Duly Noted
What are Women For?
What is that thing for? Find out. Per Olof Forsberg, Creative Commons.
Conservative columnist James Poulos got a lot of flack for his essay "What Are Women For?" and its equally long-winded and opaque sequel.
Poulos's main claim is that women have "privileged relationship to the natural world" through their bodies and that this has something to do with how women ought to live. He fancies himself an iconoclast, dispensing hard truths that neither liberals nor conservatives are ready to accept. So, what is this "privileged relationship" that nobody is willing to acknowledge? Do women have untapped powers to command animal familiars and sour milk at a glance? Disappointingly, Poulos just means that women can have babies.
"If my claim [that women are mostly for having babies] is doomed to be met with an avalanche of contempt, it seems likely that in our lifetimes social conservatism as we know it will be mocked, despised, and shamed right out of existence," Poulos whines.
By Jove, he's got it! If we reject the idea that biology determines a person's proper social role, then social conservatism turns out to be intellectually bankrupt and morally repugnant. Social conservatism says: i) There are exactly two genders, ii) You are biologically assigned to one of these at birth, iii) Each gender has a narrowly defined gender role that is esssential and unchanging across time and place, iv) Everyone has a duty to follow the role of the gender they were born into.
Conservatism says we should stick to the old ways because they're old. Any ten-year-old can see that "because we've always done it this way" isn't a persusasive argument for anything. So conservatives have to come up with some way imply that things that are old must be also good.
Poulos, like many conservatives, asserts that his preferred social mores are ordained by nature. How do we know they're natural? Usually the answer is "because we've always done it this way." But even if we grant the premise that these mores are natural, why should we feel constrained by nature? As conservatives are always reminding us, a lot of our natural impulses are bad.
Feminism says: Who cares what's natural? You have no obligation to meet other people's expectations about gender roles. These stereotypes have no moral force. Love who you want, parent if you want, express yourself, contribute to your community in the best way you know how.
Poulos implies that feminists want to jettison ideals of right and wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth. Feminism doesn't want to dispense with right and wrong, it wants to eliminate questions that are irrelevant to morality, like what shape a person's gentials are. If it's good to be strong and independent, or sensitive and nurturing--or all of the above--it's good regardless of whether you have a penis or a vagina.
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Comments
Poulos is so amazingly full of it. In reality, there is a group representing about 20% of the US public, who are hardcore authoritarian followers. These people are almost incapable of being anything other than social conservatives. They are completely impervious to shame and mockery. In addition, there is a large and extremely well-financed conservative movement that employs Poulos as well as thousands of other propagandists. His funding stream is in no danger, and he knows this.
His claim, I guess, is that it hurts him on a moral level when “the left” mocks him and views him with contempt. But even this is strange… when was the last time contempt actually hurt a person? What kind of “culture warrior” fights from an absolutely safe position, and claims to be hurt by his enemies’ attitude of contempt? Why is the damage which his side has inflicted on his enemies not sufficiently satisfying for him? If I were him I would just take sadistic pleasure in the pain and humiliation that will be felt by thousands of women over the next few years due to the extreme policies of Republicans.
What can you think about someone who essentially signs up to be Rush Limbaugh, yet claims not to take pleasure in the damage he’s causing, and affects to be worried by your natural hatred of him? It’s just nonsensical.
“Feminism says: Who cares what’s natural? You have no obligation to meet other people’s expectations about gender roles. These stereotypes have no moral force. Love who you want, parent if you want, express yourself, contribute to your community in the best way you know how.”
Sounds good to me. To some neanderthals, this is a problem?
What women are “for,” in fact, is everything except pumping out men’s babies. (Intelligent post-modern women, that is.)
In the immortal words of Andrea Dworkin: “Don’t Feed Males, Don’t Breed Males.” Here! Here!
Women have a social responsibility to themselves, and to their sisters - that’s it. Let the dumb droolers with the twizzler between their legs fend for themselves.
HP
good post
commented by user calf pain