Nothing there but what we put there?

James Schall once wisely observed that,

The initial choice that each of us has to make in life is whether we think the world and ourselves already exist with some intelligible content to define what we are or whether there is nothing there but what we put there.

The orthodoxy these days is that there is nothing there but what we put there. Take, as an example, the views of Professor Judith Butler of the University of California. She believes that there is no natural basis to masculinity and femininity, that gender is merely a performance:

... gender is a performance ... Because there is neither an “essence” that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. Gender is, thus, a construction ...

This puts the issue neatly enough. Judith Butler is taking the view that there is nothing there to define us as men and women, only what we ourselves put there as a performance or act. She correctly identifies the opposing view, but rejects it.

The opposing view is that there is an objective good embedded within masculinity and femininity to which we aspire as individuals. It is understood, in this view, that masculinity and femininity have an "essence" - that there is a real, underlying, permanent quality of masculinity and femininity that we can recognise and which is then expressed in various ways by individuals and within cultures.

So we have two diametrically opposed positions. The first position, that gender is a mere construct, is usually justified in terms of human freedom and choice. It is argued that we should be free to choose our own identities and that we cannot do this if we are limited to an unchosen masculine or feminine identity. The aim then becomes to overthrow the traditional distinction between masculinity and femininity in order to make human identity fluid and multiple.

There are some powerful arguments against this liberal view. One of them is put by James Schall, who writes:

we are seemingly freer if there is nothing there in the first place, if we are solely responsible for our world and our own being. The trouble with being so absolutely free that nothing is presupposed, however, is that what is finally put there is also only ourselves ... on this premise, no reason can be found not to be something else tomorrow.

This suggests two things. First, if there is no objective good to which my identity is connected - if my identity is something I just put there myself according to my own will - then there is a loss of meaning and significance to who I am. Second, if I can change my identity at will, then my very sense of self - of who I am - will begin to dissolve. I will not have a stable identity.

It's not difficult to apply this criticism to the works of Judith Butler. According to Judith Butler, the freedom to self-define requires more than a denial of gender. She wants both gender and sexual orientation to be self-defined; to achieve this, she wants to deny even the distinction between male and female:

Butler argues that sex (male, female) is seen to cause gender (masculine, feminine) which is seen to cause desire (towards the other gender). This is seen as a kind of continuum. Butler's approach - inspired in part by Foucault - is basically to smash the supposed links between these, so that gender and desire are flexible, free-floating and not 'caused' by other stable factors.

In a Butlerian universe, we would be made free by denying the existence of men and women; of masculine and feminine; and of heterosexuality. But there's more:

Butler says: "There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender..." In other words, gender is a performance; it's what you do at particular times, rather than a universal who you are.

... This idea of identity as free-floating, as not connected to an 'essence', but instead a performance, is one of the key ideas in queer theory. Seen in this way, our identities, gendered and otherwise, do not express some authentic inner "core" self but are the dramatic effect (rather than the cause) of our performances.

David Halperin has said, 'Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence.'

It's not (necessarily) just a view on sexuality, or gender. It also suggests that the confines of any identity can potentially be reinvented by its owner...

So there is no authentic inner core identity to who we are in a Butlerian universe. There is nothing, no essence, to which such an authentic self could refer.

Is there not a tremendous cost to such a freedom to self-define? Aren't we giving up a real, meaningful substance to our own being in order to gain such a freedom? What kind of a self are we left with to exercise our freedom to self-author?

(In my next post, I'll continue this theme by looking at the thoughts of a devotee of Judith Butler, Professor David Gauntlett.)

Are women better?

Concerned by feminist theories of gender war, the Catholic Church released a letter in July promoting the idea of "active collaboration" between men and women.

The letter provoked a short burst of media comment, which did not, however, highlight the real significance of the letter's contents.

Liberalism defied

The first thing missed by the mainstream media is the very explicit rejection of liberalism in the letter.

It is a first principle of liberalism that to be fully human we must be self-created by our own individual will and reason. The aim of politics, for liberals, is to "free" us from anything which impedes our individual will and reason.

One thing liberals want to free us from is our sex, as this is something we don't get to choose for ourselves. Liberals don't want to admit that being born male or female might influence who we are as this would be a merely "biological destiny". They prefer to believe that observable differences between men and women are due to an oppressive social conditioning which it is our duty to overcome.

The Vatican letter rejects this entire theoretical framework of liberalism. It describes the attempt to deny gender difference as follows:

their [men and women] differences tend to be denied, viewed as mere effects of historical and cultural conditioning. In this perspective, physical difference, termed sex, is minimized, while the purely cultural element, termed gender, is emphasized to the maximum and held to be primary.

What can explain this attempt to deny sex differences? The Vatican letter quite rightly points to liberal first principles:

its deeper motivation must be sought in the human attempt to be freed from one's biological conditioning. According to this perspective, human nature in itself does not possess characteristics in an absolute manner: all persons can and ought to constitute themselves as they like, since they are free from every predetermination linked to their essential constitution.

This theory is described in the letter as a "false conception of freedom" with harmful consequences to our understanding of family life and sexuality.

Difference & unity

So the good news for conservatives is that there is at least one major institution in the world, the Catholic Church, which is willing both to identify and to criticise liberal first principles.

This then raises a further question: what kind of alternative view of the relationship between men and women does the Catholic Church propose?

There is much to praise in the answer outlined in the Vatican letter. The Church unmistakably accepts the reality of gender difference, by confirming that,

From the first moment of their creation, man and woman are distinct, and will remain so for eternity.

This difference is manifested both in spirit, and in our bodies which are an expression of our spirit:

... the body is the expression of the spirit ...

... the spousal character of the body, in which the masculinity and femininity of the person is expressed ... The human creature, in its unity of body and spirit ...

The letter also affirms that men and women complement and complete each other. It does so by discussing the account of creation in Genesis:

Formed by God and placed in the garden which he was to cultivate, the man, who is still referred to with the generic expression Adam, experienced a loneliness ... He needs a helpmate who will be his partner. The term here does not refer to an inferior but to a vital helper. This is so that Adam's life does not sink into a sterile and, in the end, baneful encounter with himself ...

... woman is another "I" in a common humanity. From the very beginning they appear as a 'unity of the two' ... it is a matter of a life's companion with whom, as a wife, a man can unite himself, becoming with her 'one flesh' ...

Finally, the Church also clearly rejects the idea of gender war. In fact, the general purpose of the letter is to rebut the idea that men and women are locked into a state of permanent conflict.

The letter proposes instead an "active collaboration" between the sexes. It calls for men and women to,

no longer see their difference as a source of discord to be overcome by denial or eradication, but rather as the possibility for collaboration, to be cultivated with mutual respect for their difference.

In a similar vein, we read that,

these observations seek to correct the perspective which views men as enemies to be overcome. The proper condition of the male-female relationship cannot be a kind of mistrustful and defensive opposition. Their relationship needs to be lived in peace and the happiness of shared love.

Disappointing

The final section of the Vatican letter is on the importance of feminine values in the life of the church. I found this part of the letter very disappointing.

The intention is clearly to reassure women that just because they are different does not mean that they are inferior. The attempt to praise women, though, is taken much too far, with the implication that women are not only different to men, but superior.

The letter argues that the core value of Christianity, in fact of human values in general, is the giving of oneself to others. This is put very starkly in the words:

There is no Christian vocation except in the concrete gift of oneself to others.

It is then asserted that women are more oriented in their natures to giving of themselves to others. For instance, the letter states that,

Among the fundamental values linked to women's actual lives is what has been called a "capacity for the other".

The conclusion drawn is that women represent both Christian and human values better than men. This is why, to the delight of feminists, the letter calls on women to be drawn further into paid work and careers:

It means also that women should be present in the world of work and in the organization of society, and that women should have access to positions of responsibility which allow them to inspire the policies of nations and to promote innovative solutions to economic and social problems.

The letter suggests that the alternative to this promotion of women is a kind of masculine violence. The argument is therefore very similar to the feminist one that if women ruled the world, society would be more peaceful, humane, caring etc.

A further conclusion drawn from the idea that women represent Christian and human values better than men is that it is actually Mary who should be at the centre of Christian worship. The letter asserts that,

In this regard, the figure of Mary constitutes the fundamental reference of the Church. One could say metaphorically that Mary is a mirror placed before the Church, in which the Church is invited to recognise her own identity as well as the dispositions of the heart, the attitudes and the actions which God expects from her.

Where does all this leave men? Once again, the letter adopts a curiously feminist attitude. Men are told that they too can be good ... by being feminine. This is put, in the language of the letter, as follows:

It is appropriate however to recall that the feminine values mentioned here are above all human values ... It is only because women are more immediately attuned to these values that they are the reminder and the privileged sign of such values.

But, in the final analysis, every human being, man or woman, is destined to be "for the other". In this perspective, that which is called "femininity" is more than simply an attribute of the female sex. The word designates that fundamental human capacity to live for the other and because of the other.

Once again, note the radical final conclusion following directly on from these lines. Replacing men with women in public life will, it is claimed, lead to a "humanization" of society through feminine values:

Therefore, the promotion of women in society must be understood and desired as a humanization accomplished through those values, rediscovered thanks to women.

(One conclusion not drawn in the letter, but which will inevitably occur to others, is that if the arguments put forward in the letter are right, then the Church should ideally have a female rather than a male leadership. The letter, in other words, undermines the authority of a male priesthood.)

An alternative

Is the only alternative to a liberal feminism a Catholic one? I don't think so. In fact, I think it's possible to see women as being at the centre of life, without undercutting the masculine role of men.

Think of it this way. When a man's instincts are strongest, he is likely to perceive the love, beauty, grace, tenderness and charity embodied in a woman as being at "the heart of things" - as being core human values.

He will also, though, perceive these feminine qualities of women to be soft and vulnerable. He will want to use his harder, tougher masculine qualities to defend what he believes to be at the core of human life: to create a protected space in which the more fragile feminine qualities can survive and be made manifest.

This basic task of men, however, creates its own significant values, such as the courage and loyalty demanded of men in the physical defence of their communities, or the wisdom and impartiality required in the formal, public governance of a community.

Furthermore, it seems to be given especially to men to love and appreciate what is best in the feminine nature of women.

Who then is better? Women who embody core human values, or men who are made to love and protect these values, and who create their own masculine values in doing so?

The answer surely is that it makes no sense to declare either to be superior. Neither would exist without the other. And anyway, the healthy attitude is to be so engrossed in our own masculine or feminine identity that we wouldn't want to exchange what is best in our manhood or womanhood.

For this reason alone, the attempt to place either sex in rank cannot serve a useful purpose.

(First published at Conservative Central, 25/10/2004)

Learning from MASH

I learnt a rather curious fact by watching, of all things, an episode of the TV comedy show MASH.

The episode, The Red/White Blues, first screened in 1981. The plot is that the malaria season is about to descend on the MASH unit (during the Korean War, sometime between 1950 and 1953).

There are no stocks available of the usual anti-malaria drug, so the unit is sent a case of primaquine, a malaria suppressant. Colonel Potter isn't happy, and asks "What about the negroes?"

It turns out that those of black African descent can't be given primaquine, as it was known to give them hemolytic anemia. Everyone else is given the medicine, but Corporal Klinger (of Lebanese ancestry) and several others become sick. He is thought to be malingering, but is later diagnosed to be suffering from hemolytic anemia. We're told at the end of the episode that by the late 1950s it was also recognised that people of Mediterranean descent were unable to tolerate primaquine.

Why is this significant? As I mentioned in my last post on whiteness studies, modern liberals often deny the real, biological existence of race. Instead they prefer to view race as a social construct.

One of the arguments often made against the 'social construct' view of race is that modern medical science is finding that there are drugs which work effectively with some races but not others. Therefore, the real, biological existence of race is being accepted (and put to scientific use) by medical researchers at the very time it is denied by certain liberal academics.

What the MASH episode reveals is that knowledge of the biological differences between the races has been known to medical researchers since at least the early 1950s. It's not new knowledge after all. The reality of such differences was accepted in an uncomplicated way by the liberal scriptwriters of MASH as late as the early 1980s.

Race denial is an expression of how latter-day liberals would like things to be; it tells us something about ideological preferences rather than the larger developments within medical science.

Whiteness studies

I wrote this article for the Autumn 2007 edition of The Independent Australian. It draws on a number of pieces written earlier for Oz Conservative.

Ten years ago there were no such courses. Now “whiteness studies” is being taught at over 30 American campuses. In Australia too there are academics teaching this subject; in 2003 they formed their own whiteness studies association.

So what is it? In short, it’s a field of studies based on the theory that whites invented the idea of biological race in order to oppress indigenous peoples and to benefit from unearned privileges.

An Australian whiteness theorist, Damien Riggs, has summarized the new field of studies as follows:

Whiteness is seen as a thoroughly racialised project that aims to legitimate the authority of certain groups over others by drawing on a legacy of ‘biological’ explanations of race … Whilst this approach starts from an understanding of race as a social construction, it also acknowledges the very concrete ways in which race shapes experiences of oppression and privilege.

What is the effect of these studies on white students? One young Australian woman, Veronica Coen, tells us that her whiteness studies course led her,

to recognise that my privilege as an educated middle-class white woman was directly attributed to my ancestor’s theft of indigenous land and their exploitation

She then,

took a frightening journey into Australia’s violent history … The path was at times very distressing. My study journal was often wrinkled with tears.

Nado Aveling, who teaches whiteness studies to student teachers at Perth’s Murdoch University (it’s a mandatory part of the course) tells us of the students’ reactions that:

responses are often strongly emotional, and resistance, misunderstanding, frustration, anger and feelings of inefficacy may be the outcomes.

A social construct?

So whiteness studies confronts students with the claim that their identity is a false social construct, built around the oppression of Aborigines, and that the lives they lead are built unjustly on unearned privilege.

It’s a significant claim to make, but not one which is intellectually coherent. Even its starting point makes little sense.

Damien Riggs tells us that his approach “starts from an understanding of race as a social construction” and that we should reject “the legacy of ‘biological’ explanations of race”.

So we are meant to accept the idea that a “white race” exists not as a biological fact, but as a social construct – as something simply made up by society for its own purposes.

Why would someone make this claim, when it contradicts the visible evidence of a biologically existing white race? The answer has to do with certain intellectual assumptions existing within liberal modernism.

Liberal modernism asserts that to be fully human we must be autonomous in the sense that we are able to determine for ourselves who we are to be. Therefore, liberal modernists don’t like to recognise the existence of a “biological destiny” in which we are influenced in our identity by our sex or our race (or by other inherited or traditional qualities which we don’t choose for ourselves).

Liberal modernists therefore often prefer to believe that qualities like race are oppressive social constructs whose real existence can either be denied or made not to matter.

Inconsistency

Riggs is therefore following a modernist ideology in claiming that race is a social construct. However, even in ideological terms, this claim is incoherent.

Why? One reason is that whiteness theorists don’t simply want to declare race null and void. They want to pin down whites as guilty oppressors. Therefore, they are concerned to emphasise the idea of “whiteness” as a racial category at the same time as they deny the real existence of a white race.

To make this clear, whiteness theorists are strongly opposed to the idea of whites being race blind. They want to make whites more conscious of their “racialised” existence, whilst still claiming that there is no such thing as a really existing white race.

It’s a difficult distinction to hold and Damien Riggs himself warns that,

It is important to recognise that in talking about race we run the risk of reifying race as a ‘real entity’

Similarly, whiteness theorists dismiss the idea of really existing races and yet they recognise Aborigines as a real entity, even to the extent of claiming that Aborigines are sovereign over other groups (Riggs states that “indigenous sovereignty is the ground on which we stand”).

Then there is the issue of “complicity”. Whiteness theorists don’t want to allow any escape routes by which whites can escape the guilt of their unearned privileges. Robinder Kaur, a whiteness theorist at York University has explained that for whites,
“there is no 'safe space', no haven of guiltlessness to retreat to.”

Therefore, whiteness theorists emphasise the idea of “complicity”: that all whites, even the whiteness theorists themselves, are complicit in white guilt. It is made clear that you are still complicit, even if you renounce all privilege, or choose to identify with Aborigines, or dedicate your life to anti-racist causes. You remain a guilty white.

This may serve a useful purpose within whiteness theory. However, it adds to the intellectual incoherence of whiteness studies. After all, the original purpose of liberal moderns declaring race to be a social construct was to allow individuals to autonomously choose their own multiple, fluid identities. Now, though, we have whiteness theorists, as liberal moderns, talking about whiteness as the most absolute, fixed and inescapable of racialised categories.

Whiteness theorists simply haven’t thought through such implications; they haven’t made a good enough effort to formulate a consistent ideology.

Privilege

Whiteness studies claims that all whites enjoy unearned privilege at the expense of indigenous peoples. How, though, is this claim justified?

Veronica Coen, the student I quoted above, thinks that white Australians benefited from Aboriginal labour in colonial times. This seems an unlikely explanation for the prosperity of modern Australia. Though Aboriginal labour was important in some areas of Australia, its economic importance overall must have been small compared even to white convict labour let alone to that of free settlers.

Even the claim that whites are privileged from having taken Aboriginal land has its problems. The prominent Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has pointed out that Aborigines who were never dispossessed of their land experience similar problems to those who were:

the problems are pretty similar between communities that have never been dispossessed of their land – like in the western Cape York peninsula – and those that had been positively uprooted. It wasn’t about poverty, and it wasn’t about land, and it wasn’t about the degree of trauma experienced in history.

Pearson blames the dysfunction in Aboriginal communities not on whites having taken wealth from them, but rather on having given it to them in a misguided transfer of welfare money. He remembers a more intact community in the time before such transfers:

Everybody in Hope Vale of my generation or older grew up in a family, or household, where parents worked hard, the kids were looked after. They were bequeathed a real privilege.

Pearson is exactly right to identify these social norms as being a real privilege. It’s much easier to prosper when you are surrounded by people with a strong family and work ethic. Whites who aren’t exposed to this ethic in their homes or communities tend to experience the same loss of living standard as non-whites do.

There is one other way in which whiteness theorists have tried to explain white privilege. According to Peggy McIntosh, an American writer, she experiences a daily privilege as a white person on the following grounds:

- I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

- I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my own race widely represented.

- I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions

- I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge”, I will be facing a person of my own race.

- I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my own race.

One way to criticise this approach is to point out that American blacks, who Peggy McIntosh is taking to be the oppressed group, don’t really have that much trouble finding their own areas to live in, or their own music, or food they like, or films and posters in which they feature.

The more important criticism, though, is once again a lack of coherence. White Americans are told endlessly that diversity is a blessing which will enrich their lives. Peggy McIntosh, though, is basing her case that whites are privileged on the idea that whites can more easily escape the effects of diversity than blacks.

In other words, to accept Peggy McIntosh’s argument requires us to believe that it is oppressive to live in diverse areas in which we are no longer the majority race. If this is the case, though, why would white Americans choose to accept diversity, if the consequences are really so undesirable?

In fact, the logical consequences of Peggy McIntosh’s argument go much further than this. If I lived in a country with a million white people, but not a single non-white, then I would not be privileged and I would not need to feel guilt about my existence. However, if a single non-white was allowed to live in my country, then I would be privileged in comparison to them, I would breach the morality of modern equality, and my identity would be called into question.

It seems to me that Peggy McIntosh needs to reconsider her intellectual assumptions as they lead her to political absurdities.

Identity

What else is wrong with whiteness studies? Remember Robinder Kaur? She was the Sikh woman I quoted above who told whites that there was no escape from their guilt.

As it happens, Robinder Kaur is an editor for a magazine called Kaurs. This magazine celebrates the identity of Sikh women as follows:

The magazine will encourage the Sikh woman to rediscover herself in the light of the glorious heritage and current meritorious achievements of the Sikh community.

And how does the magazine think that the Sikh community has prospered? The editor thinks that life is full of challenges, which leads to this advice:

... how to overcome these challenges and emerge as a winner? Hard work, confidence, dedication and, of course, the blessings of the Almighty are a sure recipe for success.

So we have here a clear double standard. For Robinder Kaur her own identity as a Sikh woman is a positive thing, and Sikhs are to think of their past as a “glorious heritage”. If Sikhs have done well it is due to hard work, confidence and dedication. For whites, though, there is only guilt. Our past is to be regarded negatively as a history of oppression of others, and our prosperity is unearned.

Obviously I don’t think whites should lamely accept such a double standard. It’s natural for Robinder Kaur to think of her own ethnic identity in positive terms, and we should follow her lead in regarding our own identity a similarly positive way. What kind of life would it be if we accepted the double standard in which our role, unlike others, was one of inescapable guilt? How could a psychologically healthy life be built on the assumptions of whiteness studies?

Racism

There’s one final issue to deal with. Whiteness theorists would regard themselves as being cutting edge anti-racists. Yet, in one further act of incoherence, it is they who are peddling a dangerous racism.

Whiteness theorists are creating a picture of whites as a “cosmic enemy”: as a force in the world standing in the way of justice and equality. Groups who are regarded this way shouldn’t be surprised to find themselves targeted for removal. Here, for instance, is the “solution” of Dr Noel Ignatiev, a Harvard academic and whiteness theorist, to the “problem” of whites:

The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race.

... The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition.

... we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed – not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.

... treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.

The problem is that it’s not a few radical cranks pushing this line, but a growing academic movement within our universities. This movement has the power to influence the minds of students and to set an intellectual and political agenda. We should therefore be concerned about the appearance of whiteness studies and be ready to take up a political fight against it.

Do we really think that women and children aren't human?

The operator of a popular feminist website notes that:

we end up arguing ... whether children, the only life form lower than we, are human.

It strikes the conservative mind as odd to debate whether children are human, or which rung on the human scale people are. That's because conservatives see our status as humans as being already invested in us. It's not something which can be added to or taken away. Individuals can be unequal in their talents or attainments, but not in their human status.

So why would feminists assume that there are variations in our status as humans? It's because liberal autonomy theory, on which feminism is ultimately based, doesn't begin with the concept of an "invested humanity". Instead, a starting point for autonomy theory is that our humanity is contingent. We are made human, according to this theory, by the fact that we are self-determining agents. Therefore, the more we are self-created, as autonomous, independent beings, the more human we are.

Feminists see women as being less autonomous than men (because it's easier to think of a male career path as being a unique, self-created, independent role than motherhood); children are obviously less autonomous than men, being dependent on their parents. Therefore, feminists logically conclude that men are, in a "patriarchy," more human than women and children.

The Italian beach

The feminist debate about children was sparked by the decision of an Italian businessman to set up a women-only beach, from which not only men but also children were excluded.

This led to a controversy at I blame the patriarchy, a popular radical feminist site. On one side of the dispute were feminists who supported the removal of children from the beach. Some adopted this stance because they didn't want women to be assumed to be the natural carers of children. Many, though, professed a dislike of children in general, finding them too noisy, boisterous and annoying.

Those in favour of children on the beach argued that mothers shouldn't miss out on women-only beach time and that children are an oppressed minority group just like women and that it is therefore wrong to discriminate against them.

The debate was finally closed after about 450 comments on two different threads.

Wanting to become human

There are countless references in the comments to women and children being relegated to a non-human status. As I mentioned earlier, this complaint only makes sense if you think that individuals can be more or less human, depending on their degree of autonomy.

Here's a selection of references in the comments to the idea of a contingent humanity:

Sean: it simply sounds like what feminists are pushing for in the 'real' world, that is, basic structures allowing women to participate in the world as humans.

Zora: I have tried time and time again to explain to folks that children are, in fact, people and deserve to be treated thusly.

Cafe Siren: What if they [women] took this new knowledge of themselves as fully human back into the wider world, and demanded changes.

Catherine: The comparison that is being made is not, therefore, between women's struggle to be seen as human ...

Dairon: The story in question encapsulates so many horrific underlying ideas about social hierarchy and what can and can't be human ...

Dr Sue: I don't think the choice is between "permissiveness" and repression, but between treating children as fully human ...

Blandina: ... father who told me I was a valueless thing and not a human being ...

Physio Prof: it treats children as an oppressed class without bodily or mental autonomy ...

Tigs: ... radical education that values children as human beings is a revolutionary act in and of itself ... Treating children like human beings is part of a revolutionary program ... it might be about the same amount of hard as is treating women like human beings!

Crys T: The whole idea that so many see children as some sort of separate group (often not even a human one) ... is the problem here.

Kiki: Wow, I am always amazed when people act as if children are somehow not fully human.

Gayle: Children, like women, are "othered" and treated as a sub-human species.

Recasting nature

Such ideas lead to further complications. For example, feminist women are not going to happily accept a non-human status. Therefore, they must explain their lack of human status as being a product of the way society is organised, rather than as a reflection of the real nature of women.

The first task, that of blaming social organisation, gives them their catchcry of "I blame the patriarchy" (they blame it for everything). It also turns them into self-described utopian revolutionaries, waiting for the day that the whole system is overthrown.

The second task, of denying that women or children are naturally lacking in autonomy, is more perverse. For instance, it leads many commenters to claim that childhood is a sentimentalised fiction and that it's not desirable for children to be raised by their biological parents. In order to present children as independent, autonomous mini-adults, and therefore as fully human, the reality of both childhood and parenthood is denied.

Similarly, the operator of the site argues that children currently are unruly, as many feminists on her site complain, but that this is not an expression of their true nature, but a neurosis brought on by their non-status under patriarchy:

I have stated on numerous occasions ... children are an oppressed class. Their universal and legitimately reviled unruliness is not natural. It is a product of neurosis generated by patriarchy's two main replicatory units ..

What this means is that we are to consider children to be neurotic when they behave childishly. It also means that children aren't to be considered fully human until they stop acting boisterously.

Things are equally bad when attention turns to women. As I have already mentioned, women are thought to be less autonomous than men because they are more likely to be mothers rather than careerists. This means that a number of commenters seriously ask whether it is politically correct for a woman to become a mother. One commenter complains:

Patriarchy wants us to love babies.

There is apparently to be no oppressive mother love under the matriarchy.

One feminist mother doesn't give up without a fight. She asks those suggesting that motherhood is a patriarchal trap: "Well, what's the alternative in your opinion? Just Don't Breed?" The answer comes back:

For those of us who do have this choice, I would suggest that you strongly consider it.

It's also thought a good thing at I blame the patriarchy for women to be selfish, as this involves a pursuit of one's own autonomous wants. There's one comment I'll use to illustrate this point, though I'm not exactly sure if it's meant to be taken in earnest or if it's a clever, tongue-in-cheek send-up of the feminist ideal of selfishness:

Dawn Coyote: Speaking only for myself, I'm lazy and selfish, and the idea that I might not at any moment through my day have a space that is perfectly adjusted to my needs is vexing for me. It's all about me and what I want, after all.

I think the problem is one of entitlement, certainly, but also of independence as a worthy goal, because it's my independence, my autonomy, my right to the free enjoyment of my own pursuits in any space I occupy that has given me the idea that children are a nuisance. If I had more of a sense of responsibility to my fellow humans, be they big or little, I would not so cavalierly wish them into the cornfield.

A misanthropic humanism?

You would think that people who devoted themselves to achieving a full human status would hold humanity in high esteem. In fact, many of those feminists complaining about their lack of human status dislike humanity and wish it would be destroyed. Another selection:

Marcy: yes, I know that humans will go extinct, and I'm OK with that.

Crys T: Like you, I don't think it'd be any great tragedy for the human race to die out.

Silence: Do we need the next generation? I mean, do we really expect the human race to go on and on forever? Because I sure as sh.. don't.

It seems odd for a person to declare that "I want to be human but I don't want humanity to exist." Perhaps, though, this attitude is not such a contradiction. The demand that people have a completely free and equal autonomy is impossible to meet. As the feminists themselves admit it requires a utopian revolution.

Therefore, humanity is being set up to fail a basic test of decency. If it's impossible to achieve "free and equal wills", then humanity won't deliver to every person a full human status. There will forever be a serious breach of "human equality".

This is how "Marcy" seems to see things. In response to a commenter who thought that it was unethical to look forward to the extinction of human beings she wrote:

Ethical? It depends on whose point of view you're working from. If you're working from the planet's and the ecosystem's point of view, then it becomes very much ethical to talk about getting humans out of the picture altogether. As far as I know, it's not birds who are polluting the rivers with toxic waste. Cheetahs don't oppress other cheetahs. Elephants don't find a cure for syphilis and then withold it from some other elephants who have darker skin. I could go on. I'm sure you get the point.

Oppression and inequality have tainted humanity in Marcy's view, so humanity doesn't deserve to survive.

All of this stems, at least in part, from the logic of making human status contingent. It's an aspect of liberal autonomy theory which deserves to be challenged.

The case against Sweden

The Swedes are engaged in a radical project. They are attempting to remake their society to fit an ideal of gender equality.

The seriousness of their efforts is made clear in two speeches, one by Monica Silvell from the Division of Gender Equality (2004), the other by Margareta Winberg as Minister for Gender Equality (2002).

In the Monica Silvell speech we are told:

That gender equality is an issue directly linked to economic and political democracy is a cornerstone of Swedish Government policy.

... Gender equality is a key to the future.

Margareta Winberg puts it this way:

gender equality is a fundamental factor in democracy ... Gender equality must therefore mainstream all aspects of our lives. This is the expressed opinion of the Swedish Parliament as well as the Swedish Government.

What, though, is meant by gender equality? How is it to be measured?

The answer is predictable. The Swedes are following liberal orthodoxy and taking autonomy to be the key good in life. Therefore, equality means men and women having the same amount of autonomy. This is thought to require women having financial independence from men, and therefore having careers and equal earnings.

According to Monica Silvell:

The basis of independence, choices of one's own and thus gender equality, is money in the hand, in the wallet, in the handbag. The fact that Swedish women are able to support themselves and can live their own lives, if they want to, is the result of the struggles of many generations of women.

Adding to this, Margareta Winberg states:

First I would like to describe my fundamental views as regards the gender equality issue, the rights of both men and women to shape their lives ...

...One of the basic reasons for women in Sweden today having a relatively equal status is that we over time have worked for all women being able to have the opportunity to support themselves from their own employment. Our own income! Own money - our freedom.

This, then, is the starting point for the radical remaking of Swedish society. I believe it to be deeply flawed.

First, it is simply assumed that autonomy is the higher level good around which society should be reorganised. You might think that a community would choose to recognise, as important goods, the behaviours and qualities which allow it to continue as an ongoing tradition, but this is not the case when autonomy alone is selected as the basis of social organisation.

And does independence really so outrank other goods such as wisdom or virtue that we are to be thought superior if we are independent but foolish and vicious? Is it really true that a woman is unequal to me if I provide for her but she is more wise and virtuous and contributes more in service to the community she loves?

Then there are the "hidden" consequences of making autonomy the organising principle of society. If the aim is to make people autonomous, then impediments to the self-determining, self-creating individual have to be removed. This means removing whatever is important, but unchosen, in individual identity, including anything which we receive as tradition or as part of our biological nature. However, it is often the very things most important to us which have become hardwired as part of our biological nature or which have endured as part of a tradition.

Therefore, making autonomy the organising principle of society leads to the odd situation in which individuals are to be "liberated" from the very things which matter most to them. The two most obvious examples are our ethnic identity, which is based on tradition and ancestry and which is therefore illegitimate under the terms of autonomy, and our sex identity as men and women, which is a "biological destiny" and therefore, once again, considered illegitimate.

So even if autonomy really is a good in certain circumstances (which it is), it's unwise to make it the organising principle of society as there is an ultimately destructive logic to the way it unravels.

We could also question the assumption made by the Swedes that it is a career which brings autonomy to a woman. It's true that in the traditional family a woman depends on her husband to provide a family income. In a career, however, a woman will depend on a superior to keep her position, or for promotions or pay. It's often the case that this kind of dependence is more stressful than the domestic one as it's based on performance criteria and office politics, rather than an intimately personal relationship.

A career, too, locks up much of our time; we have to run our lives according to someone else's schedule and we have to perform tasks as instructed by our superiors. For many people this does not equate to freedom, especially in comparison to home life. This explains in part the reluctance of many young people to commit themselves to steady employment and it explains too the preference of many people to be self-employed. And there definitely exist women who, having had the experience of paid employment, prefer the more traditional stay-at-home role.

Which brings me to a contradiction in the autonomy principle. The idea of autonomy is to allow us to "write our own script". The Swedes have asserted that in order to be autonomous women must be financially independent and earn the same amount as men. However, this in itself is a restriction on a woman's autonomy as it means that she cannot choose to stay at home to care for her own children. This is especially true in Sweden where the level of tax is so high and the tax system so favours dual income families that it's not possible for most women to spend more than the allotted time at home with their children. So rather than "writing her own script" a woman in Sweden is likely to have only the choice of a career, due to financial necessity or social pressure.

Autonomy also does a strange thing to equality. It turns equality into sameness. Monica Silvell recognises this in her speech, noting that the effect of the "sex role debate" in Sweden was that:

The old view of men and women complementing one another was replaced by the notion that the sexes were basically similar.

If men and women are going to occupy exactly the same roles at home and at work, then men and women will be assumed to be similar in their natures. If there have been differences in the past, these will be assumed to be socially constructed rather than natural. Monica Silvell is also upfront about this consequence of autonomy theory:

The government must regard "male" and "female" as social constructions, i.e. patterns of behaviour determined by a person's upbringing and culture, by economic conditions, power structures and political ideology.

Note that Monica Silvell places the terms male and female in scare quotes, as if their real existence is to be questioned. This scepticism toward the reality of sex differences brings Swedish society into conflict with two significant forces, namely science and heterosexuality.

Heterosexuality is based, after all, on an appreciation of gender difference. Can we really love the feminine qualities of a woman and then doubt their real existence?

Modern science, too, has more than adequately confirmed the basis for naturally existing gender difference, both in terms of hormones and differences in the structure of the male and female brain.

Finally, there's the issue of patriarchy. The Swedes are convinced that gender was constructed as an act of patriarchal dominance. The masculine role, assumed to be more autonomous, is identified as the superior one, with women being limited to an inferior role. Margareta Winberg complains, for instance, about:

the social structure that keeps separate and segregates the sexes, women and men, and which tells us:-that the norm is men, and women are the exception-that men are superior and women are inferior-that men have great power and women have little power.

Monica Silvell warns:

we must be aware of the existence of a gender-based power structure that makes women subordinate to men.

But this argument has its own problems. First, it does exactly what Margareta Winberg doesn't want to it to do - it makes the male role the superior, socially desirable one. It means that women have to align themselves to the masculine in order to be considered equal, whilst men somehow have to be persuaded (against their best interests presumably) to share in the inferior feminine pursuits in order to make things even.

Second, it leads to the view that men traditionally were set against women, and that the patriarchal structure of society led men as a superior class to enact violence against women as an inferior class.

Monica Silvell writes:

Men's violence against women is largely an expression of the imbalance of power that prevails in the relationship between women and men. Thus, preventing men's violence against women is a gender equality issue of great importance.

Margareta Winberg contributes this claim:

This power and gender structure is also the reason why men in the present society are sexually harassing, abusing and exploiting, raping and exposing females to other kinds of physical and psychological violence.

This view of domestic and sexual violence leads to inflated claims of female victimisation; it leads to false portrayals of the most mainstream of men as being responsible for violence; it establishes an unhealthy degree of suspicion and resentment toward men among some young women; and it misjudges the motivations of men in their traditional roles of protecting and providing for their families.

The view of men and of masculinity arrived at via patriarchy theory is a road to nowhere, as is the larger Swedish effort to remodel their society along the lines of gender equality. The Swedish understanding of gender equality is too flawed at a fundamental level to maintain social stability over time. There is reason enough to reject the policy in principle and to find more worthy goals to guide the organisation of Swedish society.

Letting liberals explain

How do rank and file liberals explain their beliefs? Last month I wrote two articles which eventually drew out some serious comments by Larvatus Prodeo readers.

What most seemed to stir the LPers was my argument that liberals don't want such things as religious, ethnic, gender, national, class or cultural identity to matter.

Two LPers denied the claim. One of them, Mick Strummer, wrote that both liberals and conservatives believe that such identities matter but that:

It is their origin that is the main area of disagreement, with “Liberals” believing that much of the social, political and cultural significance of these factors is arbitrary and historically determined. As such, “Liberals” are suspicious of anyone who claims that they may be natural in the sense that they have always existed, and thus will always exist.

These factors - religious, ethnic, gender, national, class, or cultural identity - are not the same thing as many other things that ARE natural. They are not phenomena like rainfall, the dispersal of species, or the seasons. It seems to me that these factors - religious, ethnic, gender, national, class, or cultural identity - are the result of human decisions and actions throughout history, and that thus we can decide and act to make them different from the way they are currently defined and perceived.

Anyway. There is more that we could say about things, but as a “Liberal”, I will always believe that the social, political, cultural and economic world is the way it is because it has been made that way as a result of human belief and action. Thus, (it would seem to me) that it is entirely possible and feasible (indeed, necessary) to remake and reform the social, political, cultural and economic world that we inhabit…

Mick Strummer is here following the "autonomy" or "self-creation" strand within liberalism. This is the idea that it is the human capacity to "self-determine", according to our reason and will, which dignifies human life.

If you accept this idea you won't like to think of identities being natural. A natural identity is relatively fixed, and has a justification outside of human will. It isn't something that is self-determined.

You might well prefer to insist, as Mick Strummer does, that identities are social constructs, which can be remade according to our own purposes:

It seems to me that these factors - religious, ethnic, gender, national, class, or cultural identity - are the result of human decisions and actions throughout history, and that thus we can decide and act to make them different from the way they are currently defined and perceived.

But if identity is to be thought of, in the liberal way, as a social construct, can it still be considered to matter in a positive sense?

I think at the very least its significance has been degraded. Mick himself tells us that identity is arbitrary and unnatural, which surely undermines the importance we accord it.

Note too that the social constructionist viewpoint places stress on a negative aspect of identity, namely the need to keep forms of society open against concepts of enduring human identity, rather than a more positve aspect, of recognising and defending the forms of identity we value within society.

Anyway, it's common in practice for those following the autonomy strand of liberalism to hold negative views toward traditional forms of identity. Typically, such liberals will see these forms of identity as being a constraint on the individual, from which individuals need to be liberated or emancipated. There's often an insistence that any replacement forms of identity be multiple, shifting and negotiated, so that it's possible to think of them as being self-determined.

The second LPer to take aim at my position followed an entirely different strand of thought within liberalism, but I'll leave a consideration of his comment for my next post.

Why can't Sweden just accept it as normal?

From Sweden we get the following news:

The Swedish Consumers Association has reacted angrily to one of the ice pops in GB's new line. 'Girlie', a star-shaped, pink ice-cream with glitter make-up stored inside the stick, is entirely inappropriate, according to the association ...

According to GB, the 'Girlie' ice pop signals a "sense of summer", "star status" and "a disco feeling".

The Swedish Consumers Association however uses an entirely different word: "gender-profiling".

"Girlie, GB's new ice pop, is pink and has make-up inside the stick. It says a lot about what GB thinks about girls and how they should be," said the association in a statement.

According to the consumer watchdog, Sweden does not need more products that reinforce existing prejudices surrounding young boys and girls.

"Especially with a product as neutral as ice cream," said Jan Bertoft.

He would like to see alterations made to the product to make it less gender specific.

"They can call an ice pop 'Girlie' if they want, but it doesn't have to be so clearly aimed at young girls and telling them how they should be," said Bertoft.

GB's marketing manager, Christoffer Schreil, considers it unfortunate that some people have viewed the ice cream as being directed solely at girls ...

Schreil ... admits there have been a few complaints.

"We reply to everybody who gets in touch and tell them that we certainly did not mean to reinforce or cement gender roles in any way," he said.

I think I can explain this. An important strand of liberal thought is the idea that we are distinctively human because of our ability to self-determine who we are and what we do.

We don't determine traditional patterns of gender for ourselves, and therefore such patterns logically strike the liberal mind as being impediments to the self-defining individual.

Hence the fears that pink girlie ice creams might tell girls "how they should be" and reinforce gender roles.

The story doesn't end there, though. If traditional gender roles are oppressive, liberals have to explain how they came about. It's been common for left-liberals to claim that they exist as social constructs in order to shore up male privilege.

This means that there is even more reason for liberals to fear a traditionally feminine gender identity: it is thought to contribute to female oppression and gender inequality.

The Swedes are serious about this kind of ideology. Just a few years ago a Swedish minister, Jens Orback, declared that:

The government considers female and male as social constructions, that means gender patterns are created by upbringing, culture, economic conditions, power structures and political ideologies.

At about the same time a county government in Sweden removed funding for a book because it contained an interview with Annica Dahlstrom, a leading neurobiologist, who has recognised differences between the male and female brain.

If there are differences between the male and female brain, there might be reasons within human biology for traditional gender patterns, and this would violate the Swedish government policy of social construction. So there was to be no interview with Annica Dahlstrom and no book.

A Swedish newspaper editor wrote in support of the county government that:

Our Swedish gender equality policy is based on us being equal and socialised into different gender roles. Annica Dahlstrom is an essentialist feminist and believes that boys and girls are totally different. The county government cannot publish material with that opinion.

So the ice cream story isn't just political correctness gone mad. It reflects mainstream liberal politics within Sweden.

One interesting thing to note about the above quote from the Swedish editor is the sense in which the term "equality" is used. The quote suggests that men and women can't be equal if there is a real basis for gender difference. In other words, it is assumed that gender equality is based on a fundamental sameness between men and women.

Perhaps this is an outcome of the whole social constructionist argument. If you believe that gender differences are constructed to oppress women, then you will assume that eliminating gender differences will create gender equality. So gender sameness will be associated with equality between men and women.

This isn't an easy concept of equality to defend, since few people would really want, or think it possible, for men and women to be the same. So I think we could expect liberals to run both an argument that gender sameness equals equality, and a denial that gender sameness is an outcome they are aiming for.

There is also another difficult aspect of the liberal view of gender equality. If the liberal measure of equality is how autonomous or independent we are (allowing ourselves to be self-determined), and if men are assumed to be a privileged class, then men must be assumed to be highly autonomous and independent.

This would explain the assumption that I've heard expressed by feminists that men historically could do as they wished. Yet, when advocating for a modernist view of the family, liberals often tell men that they will have a liberating expansion of "choice" if they give up the breadwinner role.

So men are being given opposing accounts of their historical role according to the particular matter at hand: that they have had too much choice historically, as a privileged class, but that they have suffered from lack of choice in their traditional role within the family.

Note too another unfortunate aspect of the liberal view of gender equality. If the measure of equality is how autonomous or independent we are, and men are identified as the historically privileged class, then the male role is the one to be envied and sought after.

So you can expect liberals to fall into the idea that women, to be equal, must have more of the "superior" male role and men more of the "inferior" female role. In particular, this will mean advocating careers for women over a more traditional motherhood role.

Again, I don't think that even liberals find it easy to embrace the logic of this position. Most liberal women will retain at least an aspect of a traditionally feminine identity and instinct and won't want to regard this as inferior. So it won't be surprising if liberal women fluctuate uneasily between the claim to a "superior" masculine role, and an identification with the more traditionally feminine.

Finally, given that "equality", understood the Swedish way, requires men to act against a deeply embedded provider instinct, and women to act against an even more deeply embedded motherhood instinct, it's not surprising that the Swedes have accepted the necessity of state coercion in achieving equality.

According to Jens Orback, the Swedish minister quoted earlier, the achievement of gender equality requires government action in all policy areas:

Our work for gender equality is governed by our understanding that a gender-based power structure exists, meaning that we see that women are subordinate to men and that this is something we want to change.

To be successful in making these changes we must ensure that a gender perspective is present in all policy areas. The gender mainstreaming strategy is therefore essential if we want to achieve a gender equal society.

I have focused on pointing out some difficulties in making the liberal view of equality coherent or persuasive. The larger task, though, which I won't attempt now, is to question the liberal assumptions on which their view of equality is based.

Meanwhile, we'll have to expect "advanced" societies like Sweden to be flummoxed by the concept of pink ice creams for girls.

Taking apart a degendered Jensen

These are the thoughts of Robert Jensen, an American professor of journalism, on masculinity:

Masculinity is a bad idea, for everyone, and it's time to get rid of it. Not reform it, but eliminate it ... so long as there is masculinity, we're in trouble.

I attempted in yesterday's post to explain the ideology behind such views. Today I'd like to do something different; I'd like to look at the reply to Jensen by Cinnamon Stillwell, a columnist for the San Fransisco Chronicle.

Cinnamon Stillwell was a liberal for most of her life, but after the shock of 9/11 she started to identify as a conservative. I think she does a fine job in presenting the conservative view of things in her response to Jensen.

She begins her column by noting that gender differences arise naturally. She observes that even the youngest of children show distinctly gendered patterns of play and behaviour; that we recognise important gender differences when in relationships with the opposite sex; and that science has confirmed that there is a biological, and not just a cultural, basis for differences in the behaviour of men and women.

So masculinity is not just a "construct" which we can choose to eliminate; it is something natural to men.

As I pointed out yesterday, Robert Jensen believes that femininity too must be abolished, so that there is only a single, non-gendered human identity remaining.

Cinammon Stillwell responds, first, by criticising the feminist movement for having "all too often confused gender equality with gender sameness".

She then takes aim at some of the degendered portrayals of men and women in the entertainment industry. She shares my own dislike of the prevalence of kick-boxing women in movies and on TV. In her own words:

It has now become far more commonplace to see mere mortal female characters punching people in the face on a moment's notice, beating up or overpowering men and taking the romantic or sexual lead. Far from empowering women in reality, these fantasy scenarios put forward unrealistic expectations and a false sense of security ...

... the leading lady has become the leading man, and a not terribly charming one at that.

Nor do the non-masculine men portrayed in popular culture appeal to her:

TV shows are populated with male characters ... who stand meekly by as their much more confident and assured female counterparts ... lead them by the hand ... When male characters do exhibit masculine traits on TV, they are often made to look like fools in the process ...

Metrosexuality leaves her cold:

While gay men are welcome to be as in touch with their feminine side as they like, straight men would do well to ignore it. For what woman would want a man who cannot go a week without buying beauty products, let alone guard hearth and home? Those who acknowledge gender differences know this instinctively, while those who pretend they are meaningless are affronted when one dares speak the truth.

But most women, on a biological and often conscious level, are looking for a provider and protector in a man, among other things. Yet the metrosexual revolution would have us believe that women are yearning for nothing more in a man than another girlfriend.

In effect, Cinnamon Stillwell is arguing here that those who wish to abolish gender differences are running against normal heterosexual impulses. She no more wishes for men to become effeminate, than the average man wants women to become mannish.

The healthier heterosexual instinct, the one Cinnamon Stillwell ends her article with, is the cry of "Vive la difference!".

Last but not least, Cinnamon Stillwell also directly defends the qualities of masculinity itself. She has little time for the Jensen view of manhood:

Jensen's column provoked an avalanche of laughter and scorn on talk radio and the blogosphere. Not only did Jensen come across as, well, a wimp, but his demonizing of manhood missed the mark.

In equating masculinity with all things violent, Jensen underestimates his own sex. For masculinity is not only about being a warrior. The manly virtues include character, confidence, honor, inner strength, pride, responsibility, loyalty, generosity, industry and dignity.

It's refreshing to read such comments; it's rare for the finer qualities of masculinity to be recognised so openly in modern Western cultures.

Let's hope that the political shifts now underway keep developing and that we have more women like Cinnamon Stillwell speak up for a conservative view of gender.

Why I won't wear a white ribbon

It's International White Ribbon Day today. We men are supposed to wear a white ribbon to show our opposition to domestic violence.

But there is a problem. The message being spruiked in the media is not a simple "show your opposition to violence". Instead, we get the following themes:

a) All men are responsible for domestic violence. In the Herald Sun for instance we get this:

Demons coach Neale Daniher has a message for all men - take a good hard look at yourselves.

And this:

Men's Referral Service counsellor Bruce Colcott said all men should stop and think about their relationships with women.

b) The rate of domestic violence is high. According to the Herald Sun: "more than one in two women will be physically or sexually assaulted".

c) Women are at risk from their own partners.

d) Male culture accepts violence against women. Andrew O'Keefe tells us: "Our aim is to change the culture of silence, inaction and acceptance that surrounds violence against women."

These ideas are repeated over and over in the media. It's a serious thing as a shocking picture is created in which the average woman can expect to be attacked physically or sexually by a man, especially by her partner, and that all men are implicated in a masculine culture which condones such behaviour.

Not a happy picture, is it? Not something to attract women to relationships with men. Not something for men to feel much masculine pride about.

But is it true? For evidence, let's take a quick look at a major, official research project carried out by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Women's Safety Survey (1996).

This survey was commissioned by the Office for the Status of Women. Some of the staff at the ABS complained at the time that it was advocacy research designed to inflate the level of domestic violence.

Even so, the survey found that in a twelve month period about 2.6% of women experienced an incident of violence from a married or de facto partner. Of these 2.6% of women, about half experienced milder forms of violence such as threats or pushing or grabbing (and of the approximately 1.3% of more severe cases about 50% involved alcohol abuse).

What this means is that in a twelve month period 97.4% of men desisted from any conceivable form of violence against their partners, including threats.

When you consider the amount of alcoholism, drug use, mental illness and family breakdown in society, the figure of 97.4% of men not even committing a single instance of a threat is a creditable one to men.

Another interesting statistic from the survey is that women are physically safer when they are partnered - by a large factor of 250%. It is single women who are more vulnerable to violence. Women therefore should not go into a relationship assuming that they are at higher risk of assault - the very opposite is true.

Finally, the survey revealed that 25% of the physical assaults committed against women are perpetrated by women. Although this is a minority of assaults, it is a significant minority. So when discussing violence against women, it would be more reasonable to discuss both male and female perpetrators, rather than focusing on men alone.

And is it true that male culture condones violence against women? This hasn't been my experience. I've always felt there to be a strict taboo against such violence in the social circles I've moved in.

The research seems to confirm my own experience. A Vic Health survey from earlier this year found that over 97% of men rejected the idea that violence against women was ever justified.

So the picture built up by the media is false. Men overwhelmingly reject violence against women both in theory and practice. Women are safer having a partner than not having one. And when women are attacked the perpetrators are frequently other women.

Which raises the question of why the false picture is encouraged. The answer has much to do with politics.

The feminism of the 1970s was based to a considerable degree on patriarchy theory. According to this theory, gender is a construct designed to secure a systematic male dominance over women: a patriarchy. All the institutions of society are shaped to secure this male control over women. Marriage and the family are simply instruments of control in which the work of the patriarchy is carried out either through emotional manipulation or violence.

So patriarchy theorists won't accept the idea that men are generally protective toward women and that a masculine culture discourages violence against women. Instead, they'll emphasise that all men are implicated in the systemic subordination of women through violence, and that women will be most directly controlled within the family.

You can see such assumptions at work when feminist Gloria Steinem declared that,

Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself ... The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their own home.

The Australian feminist Kate Gilmore voiced a similar belief when (as head of a federal campaign against domestic violence) she claimed that:

You can see the tyrants, the invaders, the imperialists, in the fathers, the husbands, the stepfathers, the boyfriends, the grandfathers, and it’s that study of tyranny in the home ... that will take us to the point where we can secure change.

So if we accept the talk about all men being responsible for domestic violence, or masculine culture condoning domestic violence, or men alone being responsible for violence against women, or marriage placing women at greater risk of domestic violence, then we are lazily adopting the legacy of a radical feminist politics, one which assumes that gender is a social construct and that marriage and the family should be abolished as instruments of patriarchy.

Queer theorists also seem prominent in promoting the false picture of domestic violence. Queer theory is also based on the idea of gender being an oppressive social construct. The focus, though, is on the privileging of heterosexuality and a heterosexual masculinity. Queer theorists, therefore, have an interest in deconstructing a "hegemonic" masculinity, and so have a reason to blame an existing male culture and an existing pattern of heterosexual relationships for domestic violence.

In Australia Dr Michael Flood is a prominent figure in White Ribbon Day. He is someone who writes about "the academic destabilisation of dominant constructions of men and manhood" and who insists that we should not "take as given the categories of "men" and "women". The binaries of male and female are socially produced ..."

So we do need to be careful about the agenda behind the whole domestic violence issue. It is not politics free. There are political reasons why men in general and husbands in particular are targeted in these campaigns, and why the incidence of violence is exaggerated.

Yes, an opposition to domestic violence is a good cause. It is a cause, though, which urgently needs to separate itself from a bad politics.

Whiteness studies II: real indigenes vs fictitious whites

Whiteness studies is worth a part two. By drawing out the theory a little more, you get a better sense of what is really involved in this field of studies.

Indigenous Sovereignty

The basic claim of whiteness studies is that race is a social construct, rather than a biological reality, formed to allow some people to enjoy an unearned privilege at the expense of the oppressed other.

But who is this oppressed other? According to Australian whiteness theorists it is the Aborigines. This leads these theorists to talk a lot about "indigenous sovereignty".

Damien Riggs, for instance, states that "indigenous sovereignty is the ground on which we stand", whilst the whiteness studies association has as its first aim to "respect the existence of and continuing rights deriving from Indigenous sovereignties in Australia and elsewhere".

But this creates some logical tensions within whiteness theory. Just as it's difficult to assert that whites don't exist as a race but are a racial power group, so too is it awkward to claim that Aborigines don't exist as a race but are nonetheless a real entity, even to the point of being 'sovereign' over other groups.

Whiteness theorists, in other words, are assuming Aborigines to have some real, essential existence as a distinct group, whilst at the same time treating the existence of whites as a kind of fiction to be socially deconstructed.

Furthermore, it's difficult to set up an opposition between really existing indigenous peoples and fictitious whites, given that it is whites who are the indigenes in Europe.

Do European whites have a real sovereign existence, given that they are the indigenes? I would bet anything that whiteness theorists would wish to argue no, but this is the implication of connecting indigeneity and sovereignty.

Complicity

Another feature of whiteness studies is the idea of complicity.

According to this idea all whites, even the whiteness theorists themselves, remain part of the oppressor group. There is no way to separate oneself from this group, as all whites benefit from unearned privilege and are trapped unconsciously within white ways of knowing the world.

In his essay, Riggs frequently turns to the idea of complicity, as when he reports that:

all non-indigenous people are implicated in practices of oppression, and that the task is to develop ways of exploring this complicity, rather than denying our location within it.

Why stress the idea of complicity? It seems to me that whiteness theorists are trying to close any loopholes by which whites might escape "reflexivity": a discomforting confrontation with their own oppressive privilege.

The noose is set very tight. Riggs quotes another whiteness theorist, Janne Haggis, to the effect that anti-racists are just as complicit as racists:

I contend, we (the social analyst) still construct in the anti-racist position, a moral space of no more or less complicity.

Nor are whites who give up power and privilege any less complicit. Again, Riggs quotes a colleague, Fiona Probyn, who asserts that:

claims to "giving up power" only make sense in relation to having the ability to choose to do so - they only reassert white dominance.

Nor are whites who choose to identify with Aborigines off the hook. Riggs returns to Jane Haggis who informs us that the task for the 'traitorous' sociologist of whiteness (her description) is, in part, that of:

refusing the seductions of slipping into indigeneity to avoid the discomforts of being within whiteness.

So there you are. There are to be no possible ways of avoiding the "discomforts" of whiteness.

Once again, though, there are contradictions in the theory. The idea of complicity is supposed to force whites into reflexivity. It does this, but only at the cost of what whiteness studies was supposed to achieve in the first place.

Liberal moderns treat race as a social construct because they don't like the idea that individuals might be influenced in important ways by a fixed, unchosen category like biological race.

Whiteness studies is part of this liberal effort to deconstruct the concept of biological race as a fixed category. The idea of complicity, though, lets fixed categories return with a vengeance.

According to whiteness theorists, our existence is thoroughly racialised and there is no possible way to escape from our racialised category. Our position is fixed.

So much for the "multiple fluid identities" usually touted by liberal moderns!

There is one final point to be made. The idea of complicity is supposed to leave all whites stuck in a position of discomfort. Our whiteness is supposed to cling to us as a trouble.

But what healthy minded person would accept such a theory? Why would anyone willingly take on a negative self-identity? Who would willingly make themselves subservient to others in their moral status?

We are being asked to share a kind of psychological perversity. And all for the sake of a political theory which struggles to be logically coherent.

(I'll finish here, but return in a later post to look at the most unpleasant aspect of whiteness studies.)

Whiteness theory: You don't exist and you're bad!

Ten years ago there were no such courses. Now "whiteness studies" is being taught at over 30 American campuses. In Australia too there are academics teaching this subject; in 2003 they formed their own whiteness studies association.

So what is it? In short, it's a field of studies based on the theory that whites invented the idea of biological race in order to oppress other people and benefit from unearned privileges.

To understand the theory in more depth I'd like to comment on an essay written by a whiteness studies advocate, Damien Riggs.

A) Race as a social construct

Riggs believes that race is a social construct rather than a biological reality.

On the face of it, this is a very odd assertion. After all, there do exist people who are white as a matter of human biology - tens of millions of them.

So why would Riggs hold to the "social construct" theory? The answer is, I believe, that the idea of race as a social construct fits in well with liberal political theory. It makes sense in terms of ideology, even if it appears to be at odds with observable reality.

The intellectual orthodoxy of our times is liberalism. Liberals believe that we become human when we are free to choose for ourselves who we are to be. Liberals, therefore, don't like the idea of a "biological destiny". They don't like, for instance, the suggestion that our biological sex influences who we are, as this is something fixed that we are born into rather than determining for ourselves.

Similarly, it makes sense within the terms of liberalism to deny the biological reality of race, and to prefer instead the suggestion that race is merely a social construct, something which humans have made and can therefore readily unmake.

There is one further step in the logic of whiteness studies. In theory, liberals could apply the social construct idea equally to all races. They could argue that all races are mere constructs to be overthrown in favour of a universal individualism.

Whiteness studies is more partisan than this. Theorists like Riggs don't stop at the suggestion that all races are social constructs. They go on to ask a more specific question of why humans invented whiteness. The answer they give is that it's to allow some people to get power over others. Whites exist because whiteness allows them to be privileged oppressors.

This last claim has some particularly unpleasant consequences, which I'll discuss later. For now, though, it should be possible to understand Riggs' summary of his own field of study:

Whiteness is seen as a thoroughly racialised project that aims to legitimate the authority of certain groups over others by drawing on a legacy of 'biological' explanations of race ... Whilst this approach starts from an understanding of race as a social construction, it also acknowledges the very concrete ways in which race shapes experiences of oppression and privilege.

The theory of social construction is not without its contradictions - as those advocating whiteness studies are only too aware.

Theorists like Riggs wish to deny the real existence of race and to persuade us that race is a fictional category. At the same time, though, their central focus is on "whites" as a real category of privileged oppressors. In fact, in trying to highlight racial privilege, one of their aims is to try to get whites to be more conscious of their "racialised" existence - they don't want whites to be race blind.

So whites are being told: you don't exist as a race, but as a racial power category you do exist.

It's a difficult distinction to hold, and Riggs himself warns that:

it is important to recognise that in talking about race we run the risk of reifying race as a 'real entity'

(There's a couple of other important aspects of whiteness studies to discuss but I'll leave them till later.)

Sweden vs Science

A minister in the Swedish government has made the following extraordinary claim about men and women. Jens Orback announced that,

The government considers female and male as social constructions, that means gender patterns are created by upbringing, culture, economic conditions, power structures and political ideology.

Don't let the meaning of this pass you by. The Swedish government has made it official policy that what is "male" and "female" is invented and has no real existence. Gender difference, it is being claimed, does not really exist.

In Sweden, this view is taken seriously. So much so that funding for a book was denied by a county government because it contained an interview with a leading neurobiologist, Professor Annica Dahlstrom. Professor Dahlstrom referred in the interview to scientific research showing that there are differences in the brains of men and women.

So, Swedish liberals have a problem. They want to believe that there are no differences between men and women. But then a leading neurobiologist lets it be known that science has revealed the most significant of differences between men and women.

What do the Swedish liberals do? They try to suppress the scientific evidence.

Of course, when the Vatican objects to such dubious practices as the use of the unborn for medical research or spare parts, liberals attack the Catholic Church for its "dark age" attitude of hindering scientific progress. But, as we now clearly see, liberals themselves don't support science in an open-ended way. They are willing to try to suppress a scientific truth which is inconvenient to their political beliefs.

And why do they do it? Why do they so stubbornly cling to the unlikely idea that men and women are the same?

The reason, as I have outlined many times before, is as follows. Liberals believe that we are human because we can create who we are by our own will and reason. Our gender, though, is not something that we can choose for ourselves - it's something we're simply born into. Therefore, it becomes a limitation or constraint on our freedom to choose who we are.

Liberals want to remove this constraint. A favourite option for doing so is to claim that gender is merely a social construct. Our masculinity or femininity is merely a creation of society, so the argument goes, designed to uphold a power structure which privileges male will at the expense of female will.

If true, two things follow. First, gender itself can be deconstructed, removing the constraint on the "freedom" of the self-creating individual. And second, by doing so the patriarchal power structure is undermined, paving the way for "equality" (equal will) between men and women.

No wonder that Swedish liberals cling so stubbornly to this idea, even if it makes them look like flat-earthers. It fits in with their ideology beautifully. It makes possible the kind of freedom and equality which liberals so eagerly seek.

Sadly for liberals, science is now fatally undermining the "gender is a social construct" idea. It is now beyond dispute that our masculinity or femininity is created, to a considerable extent, by biological factors. Science has proved decisively the very thing that conservatives have always claimed: that we are not just "blank slates" but that our distinctive natures as men and women are hardwired into us.

And finally, what of those liberals who don't want to deny the overwhelming scientific evidence? Most, no doubt, will retreat to option two. They will recognise that gender difference is real, but insist that it be made not to count.

They will therefore continue to support the attempt to overcome the influence of gender through social engineering.

For instance, they will no doubt approve of the "equality bonus" recently proposed in Sweden. The Swedish government is upset that most parental leave is still taken by women, even after such leave was made available to men. Swedish men, if fact, only used up 18% of their leave entitlement last year.

For a conservative, this is not so surprising. Women will by nature have a stronger maternal instinct than men, and men will have a stronger provider instinct than women. So you would expect most parental leave to be taken by women.

But the Swedish government is willing to spend a lot of money offering financial incentives to men not only to stop working and take parental leave, but to do so alone, when the mother isn't home.

For the liberal Swedish government it's important that gender not count in how we arrange work and family life. And if the financial incentive doesn't work? Get ready for more heavy-handed measures to combat any traces of traditional gender roles in liberal Sweden.

Medical science vs liberalism

In the Herald Sun this morning there's an article about a serious eye disease (mac. degeneration, from which famous Australian authoress Colleen McCullough suffers), which can cause a progressive loss of vision. What is politically interesting about the article is that two of the risk factors listed for the disease are "gender" (being a woman) and "race" (being caucasion).

So here is more proof that race and gender are not merely "social constructs", as liberals like to claim, but have such a real existence that they influence the incidence of serious medical conditions.

Natural differences

Here's a well written column by Michael Gurian on accepting natural differences between men and women.

Liberals have spent a lot of time arguing that differences between men and women are created by socialisation alone: by upbringing, education, media influence and so on. They have preferred to believe this because they don't want an unchosen quality like our manhood or womanhood to significantly influence who we are. This is because it's a liberal first principle that we should be self-created by our own individual will and reason - that this, in fact, is what defines us as human.

Hence the liberal attempt to overthrow the influence of inherited sex roles, which is still going on today.

Modern science, though, is undermining the liberal position, as the Gurian piece makes clear. The conservative attitude, that there are natural differences between men and women which will be reflected in the nature of social life, and particularly family life, is being increasingly vindicated.