Marxist, essentialist feminists out
there are about as eager to jump on the corpse of the late Baroness Thatcher as
vultures on a recently dead animal. It is claimed that the late Baroness did
nothing to represent the collective interests of women; that she reduced the
size of the welfare state and somehow harmed women in the process (See the Guardian
article below).
I have a bit of news: there is no such thing as the collective
interests of women. There is no characteristic of the feminine gender which
renders women less capable of supplying their own needs than men.
Only the most disgusting ideological essentialism says that
women are inherently weak and need the state to protect them, thus justifying
state aid to raise them above the squalor of poverty.
Women have volition. They can choose how to act and behave
as rational actors who defend their own self-interest in the free market. The
fact that one is born a woman does not determine one’s status in life and does
not make one automatically deserving of the aid of the community.
It is often said that the feminist movement(s) have a choice
between attempting to elevate domestic work to the same status as labor outside
the home or arguing that women should be allowed to leave the domestic realm and
engage in non-domestic labor.
For those who want to elevate domestic labor and all of the
other essentialized qualities of women to the same status as work outside the
home, Margaret Thatcher is a bad example of a feminist.
A woman who had children and yet bridged the gap between
being a mother and a politician doesn’t make for a great example of the
oppressed woman that the Marxist feminists are looking for.
It is equally true that Thatcher is not the historical norm.
In her day, many women with children found it very difficult to have a life
outside the home while also raising children. If anything, that should make
Thatcher a great example, a heroine of sorts for women who do have children.
If Thatcher did not want to be recognized as a woman, but
for the policies she implemented, all the better. That suggests that she did
not view her gender as a significant marker of her identity and we would all be
the better for living in a world where everyone felt that way about their
gender.
In any case, it is wrong to villainize Thatcher as
anti-feminist because she believed in free market principles. One does not have
to support a ‘feminist ethic of care’ in order to believe that one should not
be discriminated against on the basis of one's gender.
In fact, I would
argue that it is far more productive to look at women as essentially equal and
capable of representing themselves in a free market place than it is to coddle
them with state subsidies to help them overcome the supposed barriers imposed by gender.
One can be a libertarian feminist; it’s just not in style
these days in an academy dominated by the fragments of Marxist and Frankfurt-style
political thinking.
And I have to add as a student of communication that if ever
you thought there was such a thing as the “feminine style” of communicating;
that women somehow communicate differently (perhaps more kind and
understanding?) than men. Or if you think that women cannot wield power in a ‘manly’
way, then please purge your essentialist mind and watch this video.
Rest in Peace Baroness Thatcher, may your spirit chastise
those members of your own gender who haven’t the sense to realize your contribution
to their own liberation.
A much better article that describes Thatcher in more sympathetic
terms:
I will add one more article that gives a slightly different view of things. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher
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