Feminism: re-visioning the man-made world

How do feminists envisage the human world they inhabit? And what, in consequence, are the assumptions that feminist researchers bring to their various forms of human inquiry?

These questions, formulated here to target feminism and feminist research, are questions we have already addressed to positivism, interpretivism and critical inquiry. In doing so, we have in each case been forced to take account of the pluralism that obtains. For a start, as we saw, there are many positivisms. The same must be said of interpretivism. Not only has interpretivism emerged historically in the threefold guise of hermeneutics, phenomenology and symbolic interactionism, but each of these assumes a range of distinct forms that are not easily reconciled and are sometimes irreconcilable. Critical inquiry too has a long history. The divergences found to arise within just one ‘school’ in this tradition are warning enough that we cannot facilely lump together theoretical stances whose differences are as striking as their commonalities. Nor can we ignore the differences in social research posture and procedure that these stances call for.

It would be unrealistic to expect feminism to be different. Here too we come up against a wide-ranging pluralism. People may speak and write of ‘feminism’ in the singular, just as they speak and write of ‘positivism’, ‘interpretivism’ and ‘critical theory’ in the singular, but there are, of course, many feminisms. Feminists make sense of the world in a myriad of ways and bring differing, even conflicting, assumptions to their research. Feminism speaks with one voice in characterising the world it experiences as a patriarchal world and the culture it inherits as a masculinist culture, but this unity is short-lived. What do patriarchy and masculinism mean? How do patriarchy and masculinism arise? What, in sociological terms, is the paramount locus wherein patriarchy and masculinism are encountered and identified? From where do patriarchy and masculinism draw their essential support? And are these, in fact, the questions it is most relevant to ask? Merely to raise issues like these is to point up the heterogeneity of feminist thought.

Here once more, then, there is place for some ‘sorting out’.

For a male to presume to do such sorting out, even when relying overall on women’s texts, calls for a good measure of courage or fool­hardiness. Probably both. There are those who would assert without qualification that a man can have nothing valid or useful to say about feminism or feminist research. While the literature carries references enough to male feminists and feminist males, to a large number of feminist writers these terms are oxymorons.

We reject the idea that men can be feminists because we argue that what is essential to ‘being feminist’ is the possession of ‘feminist consciousness’. And we see feminist consciousness as rooted in the concrete, practical and everyday experiences of being, and being treated as, a woman. (Stanley and Wise 1983, p. 18)

Given Stanley and Wise’s definition of ‘being feminist’, theirs is impeccable logic The definition is not unchallengeable, of course, and it surely has anomalous implications. On these grounds, a woman emerges as a genuine feminist if, espousing a weak form of liberal feminism, she is content to see meagre gains for women in workplace opportunities which leave all systems and structures in place and essentially intact, male-derived though they are. Not so a far more radically minded male who insists that sexism permeates the very fabric of society and the culture that sustains it and warns that women will never experience justice or achieve any measure of equality without fundamental changes to cultural thought patterns and societal structures. The mande of feminism is denied to the latter because he is male and therefore unable to share feminine consciousness.

The same logic would deny to whites the possibility of their being in any formal sense members of the black movement for civil rights. However anti-racist their sentiments and whatever they might do for the cause, they are unable to share the consciousness and experience of people of colour. Yet the important role whites have played in movements for emancipation and racial justice cannot be denied. Feminist writer Alison Assiter writes of how African people have revealed the Eurocentrism of modem science. Those who have played this role are ‘African people who spoke from a commitment to the emancipation of Africans from white domination’. She adds, however: ‘One does not have to be African to hold these values; potentially, anyone would be able to join the relevant community’ (1996, p. 87).

Echoing around us, at the same time, is Freire’s clear assertion, referred to in the previous chapter, that no one can liberate somebody else. As Freire sees it, no one can even liberate herself or himself. Instead, people together—yes, people in fellowship—liberate one another. That being so, there is no escaping the need for the women of this world, in solidarity with one another, to engage in a movement for deliverance from oppression and the attainment of equality. No one can do it for them. It can only be their movement. Women must lead it and constitute its core.

Nevertheless, a ‘movement’—a much looser concept than, say, ‘institution’ or ‘organisation’—allows for a broad range of affiliations and diverse modes of participation and action. Just as whites have joined blacks in their struggle, to the advantage of the movement as a whole, men can surely join women in theirs—peripherally, to be sure, but not the less wholeheartedly for that. Nor is such involvement to be seen as some kind of exercise in altruism. Men’s own interests are utterly at stake. They are, after all, victims as well as perpetrators of patriarchy and sexism. At one point it became something of a truism in feminist literature but it bears repeating: patriarchy and sexism are not fetters worn by females only; they severely limit human possibility for males as well.

Source: Michael J Crotty (1998), The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process, SAGE Publications Ltd; First edition.