Hello and welcome to anyone who’s new around here! I love discussing feminist theory concepts and seeing how they relate to parenting. So far, we’ve very lightly covered some of what I consider to be the ‘essentials’ underpinning modern feminist theory: the social construction of identity and the ‘intersectional’ or interrelated nature of our identities, and the notion that our society privileges or rewards certain identities whilst disadvantaging others. There’s a few more key concepts we’ll discuss over the next few weeks: the difference between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, and the implications understanding gender in different ways has for different people, including people who don’t identify with the gender labels they were assigned at birth (trans* people), and how men can be feminists. I’ve listed a bit of a syllabus on this post, which also gives a bit of insight about the value of a working knowledge of feminist theory concepts to parents, especially mothers.
Before we move on, let’s do a quick review of what we’ve covered so far. And a note about terms: I haven’t put up any sort of glossary, but if there is any word or concept that you would like more clarity on, please let me know via comments or the Good Beginning facebook group.
Social Construction of Identity
This idea, introduced by Sally Haslanger in her 1989 article “Social Construction: Gender and Other Social Categories” (which you can read at this link: Social Construction of Gender) asserts that gender - the way that we know ourselves to be men or women - is a ‘socially constructed category’. By this she means that it is not something which is inborn, rigid, immutable, or in any fundamental way ‘true’; instead it’s something that is created and enforced by our social conditions and rules.
Depending on your previous engagement with feminist thought, this might either seem like a very new idea - that the categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are something that is , to use Haslanger’s words ‘not inevitable’ - or this might seem like a problematically old idea which elides the deep-seated feelings some trans* individuals have about their gender expression. Either way, the idea that there is a cultural agenda or message which creates and reinforces our society’s framework of sex and gender is useful to me as a feminist and mother. It helps me to see the gendered expectations placed upon my children by society as ones that they are not required to fulfil, and encourages me to ask about the motivating factors behind those expectations. Who benefits from the system? Whose interests are maintained?
Intersectionality
While holding in our minds the idea that social categories are by and large products of social construction, we explored the idea of intersectionality, introduced by Dr. Kimberle Crenshaw in her 1989 article “Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Colour” (which you can read at this link: https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mapping-margins.pdf). The basic concept of Intersectionality describes the way that everyone’s identity is made up of various parts or layers. In the article, Dr. Crenshaw specifically discusses Black feminism and the ways in which it is impossible for Black women to prioritize being women or being Black; everyone inseparably belongs to multiple categories at once. An intersection of less socially valued identity categories combines to put people at a greater disadvantage than others in society.
We’ll discuss matricentric feminism later on, in the part of the series especially about feminist motherhood (I can’t wait!!), but it’s worth highlighting now that our identity as mothers (or as Andrea O’Reilly would say, mother-women) is inseparable and in conversation with our identity as women (or however we know ourselves to be gendered individuals), who have a racialised identity, a sexual orientation, a nationality and/or immigration status, a body which is enabled or disabled in society, and in some cases a religious identity. How does intersectionality affect your children? Can you see how aspects of their identity combine to create an idea in people’s minds of who they are, and who they might grow up to be?
White Privilege
After considering how identity categories - although not ‘inevitable’ in their makeup - work together in our current society to advantage or disadvantage people in different ways, we tried to understand more about the nature of that privilege. Peggy MacIntosh’s 1988 article “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies” guided us through some questions and scenarios to help bring everyday advantage to light. Comparing the unearned, un-asked-for privilege awarded to some in society based on race, sex, or gender to an invisible backpack full of useful tools, she gives scenarios (which you can read about here) that a white reader can relate to her own life. The examples highlight how people from socially privileged categories who have been personally disadvantaged (by unfortunate events, or by their other intersectional identity categories), still have received more favourable treatment socially than they would have, being the exact same person with the same circumstances, but from a socially disadvantaged category. The key question in the piece is “Having described [unearned privilege], what will I do to lessen or end it?”
Compulsory Heterosexuality
MacIntosh uses an example in her article showing how society ‘normalizes’ or privileges heterosexuality as the usual, expected, and ‘right’ mode of being. Adrienne Rich, a poet and feminist thinker (whose work on motherhood will also feature in our motherhood mini series), began writing about this idea in 1980, with her paper ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’. The essence of the article identifies something that we all experience, and that our children experience, although you may not have noticed (and that’s OK): the cultural assumption that everyone is heterosexual until proven otherwise (and even, indeed, sometimes after it’s disproven), and that being heterosexual is the normal state of affairs. The article was written when it was considerably less comfortable for LGBTQ+ people to be ‘out’ in public, but even in our comparatively queer-embracing culture, the set-point for relationships and people's sexual identities is heterosexual unless further information is disclosed.
This affects us, and our children, in a number of ways. It makes it a climate where non-heterosexual people have to ‘come out’ - to disclose their sexuality - and decide at all of these junctures (which happen lots - it doesn’t just come up when you’re directly discussing a partner, but when people use ‘gender clues’ or ‘sexuality clues’ - things like coded parts of your appearance - to try and determine your sexuality) whether or not it’s safe to do so. It makes invisible the queer identities of people whose relationships appear heterosexual on the outside - for instance, for queer and bisexual women who partner with men - which can feel jarring, isolating, or like they are keeping back some kind of secret from people they know.
It affects our children by teaching them to assume they are heterosexual themselves, with the implicit message that if they’re not, they are somehow less than, not normal, not what we expected. Even very young children start to absorb these messages, through exposure to media where all the characters are straight, by people making jokes about ‘boyfriends’ and ‘girlfriends’ when they have different-sex playmates, and certainly by overhearing and noticing the undercurrents of homophobia and transphobia in society.
There are some other themes in this article, including the perspective that sexuality can be a political choice (rather that something fixed and inborn), and that male power, or patriarchy, shapes the way in which our relationships are formed. Much like MacIntosh, Rich asks her heterosexual readers to be willing to critique the social institution of heterosexuality, while still being in heterosexual relationships, and to refuse to settle for having heterosexual privilege while other women are disadvantaged.
And that’s what we’ve covered so far! Please jump in with thoughts, questions and connections, and we’ll step ahead to some notions about gender identity on Friday.