Can liberals tolerate sex distinctions?

Things don't always go the way of liberal modernism. Take the case of sex distinctions. These are supposed to be made not to matter in a liberal order.

One reason for this is that liberals believe that to be free we must be self-determining. We must be unimpeded in creating who we are and what we do. Our sex - the fact of being a man or woman - is something that we don't get to determine for ourselves. Therefore, it is seen negatively as a "biological destiny" and traditional sex roles are rejected as being merely "conventional" and therefore "restrictive".

This orthodox, establishment liberal view, that sex distinctions must be made not to matter, is set out by Susan Moller Okin as follows:

A just future would be one without gender. In its social structures and practices, one's sex would have no more relevance than one's eye color or the length of one's toes.

Similarly, Carolyn Heilbrun has declared that:

our future salvation lies in a movement away from sexual polarization and the prison of gender toward a world in which individual roles and modes of personal behavior can be freely chosen.

Here in Melbourne there is a private club called the Athenaeum which, since its formation in 1842, has restricted membership to men. A group of 130 high-profile members of the club have been campaigning to change the rules, but have not persuaded the majority of members to do so.

A Herald Sun columnist, Sally Morrell, weighed in on the issue. Her argument was simple but significant:

Of course, once there was the cry of "sexism" the usual gender war warriors came out to once more re-fight the battles of last century.

There was Victoria's Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission chief, Helen Szoke, claiming that while she had no power to change the Athenaeum's rules it was a "matter for common sense" that it should allow women to join.

Common sense?

Common sense tells me that it's actually very common indeed for women to prefer women's company, and men men's.

Barbecues in my childhood always had the women clustering around the kitchen, while the men stood around doing what they do to the snags and burgers.

And nothing much has changed. Look around at the next school social or street party, and you'll see the sexes doing their oil-and-water thing.

Sure, my women friends love the men in their lives, and love socialising with men, but we also love our women-only time.

My book club has no women-only rule, yet not a single man has even asked to join it in the years we've been going, and none of us plans to bring one along soon. It's wonderful to be among just women, free to indulge ourselves in goss and pop-psychology ...

I bet those old dinosaurs at the Athenaeum feel much the same way about their club.

And, I guess, the club offers them much the same kind of service.

A refuge from the other sex, albeit in somewhat grander environs and with a brandy after dinner to boot.

And you've got to wonder why Szoke doesn't also declare war on the women-only Lyceum Club, just a short walk from the Athenaeum.

For some reason the sight of rich women enjoying each other's company seems natural and social, but the sight of rich men doing the same seems sinister and evidence of a conspiracy.

Sally Morrell is arguing that sex distinctions do matter in our lives. That there are times when we enjoy the company of the opposite sex, but also times when we interact in a different way with our own sex.

She is arguing that this is a natural, ongoing, ineradicable, positive aspect of life which does not need to be suppressed.

In accepting sex distinctions as a natural and positive aspect of life, she has no need to explain them as an assertion of superior identity by one group over another, as left-liberals commonly do. So she doesn't assume that when a group of men socialise together, that they are acting to enforce an unjust power structure over women.

She therefore doesn't resort to the usual double-standard in which it's considered alright, or even liberating, for women to socialise or interact together, but thought dangerously illegitimate for men to do so. (Why "liberating" for women? Presumably, in socialising or interacting together separately from men, they are held to be escaping male control and male power - this is the very negative understanding of sex distinctions which leads to the retention of women-only groups, such as schools, sports clubs, gyms and girl guides, but to a voluntary or sometimes compulsory shift to unisex membership for previously male groups.)

I would add one further argument to those made by Sally Morrell. It's particularly important that young men experience masculine, and therefore masculinising, environments. Without this, it's more difficult for boys and young men to develop the strength of character and resilience they need to shoulder the burdens that will be placed on them in their adult lives. It's of considerable personal benefit to women if their fathers, husbands and sons cope well in life. So women, too, have an interest in maintaining male only spaces in society.

There's been one other setback to the liberal programme of making sex distinctions not matter. A couple of years ago I noticed that even feminists were returning to traditionally feminine pursuits:

It seems to me that the more that such feminist women reject femininity in theory, the more that they attempt to bolster it in practice. How else can you explain the feminist craze for the most feminine of interests, such as knitting, sewing, decorating, flowers and kittens.

Kate herself lists her primary interest as knitting; Mindy makes quilts; Laura likes baking and kittens; and Janet likes to sew pink clothes for her daughter. Janet, in fact, runs one website about her passion for laundry and another about her love for motherhood, her daughter, flowers, gardens and sewing.

This return to feminine interests has now become a recognised social trend. In a feature column in the Melbourne Herald Sun, Kylie Hanson writes:

For so long, the feminist movement made housewife a dirty word ...

We were proud not to cook, and shrugged our suit-clad shoulders when confronted with a sewing machine ...

It was dubbed progress ... But what women realised was that turning our backs on domesticity wasn't the easy answer.

Now, younger women are returning to the so-called domestic crafts: sewing, cooking, knitting and gardening.

Doesn't this trend suggest that sex distinctions are more deeply ingrained than liberals suppose? Why else would even the most "progressive" women take up traditionally feminine interests? It's not as if the current generation of women have been socialised to sew and to bake. Nor do they lack alternative pathways. But still they return to the traditionally feminine.

Why would they do so if the feminine only exists artificially to oppress them? Isn't it more likely that women are naturally oriented to some degree to what is distinctly feminine?

The evidence suggests that sex distinctions do matter and should be accepted as playing a meaningful role in society.

Do women work harder than men?

I want everything, just like men get to have, except without having an easy life buttressed by inequality.

The quote is from a commenter at a feminist website. It can be an odd experience reading these sites. There are feminist women who seriously believe that men are a privileged class and therefore have it easy compared to women. As the operator of one of these sites put it:

... the dude merely has to show up at the wedding.

I couldn't help, therefore, but notice the striking contrast between the attitude of these feminist women and that of Bettina Arndt in a recent Herald Sun column.

Bettina Arndt didn't like recent media reports portraying men negatively as domestic shirkers, so she looked up the data on male and female workloads. She found, contrary to assumptions, that fathers generally work harder than mothers:

You have to look very hard in the ABS website to find data on total work for men and women.

All they have at the moment is 1997 Time Use data, which will be updated later this year.

But surprise, surprise, it shows most fathers work harder than mothers.

The only group of mums who put in more hours were the small proportion, just over a quarter, who work full-time, clocking in more than 71 hours total work, compared with the full-time working dad's 69.

These dads averaged three hours more than mums working part-time and 10 hours more than homemaker mums.

Why is this not a story?

It's a similar outcome with the Australian Institute of Family Studies data. This shows that men put in more hours if the couple is childless and when the children are aged 5 to 14. It's only when the children are aged under 5 that women put in significantly more hours (7 hours per week).

Bettina Arndt doesn't want marriage to be based on hostile account keeping:

Yes, women put in tedious hours sorting whites from darks and wiping tiny noses.

But many men face hours behind the wheel in snarling traffic, often working long hours in dreary jobs to pay the mortgage.

It makes no sense, this endless gnawing at the bone, examining, dissecting, predicting married life on the basis of how many dishes washed, how many floors swept.

In real life, in good relationships, there's always much more that adds to the ledger of marital happiness.

The French disconnection

Marilyn French made a splash in 1977 with the publication of The Women's Room. This angry feminist novel tells the story of Mira, an unhappily married woman who escapes via divorce to an independent life of study and sexual freedom. The book sold 21 million copies.

Last Saturday The Age ran a story on the now 77-year-old French ("The French Revolution" 5/5/07). What struck me most about the piece were the "disconnects" in the views of the ageing feminist writer.

For instance, Marilyn French's two children are now in their 50s and both are childless. It's understandable that French should miss being a grandmother and therefore lament the growing rate of childlessness in Western society:

She still has a dim view of marriage, but is passionate about motherhood, believing it should be the central organising principle of society. She sits forward, eyes flashing, when I ask why. "What else are we here for? I mean, if there is a god, what did the god put us here to do? One thing: have children. That's it. And what do we do? We make it into the least interesting, unpaid, on-the-side thing you can do - societies are geared so that really, you'll have an easier ride if you just don't have children. Perverse values.

She points to rising childlessness among women of the current generation and says it's only going to get worse. "You make it so hard, they're just not going to have the babies - people are going to have to pay them to have babies. Building airplanes - is that really what we're here to do? Going to the moon - is that really a primary consideration? No.

I agree with much of this. In a sense society traditionally has been organised around motherhood: around creating a protected and secure space in which women can bear and nurture their children. Most people too do ultimately think of their children as being the most important of their life achievements.

I wonder, though, how French thinks motherhood can be treated as the central organising principle of society if men aren't brought into an active and enduring support for the mothers of their children through marriage.

It's odd too that French thinks that the way to make motherhood more interesting and attractive is to commodify it. Usually the left is opposed to the commodification of social relationships under capitalism, so it's notable that French wants motherhood to be valued in terms of wages and market value.

However, there is a more jarring disconnect in French's views on motherhood and children. She proudly tells her interviewer that:

I've had more love affairs than anyone else except for my daughter ... The number amounts to the hundreds.

We learn too that French has,

a strict policy of living for pleasure. This is a big thing for French.

She won't commit to living with anyone else, choosing instead to live independently:

I've had lovers that would come for four, five days or every other weekend - and that's fine with me. I like that.

She has spent her time writing, travelling (most recently to the Amazon), and having casual affairs. It's the standard modernist lifestyle choice, if you think that autonomy (independence) is the key good in life and that traditional commitments represent an oppressive restriction.

The problem is that it's difficult to fit children into it. When we have children we give up part of our autonomy: we are no longer unimpeded in choosing what to do or be. So French is living and advocating an autonomist lifestyle, the classic single girl lifestyle, in which motherhood is likely to loom as a repressive defeat.

French wants things which are at odds with each other. She advocates autonomist views which are likely to lead people to associate motherhood negatively with oppression. Consider the opinions of right-liberal Charles Richardson, quoted approvingly at the left-liberal Larvatus Prodeo site. Charles Richardson recently attacked the Treasurer's calls for improved fertility on the grounds that:

Decreased birthrates are associated with two things: increased standards of living and improved status of women ... If Australia wants more people we don't have to return our womenfolk to domestic drudgery in order to get them. We just need to open the door (to immigrants) a bit wider ... The drivers of fertility crusades are racism and misogyny: keep the women barefoot and pregnant ...

So autonomy theory led Marilyn French in the 1970s to condemn marriage as a domestic restriction and to propose an independent lifestyle in its place; the same theory now leads modern liberals like Charles Richardson to condemn motherhood as an oppressive domestic burden on women, limiting women's independence.

There's one other disconnect in French's views I'd like to briefly mention. French believes a true revolution in the relations between the sexes has stalled because men haven't changed enough:

Too many are still trapped in the old deluded myths of masculinity, a "hollow suit" of actions and beliefs that has proved extremely stubborn to alter, despite all the talk of SNAGs and metrosexuals, she says.

But is French romantically attracted to the modern metrosexual male? When asked why she wrote, My Summer With George, a novel about an older female pursuing an eligible male journalist, this is the response:

"Well, I got a crush on a guy," she says bluntly. "I realised, I've gone through all these experiences, and here I am - how old was I? I don't know, in my late 60s - and it was like Cinderella. I'm not kidding. You really mean I still have these feelings, that somebody's going to come along, this prince, and make my world wonderful? ... Talk about the triumph of hope over experience."

So the fundamental relationship between men and women, the fundamental attraction between the sexes, is still experienced, even by an ageing radical feminist, in terms of traditional gender. Yet, Marilyn French is calling for a revolution in which traditional masculinity is overthrown.

In other words, she admits that she herself responds romantically to the traditional male, and yet she criticises men for being too traditionally masculine. It seems to me that her own heterosexuality is getting in the way of a consistent politics here. Personally, I'd suggest that she modify the politics at this stage, but I think it's more likely for expectations of love to be sacrificed. A pity, though, if women in general are encouraged to follow suit.

Feminine rebellions: the Viking princess

Sweden has taken feminism much further than most other countries. Although I've criticised the theory behind this feminism at length, I've done so from a distance. So I was very interested to discover the Viking princess website, written by a Swedish woman now living in London. When the Viking princess criticises Swedish style feminism she does so with first-hand knowledge of its effects on her as a woman.

Amongst the more revealing articles are:

Femininity and womanhood today? In this article the Viking princess notes that she is effectively living the lifestyle of a man. This is what Swedish feminism aims at: it identifies autonomy as the key good in life and the male role as the autonomous one. Therefore, it insists that men and women are similar in nature and that women should pursue the "superior" male role in equal numbers to men.

If the Swedish feminists were right, then the Viking princess should be happy with her autonomous lot. But she's not. She feels as if she's lost something central to her own self, namely her femininity. She writes:

I can do most things that a man can do; I am independent, competent and earn a high salary. All this might make me think: What do I need a man for?

Yet, what do I crave more than anything? To be a real, old-fashioned woman. To have a man who cares for me and to have a home to manage (as opposed to managing stupid IT projects.)

She adds:

I get very little satisfaction from my ‘high-powered’ job. Why is this?

I think it is because what I am doing is against nature!

Everything I wanted to prove to myself and others about my competence or career, I have already proven. And to be honest, I wasn’t that fussed to start with. I just needed the money and happened to like IT.

But now I need to prove that I can be a real woman! I don’t even know where to start! I spent most of my life trying to emulate men and male behaviour!

I am sick of being so independent, of often being cleverer than men who fancy me (which is a turn-off). I am sick of wearing the trousers, metaphorically and in practice.

Furthermore:

Another problem is that the more time I spend emulating male behaviour at work, the less feminine (and more masculine) I become. I have learnt military leadership techniques for goodness sake! I can push my guys as if I was a drill sergeant… And every time I do, it kills of another bit of my female soul.…

All my feminine qualities are undesirable at work. Being caring, giggly, pretty, emotional etc, are all negative things to a greater or lesser extent. In my reviews at work I have had negative feedback involving all of these qualities, believe it or not.

What all this suggests is that for women like the Viking princess independence through careerism is not the most important good in life. What she finds more important is to fulfil deeper aspects of her own given nature; it is most significant to her to reconnect to her feminine soul, something she feels she can't accomplish adequately whilst living a masculine lifestyle.

Growing up a unisex girl. This article describes the experience of growing up in a country in which gender difference was suppressed rather than celebrated. Even at nursery school feminist gender politics was drilled into the young children:

There was constant talk even in nursery school about how traditional split of work between the genders must stop. There certainly was no question of having pretty dolls for girls to play with; we all played with nice but very gender-neutral toys. I suppose there was a slight bias towards the kinds of toys you’d traditionally give to a boy actually.

It's interesting to note here a contradiction in modernist politics. Autonomy, in the sense of being unimpeded in selecting who we are or what we do, is the ruling principle. The Swedish government follows this ideal of autonomy. The end result, though, is a greater state intrusiveness into what people would normally choose to do or be compared to more traditional societies. Autonomy theory doesn't result in people being left alone to make their own way, as most people if left alone would choose things considered illegitimate under the terms of autonomy theory (most people would follow their natural instincts and adopt a pattern of gender behaviour; they would also choose to sacrifice some part of their autonomy in order to fulfil other aims, such as marriage and parenthood).

Our Viking princess accepted the unisex ideology until she became old enough to choose to read some classic girl's books:

Gradually I started to notice that the heroines of these books generally put a big emphasis on being girls and on taking pride in that. It was something I had never done. I started having a feeling I was somehow missing out on the experience of being a girl.

When going abroad to Southern Europe, I noticed that little girls there usually wore skirts and frequently even pretty dresses. I and my friends very rarely did. In fact I very rarely wore traditionally girly clothes at all. My parents told me that the Southern Europeans wore such clothes because they were old-fashioned, religious and couldn’t afford much clothes anyway. They made all these things sound very bad, which I as a child of course latched on to.

I also dreamed of wearing pink, or perhaps yellow clothes. But looking at photos, it would appear I was mainly in brown corduroy or navy cotton! ... I remember fantasizing about being asked to be a bridesmaid so I could wear a frilly dress and carry a bouquet of pretty cut flowers!

I was aware though that I was not supposed to want such things.

At puberty it was even more difficult to accept the unisex view:

When I started getting breasts and boys started changing their voices I felt somehow cheated.. There wasn’t supposed to be any difference between boys and girls! But we all started changing to be more and more different. The boys were getting violent, always fighting each other. They seemed to enjoy watching and teasing us girls while we started becoming interested in fashion, make-up and pop music.

Eventually, the Viking princess rejected unisexism in principle:

It started becoming increasingly clear to me as if man and woman are two pieces of a puzzle that fit together because they are essentially differently shaped… That their physique and psyche complemented rather than duplicated each other. The idea that they are identical pieces seemed to me as a tremendous misconception and I was terribly irritated at having been fed an incorrect version of things all through my childhood. What I had been told simply wasn’t true. All my recent experiences showed that men and women were different and that men could no less be like women than women could be like men.

Since I wouldn’t want a man who behaves and looks like a woman, it makes sense that a man wouldn’t want a woman who behaves and looks like a man! True?

Why this ridiculous pretense that we are the same, when we very obviously are not? If I had been brought up more as a girl/woman instead of a gender-neutral being, I would have been stronger and more confident as a woman today! As it is, I had to discover the hard way that I was not the same as a man in a multitude of ways. I spent many years at work, trying to emulate an ‘alpha’ male in my behaviour…

I have no idea how the unisex ideal affected the boys around me. They too were brought up in a ‘unisex’ way.

I can tell you this though: In Sweden it is not common for men to help women with bags on public transport. Also, men expect women to regard sex in the same way as they do (i.e. casual unless expicitly stated otherwise…) They normally do not pay on dates, walk women home or pull out the chair for you etc.. Imagine my surprise when these things happened in England. I felt like a princess!

Until quite recently, every time I noticed a difference between me and men I kept thinking; this is wrong… I ought to be like the men… I felt like I was letting other women down unless I constantly strived towards the male ‘ideal’ that was set for Swedish women. I forced myself to carry heavy things (hurt my back badly when I moved!) to take work extremely seriously (with the result that I got very stressed out) and to never be scared or cry. These were girly, i.e. bad things. But let me tell you, it’s hard work hiding your true nature and pretending to be something you are not! (I still do it all the time, at work .)

Discovering that being feminine is not a ‘crime’ (in fact, it can be a positive thing) was a big revelation for me. I don’t actually want to be like a man!

I wish Northern European society would stop denying women the opportunity to be female! What good does it really bring? Who benefits?

This is nothing less than a feminine rebellion against liberal modernism and the Viking princess carries it through with a certain skill and style.

Leave the seat up

An excellent letter was featured today in the Age newspaper. It's from a young woman, Kim James, whose boyfriends have been of the domesticated metrosexual type. Having lived with these men, and become somewhat exasperated with their domestic over-achievement, she proposes a new list of what modern women really want:

We want an immaculate house, yet never again to see an apron or rubber gloves on our men.

We (women) want a fair share of the cooking and a superior knowledge of which detergent is best for the environment, pets and fertility.

We want out beauty products to greatly outnumber those of our partner's, but at the same time he must smell nice, be mainly soft to the touch and have good oral hygiene.

We want our cars and gardens to be tended to, yet do not want to smell grass clippings or see grease in the bathroom sink/carport.

We want to believe our men are DIY geniuses - and if they're not, they need to fake it.

Most of all, we want our sensitive new age guys to be in touch with our needs without us having to say a word.

And we want all this without (anyone) accusing us of being unrealistic. Impossible to achieve? Then please, I beg you, just leave the toilet seat up.

What's impressive about this list is that Kim James recognises first of all that she wants a combination of masculine and feminine qualities in her ideal boyfriend; second, she realises that this combination is not likely to occur; and third, that when forced to choose she would much prefer the masculine qualities to the feminine.

The moral of the story? It's still going to pay off for men to learn how to change tyres and mow lawns rather than to master the art of the manicure. Women may want a certain amount of grooming and emotional sensitivity in their men, but too much is going to seem effeminate and unappealing to a heterosexual woman.