An Essentialist Feminist meets a Liberal Feminist or Why I don't think Feminists should play the Victim

E – Hi there, may I tell you about my movement?

L – Sure!

E – Women and men have their own set of essential qualities which define their respective sexes. For centuries, since the fall of the matriarchy, men have been glorifying their essential qualities (masculine qualities) while denegrating the essential qualities of women (feminine qualities).

L – That sounds horrible.

E – It essentially is.

L – Do you mind if I ask you some questions about all of that because I think I'm a little confused?

E – Sure!

L – Well, first what makes a quality essential?

E – That means it is associated with the entity in question, in this case the essential qualities of men are associated with men while the essential qualities of women are associated with women.

L – That's interesting. So how are these qualities associated with men or women?

E – Based on their use by one of the sexes.

L – So association is based on use?

E – Yeah, basically.

L – Are there some members of one sex that display the qualities associated with the other sex i.e. women that display qualities associated with men or men that display qualities associated with women.

S – Yes of course, there are lots of those types. A woman named Joan of Arc was a great military leader and even though King James I of England was male, he displayed many negative qualities which the patriarchy associates with women.

L – Was Joan of Arc considered a man because of her valor or King James I a woman because of his indecisiveness?

S – No, of course not that is silly.

L – So, despite their abnormal deviation from the set of essential qualities associated with their sex they remained members of their own sex?

S – Yes, isn't that obvious?

L – I'm the one asking questions. Why then are those qualities (valor and indecisiveness) associated with men and women respectively?

S – Because the consensus of history shows that generally speaking those qualities were associated with men or women.

L – Why does history say that when there are clearly exceptions to the rule?

S – Oh that's the good part. History is just this big cover up, as part of which men have striven to hide from memory those men who break the pattern and to suppress the memory of women who did not conform to their predetermined role.

L – Have men been successful in this cover up, because if so that would really suck?

S – No, because as we are aware of their attempt to do so and have acted to prevent its success or the continuation of the cover up.

L – Well that's good news. But is it possible that as part of this vast coverup they created a system of labels that associates certain preferred qualities with men and non-preferred qualities with women?

S – What do you mean?

L – It's kind of like they tried to deal us a bad hand in a card game by deliberately giving us bad cards to play with.

S – Oh yes, they definitely did that.

L – So then, should we accept this bad hand i.e. their attempt to label certain good qualities which lead to success as masculine and other qualities which do not lead to success as feminine?

S – You know what, those qualities that you're talking about, those are the qualities of men which they have glorified through the creation of a patriarchal hierarchy and a heteronormative society.

L – But are those qualities the essential qualities of men or is it simply that they would have us to believe that they are the only ones who can have those qualities?

S – It is possible that the male hierarchy has deceived us into choosing to use rhetorical tools (as well as display other qualities) which are inherently faulty. Tools such as rhetorical self-identification as the victim or rhetorical victimization which inherently place us in a subordinate role to the offending patriarchy.

L – How then should we respond when women self-identify themselves as victims (use the rhetoric of victimization) in the media?

S – With expressions of disgust. We are not subordinate to the patriarchy, we are equal to it and therefore we should not be constrained to using tools which only reinforce its power over us as victims.

L – So the logical conclusion of our conversation is that this whole system of essential qualities for men and women has been designed by men to trap us through the used of sex-based associations and labels?

S – Yes, we must reject the tools they have given us and take up the tools which they reserve for themselves.

L – But will the master's tools ever dismantle the master's house?

S – Haven't I heard that somewhere before? But the answer is that you have set up a false metaphor. It is not the master's house, it is the house if of all humankind who are created with equal rights to live in it and utilize the tools associated with it.

L – Just a thought: Is the logical conclusion of liberal feminism the abolition of sex based associations and the creation of a gender-blind society?

S – I think so, but honestly I am tired of thinking about all this. Let's go have a cigarette.

Fin

Sober Holidays

     Next week, I can look forward to the following: apathetic attitudes toward school work, repeated requests to watch Christmas films, quarrelsome questions about failing grades and a persistent preoccupation with the two weeks between Friday, December 16, 2011 and Tuesday, January, 2012. I will respond to all of these questions with the universally befuddling response: “I'm sorry, the computer says no...” But next week is really inconsequential, a symptom of a larger problem, that problem is that when the bell rings on Friday and my students leave the school, they will return to me more or less unchanged. Let me state clearly that I am not against Christmas as a religious or cultural holiday. But I am against the possibility of its acting as a giant “weekend” of relief for both my students and society at large in this nation.

     Economically, this nation is on the precipice of disaster. Our government has failed to address the real issues of our time, a few of which are: our nation's growing debt which we have no plan to repay, the completely disregarded impact our nation's industry has on the climate as well as our failed education system which public policy has failed to address. Americans have a tendency to behave like imperial citizens, many of us resign our responsibility to others who will “figure it out” but America is no empire, though its citizens often behave that way. Political discourse in a republic such as our own goes both ways: leaders shape public opinion and the public tells leaders what it wants to hear. The public has failed in its duty on these issues. On the left, politicians pander to the public on the dole which cares more about its benefits than the nation's economic prosperity. On the right, politicians pander to a public willfully blind toward climate change, which is symptomatic of the right's refusal to accept the conclusions of modern science.

     Underlying the first two problems is the third problem, one which I confront daily, our failed education system. Unless we first fix our education system, we cannot hope for a public discourse which meaningfully interacts with the real issues of our time in an effective way. The blame lies as much with parents, students and families as it does with teachers, principals and the system. If parents and students became more interested and involved in the educational process, we would be one step closer to a solution.

     This nation has not earned a vacation. We enter this holiday season with unresolved issues both at the societal and political levels and no one should forget that this Christmas. There are no bombers flying overhead or armies waiting to invade, but the same apprehension which loomed over London in December of 1940 should loom over us as well. The threat is not the same. The threat is that we habitually fail to recognize our own problems and often allow them to go unresolved to the point of crisis. So when you leave your job to celebrate Christmas, whenever that may be, ask yourself if you have earned the break, if you have accomplished anything worthy of reward. If your answer is yes then by all means have a merry Christmas relaxing with your family. But if not, I hope you accomplish something over the break and wish you the most sober of holidays.  

An Apology for my Methods

I recently taught a lesson on "Abraham and the Patriarchs" in my World History class. I chose to refer to the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as myths, which I told the children were "enduring stories told to convey ideas." This lesson drew considerable controversy, with many well-educated friends weighing in on my decision. But to all of you who did weigh in, I welcome the chance to respond to your thoughts and concerns. There are three arguments in my apology. The first concerns academic values, the second the why certain cognitive models are inapplicable with the final argument demonstrating why this method is best from the Christian perspective.

1. 

One of the very first arguments devised against my methods was that children are not cognitively developed enough to understand how a myth can be empirically false and yet true in a more abstract sense. I do not think this applies only to children, there are many adults who cannot make such distinctions. 

If therefore, people (children or adults) are incapable of making those distinctions should we merely let them proceed believing that events which are "regarded as historical although not verifiable" are grounded in the empirical reason used in academic settings. I should say not, in the absence of evidence which explicitly supports the existence of the patriarchs we can draw no conclusion about their existence based on reason and logic. It does no good to ignore the stories as they already know them. Therefore, we ought to teach such stories in school as 'myths' or possibly 'legends' but certainly not history. Even if people cannot grasp the distinction, secondary schools are designed to reinforce the individual's ability to reason not to reinforce cultural or religious values. Ideally, a teacher should also consider the various religious backgrounds of students in their class, though mine are quite uniformly somewhat christian.  

2. 

Bloom's taxonomic model, created in the 1950s and introduced to me by one of my critics, suggests that children start out learning by remembering, understanding and applying before proceeding to analyzing, evaluating and creating as represented in the following diagram taken from: edorigami.wikispaces.com.   

This seems simple enough but it fails in two ways. First, it fails to take into account the complex environment in which children learn. Children in High School are frequently asked to design projects and compose essays or other assignments. Categorically, these skills belong to the highest level of thinking - creating. By neglecting to teach them how to analyze and evaluate before creating we are by default reducing the quality of their creations. For a more detailed criticism of this model see: http://www.utechtips.com/2007/01/08/blooms-taxonomy-revisited/. In my case, it would be unfair for me to allow my students to construct a poster about the patriarchs if I had not offered them the information necessary to analyze the story and distinguish between important and unimportant "facts." 

Moreover, most students from the bible-belt already know the story of the patriarchs from churches and Sunday schools. For me to recite the stories would be redundant. If I offered them a slightly different way to look at and interpret the stories, education would take place. In fact, according to this model's approach we might move out of the lower categories and into the higher ones by basing the lesson on "facts" already in their minds and then offering a new way to look at them. 

3. 

Aside from the academic reasons I have for refusing to teach "Abraham and the Patriarchs" as historical fact, there are religious reasons for doing so as well. The present system encourages thinking about the world in terms of empirical facts and simply put, the Bible was not meant to withstand such scrutiny. Thus Christians who suddenly become aware of the "facts" have a tendency to, out of shock, reject the facts or reject their religion. Neither of these outcomes are desirable. 

Christian children do not need to be taught using a system of absolutes, it is no good in the long run to introduce facts now and introduce qualifiers later especially when it could affect a person's faith. Religious and philosophical truth have abstract characters and should be recognized as such.  

Bertrand Russell, one of Christianity's foremost critics argues that the only reason people become religious is because of indoctrination from an early age. Unfortunately, he is correct in more cases than he is not. That is why it is unconscionable to me to skip over the controversial bits (and so leave students in the dark) merely to prevent challenging their faith. I will not contribute to a system that essentially reinforces children's cultural and religious notions and results in their being good docile adult church members who listen to their priest and sing their mass in Latin... A person's faith is part of their personal journey which ought to be challenged at every turn not coddled and given the weak and unreliable support of empirical evidence. 

I know that many of you may disagree with me and please continue to do so, I find your comments enlightening, but I hope this post has served to justify to you my teaching methods.