[5179] in Central_America
New quotes for Fri Nov 19
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Central America)
Fri Nov 19 06:30:34 1993
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1993 06:29:42 -0500
From: Central America <root@charon.MIT.EDU>
To: ca-mtg@charon.MIT.EDU
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debonte (Erik L De Bonte):
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hch (Hernando Cortina):
I feel like a wet parking meter on Darvon!
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katie (Lillian Kamp):
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sethf (Seth Finkelstein):
[This is for CA in semi-reply to sorokin's .plan]
The Struggle for Feminist Purity Threatens the Goals of Feminism
Daphne Patai
[Chronicle of Higher Education, February 5, 1992, p. B1]
A number of years ago I got the idea of putting together a
volume with the title "Ideological Policing in Contemporary
Feminism." The episodes leading to this intention are by now a
bit vague in my mind, but they included stories told to me by
feminist colleagues, for example about being criticized by other
feminists for wearing make-up, for being heterosexual, for
wanting a door put on an office and thus gaining some unsisterly
privacy from the feminist staff members in the adjoining office.
In my own courses in women's studies, I have seen similar
examples of intolerance among my students--eyes rolled to ceiling
in exaggerated disapproval of a classmate's reference to her
"boyfriend"; heated criticisms by young women in sturdy boots and
pants of the "conventional" apparel of other women in the class;
an urgent need to ferret out examples of latent unfeminist
tendencies; a certain aggressiveness in displaying one's
ideological credentials. Of course, there was surely just as
much intolerance elsewhere in the university--antagonism, say, to
lesbian students--but at least in my own women's studies courses,
I did not see that kind of hostility emerge. It was obvious that
women's studies classrooms provided a safe arena in which
interesting reversals of prevailing reality could take place. It
didn't surprise me that, among young students at least, this
might lead to excessive zeal.
All this, of course, was before the burning intellectual
question of the day revolved around "political correctness."
I never wrote that book--and a major reason I didn't was
that I couldn't decide how to write a critique of feminism that
would not in some way hurt feminism and that would not
automatically place me in the enemy camp. Despite opponents'
assertions, feminist concerns had not had such resounding success
in the world that I wanted to hazard a public critique. And the
ease with which the charges of PC have been catching on shows
that I was right to be wary of writing something that could be
taken to support such charges.
But everything one tolerates that one shouldn't inevitably
returns.
So, today, I am once again exercised over ideological
policing within feminism. I am still worried about the best way
to write about this subject without making my views useful to the
opposition--the very real opposition that exists to feminism and
to women's studies programs. Indeed, the difficulty in making up
my mind about this dilemma is part of what motivates this essay.
But its context is provided by the following concatenation of
events:
On October 30, 1991, I published a commentary in these pages
on "surplus visibility" and the stigma of minority status. In
November, as responses to the article came in, I discovered that
my argument apparently had led some people to assume that I must
be black. Thus, I received a letter requesting that I contribute
a brief life story to a book on blacks who had "made it" in
academe. At the same time, in my own Women's Studies Program at
the University of Massachusetts, I found myself called a racist
because, as acting director, I had been unable to come up with
extra money for an elective course on indigenous women proposed
by two Native American graduate students. Simultaneously, I had
used the last bit of money in our budget to finance a required
course on the intellectual foundations of feminism, to be taught
by a teaching assistant who happened to be white.
The same error was being made in both cases: identity
politics--the assumption that a person's racial or ethnic
identity and views are one and the same. If people found what I
said sympathetic or useful to blacks, I must be black. If
minority women were frustrated or disappointed by an
administrative decision, I, in my white skin, must be racist.
The consequences of these two cases of mistaken identity
were, however, vastly different. In the first case, I merely
wrote to explain that I was white and hence not an appropriate
candidate for a book on black academics. In the latter case, I
tried to explain that "racism" had nothing to do with the events
in question. This simple denial brought a storm down upon my
head. I was told by a young black colleague that when a woman of
color says she has experienced racism, she is the authority on
that experience and cannot be challenged. More protests on my
part--that this made any kind of discussion impossible--only made
the situation worse, as memos and charges came from every
direction. Every direction but one: not one of my colleagues who
clearly believed that the charges were absurd (and told me so
privately) was willing to say so publicly.
I began to realize that we were confronting a new dogma
sanctifying a reversal of privilege: instead of the old
privileges accompanying the status of "white," truth,
righteousness, and automatic justification in the world of
women's studies now reside with "women of color." As if in
compensation for past oppression, no one now can challenge or
gainsay their version of reality. What can be said for such a
turnabout, of course, is that it spreads racial misery around,
and this may serve some larger plan of justice, sub specie
aeternitatis.
But this is hardly adequate for those who believe earthly
justice must be pursued case by case, and cannot be won by means
that are themselves unjust. In this instance, however, the facts
of the case were of no importance: only identity counted. This,
let me emphasize, was no misinterpretation on my part, for some
memos actually did state that it was absurd for a white, tenured
professor to claim she was being unjustly accused. By virtue of
having a certain identity (white) and occupying a certain
position (tenured), an individual would necessarily be guilty of
whatever accusations a woman of color (or an untenured
individual) might make against her.
Among my other offenses was an expression of concern at the
way some of our students were using the term "Eurocentric" as a
new slur: by dismissing an entire culture as "racist," they
relieved themselves of the burden of learning anything about it.
An administrator at my university told me of a student activist
who heatedly said: "Do you know who's teaching Spanish in the
Spanish Department? Spaniards!" Nor do I take this merely as a
joke; I have often wondered how soon it will be before someone
suggests that my "identity" (North American) should cause me to
cease teaching classes in one of my areas of research, Brazilian
women.
The situation that I describe is, alas, hardly unique. What
adds to my distress is that it is not usually discussed. For
another dogma of women's studies seems to be that our problems
must not be aired. There are some good reasons for this
reluctance, of course, given the eagerness with which opponents
of women's studies might seize on any disagreements. But the
consequences are nonetheless dreadful: a kind of siege
mentality, in which demands for loyalty thrive and very little
fresh air gets in. What does flourish in this confined
atmosphere is a flaunting of correct postures, which everyone
rushes to embrace, perhaps in an effort to compensate for sexual,
racial, or other identities that have been called into question.
Thus, students in my course on utopian fiction by women
wrote papers this past semester displaying attitudes that they
apparently had learned were the appropriate ones in their women's
studies classes. A young white woman too shy to speak in class
wrote repeatedly of having to come to terms with her status as a
"white oppressor." A young man wrote that a novel we had read
taught him that his relationship with Mother Earth was one of
rape and pillage; he now saw his rock collection in a new light.
I wondered whether he had intended this as parody--which would
have been a more original response.
An extremely articulate student wrote eloquently (and
without any apparent irony) about how, as a woman, she was
silenced and lacked a language. And a white student who
criticized a black writer's metaphorical use of the word
"slavery" to describe a casual labor exchange was coldly told by
another white student that it was not appropriate for a white
person to criticize a black writer's metaphors. It is true, of
course, that white society has historically oppressed black
people, men have damaged the environment, and women indeed have
been silenced, but these facts do not mean that everyone today
inherits a simple identity or is personally guilty of everything
her or his predecessors did.
<Truncated due to the 10000 char limit. To be continued>
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sorokin (Jessie Stickgold-Sarah):
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therese (Therese):
At the still point of destruction
At the centre of the fury
All the angels all the devils
All around us can't you see
There is a deeper wave than this
Rising in the land
There is a deeper wave than this
Nothing will withstand...
- Sting,
Dream of the Blue Turtles
--- End of Central America ---
