“Worker and Kolkhoz Woman” Soviet-era statue in Moscow

A few weeks ago I put the question of what I should write about next to some of my readers. Among others, a popular suggestion was to provide “A Male perspective on modern Feminism”.

I chose that suggestion because Feminism is a topic I’m incredibly passionate about. For me, it presents a large front for political and social advancement that intersects with both my socialist and liberal ideals and its ultimate goal is long overdue.

Before getting into my views, I wanted to make a few things clear. This is not a “Male” view on feminism. I would not in a million years proclaim to encapsulate the thoughts of all men, nor would I want my opinion to be anchored to my gender, something I despise about the callous dismissal of my, and any male argument as “Man-splaining”. This is simply A perspective which happens to be mine.

This post also won’t explore the “types” of Feminism (first, second, third wave) I find any discussion on the difference and benefits of each “type” counter-productive to the movements social aims and detracts from the value of discourse. As such, I’ll restrict this post to a review of the social movement as a whole.

What is Feminism?

A good place to start would be a definition of what Feminism means to me. The simplest way to do so is to classify it as anything related to the liberation of women.

You’ll notice two things about this definition, first, that it is not a comparative definition, it is not an equation of the genders or a comparison on their level of liberation i.e. a woman is not to be AS liberated as a man. Liberation is not a gendered concept. Second, by still providing it with a specific gendered scope, it acknowledges that women, due to biological differences, have unique and differentiated needs. This does not mean that “liberation” for women has a different definition than if we were to apply that term to Men, but that these differences need to be accompanied in the way we construct our society.

For example, Women have the sole biological ability to bear children, this is a differentiated function which we must accommodate for when it comes to the workplace. As such, a woman’s economic liberation, cannot be considered complete unless our systems account for these differences to provide equitable outcomes. Liberation, in the context of women is thus about ensuring that gendered differences do not pose an inherent handicap in a woman's involvement in society or her own fulfillment.

A similar analysis can be applied to the ridiculous notion of taxing women’s hygiene products.

Capability and Morality

The biggest challenge to women has always been whether women are “capable” of doing the same thing as men, a question I will entertain as nothing but preposterous. The biggest challenge that women ever faced has never been their capacity to do something, it’s been the male perspective of what women, who have existed under restrictive social rules, are capable of. Ironically making the satirical jokes we bestow on women's abilities nothing but jokes on the restricted society we both exist in.

The ridiculousness of this claim was laughed at in 380 BC. In The Republic, Plato emphasized the need for citizens, irrespective of gender, to go through the same education process, including training bare (naked) for war, to fulfill their stately duties: “All I have said about men applies equally to women, if they have the requisite natural capacities”. How sad it is that we’re still facing this rhetoric today.

A cynical caricature imagining women in positions of legal power trying someone for a “Breach of promise”

Coupled with this narrow societal interpretation has always been the similar narrow interpretation of morality and sexuality, something I’ve written at length about here in the context of “the refugee crisis” and here in the context of Democracy.

The moral argument goes very much along the lines of “Imagine what would happen if we let women …. (vote, sleep with who they want, get an education, etc)”. With this rationale, any behavior away from the moral norm is met with an apocalyptic response. This is understandable as any social change will indeed force a change in worldviews, that is to say, if we imagine women (or any subsection of society) performing a function other than that they currently perform, the entirety of our operating model will need to be changed, and change it must.

These two issues have continuously hindered not just the progress of the Feminist movement around the world, but our progress as a race.

The Feminist battlefield

It’s still these two notions that continue to provide the biggest challenges to Feminism. Here we come across the issue of equality as a function of opportunity or outcome, and this is where I both become a skeptic to the current trends of social activism as well as a partner in the need to present a more political approach to remedying current impasses.

To elaborate on what I mean by “the current trends in social activism” I would like to first dive into the outstanding issues faced by Feminism and separate the social elements relating to Feminism from the legislative elements.

Feminism was in the past a struggle to gain “equal rights” which are now, in a legal framework, available. It is illegal to discriminate in employment based on gender, women are allowed to vote etc.

This allows us to say that equality of opportunity is available. Nevertheless, our society remains heavily male dominant and gendered and outstanding as well as new issues that feminists deal with are hard to legislate for, and in many cases should not be legislated against lest the liberal values of equality become tyrannical.

An example of this would be how gender traits are almost prescribed at birth. In 1974, Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Frank J. Provenzano, and Zella Luria studied how parents describe their newborn children based on their gender noting that all newborn babies are near indistinguishable based on height and weight. Newborn daughters were more often described using traditional “feminine” characteristics and new born sons were described using traditionally “masculine” characteristics. Fathers were more extreme in their conformity in assigning traditional traits than mothers.

Although things have changed since 1974, this experiment remains an important example of how gender typing, a social process, can impact the developmental process. If women are raised to see themselves as soft, little, and delicate, one can only wonder how this could impact their own perception of their capabilities.

The fact that this “projection” is social also makes it impossible to legislate against, imagine if we were to pass laws on how parents can or cannot describe their children!

Results of the experiment carried out by Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Frank J. Provenzano, Zella Luria in 1974

Alongside the above social battle, Feminism still has a legal battle which is less about equality and more about women’s rights, the rights and liberties that extend beyond the comparative interpretation of equality and into those specific to the gender itself ex. abortion, access to feminine healthcare, paid maternity leave.

Although the remedy for those issues lay in legislation, they remain at their core social and moral and the only way they can be achieved is by removing morally perceived barriers. To make them law the movement needs to either get a democratic majority on a grass root level or through the democratic process of representation.

Justice?

Having laid out the battlefield we can go back to our analysis of “the current trends in social activism”. We’ve already discussed how equal opportunity exists yet as Macklemore has pointed out “A certificate on paper isn’t gonna solve it all”.

With this in mind, the social activist trend has moved from equality of opportunity to equality of outcome. Metrics of gender balanced company boards and legislation on sexualized and body shaming advertising has been adopted. Not to mention the many companies who have adopted similar initiatives to uplift their brands.

Focusing on equality of outcome does have its merits, an increase in female role models helps counteract the gender-typing we have previously discussed. Having more women in positions of power in corporations, government, and universities also means that decision can be more representative of women’s needs.

Having said that, focusing on equality of outcome has two major downsides. First, meeting those metrics doesn't solve the underlying social issues. Second, the solutions create a perception of “forced acceptance”, that is, they create a win-lose dynamic between the genders. Individuals who may have not yet come to terms with the “capability and moral” arguments around feminism are now forced to accept that a woman belongs in the boardroom, or that it is wrong to speak to a woman in a certain way (cue the freedom of speech argument)etc.

It’s true that this perceived dynamic is inextricable from the notion of privilege, that is it is men’s privilege that permits them to feel threatened by this “upheaval”, but leaning on that accurate analysis does nothing more than exacerbate that dynamic.

Focusing on equality of outcome then shifts the fault line from the idea of liberty and liberation to right and wrong, ironically presenting the argument on the same moral fault line used by conservatives. A fault line which makes arguments absolute.

Fighting the battle

The above is not to undermine the importance of the outcome, for what’s the point of equality of opportunity if outcome remains far from equitable on the basis of gender?

Ending body shaming, the pink tax, rape culture and all the other very real issues tackled by Feminism is imperative, but it isn't going to be done by superfluous action aimed at the end of the process without dealing with the social dynamics in the middle.

This means that to ensure sustainable cultural change we must look at the systems which create these inequalities and not just the outcome of these systems.

We should focus on systemic changes such as introducing compulsory relationship and sexual education curriculum, police and judicial training on dealing with rape cases, pushing for PSA’s that highlight gender-typing issues faced by women (ex. low participation in STEM subjects).

The benefits of this approach are several fold. First, it changes the conversation away from an absolutist moral rhetoric. Second, it focuses on the overall societal benefits of such programs which are not different from other programs launched in the past. Third, it bypasses the need to confront on the individual level and puts the burden where it belongs, on the government. Fourth, it forces us to come up with real progressive solutions that we can rally others around making feminism more than an “anti” movement.

By tackling the issues in a political sphere as opposed to a social one, we can ensure that whatever changes take place will be consistent and enduring.

Wrap up

This post is by no means intended to present a comprehensive summary of my views on feminism or gender and sexuality, but I hope it presents a brief glimpse into the functional aims behind my perspective.

More important than any critique on where the energies of this complex and diverse movement should be invested, is that we, as men, prove to be solid allies within our social groups by highlighting the detrimental impact of sexism be it social, economic, or legal. Women face a plethora of challenges that we as men simply don’t, be it safety in public spaces, childbearing, or our social standing in regards to our sexuality. Making ourselves immediate allies by informing ourselves of these issues and helping shed light on them elsewhere is the best way to apply ourselves in making a change.