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.  

On the Capitalist System and Small Business Owners

America has been almost wholly given over to capitalism, a system which enriches few, impoverishes as many as it enriches and which is presently attempting to dismantle our cherished liberties. William Wordsworth in an excerpt from his poem England, 1802, says it best. 


The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.


It's very difficult to deny that wealth has become associated with social affluence and status in America, 2011.  We hear wealth praised every day in the media, not directly of course, but what else is all the political pandering about 'making the economy safe for entrepreneurs' about. These entrepreneurs or small business owners who the Republicans (and even some Democrats) pander to are the wealthy or those trying to obtain wealth through the founding of a business, which according to almost all Republicans will always be small and harmless, integrated into the community and owned by your next door neighbor. 


The truth is this, there is not one aspect of being a business owner (small or large) that ennobles a person. As Wordsworth says, "Plain living and high thinking are no more." If anything business ownership makes a person more susceptible to the vices of greed and envy and perhaps other vices such as gluttony and pride. Though I am obliged to credit capitalism with attempting to eliminate sloth by rewarding people for their labor. Yet even then, the capitalist system does not encourage people to take an interest in their work merely for the sake of the work but instead encourages them through the distribution of the filthy lucre we call money. 


Some weeks ago (September 7th) Ron Paul, a candidate whom I respect more than other Republicans, argued in the Republican presidential debate that government organizations like the TSA should be dismantled and the industry deregulated, allowing pilots to carry guns and private security firms to monitor passengers boarding planes. This suggestion received a great deal of applause from the audience. The American public, or at least Republicans, seems convinced in this instance as well as in the bigger picture, that businesses do a better job of providing services than the government. In the sense that they could possibly make the process more efficient, saving time and money, I agree. 


Imagine for me a deregulated industry and a private security firm doing the job of the TSA. Inevitably, these unregulated goons working for the airline would racially profile customers. Free from the oppressive jackboot of government regulation, there would be no incentive to prevent this racial profiling. We have also to think of what this private security firm would do with our data and information. Would they be given access to the no-fly lists generated by the state department, or national security databases? Would they store the naked images taken of us as we passed through a scanner where they could be hacked or leaked? On the whole the only thing which would prevent any of this from happening or offer any redress would be an extensive litigation process which no one wants to undergo. 


Let us remember that regulations (nasty rules which bind the noble hands and feet of America's entrepreneurs)  conceptually include laws that make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex, race or religion when hiring an employee or selling a product to a customer. The concept of regulation also includes laws which prevent entrepreneurs from firing pregnant women who recently gave birth or paying men doing the same job more than women. Regulation (from the mouth of Ron Paul himself) also includes the minimum wage. Imagine eliminating the minimum wage which is not even a proper living wage. The poor would only become poorer, but businesses, driven by their bottom lines, would thrive as they do in China today.


The simple matter of fact is that the American dream is devoid of moral virtue. There is no incentive in the capitalist system for morality. Capitalists, entrepreneurs, small business owners (by any name) are of necessity driven only by one direct motive, profit. Doing what is right will not always be compatible with making money. It is this role which the government fulfills, to protect the poor and the middle class from the oppressions of the world's new feudal lords, entrepreneurs. 


As Wordsworth says in the most famous stanza of England, 1802:


IT is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flow'd, 'with pomp of waters, unwithstood...
...Should perish; and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever...*

Americans, the inheritors and guardians of that freedom, which is by no means exclusively British or even western, might take a note from Wordsworth and not "change swords for ledgers and desert the student's bower for gold." While we yet have the power at the ballot box, we should not exchange our ideals for economic prosperity and our moral virtue for a system that is servant to the bottom line. 

*For the full text of the poem go to: http://rantingstan.blogspot.com/2008/10/english-poetry-england-1802.html

I wish to add that although I initially wrote this in an earnest spirit, it no longer represents the fruit of my thinking in its entirety. I will leave it up because I believe that it conveys to my readers a picture of the progression of my thought.

Moments of Silence

What is a moment of silence?

Is it a response to our “disbelief, terrible sadness and quiet unyielding anger”

Does it demand our introspection,

Or do we know exactly what we feel in that moment?

In that moment of political, social silence,

undefined by the simple parameters of time,

are we fully aware of the empires we make?

Should we accept the silence?

Who does silence honor?

What does it say of a nation that it is

Speechless. Unprepared. Non-responsive. Irresolute.

In that moment we redefine ourselves recklessly.

That moment is stolen time, never to be returned.

It is a child that cannot care for those who occasioned its feeble and uncanny existence.

Its irony is deafening to a race distinguished by speech.

It is a moment of surrender,

To something new and foreign

Not terror but fear.

In that moment, while terror played the fool

Justice removed her blind

To gape at the spectacle

And despair with a tiny prick

Stole her virtue in the street.

So what have we to say of moments of silence

They are imperial bridges across the Rubicon

Assembled by the people working in silence

Why I can Finally Break with the Pied Piper President

It's been a long road, getting from the beginning of the Obama presidency to here. At first, I reluctantly accepted the fact that he was president. I fell for the proverbial snake-charming music of Obama's middle-of-the-road policies and the political ideals embodied in The Audacity of Hope, which if it is a sincere work, may remain one of the most poignant critical works on twentieth-century American poltics.

Unfortunately, unlike books, people change based on the circumstances with which they are presented. President Obama, who once seemed a political dove in a world of rats, has departed from his adherence to liberalism (and I mean classical political liberalism without any connection to modern "liberals"). I am referring to his refusal to seek congressional approval for the war in Libya under the War Powers Act of 1973. Charlie Savage writes the following in the New York Times: "The theory Mr. Obama embraced holds that American forces have not been in “hostilities” as envisioned by the War Powers Resolution..." (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/world/africa/18powers.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp)

But as John Boehner, who I am loath to admit has a point, argues: "We’re spending $10 million a day. We’re part of an effort to drop bombs on Qaddafi’s compounds. It just doesn’t pass the straight-face test, in my view, that we’re not in the midst of hostilities.” Mr. Boehner is correct, we are clearly at war with Libya. While it is a war that clearly has merit, sidestepping the process of constitutional approval places the legislature in a subordinate position to the executive. The necessary balance of powers envisioned in our constitution and given expression in the War Powers Act is destroyed. This sets a dangerous precedent for the expansion of executive power.

After all, even the cowboy-turned-President George Bush (whose somewhat authoritarian image earned him the moniker King George) sought congressional approval for the military actions he approved as president. The president should not be able to avoid congressional approval and this is one issue over which this rattlesnake is forced to part ways with the Pied Piper President and say "don't tread on me."