Radical Feminism Today Denise Thompson PDF

Radical Feminism
Today
Denise Thompson
eBook covers_pj orange.indd 59 20/2/08 6:28:13 pm

R a d i c a l F e m i n i s m To d a y
R a d i c a l F e m i n i s m To d a y
Denise Thompson
SAGE Publications
London Thousand Oaks New Delhi
Denise Thompson 2001
First published 2001
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Contents
Introduction 1
Part One Understanding Feminism 5
1 Defining Feminism 5
On definition 5
Defining feminism 6
A feminist standpoint 17
2 Ideology Justifying Domination 22

Truth and domination 29
Meaning and understanding 31
3 Ideology Enabling and Disguising Domination 36

Pleasure and desire 36
Individualism 43
Part Two Misunderstanding Feminism 53
4 Feminism Undefined 53
5 Other Definitions 59
Patriarchy 59
Sexism 63
Women 64
Gender 72
Dichotomies 79
6 Difference 81
Differences between the sexes 81
Feminist object relations theory 82
7 Differences Among Women 92

Feminism and race 94
Exclusion 95
Irrelevance 102
Denying male domination 107
vi C O N T E N T S
8 What Does it Mean to Call Feminism

White and Middle-Class? 112
False universalism 116
Imperialism 123
Race, class and gender 126
9 Masculinity and Dehumanization 133

The radical feminist account 133
Racism, masculinity and dehumanization 135
Conclusion 146
References 149
Index 159
Introduction
T he general tenor of the arguments in this book is that radical feminism is

not one form of feminism among others, but simply feminism unmodi-
fied (MacKinnon, 1987: 16), and that the common practice of qualifying
feminism with any of a variety of pre-existing frameworks serves to disguise
the core meaning of feminism. In the 1970s, those frameworks tended to
be summed up under the headings liberal feminism, socialist feminism and
radical feminism; subsequently, they have multiplied into a plethora of
feminisms which defy enumeration. But such a characterization disguises
the relations of power involved. What has been happening is not a struggle
over the meaning of feminism between equally matched contenders, but a
stream of attacks powered by allegiances to varieties of malestream thought,
against what is labelled radical feminism. This labelling serves the ideologi-
cal purpose of opening a space within feminism for other feminisms, thus
providing a platform for attacking it from within.
This present work is an investigation of one of the most influential sites
of the process of dismantling feminism from within, what I have come to
call academic feminism. By academic feminism I do not mean everything
produced in universities under the heading feminism. Still less do I mean
all feminist work which is academic in tone and format, since I regard my
own work as academic in this sense. What I am referring to is that work,
self-identified as feminist, which either ignores feminisms central prob-
lematic of opposition to male supremacy, or which actively sets out to pil-
lory genuinely feminist work. The meaning, value, truth and reality of
feminism, as I shall be arguing at length, is its identification of and opposi-
tion to male domination, and its concomitant struggle for a human status for
women in connection with other women, which is at no ones expense, and
which is outside male definition and control.
Because academic disciplines are conventionally male-identified, it is
hardly surprising that a feminism which exposes those interests cannot be
allowed a place in the academic canon. That some feminist work in the
academy has nevertheless been able to identify and to resist the coercions
and seductions of malestream thought, is a tribute to its authors commit-
ment, persistence and dedication. There are many feminists within academe
whose feminist politics is direct and unequivocal, and who have succeeded
in conveying it to their students, but they are in the embattled minority like
radical feminists everywhere. But in too many self-identified feminist texts
emanating from academe, the signs of their origins are only too evident.
The chief of those signs is equivocation on, or outright repudiation of, the
2 INTRODUCTION
question of male domination. While this may be inadvertent, it is none the

less systematic. Constructs of cultural feminism, essentialism, puritanism,
false universalism, political correctness, white and middle-class, ahistori-
cal, etc., are typically directed against those feminist writings which most
clearly identify male domination and its ways.1
Although the critique of academic feminism is one of my major concerns,
I do not discuss postmodernism in any detail. This might seem a curious
omission in light of the overwhelming influence of postmodernism on femi-
nist theorizing in the academy in recent years. The omission, however, is
deliberate. I do not discuss postmodernism as an identifiable framework
because to do so, even as critique, would be to reinforce its position of pre-
eminence. To focus attention, even critically, on postmodernism would be to
award it credibility as a feminist enterprise, when from a feminist standpoint
it is merely another ruse of male supremacy. As Mia Campioni put it:
The white, male, middle-class intellectual response to this revolt [of the other]
has been to appropriate this claim to otherness as its own revelatory experi-
ence. . . . As a male theorist declared unilaterally: we have found that we are all
others (Paul Ricoeur, quoted in H. Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic, 1983: 57).
He forgot that he was once more speaking for all of us. The noisy protests of
others hitherto mute (or ignored / unheard) must have come as a huge shock to
him. . . . He could not understand these protests in any other way than by assum-
ing this other to be him again, or to be again there for him to appropriate as
his own. (Campioni, 1991: 4950 her emphasis)
On the other hand, I do address many of the issues which have been raised
under the postmodernist banner, and many of the texts I discuss are expli-
citly identified as postmodernist.
The referent of the feminism I will be alluding to throughout this pre-
sent work is that second wave of feminism, initially known as the Womens
Liberation Movement, dating from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Femi-
nism, in the sense of women defending their own interests in the face of
male supremacy, is of much longer duration than the last three decades, and
hence to call this latest manifestation a second wave does an injustice to
the long history of womens struggles on their own behalf (Lerner, 1993;
Spender, 1982). (There is no third wave feminism at present is a clarifi-
cation and holding on to the insights and gains of the Womens Liberation
Movement in the face of the male supremacist backlash, and of those
co-optations and recuperations which penetrate (pun intended) the very
body of feminism itself. Still less have we arrived at any era of postfemi-
nism, for the simple and obvious reason that male supremacy still exists.)
But although feminism has wider historical connotations than I give it here,
my task is not to write a history of feminism throughout the ages; it is,
rather, to engage in the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the
age I myself have lived through (to paraphrase an insight of Marxs).2
As I mentioned above, it is radical feminism which provides my own
standpoint and which I regard as feminism per se. But although I will be
INTRODUCTION 3
arguing at length that much that is called feminism is not, I have often
allowed the designation feminism to stand even while I argue against it. In
other words, I use the term feminism in a systematically ambiguous way.
Sometimes I mean feminism per se, that is, radical feminism which identifies
and opposes male domination; and sometimes I accept the self-identification
as feminism even while disagreeing with it. Which is which should be clear
from the context. I have kept the ambiguity in the interests of open-endedness
because it resides in the texts under discussion. It is sometimes the case that
I criticize one aspect of a text which in other respects displays impeccable
feminist credentials.
The texts which I use to exemplify this kind of academic feminism have
been selected randomly. They are exemplary only, and not in any sense chief
offenders in the issues I identify. They are intended to illustrate certain
themes, and not to castigate individual authors or particular pieces of work.
I could have chosen any number of other texts to illustrate those themes,
which are endemic in academic feminist theorizing and not peculiar to par-
ticular authors.
My task is not to sort out who is a feminist and who is not. The issue of
defining feminism is not a question of who is (or is not) a feminist. While it
may indeed be the case that no one has the right to tell anyone else whether
or not she is a feminist, that is not what is involved. To see it in that way can
only impede the progress of feminism because it stymies the important pro-
ject of self-clarification by placing a ban on saying what feminism is. It
reduces politics to a matter of personal preference and opinion. The crucial
question is not Who is a feminist? but What is feminism? This latter ques-
tion can only be addressed with reference to the logic of feminist theory and
practice. The meaning of feminism needs to be radically contested and
debated. But that cannot happen as long as feminism continues to be impli-
citly defined only in terms of anything said or done by anyone who identifies
as a feminist.
As an exercise in radical feminist theory, this present work is somewhat
unusual. Radical feminist writing has not on the whole tended to engage in
explicit theory-making in the sense of building on, extending and engaging
with attempts to say what feminism is. For if radical feminism has not been
welcomed into academe, the feeling has been mutual neither has radical
feminism been eager to intrude upon the more arcane levels of theorizing.
Arising as it does out of the practical politics of womens lives and experi-
ences, and springing directly from the changed consciousness which is femi-
nism, the theory has tended to show itself in the issues addressed and in the
ways in which those issues are interpreted, rather than by being said out-
right.3 In most cases feminist theory is implicit in feminist texts, rather than
explicitly spelled out. By and large this has been a deliberate strategy on the
part of radical feminist theorists. It has meant that radical feminism has
remained tied to issues of real concern to women, rather than being enticed
by the seductions of theory for theorys sake (Stanley and Wise, 1993). For
the most part, radical feminism has focused on exposing the worst excesses
4 INTRODUCTION
of the social system which is male supremacy. The need to say what feminism
is, however, has become urgent and pressing in light of the strength and
influence of the anti-feminist backlash, a backlash which is increasingly
masquerading as feminism itself. This present project is a contribution to
the debate.
The work is divided into two Parts. Part One is called Understanding Femi-
nism. In it I discuss what is at stake in feminist politics. In Chapter 1 I
define feminism as a moral and political struggle of opposition to the social
relations of male domination structured around the principle that only men
count as human, and as a struggle for a genuine human status for women
outside male definition and control. I also discuss what is involved in a
feminist standpoint. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the concept of ideology.
Chapter 2 discusses some objections which have been raised to the use of
the term, and argues that it is useful as a designation of the ways in which
domination is disguised in order to justify it and make it palatable. In this
chapter I also criticize arguments to the effect that truth is complicit with
domination, and discuss the issue of comprehensibility in feminist theory. In
Chapter 3 I investigate some of the ways in which ideology works, through
the inculcation of pleasure and desire, and through interpreting relations of
ruling as the personal preferences or attributes of individuals. Part Two is
called Misunderstanding Feminism. It is devoted to criticisms of a number
of ways of characterizing feminism other than in terms of the opposition to
male domination. Chapter 4 discusses the feminist reluctance to define femi-
nism. Chapter 5 discusses a number of implicit definitions of feminism in
terms of women, patriarchy, sexism, gender and dichotomies, arguing
that all these meanings have limitations as the chief designator of a feminist
politics. Chapter 6 looks at the question of differences between the sexes.
In Chapters 7 and 8 I discuss in some detail the question of differences
among women, and in particular the contentious issue of race and the part
it has played in feminist politics. In the last chapter, I use the early radical
feminist insight that male domination is the primary form of social domina-
tion in order to suggest alternative ways of bringing a feminist perspective
to bear on racism and imperialism.
Notes
1 For a critique of the concept of essentialism and its unjustified use against
radical feminism, see Thompson, 1991, Chapters 7 and 10.
2 Letter to Ruge, Kreuznach, September 1843, in Early Writings, Penguin Books,
1975: 209.
3 The reference is to Ludwig Wittgensteins distinction between showing and
saying: What can be shown cannot be said (Wittgenstein, 1951: 4.1212). The dis-
tinction may be absolute in the case of logic. But a political commitment such as femi-
nism must be able to identify explicitly the interests, meanings and values which
determine both what feminism is struggling against and what it is struggling for. In
that sense, any distinction between what can be said and what must simply be shown
is provisional. It is tied to certain purposes and shifts according to the task at hand.
Part One Understanding
Fe m i n i s m
1 Defining feminism
On Definition
U nderstanding what feminism is is not a straightforward task because

there is a reluctance among feminist writers to engage in explicit defi-
nition. On the whole feminists tend, often quite deliberately, not to say what
they mean by feminism. That word, wrote Alice Jardine, poses some seri-
ous problems. Not that we would want to end up by demanding a definition
of what feminism is and, therefore, of what one must do, say, and be, if one
is to acquire that epithet [feminist]; dictionary meanings are suffocating, to
say the least (Jardine, 1985: 20). Even compilers of feminist dictionaries are
reluctant to engage too rigorously in definition. Maggie Humm, for exam-
ple, said that it could only be misleading to offer precise definitions of femi-
nism because the process of defining is to enlarge, not to close down,
linguistic alternatives (Humm, 1989: xiv).
These warnings against definition would have some point to them, were
it not for the special circumstances of the current condition of feminist theo-
rizing. There is little common agreement about what feminism means, even
to the point where positions in stark contradiction to each other are equally
argued in the name of feminism, with little hope of resolution as things
stand at the moment. The need for clarity is pressing in a context where a
great deal of what is called feminism is not, where euphemisms and eva-
sions abound, where the sponge words (Mills, 1959) of postmodernism
soak up all meaning, and the backlash against feminism masquerades as femi-
nism itself. Definition, in the sense of the explicit assertion of meaning, has
an important role to play in the feminist struggle.
To define feminism is to take responsibility for what one says about femi-
nism. It is a way of situating oneself and clarifying the standpoint from
which one approaches the feminist project. And it is not only the author
who must decide on the accuracy or otherwise of her own definition, but
also the reader. By defining feminism, the author is providing for the reader
6 U N D E R S TA N D I N G F E M I N I S M
the opportunity to enter into debate. No discourse belongs solely to its

author. Readers too participate in the creation of meaning. A definition sets
up a dialogue, and it does that best when the author gives a clear and unambi-
guous account of what feminism is in the context of her own discourse.
Definition is a clarifying device. Saying clearly what is meant by feminism is
to make provision for challenge and debate. Definitions are tentative, open
to challenge, must be argued for and substantiated, and can always be modi-
fied. Because the problem of dogmatism is a very real one, it is as well to
remember this. Defining something is not to fix it irrevocably and for all
time. A definition is not the essential and only true meaning. It is not authori-
tative, only more or less accurate for the purpose for which it is intended.
Far from rigidifying meanings, definitions are devised in particular contexts
for particular purposes. The context in this case is that of a feminism under
attack from within, and the purpose is to clarify what is at stake in feminist
politics. While a definition certainly closes down some alternatives, it also
opens up others. Hopefully, the alternatives which are closed down by the
definition I propose are those anti-feminist positions paraded as feminism,
while the alternatives it opens up are those of a feminism which is truly in
the interests of women.
What follows is a definition only in the sense that it is an explicit clari-
fication in the light of the special circumstances mentioned above. In fact it
is rather more than a definition. It is an extended account of the ways in
which the discourse of feminism makes sense. It is an account of how the
term feminism is used, but not just any usage will do. As I argue through-
out, there are some usages of feminism which either make no sense of the
feminist project, or are actively antagonistic towards it. Hence, simply
pointing to the way the term feminism is used is insufficient for the pur-
pose of clarifying the nature of feminism. To the extent that uses of the term
feminism contradict or confuse the ethical and political aims of feminism,
they cannot be said to count as feminism.
Defining Feminism
The theme of social construction runs throughout the literature of second-
wave feminism. (Gender is commonly used to denote this theme but, as I
argue at some length later, there are grave problems with this usage.) This is
intended to emphasize the fact that sex, sex differences, relations between
the sexes, the very category of women itself, are due to social arrangements
and not to biological necessity, that these are questions of culture not nature.
To insist that the situation of women is socially constructed, and not natu-
rally given, is a necessary emphasis given the justificatory role still played by
biological explanations for womens social subordination. But the idea of
social construction is not a new one, nor is it a peculiarly feminist one even
in the weakest sense, that is, concerned specifically with women. It origi-
nated with sociology.1 It is not even a particularly radical idea, since it can
be found in the most conservative of sociological writings. Although it is an
DEFINING FEMINISM 7
improvement on arguments from nature, it has a limited use for feminist

purposes unless it is combined with an analysis of what kind of society it is
we are talking about, and of the implications of that for feminist theory and
practice.
From the outset, it should be obvious that feminism is a social enterprise,
a moral and political framework concerned with redressing social wrongs.
It is an ethical stance in that it starts from and continually returns to ques-
tions of value, of good and evil, right and wrong, of what is worthwhile and
significant and what is not. Feminism is centrally concerned with judge-
ments of what ought and what ought not to be the case, with what consti-
tutes right action and the good life and with what operates to prevent that,
with the nature of the human conditions within which we want to live and
those which must be resisted because they are morally wrong. Morality is
not just a private matter. Although it concerns what each of us decides about
what constitutes the good life and how to live it, that does not mean that
morality is an individualistic phenomenon in any sense which implies that
individuals are discrete entities, existing in isolation, prior to or somehow
outside social relations. Individuals can be nothing but social beings, and
the moral beliefs which structure human life are collective. That does not
imply actual universal agreement, because in that case there would be no
decisions for people to make. But it does mean that morality must be shared
and communicable, even when it involves an unpopular stance taken in
opposition to dominant beliefs.
The way in which feminism is political is not well served by the conven-
tional meaning of politics, for example, as all that characterizes or touches
upon the domain of public policy (Montefiore, 1990: 201). One of the
earliest insights of feminism was the recognition that the public / private dis-
tinction is an ideological construct which confines important aspects of the
subordination of women to the domain of the private, and allows some of
the most violent manifestations of the power of men over women to go
unrecognized and unchecked. The feminist slogan The personal is political
both acknowledges and challenges that dichotomy. A feminist politics involves
struggling to make the private woes of women public. It involves, too,
identifying the numerous ways in which the public sphere men value is
dependent for its continued existence on the unpaid, unacknowledged and
unreciprocated work of women. And it involves elucidating the ways in
which the public penetrates the private home, family, bedroom, and the
individual psyches of women and men.
The public arena is, ideally, the domain of consensus, since it is not pos-
sible to reach agreement unless the debate happens out in the open. It is this
ideal of consensus which feminism appeals to in its attempts to bring the
wrongs done to women under public scrutiny. In this sense, feminisms claim
to be political is similar to politics in the conventional sense, in that it aims
to put womens interests on to the public agenda. But it is also different in
that it insists that there are crucial dimensions of the private sphere which
ought to be matters of public debate and rectification. In so doing, feminism
brings into question the split between public and private on which
conventional politics depends. Feminist politics requires that the nature of
politics in the conventional sense be radically changed if it is to include the
interests of women. This requirement cannot be met by a tokenistic fitting
of some women into positions which remain unchanged. Women cannot be
equal with men as long as there is no equality among men. In feminist
terms, what women want is a human status where rights, benefits and dig-
nities are gained at no ones expense, and where duties and obligations do
not fall disproportionately on the shoulders of women. Such a project
promises to transform politics altogether.
Politics is also concerned with social relations of power, and the relations
of power which feminism identifies are those of male domination. Feminism
aims to expose the reality of male domination, while struggling for a world
where women are recognized as human beings in their own right. Using
the unequivocal and adamantine terminology of male domination and its
synonyms does not mean mens absolute power and womens absolute
powerlessness. It is used for the sake of clarity, in order to designate as
clearly as possible what it is that feminism is opposing.
If it is feminisms peculiar genius to have uncovered the social reality of
male domination, simply to appeal to social construction becomes radically
inadequate as a feminist strategy. If social reality is male supremacist, then
what the social construction thesis implies is that we are constructed as
the bearers of the social relations of male supremacy. But while this is a
major implication of feminist theory, it is immediately countered by the exis-
tence of feminism itself. Feminism says that male domination constitutes the
conditions under which we live, but that it ought not to be so. At one and
the same time, feminism both exposes the existence of male domination and
challenges it. Indeed, it is through exposing male domination as domination
that feminism poses its major challenge, since social domination operates
most efficiently to the extent that it ensures compliance by being disguised
as something else, and not domination at all. It has been the task of femi-
nism to tear away the masks behind which male domination hides its true
nature, and expose it for the dehumanizing system it really is.
Male domination does not mean what one writer referred to as unrelent-
ing male drives for dominance and mastery (Hawkesworth, 1989: 543). It
does not mean that all men are invariably oppressive to all women all the
time, nor that women are invariably the passive, peaceable victims of a male
will to power. It is a social system, a matter of meanings and values, practices
and institutions. While social structures are maintained through the com-
mitment and acquiescence of individuals, and can be eroded by the refusal
of individuals to participate, they have a life of their own, and can continue
to exert their influence despite the best efforts of the well-intentioned. The
manifestations of male domination, although they are sometimes horrifically
violent and degrading, are also subtle, mundane, ordinary, unremarkable,
and, moreover, very deeply embedded in the psyches of individuals, and not
just male individuals either. It constitutes the social environment of women
DEFINING FEMINISM 9
as well as men, the mutual knowledge of social actors (Giddens, 1984:

375) and part of the taken-for-granted ambience of everyone.
To insist on the reality of male domination does not mean that individu-
als are nothing but inert entities moved hither and yon by forces outside
their control. Whether particular actions, desires, etc., maintain the social
structure, or whether they erode it, is the responsibility of the individual
agent to decide, a responsibility which remains even when evaded. Male
domination is not some kind of monolithic and homogeneous system within
which individuals are inserted without their knowledge and with no possi-
bility of non-compliance. Any such assertion would be empirically false. It
is not the case that individuals have no choice but to comply with dominant
norms and the norms of domination. No regime can turn human beings into
automata or reduce peoples choices to absolute zero. Even the totalitarian
regimes of the twentieth century, with their widespread brutality, murder,
terror and lies, failed to crush all rebellion. At the same time, the extent to
which people are kept in ignorance of where their real interests lie, are
manipulated for purposes not their own, are prevented from controlling
the conditions of their own existence by powerful vested interests, is the
extent to which they are subjected to conditions of domination. It is this
reality of domination which feminism resists with its commitment to the
belief that human beings have the right to exist in freedom and dignity
simply because we exist.
None the less, social systems are maintained and reproduced through
peoples commitment to their continued existence. Society requires
peoples active participation if it is to exist at all; and individuals only exist
within the social realities which supply them with ways of knowing, under-
standing, valuing, and recognizing self and other. Anthony Giddens put this
in terms of the recursive nature of human social activities, which are
not brought into being by social actors but continually recreated by them via the
very means whereby they express themselves as actors. In and through their
activities agents reproduce the conditions that make these activities possible. . . .
The fixity of institutional forms does not exist in spite of, or outside, the
encounters of day-to-day life but is implicated in those very encounters. . . .
Human societies, or social systems, would plainly not exist without human
agency. But it is not the case that actors create social systems; they reproduce or
transform them, remaking what is already made in the continuity of praxis.
(Giddens, 1984: 2, 69, 171 emphases in the original)
But while this account fills out the concept of social construction, it is
still inadequate for feminist purposes because it says nothing about domina-
tion. In Giddens account, the very possibility of the existence of social con-
ditions of domination is argued away. He defines power in terms of human
agency, as the capacity of individuals, singly or collectively, to get things done,
to achieve outcomes, to make a significant difference in the world. He is fully
aware that people do not have unlimited freedom of action. But he casts
the issue only in terms of constraint and enablement, while providing no
criteria for deciding which is which. He says that the structural properties
of social systems are both enabling and constraining (Giddens, 1984: 162).
But if constraint is enablement (and vice versa), how do we distinguish
between the constraints which enable, that is, which provide the basic pre-
requisites for action, and those which enable no more than peoples con-
sent to their own oppression? He also says that constraint operates through
the active involvement of the agents concerned, not as some force of which
they are passive recipients (p. 289), and that all forms of dependence offer
some resources whereby those who are subordinate can influence the activi-
ties of their superiors (p. 16). But while this might be true, it takes for
granted the very issues of dependence, subordination and superiority which
feminism seeks to bring into question.
He also says that Domination and power cannot be thought of only
in terms of asymmetries of distribution but have to be recognized as inherent
in social association (or, I would say, in human action as such) (pp. 312).
But if domination is power, and power is social association or human
action as such, there is no way of distinguishing between those dominating
forms of power which serve the interests of some at others expense, and
those forms which everyone needs if we are to operate in the world. If domi-
nation cannot be separated out from power and confined to asymmetries
of distribution, how do we distinguish power-as-capacity (including access
to those resources which enable human action) from power-as-domination
(including the monopolization of resources and their accumulation in the
hands of the few) (Allen, 1998; Hartsock, 1974)?2 On Giddens account,
there is no possibility of political struggle against relations of ruling and for
the capacities of everyone to control the conditions of their own existence.
But for feminist purposes constraint is not really the issue. Although
women may indeed be constrained under conditions of male supremacy,
from the perspective of women constraints on the worst excesses of male
behaviour are positively beneficial. The restraining powers of the state, for
example, have sometimes been of benefit to women. The police and the
judiciary have the power to protect women and children from violent men,
and that power is sometimes used effectively, if too often reluctantly. The
state also has the power to redistribute income, and that power operates in
favour of the women and children who comprise a disproportionately large
segment of the poor. That the state thereby constrains men, by imposing
penalties for violence and by taxing the wealthy, is a positive virtue from the
point of view of women. To couch questions of freedom and power in terms
of enablement and constraint betokens a masculine ethos. This is the
world view of those who already have the capacity to act freely because the
world is made in their image and likeness, or who react violently if they are
deprived of what they have been promised is theirs by right.
The political concern with power is a concern with the sort of power
which causes problems, that is, the domination which results in harm and
misery. The problem with power is not that it achieves outcomes, but that it
is exercised to prevent categories of people from achieving even the most
D E F I N I N G F E M I N I S M 11
basic outcomes necessary for their human dignity and respect. A liberatory
politics like feminism is a stance taken against power in the form of domi-
nation and in favour of power in the form of the exercising of capacities at
no ones expense. It requires knowledge of the ways in which power-as-
domination is exercised, because those ways are not always overt and delibe-
rate. It is a sociological truism that the social control of populations is most
efficient when people control themselves, when they perceive the status quo
as in their own interests and acquiesce more or less willingly in its main-
tenance and reproduction. Indeed, this commitment on the part of individu-
als is essential if the social order is to be reproduced at all. It is often the case
that the interests of some people can prevail over and against the interests
of others, without those others putting up any opposition at all. As Steven
Lukes points out, power-as-domination is frequently exercised by control
over sources of information so that people do not even get to find out that
they have grievances, much less protest against or act to change oppressive
conditions.
the most effective and insidious use of power is to prevent . . . conflict from aris-
ing in the first place. . . . is it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of
power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shap-
ing their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept
their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine
no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or
because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial? (Lukes, 1974: 23, 24)
Hence, people can willingly act to reproduce relations of domination and

subordination without realizing that that is what they are doing, much less
being in a position to resist. But Lukes is only partly right in his comment on
relations of power between women and men, when he says that both are vic-
tims of the system, rather than one being held to exercise power over the
other. He is right to point out that it is not so much a question of men . . .
choosing to exercise power over women, through voluntary actions on the
basis of modifiable attitudes, but rather a system of domination in which
both men and women are caught up, albeit one serving the interests of the
former at the expense of the latter (Lukes, 1977: 10). But while it is true that
both women and men can be complicit with relations of male domination, if
the system operates in the interests of men and against the interests of
women, they are not both victims in quite the same way. It is misleading to
refer to men as victims of a system which ensures that their interests will
prevail at womens expense, although it is true that the system is often unwit-
tingly, and sometimes explicitly, maintained by both women and men. The
system of male domination cannot be wholly identified with mens conscious,
deliberate choices to subordinate women, firstly because the taken-for-
granted nature of the system allows womens subordination to be effected
through business as usual, and secondly because the actions of women can
also serve to maintain the system as long as women remain unaware of their
real interests. None the less, the question of womens liberation from male
domination is a moral one, and, as such, it depends on voluntary actions and

modifiable attitudes on the part of both sexes, but especially on the part of
women, if the system is to be challenged and opposed.
To refer to male domination, then, rather than using the more neutral
terminology of social construction, is not to refer to something monolithic
and inexorable. No system of domination, even the most totalitarian, func-
tions without contradictions, ambiguities and resistances. Domination
refers to a hierarchical social order wherein the interests of some prevail at
the expense of the interests of others. It refers to social arrangements which
facilitate the interests of elites to the detriment of categories of people
excluded from access to the resources needed for even the most basic human
dignity. It is maintained partly through ideological means to ensure the con-
sent of the oppressed to their own oppression and to provide justifications
for maintaining the status quo, partly through the threat, and periodic actual
exercise, of violence. Male domination means that the male represents the
human norm at the expense of a human status for women. Mens interests
and values are set up as universal human interests, and genuinely human
values like reason, virtue or courage are appropriated as exclusive to men.
At the same time, male domination means that the female is regarded as sub-
sidiary, subservient, ancillary to, or absent from, the human norm, while
the interests, values and rights of women are denied, trivialized or derided,
and womens time, energy and attention are expropriated for mens use and
pleasure. Under conditions of male supremacy, women are allowed, at best,
a second-rate human status acquired through relations of subordination to
men; at worst, womens needs and interests are ignored, and women are
treated as if we had no rights and no claim to be accorded human respect
and dignity. As Simone de Beauvoir put it over 40 years ago: A man never
begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes with-
out saying that he is a man. . . . Representation of the world, like the world
itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view,
which they confuse with absolute truth (Beauvoir, 1970: 15, 175).
Male supremacy, that view of the world which insists that only men be
recognized as human, condones, permits, even at times recommends (as,
for example, in pornography) harm to women. Because women are not
human within the terms and under the conditions of male supremacy, they
are not allowed access to the rights and dignities of being human. Because
women are not recognized as human, they can be treated with contempt.
What happens to them does not matter, their needs do not have to be con-
sidered, their interests can be trivialized and denied. Because women are not
human, they become nothing but objects for mens use. This creates a con-
tradiction at the heart of the world order that is male supremacy. The chief
contradiction structuring and rupturing male supremacist conditions is the
existence of women which continually gives the lie to the male as the stan-
dard of human existence, a lie which is managed by acknowledging women
only to the extent that they serve mens interests. It is not possible, after all,
to deny womens existence altogether (although the instances where that
happens are many and various and rarely commented upon). Moreover,
women have many and varied strategies for resisting male domination.
Some of these merely reverse the power hierarchy. Some are complicit with
the meanings and values of domination while defeating a particular indivi-
dual or individuals (male or female). Other strategies of resistance on the
part of women radically undermine the belief in womens inferiority and
availability to men, and manifest a power and capability far beyond anything
permitted to women within the confines of the conventional female role.
Male monopolization of human status dehumanizes everyone, for if
women are not human, men cannot be genuinely human either. Tyranny
corrupts. It corrupts the tyrannized by requiring of them the values of
subservience, but (as Hegel pointed out) it is even more corrupting for the
tyrant. By failing to recognize the humanity of his female other, the tyrant
destroys his own human status. Because he will not allow her her own
unique self, he deprives himself of anyone to recognize him. Because every-
ones first other is female, the mother, the process of dehumanization starts
at once, from the beginning of each human existence, and hence humanity
under male supremacist conditions is flawed from the outset.
What feminism is fighting for is a world in which women have, and are
seen to have, a fully human status. It is this aspect of the feminist struggle
which has received the most attention, to the point where feminism has
tended to be implicitly defined solely in terms of women. This focus of
attention is vitally important. It is necessary to rescue women from histori-
cal oblivion, to insist on womens human rights and dignities, to expose the
injustices and harm done to women, to assert in a multitude of ways that
women are human beings deserving of respect. But although many of the
feminist enterprises devoted to women display insight into the social system
of male domination even when it is not stated explicitly, focusing on women
in and of itself says nothing about the male supremacist relations of ruling
which makes this focus necessary. As a result, defining feminism only in
terms of women has given rise to a number of futile debates, about what is
involved in the category of women, for example, or about whether women
are the same as or different from men. It has also had the unfortunate politi-
cal consequence of dividing women into a multiplicity of incompatible
social categories. Hence, although defining feminism in terms of women is
necessary, it is not sufficient as the unifying factor of feminist politics. It is
the opposition to male domination which makes feminism relevant to
women wherever they are situated, however differently they are excluded
from recognition as human.
Because the male monopoly of the human is still too little recognized,
because it is still veiled by hegemonic meanings and values which authenti-
cate maleness and depreciate femaleness, the creation of a human status for
women requires that women seek recognition from each other, that women
live in connection with women and recognize each other in ways which are
outside male control and definition. It used to be argued that lesbianism was
central to this project, as long as lesbianism was itself defined as women
identifying with women, women loving women, women seeing each other
as human individuals lacking nothing (Abbott and Love, 1972; Myron and
Bunch, 1975). Lesbianism was seen as central to feminism, both as a chal-
lenge to male supremacy because of its challenge to the dominance of hetero-
sexual desire, and as a redefining of the category of women, for women and
by women and outside the male hegemony. This did not mean that all femi-
nists, or all women, should be lesbians (any more than all women should
be any other one thing in particular). It meant that lesbianism, as mutual
recognition between women, should be accorded an honoured place within
second-wave feminism, so that it was available to women as a real alterna-
tive to defining themselves only in relation to men.
Initially, during the 1970s, it was argued that lesbianism was also central
to feminism because it was a sexual practice and because of the kind of
sexual practice it was, that is, sexual desire and activity without the penis,
and hence a sexuality with a potential for equality rather than domination.
But subsequent developments in the meaning of lesbianism have almost
buried that feminist stance. One of those developments was the rise to
prominence of lesbian sadomasochism, supported by a sexual libertarianism
which defined sex only in terms of bodies and pleasures and which
demanded that sex be placed beyond political critique. It seemed that les-
bian sex, too, could be hi-jacked for male supremacist purposes. This should
have come as no surprise, since feminism had early identified the connec-
tion between sex and domination at the heart of male supremacist meanings
and values. We had not, however, gone far enough in our analysis, and
investigated the ways in which women, too, could be complicit with eroti-
cized domination. Another development which rejected the feminist stance
was the influence of a discourse of liberal tolerance whereby lesbianism was
defined merely as a sexual preference, as the personal attribute of some
(few) individual women. Although preferable to contempt or persecution,
this attitude of tolerance ignored the social context of phallocratic reality
within which sex is still embedded, and hence took the feminist politics out
of lesbianism.
None the less the feminist point remains (marginalized and derided though
it might be). The feminist point is that sex is central to womens oppression.
It is through heterosexual desire that women are fitted, and fit themselves,
into their subordinate roles in relation to men. Relations of domination
function most efficiently to the extent that individuals consent to the status
quo, rather than being overtly and forcibly coerced. People must accept the
sphere allotted to them within the hierarchy and see it as the only reality. It
is womens lot to serve men, to see no alternative to their subordinate roles
in relation to men, to gain access to human status only through men, and
to embrace that as their own identity. Heterosexual desire puts the excite-
ment and the reality into womens subordination to men (Jeffreys, 1992).
Lesbianism within the feminist context was meant as a challenge to the
exclusiveness and naturalness of heterosexual desire as the only form of
intimacy women are allowed. It was a refusal to serve or service men, a
withdrawal of recognition from men as the only human individuals, and a

commitment by women to womens full humanity.
Lesbianism put the excitement and reality into separatism. It gave sepa-
ratism its central focus and meaning by drawing on the power and energy
of sex to bring women together. But we paid insufficient heed to the impli-
cations of our own analysis that sex derives its power and energy from the
role it plays in reproducing the social relations of male supremacy. While the
focus on sex accurately identified the problem, the ease with which lesbian-
ism was reincorporated in the malestream, at best as a neutrally valued sex-
ual preference, at worst as just one more pornographic scenario, indicates
that the struggle is far from over.
Separatism is a continuum of feminist politics, involving a withdrawal of
consent to male supremacist relations of ruling. It is not some kind of revolu-
tionary end point. Rather, it is a constant strategic necessity as long as the male
remains hegemonically the human norm and male supremacist conditions
require female compliance. Male supremacy not only excludes women from
human status, and from highly valued forms of life, such as government,
wealth, creative and artistic endeavour it also includes women, in roles con-
fined to the support and nurturance of males, as mothers, wives, receptacles
for the penis, as the mainstay and support of masculinity, as the unrecognized
recognizers of male subjectivity, required to silence their own interests in the
interests of masculine importance, status and reality. It is this inclusion of
women within male supremacist meanings and values which requires womens
exclusion from those spheres men value, spheres which could not exist with-
out the work women do in providing basic human necessities. Womens exclu-
sion from positions of power and influence has a purpose to keep the
majority of women tied to men, promoting male interests, nourishing and fos-
tering male subjectivities, doing the work and providing the ground from
which men can launch themselves into those projects so highly valued within
male supremacist conditions.
It is this inclusion which separatism contests. While separatism has been
criticized for exacerbating womens exclusion from male dominated domains,
in fact feminism has never been unequivocally in favour of womens equal-
ity with men. The public domain is hierarchical, exploitative, structured by
invidious distinctions between categories of human beings, motivated by
subjectivities domineering and contemptuous, or obsequious, ingratiating,
envious and resentful. Womens entry into statuses and positions structured
by the requirements of male prestige and power, does no more than set
up among women the same hierarchies already existing among men, and
reproduces current invidious distinctions among women. So feminisms
challenge to womens exclusion is not unambivalent. Feminisms refusal of
womens inclusion, however, as female auxiliaries to projects designed in the
interests of men, as supporters and exponents of male supremacist meanings
and values, is clear and unequivocal. It is in that sense, as this very refusal,
that separatism is the chief strategy of second-wave feminism, not, however,
as a refusal to have anything to do with men. Such an interpretation is not
only unrealistic, it is also individualistic. It interprets male domination only

in terms of men and their attributes, rather than as a system of meanings and
values. It also rules out the possibility of important feminist projects which
engage directly with male supremacist institutions (reproductive techno-
logies, for example), with the aim of challenging them.3 Separatism is a
withdrawal of allegiance to these conditions. That may or may not involve
withdrawing from some forms of relationships with men, crucially, although
not only, sexual relationships. But because men are not the only bearers of
the social relations of male supremacy, withdrawing from men (even if that
were possible or desirable) is not sufficient as a withdrawal of consent to
male supremacist meanings and values.
In the most general terms feminism is a struggle in the domain of mean-
ing, in contrast to, for example, women violently overthrowing the present
ruling classes, or taking over the means of production or the worlds wealth.
Given how little social power women have, such enterprises are wildly
beyond our capabilities or resources. Meaning is everywhere because we are
language users. To say that feminism is a struggle in the realm of meaning is
not to say that feminism is, therefore, not concerned with mundane matters
like rape, child care, equal pay, parliamentary representation, etc. It is sim-
ply to say that those matters have a different meaning from a feminist per-
spective than they do from any other. It is also to say that, because meaning
is everywhere, so is the possibility of feminist struggle. It is to say that femi-
nist politics is not confined to the kinds of issues conventionally defined as
political, but that it can happen anywhere with whatever tools are closest
to hand. It can happen in the deepest recesses of the psyche as well as world-
wide, in the most intimate of personal relationships as well as nationally and
internationally. It is to say that feminism is available wherever women are,
and advances wherever women do. The gargantuan accumulations of wealth
in the hands of a few men at the expense of the majority of people, the all-
pervasive systems of propaganda pacifying whole populations with banal,
misogynist stupidities, the mass starvation and destruction of the environ-
ment generated by international capitalism, the nation states legislating in
the interests of the powerful and stockpiling lethal weapons sufficient to
wipe out the human race, and everywhere men on the rampage, raping,
maiming and killing all this is far too much for anyone to cope with, even
collectively. But that is not cause for despair. The struggle is also against the
meanings and values of the world that is the case, and that struggle takes
place within each individual committed to the task of refusing compliance.
While individuals can often do very little about the facts of domination, we
can all radically bring the meanings into question and refuse to embrace the
values.
In defining feminism as the struggle against male supremacy and the
struggle for a human status for women identifying with women, I am not
making the weak claim that this is only my definition, that everyone has
her own definition, and that anyones definition is as good as anyone elses.
I am making the much stronger claim that this is what feminism is. The
definition is presented as the definition of feminism, the one which makes
sense of the feminist project. It addresses the logic of feminist politics,
theory and practice; and it is broad enough to include most of what is
recognized as feminism, while being specific enough to allow anti-feminist
arguments and assertions to be identified and excluded. It is true that I am
a single individual making the claim, and that I speak on no ones behalf but
my own. But that does not debar me (or anyone else) from saying what femi-
nism is. This does not mean that the definition proposed here is unchal-
lengeable and beyond argument. On the contrary, because it is argued for in
the clearest possible terms, it is very much open for debate. Disagreements,
however, cannot be resolved by means of well-intentioned decisions to
respect our individual differences of opinion. Although polite agreement to
disagree may sometimes be the only civilized option, it does not resolve the
contradictions, but simply postpones them. While individual feminists are
the participants in the debate, feelings and opinions are not sufficient refer-
ents for feminist theory, which must be argued through with reference to the
logic and evidence of feminist theory and practice.
Neither is the definition I propose confined to one type of feminism. The
tendency to refer to feminisms in the plural is an evasion of the real and
important contradictions between competing assertions made in the name
of feminism. To the extent that arguments are mutually contradictory, the
conflicts will never be resolved by separating the antagonistic positions and
allocating them to different feminisms. Respect for differences can be car-
ried too far, especially when those differences are not just differences but
glaring incompatibilities. I intend that the definition I have proposed here
will allow the conflicts to be addressed directly.
A Feminist Standpoint
What I have been arguing for is a feminist standpoint, although the sense in
which I use the term differs crucially from the way it is already being used
within feminist writings. I do not ground a feminist standpoint in women,
womens experience, womens pain and oppression (Jaggar, 1983), womens
life activity (Harding, 1986; Hartsock, 1985; Smith, 1972), womens empa-
thy (Keller, 1983), womens more integrated (than mens) ways of knowing
(Rose, 1987), nor in any postulated unique access women might have to car-
ing (Noddings, 1984), or to peculiarly female forms of knowledge (Andolsen
et al., 1987). The concept of a feminist standpoint could only have come
from women, and it must not lose sight of women and womens interests. But
womens social location alone is not sufficient guarantee of feminist com-
mitment, vide womens embracing of right-wing, fascist, misogynist values,
for example, and the myriad of ways in which women can embrace our own
oppression because it is the only reality we know. And men are capable of
understanding a feminist standpoint, although not capable of contributing
to one, I would suggest for strategic reasons men still tend to dominate
wherever they are included, because male supremacy is still the way the
world is and its patterns and habits are still too deeply ingrained.
A feminist standpoint, as I interpret it, starts from the question which is
prior to any discussions about womens nature, womens abilities, womens
life situations, etc. That question is: why are women and their concerns
problematic? It is the answer to that question because of male supremacy
which constitutes the revolutionary potential and actuality of feminism. A
feminist standpoint is grounded first and foremost in acknowledging the
existence of male domination in order to challenge and oppose it. This con-
sciousness arises out of the social positioning of women because the problems
of womens exclusion from human status are more pressing for women
(although in the long term everyone stands to gain a human status which is at
no ones expense). But womens consciousness of their life situations does not
become feminist until it develops into an awareness that womens social posi-
tioning is structured by male domination, and unless the male monopolization
of human status is resisted consciously, deliberately and continuously.
Most of the proponents of a feminist standpoint are aware that womens
experience alone is insufficient for feminist politics, but they are vague on
the question of how we get from experience to theory and politics. How
does a feminist consciousness arise out of womens life activity when all
women are not feminists, and some women are actively anti-feminist? What
is it that has been achieved with the commitment to a feminist standpoint?
What is it that is being struggled against and what is being struggled for?
What is it that a feminist standpoint aims to liberate us from?
None of the feminist standpoint theorists unequivocally identifies engag-
ing with male supremacy as the link which transforms womens experience
into feminist politics. They certainly recognize the existence of, and oppose,
male domination. They also apply this recognition to their analyses. But
they do so only implicitly or tangentially, while at the same time failing to
acknowledge that it is this very challenge to male domination which pro-
vides the structuring principle translating a consciousness of womens lives
into feminist politics. In the absence of any explicit naming of what the
feminist political struggle is about, their task is confined to finding some-
thing intrinsic to womens lives which in and of itself leads to a feminist con-
sciousness. But to the extent that they do find this something, they do so
because their prior commitment to acknowledging the existence of male
supremacy allows them to see it.
Nancy Hartsock, for example, states that womens lives make available a
particular and privileged vantage point on male supremacy (Hartsock,
1987: 159). She then proceeds to examine what she refers to as womens
life activity and the sexual division of labour in order to find that privi-
leged vantage point. But her account of womens life activity is already
informed by her commitment to opposing male supremacy. It is her feminist
standpoint which enables her, for example, to perceive the sexual division
of labour as a political problem rather than a fact of nature, womens
unpaid work and women themselves as appropriated by men rather than

freely given by women, and, as Alison Jaggar put it, household labor . . . as
work rather than as a labor of love (Jaggar, 1983: 384). Hartsock is not
examining womens life activity per se, in order to find a basis for feminist
politics, as she herself interprets her task. She is presenting womens lives
from a perspective which already includes a feminist commitment.
Sandra Harding explicitly refuses to place the opposition to male
supremacy at the centre of the feminist political agenda (Harding, 1991: x).
Her reason for doing so is her belief in a plurality of oppressions: [Feminist]
tendencies that focus on male supremacy and gender relations without giving
equal weight to other important aspects of social relations can provide
resources for Eurocentrism, racism, imperialism, compulsory heterosexism,
and class exploitative beliefs and practices (p. 11). But by couching the politi-
cal problem in this way, she commits herself to confining oppressions within
discrete and unrelated categories. In her account, male supremacy is not just
something other than Eurocentrism, etc., struggling against it is antagonis-
tic to any project of struggling against other forms of oppression. Focusing
on male supremacy, she implies, happens at the expense of other forms of
political struggle. She does not consider the possibility that these other
aspects of social relations also have male supremacist aspects, and hence
that struggling against male supremacy is also to struggle against all forms of
relations of ruling. (I discuss these issues in more detail later in relation to
racism.)
Hardings feminist project is to demonstrate that knowledge grounded in
womens lives can give less partial and distorted accounts of nature and social
relations than knowledge produced by men of the dominant groups. But
whether or not feminist knowledge is less partial and distorted than
malestream thought is not the issue. The main problem with ideologies of
domination is not that they are partial and distorted, although they are both.
The main problem is the question of whose interests their partiality serves,
and the ways in which their distortions operate at the expense of those they
subordinate. Feminism exposes as partial that which claims to be impartial and
disinterested, not because feminism is less partial, but because it enters the
discourse from another direction, the interests of women in opposing male
domination. Harding herself is aware that knowledge cannot be disinterested
and value-free, but she equivocates on the next logical step explicitly char-
acterizing feminism in terms of the struggle against the meanings, values,
discourses and practices of male domination. As in the case of Hartsocks
account, it is possible to characterize womens lives in the way Harding does
only because of her implicit acceptance of a framework which already identi-
fies the manifestations of male domination, her disclaimers notwithstanding.
Despite Hardings own attempt to jettison the focus on male supremacy, it
is only that focus which gives her her feminist insights.
Alison Jaggar gives the most detailed account of the political limitations
of confining what she calls a womens standpoint to womens experience.
She is clearly aware that appeals to womens life activity are not alone
sufficient for feminist politics. She says that the standpoint of women . . . is
not something that can be discovered through a survey of womens existing
beliefs and attitudes (Jaggar, 1983: 371), and that all aspects of our experi-
ence, including our feelings and emotions, must be subjected to critical
scrutiny and feminist political analysis (p. 380). She discusses the case of
right-wing women whose thinking about their lives and experiences, far
from leading to a feminist consciousness, has resulted in a militant anti-
feminism. She concludes the discussion by saying: Simply to be a woman,
then, is not sufficient to guarantee a clear understanding of the world as it
appears from the standpoint of women (pp. 3823).
But although she is aware that it is political struggle which transforms
womens experience into a womens standpoint, and although she is also
aware of male dominance as one of the problems addressed by feminist
politics, she does not identify the struggle against male dominance as the
crucial defining factor of that politics. She acknowledges the insight that
the prevailing culture is suffused with the perceptions and values of male
dominance as one of the main contributions of radical feminism. But she
seems to believe that this insight entails attempting to create an alternative
womens culture which is unrealistic, elitist and incomprehensible to most
women. She says that it is only socialist feminism which is able to explain
why this culture is dominant and to link the anti-feminist consciousness of
many women with the structure of their daily lives, because socialist femi-
nism is explicitly historical materialist. But at this point male dominance
drops out of her account this culture is simply dominant and we are
left with nothing but womens daily lives and a political and scientific
struggle which has lost its central focus (p. 382). Without male domination
as the inimical adversary of feminist politics, there is no possibility of iden-
tifying the ways in which womens lives are imbued with the meanings and
values of male supremacy, and hence no possibility of engaging in any politi-
cal struggle at all. Jaggar eventually acknowledges this. She emphasizes the
long and protracted nature of the feminist struggle to reveal the intricate
and systematic reality of male dominance, and says that In the end an ade-
quate representation of the world from the standpoint of women requires
the material overthrow of male domination (p. 384).
Nothing more than this acknowledgement is needed for a feminist stand-
point, since to expose, name and describe male domination is already to
acknowledge womens interests in opposing it. It is at this point, once the
existence of male domination has been recognized, that all the really hard
questions start: What counts as male domination? How do we recognize it?
Is this particular phenomenon an instance of male domination or is it not?
What does sexuality have to do with it? What is my responsibility? Can any-
thing be done about it? Should anything be done about it? It is certainly part
of the feminist enterprise to insist on the recognition of womens contribu-
tion to subsistence, and their contribution to childrearing (Hartsock, 1987:
164). But to focus only on revaluing womens traditional activities, impor-
tant though that is, is not what centrally defines a feminist standpoint.
Feminism is a thoroughgoing critique of male domination wherever it is

found and however it is manifested. It is a working towards ending male
impositions of whatever form, and the creating of a community of women
relating to women and creating our own human status unencumbered by
meanings and values which include women in the human race on mens
terms or not at all. That can only be done from a standpoint which recog-
nizes the existence of the social order of male supremacy which allows a
human status only to men, a standpoint which involves a struggle to reinter-
pret and rearrange the world so that women can be recognized as human
too.
Notes
1 Martha Nussbaum locates the origin of the idea of social construction even
earlier in history, in ancient Greek philosophy (Nussbaum, 1999: p. 5 of 12).
2 Allen suggests a third meaning of power, a concept of power-with as a way
of theorizing coalitions with other social movements (p. 8). But this is already con-
tained in the idea of power-as-capacity, Allens power-to, since there is no implica-
tion that the power to achieve outcomes only happens in isolation.
3 I am indebted to Renate Klein for drawing my attention to this point.
2 Ideology justifying
do m i n a t i o n
D omination is routinely maintained through the willing, albeit manipu-

lated, consent of populations. That is not the only way it is maintained.
Oppression is in no sense caused by the consent of the subordinated; nor
can it be abolished simply by withdrawing consent, although such a with-
drawal is necessary if there is to be any challenge to relations of domination.
Relations of ruling can operate without the consent of the ruled, through
the use of violence, force and coercion, through the monopolization of
wealth and information, through the confining of goods and opportunities
to small, elite segments of the population, through policies and practices
which benefit some at the expense of others. But the social conditions of
male supremacy function most efficiently to the extent that women (and
men) accept the reality of their position, embrace it as natural and unalter-
able, desire its continuation and fear its destruction, and believe it is their
own meaningful existence.
To the extent that we live under conditions of domination, that fact must
be disguised. The term ideology is useful for designating that form of sys-
tematic meaning which functions to legitimate relations of ruling, as long as
it retains the connotations Marx and Engels gave it, to mean that the ideas
of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas (Marx and Engels,
1974: 64).1 In that sense ideology refers to systematic meanings which
excuse, permit, legitimate and provide justifications for relations of ruling.
As meaning, it is not simply a matter of ideas separated out from some
other level of existence, usually designated material. Meanings permeate
both theory and practice, and they are both private and public. They can
operate unconsciously, through feelings of desire or aversion. They provide
values and purposes and reasons for acting, and operate on every level of
human existence. Ideological meanings are whatever makes domination
palatable or acceptable, or natural, real and unchallengeable.
There have been objections raised to using the term ideology in this sense.
But none of them provides convincing reasons to abandon the concept as
the designator of attempts to justify domination, chiefly because they fail
to see the overriding importance of domination, and hence to recognize
the need for a term to designate those forms of domination which are
not overtly coercive. As a consequence, they fail to allow that there is a
meaningful connection between ideology and domination. The arguments
I D E O L O G Y J U S T I F Y I N G D O M I N AT I O N 23
tend to insist that there is an inextricable connection between ideology and

the Marxist economic base/ideological superstructure construct, and that,
because that construct is untenable, so is the concept of ideology. Michle
Barrett argues that the concept of ideology is not necessarily tied to the
base/superstructure model of society, but says that it is still a useful term as
long as it refers to the idea of mystification in general, rather than being
confined to class. She argues that discarding class relations as the central
defining characteristic of ideology also means discarding all references to
agents or interests (Barrett, 1991: 167). But to abandon the concepts of
agents and interests is to abandon politics. If there are no agents, there
are no perpetrators and beneficiaries of relations of domination, and no one
whose human agency is blocked by powerful vested interests. If there is no
one who acts, there is nothing to be done. To delete any idea of interests
is to abandon any idea of domination, and hence any possibility of chal-
lenging it.
There is no reason why a distinction between the ideological on the one
hand, and the economic on the other, should be made in the first place, no
reason, that is, outside the more arcane levels of disputation within (or with)
Marxism. From the standpoint of a critique of domination, it is quite feasi-
ble to hold that relations of ruling are maintained both ideologically and
economically (and politically and by force). The ownership and control of
wealth is only one way in which relations of domination and subordination
are maintained, and they are maintained most efficiently to the extent that
their nature as domination, their operation at the expense of the subordi-
nated, is hidden from those subjected to them.
Abercrombie et al. (1980) raise other objections to what they call the
dominant ideology thesis. They argue that it is not the case that the cohe-
siveness and stability of capitalist society depend on the ideological incor-
poration of the working class into acceptance of the status quo. To the
extent that there is something like a dominant ideology, they argue, its
function is limited to maintaining cohesiveness and unity among the ruling
class; it has no function in the explanation of the coherence of a society
as a whole (Abercrombie et al., 1980: 3). The quiescence of the working
class, their failure to resist capitalist relations of domination, is sufficiently
explained by the coerciveness of the political and economic control. People
are often well aware of the nature of class society and their position in it,
but they do not have the power to do anything about it. The authors say that
workers may accept the economic order of capitalism and its class-based
social organization at a factual level, as an enduring system. But, they go on
to say,
this factual acceptance need not involve any signs of normative acceptance or
indoctrination. . . . Compulsion is most obviously founded in the structure of
economic relations, which oblige people to behave in ways which support the
status quo and to defer to the decisions of the powerful if they are to continue
to work and to live. (ibid.: 122, 1545)
This is true enough as far as it goes, and it is important to keep pointing

out that relations of ruling are essentially coercive. But it is not an objection
to a dominant ideology thesis. It can be acknowledged that it is not possible
to fool all the people all the time, without abandoning the thesis. There is
plenty of evidence of systematic behaviour which works against peoples
own interests at whatever cost to themselves and others, and which upholds
the meanings, values and structures of domination. For example, women
marry men they know to be violent,2 they remain faithful to husbands and
boyfriends convicted of the most horrendous crimes of violence against
women, they excuse and justify the violence of the men they love, they
write love letters to convicted rapists and mass murderers. Such behaviours
only make sense with reference to something like womens own embracing
of the male supremacist ethic which requires that women subordinate them-
selves in the service of men.
A further problem with these authors account concerns their reliance on
a domain of everyday discourse, epistemology, or way of life (p. 189)
where people get on with the business of living uninfluenced by the world
view of the rulers. But that is certainly not the case with women, whose
personal lives are precisely lived within the male domain which reaches
into the deepest recesses of the mundane. Male supremacist relations of
ruling penetrate (the metaphor is deliberate) the most intimate levels of the
everyday, damaging bodies, distorting minds, breaking hearts and deform-
ing the spirit. What Abercrombie et al. have established is nothing more
than a reassertion of the public / private distinction which enables the main-
tenance of male power over women by keeping its more immediate mani-
festations out of the public realm of contestation and sanction, and by
confining women to the private and the domestic where they have few
rights and little or no public voice. The ideology of public and private,
however, is not espoused only by men, but also by women to the extent
that they willingly embrace what operates against their own interests in,
say, personal safety or economic independence. To say as much is not to
hold women responsible for the oppressive situations they might find
themselves in. But the fact remains, as feminism has been at some pains to
point out, there is no sphere of personal life which escapes relations of
domination. Unless, of course, the reality of that domination is acknowl-
edged and opposed.
Michle Barrett also rejected any concept of ideology which implied that
the subordinated participated in their own oppression. She argued that
feminist writings which regarded cultural phenomena such as soap opera,
royalty or romantic fiction as forms of ideological subjection of women
failed to take account of the passionate enthusiasm of many women for the
products of which they are alleged to be victims (Barrett, 1991: 10). But
passionate enthusiasm is the way ideology must operate if it is to operate
at all. To assert that women get pleasure out of romantic fiction, say, is not
to argue against its nature as ideological, but, on the contrary, to acknowl-
edge the way it works as ideology, the way it has effects and is effective.
These effects do not have to be total for it to be identified as ideology. That

women willingly embrace something is not a sufficient criterion for judging
that it is therefore not ideological. It does not rule out the possibility of
ambivalence, or that the pleasure might exist alongside doubt or a critical
attitude. The only criterion for judging whether or not something is ideo-
logical is whether or not it reinforces relations of ruling.
Many years ago, at the beginning of this second wave of feminism,
Shulamith Firestone exposed the ideology of romantic love as a crucial
mechanism for ensuring womens subordination to men. A book on radical
feminism that did not deal with love, she said, would be a political failure.
For love . . . is the pivot of womens oppression today (Firestone, 1981:
126). The problem with romantic (heterosexual) love was the unequal
power relationship between the sexes, the way love was constituted at
womens expense. Through love, women were excluded from the public
realm of culture and confined to personal life, so that womens creativity,
energy and emotional work could be used in the service of men. The con-
tradiction between mens need for emotional nurturance from women on
the one hand, and womens utter irrelevance to anything men define as
important on the other, tended to remain hidden from men. Men managed
the contradiction by elevating one member of the subordinate class of
women above all the rest in order to dignify her as a worthy recipient of his
affections. Firestone felt that women tended to be more realistic: in their
precarious political situation, women cant afford the luxury of spontaneous
love. It is much too dangerous (p. 139). While both sexes needed emotional
security, women also had their economic security and sense of identity and
personal self-worth at stake. Despite their more realistic appraisal, however,
women could not resolve the contradiction. The most they could do was to
make the best of a bad situation (p. 145). And for many women, even the
realistic appraisal made no inroads on their desire.
It could be argued that Firestones account is culturally specific, that it
only applies in cultures where romantic love has a meaning. And it is true
that, to the extent that the economic coercion of women into marriage is
close to absolute, when womens very lives depend on getting married and
they have little choice in the matter, an ideology like that of romantic love
would be less important as a means of securing womens compliance. None
the less, even the most coercively controlled social environments require
pacifying ideologies. Such constructs as female chastity and male honour,
wifely duty, filial piety, maternal instinct, etc., are also ways of manag-
ing womens consent to their subordination to men. Like the ideology of
romantic love they, too, channel womens desire and commitment in ways
detrimental to womens well-being. At the same time, there is a sense in
which they are merely a gloss on the actual structures of social power.
Sometimes, even the most aware woman has no choice because she is not
provided with alternatives.
Perhaps the most famous exponent of an anti-ideology thesis is Michel
Foucault, who provided a neat summary of the main objections:
The notion of ideology appears to me difficult to make use of, for three reasons.
The first is that, like it or not, it always stands in virtual opposition to some-
thing else which is supposed to count as truth. . . . The second drawback is that
the concept of ideology refers, I think, necessarily, to something of the order of
a subject. Thirdly, ideology stands in a secondary position relative to something
which functions as its infrastructure, as its material, economic determinant, etc.
For these three reasons, I think that this is a notion that cannot be used without
circumspection. (Foucault, 1980: 118)
But Foucaults objections are otiose, not surprisingly, given that he makes
no distinction between power and domination, a tendency which he shares
with most social theorists. While much of what Foucault said about power
is accurate, his account is limited by his inability to recognize domination
and hence to conceive of alternatives. None the less, he does clearly state the
main objections to the concept of ideology. To take his third point first: as I
pointed out above, using the concept of ideology does not necessarily entail
any commitment to a base/superstructure model of society. It is not intrin-
sically tied to the idea of an economic base outside ideology and which
determines it.
Foucaults second point that the concept of ideology necessarily implies
something of the order of a subject is correct. But rather than being an
objection to using the term, that implication is one which should be retained.
While it is politically important to challenge the ideology of individualism,
not all references to individuals are ideological, and unless there is some idea
of what it is to be human there can be no politics and no morality. Accepting
the need for something of the order of a subject does not entail accepting
the other connotations which Foucault appears to believe are inextricably
tied in to the idea of the individual (Foucault, 1980: 98, 117). It is possible
at one and the same time to acknowledge that the subject is historically con-
stituted, and that each of us is a locus of moral choice and responsibility. To
leave the account of the subject where Foucault does, as both constituted by
power and its vehicle (ibid.: 98), is to leave us trapped in domination, with
no choice except inert subjection, active compliance, or magnanimity on the
part of the powerful. While there may not be any source of all rebellions, or
pure law of the revolutionary (Foucault, 1985: 96), it is possible to refuse
complicity, not always or once and for all, but over and over again, and wher-
ever it is possible. And those refusals, sometimes tentative, sometimes
adamant, sometimes partial, sometimes absolute, sometimes negotiable,
sometimes permanent, are made by individual human beings who live with
the consequences. Hence, the notion of ideology does require something of
the order of a subject, although not one existing outside any system of mean-
ing at all, but one capable of actively choosing among alternatives to the
extent that alternatives are available and recognizable.
To come finally to Foucaults first point: that the use of the term ideology
necessarily stands in opposition to something identified as truth.3 In the
sense in which I use the term, ideology is not one special kind of discourse
among others (using discourse in the broadest sense to mean a system of
meaning). Rather, it is, as Jorge Larrain says, a level of meaning which can
be present in all kinds of discourses . . . [and which] may well be absent
(Larrain, 1979: 130, 235 n. 2). It is not the case that we are always in
ideology. What we are always in are systems of meaning. Whether mean-
ings are ideological or not depends on whether or not they are used in the
service of domination. That cannot be decided from a position of neutrality.
Domination can only be seen from a position which involves a willingness
to see it. Without such a position, manifestations of domination can always
be interpreted as something else, as isolated instances, exceptions, idiosyn-
crasies, personal pathologies or trivia, or even as something they are not
pain as pleasure, for example, or degradation as fun, humiliation as pride,
oppression as freedom.
Because ideological meanings can appear anywhere, there is no need to
posit an alternative to ideology, a discourse of truth with which to counter
lies, falsehoods and distortions, the usual contender for this status being
science. The distinction between what is ideological and what is not, is not
always a distinction between falsehood and truth. Although questions of
truth and falsity are not irrelevant in deciding what is ideological and what is
not, they are not the same question. Given that relations of domination con-
stitute the status quo, ideological beliefs are often true (at least in the refer-
ential sense) rather than false. Whether or not any particular ideological
practice is true or false depends on the standpoint from which it is viewed.
From the standpoint of immersion in the male supremacist status quo, it is
true, for example, that the only form of adult intimacy available to women is
a sexual relation with a man, that womens lives revolve around getting and
keeping a man. Women (and men) believe it, act upon it, make choices based
upon it, run their lives according to it. From a feminist standpoint, it is a lie.
It involves a calculated falsehood which suppresses consciousness of alter-
natives, which obliterates the knowledge that women can also be intimate
with women, as friends, lovers and kin, with children as human beings rather
than as burdens or jailers, with men simply as friends, and that women can
live happy and fulfilled lives without sexual relationships with men.
By and large, ideology is not stated in testable form. The generalized
belief that only men are human, for example, is never stated in these terms.
Indeed, to say it aloud is already to undermine its efficacy because it can
only operate as long as it remains hidden. Saying outright that male
supremacist conditions allot a human status only to men, exposes the con-
tradiction between the ideology and the fact that women are human too.
Instead of being openly acknowledged, belief in the male as the human
norm shows itself in a myriad of disparate contexts, the connections between
which only appear from a feminist standpoint. It frequently operates through
what might be called the phenomenon of female non-existence. There are
those occasions of everyday social life where women are habitually talked
over and ignored, where matters of interest to women are either never
raised or are dropped as quickly as possible, where men talk to each other
as though there were no women present, where at best women are listened
to briefly while the message is conveyed that their right to speaking-time is

strictly limited. There are the literary productions of famous men which
contain no female characters and that fact is never remarked upon. There
are the pages of daily newspapers where the doings of men are writ large
and women hardly ever appear.
The contradiction between the ideological belief that only men are
human and women are not, on the one hand, and the actual existence of
women on the other, is not just a matter of logic. The belief that women are
not quite, or not at all, human gives men permission to manage the contra-
diction through violence against women. Men bash women because they
can, because women have no redress, little or no access to the means for
protecting themselves or asserting their human rights. Individual incidents
of exceptional violence will usually be overtly deplored. But they will also
be covertly condoned by being trivialized, turned into jokes or argued away.
There is a variety of ideological tactics for hiding the systematic nature of
violence against women, for denying the function it serves in keeping
women subordinate to men by demonstrating to women that their right to
safety and security of person can be withdrawn at any time without warning.
Sometimes the violence is denied outright. Take rape as an example.
Sometimes the violence is denied by blaming the victim. It is said that she
asked for it, that she deserved to be harassed, raped, bashed, even mur-
dered. It is said that she nagged him, provoked him, criticized him and
undermined his masculinity. It is said that she is a whore, a slut, or any one
or more of a number of nasty names women are called. It is said that she
dressed invitingly, walked on the streets or caught a train at night, or
accepted a lift home. It is said that she didnt say no, or didnt say no
often enough or loudly enough, or said no and meant yes, and anyway,
she didnt struggle so how was he to know she didnt want it. Sometimes the
denial takes the form of excusing the offender. It is said that he was drunk
and didnt know what he was doing. It is said that he had a hard life, that
his mother didnt love him, that his wife refused to have sex with him. More
generally, the perennial and systematic male violence against females is
explained away by accounting for it in terms of isolated, unconnected (and
regrettable) incidents, perpetrated by admittedly nasty individuals, who
could be of either sex but just happen to be male on each particular occasion.
It is certainly true that men who rape, bash, harass, violate, degrade or
murder are grossly deficient human beings, whether their violence is directed
against women and children, or against other inferior males, such as homo-
sexual men or Aboriginal men, or against each other in defence of slights to
their masculinity. But that deficiency is not just a personal failing (although it
is also that too, and they can be held responsible for their actions). Mens
violence is a product of a phallocratic reality which constructs masculinity
as something which has to be defended at someone elses expense. That
someone else is always initially a woman, whom the burgeoning masculine
persona must come to hold in contempt because she does not possess a
penis, the only symbol of human status allowed under conditions of male
supremacy. Violent and arrogant males are those who have learned that
lesson only too well, who have managed to continue denying the evident
humanity of women, and whose own sense of humanity extends no further
than their genitals. The violence and arrogance express a subliminal aware-
ness of the paltriness of the only justification they know for their own exis-
tence. The consequence for women is a permanent reign of terror, subdued
most of the time, but always there curtailing our freedom of movement and
action.
When the existence of women is acknowledged, it is interpreted in terms
favourable to men. To be a woman under male supremacist conditions
means to be the helpmeet and nurturer of males. To be a woman is not to
exist in her own right. If she settles for her conventional role, she is confined
to the constricted sphere of domesticity, financially deprived, emotionally
and economically exploited, isolated from other women, restricted by the
ever-present needs of the children, subjected to the whims of an individual
man, her quality of life dependent on whether or not he is good to her, on
his decisions, not hers. Women have developed countless stratagems for
retrieving some sense of dignity and self-respect, or alternatively some modi-
cum of power and domination, despite the limited domain within which
they are allowed to operate. And caring for and relating intimately to
children is a worthwhile and dignified project in itself, despite the low valua-
tion it is given in phallocratic reality. But what it means to be a woman
under conditions of male supremacy is to be expected to service men and
children, preferably male.4
For the purposes of feminist politics, whether any particular ideological
pronouncement is true or false is not the main issue. What a feminist poli-
tics has to decide is whether the meanings which structure peoples lives
reinforce relations of ruling by reinforcing the interests of the dominators
and suppressing the interests of the subordinated, whether meanings can be
used to challenge or undermine domination, or whether they have to be
changed or discarded altogether. These are decisions which cannot be made
once and for all, but which will continue to need to be made as long as male
supremacy lasts. But such decisions cannot even be made unless the exis-
tence of male domination is seen in the first place.
Tr u t h a n d D o m i n a t i o n
The question of truth is not, however, irrelevant to feminist politics. Although
it is not often addressed in feminist writings, there are some writers who are
explicitly opposed to the idea that feminism can make claims to truth, on the
grounds that such claims are inherently complicit with domination.
This is the position Jane Flax takes, for example (1990: 2223). She asserts
a direct connection between truth and domination, and asks: What are the
relations of knowledge and power? Does all knowledge necessarily inflict
violence on things, ourselves, and other persons? (p. 236, her emphasis) a
question she has already answered by equating a claim to truth with a will
to power (p. 12). For Chris Weedon, too, claims to truth are inexorably
implicated in domination:
Truth is by definition fixed, absolute and unchanging. It is the final guarantee
of the way things are. . . . It is in making claims to truth that discourses demon-
strate their inevitable conservatism, their investment in particular versions of
meaning and their hostility to change. (Weedon, 1987: 131)
Although there is a real problem being alluded to by arguments like these,

involving ideological versions of reality and the suppression of counter-
hegemonic versions, that problem is not addressed by dispensing with claims
to truth altogether, since any claim to be heard is also a claim to truth. Apart
from the inherent absurdity of the argument, the demand to abandon any
claim to truth whatsoever can only weaken the cause of those who have no
right to be heard under conditions of domination, including the cause of
feminism. Truth may not be the ultimate arbiter of the rightness of the femi-
nist cause, given the tendency for dominant interests to define what counts
as real. None the less, a strategic retreat from making claims to truth is a
strategy which can only weaken the force of feminist arguments. In the truth
stakes, the status quo may win much of the time. But that is not a good
enough reason for withdrawing from claims to truth, even though what
counts as true or false cannot be decided without prior commitment to cer-
tain kinds of meanings.
Truth is not a function of domination. Might is not right in any sense
which entails that those who dominate monopolize the truth, or that only
the dominant have access to the truth, or that truth is what serves dominant
interests. Whatever truth might mean, and however it is established, the
fact remains that it is possible to make judgements of truth and falsity. Those
judgements are not fixed, absolute and unchanging (as Weedon claimed),
neither do they have eternal value (Grosz, 1989: 110). They are always jus-
tified in some way, although those justifications are probably never based on
those necessary and sufficient conditions required by (some forms of) phi-
losophy. Such judgements may indeed not set us free (Flax, 1990: 42), but
no emancipatory project is conceivable without them. Judgements of truth
and falsity can be made anywhere, at any time, by anybody. And something
remains true (or false) whatever anyone may say, whatever anyone wants (or
does not want), whatever force or arguments are brought to bear. Nothing
and no one can make something false if it is true, or true if it is false. There
is always the possibility of being wrong, that is, of fallibility. There is always
the possibility of lies, mistakes, deceptions, delusions, and it may not be pos-
sible to know on any particular occasion whether or not something is true.
But truth is truth and not some other thing, and so is falsehood.
Unless it is possible to judge whether or not something is true, it is not
possible to judge whether or not it is false either. There is a logical connec-
tion between truth and falsehood in the sense that the meaning of each is
dependent on the other. It makes no sense to talk about falsehood without
a concomitant idea of truth. Both are judgements about what is asserted.

Unless both are possible, neither is, because the basis for the judgement, the
existence of an alternative, has vanished.
The problem of domination is not a problem of truth at all, or not in the
sense that those who challenge relations of domination must eschew all
claims to truth. Far from being complicit with domination, truth claims on
the part of feminism are a crucial aspect of its political opposition to male
domination. The advent of second-wave feminism was accompanied by a
sense of outrage at how we had been lied to and deceived. If we were to
expose lies and deceptions, we had to claim to be speaking the truth, and to
identify the states of affairs which verified our claims and falsified the claims
of male supremacist ideology. The question is not whether or not feminism
should make, and be seen to be making, truth claims. The problem is how
to get the truth uncovered by feminism heard, how to get feminist truth on
to the public agenda and into the arena where the wrongs done to women
can be addressed and rectified. The problem is how to bypass, undermine or
overthrow male supremacist ideology and its ownership and control of the
means of information distribution. Feminism exists under hostile conditions
where it so often cannot even make itself heard, much less be understood
and its truth claims evaluated.
Meaning and Understanding

It is not through its monopolization of truth that domination operates, but
through what might be called the control and manipulation of meaning.
Domination is control over systems of meaning, as well as over wealth,
resources, populations, etc. It is control over (which is never absolute), in the
service of vested interests, in any sphere. Domination must include control
over meaning if relations of ruling are to be purveyed as in the interests
of all. It is meaning which can be complicit with domination, not truth.5
Meaning is logically prior to truth in the sense that it is not possible to
decide whether or not something is true unless what it means is understood
in the first place. Questions of truth and falsity cannot even arise unless
what is said is comprehensible. And yet control over meaning operates as
much through familiarity as through incomprehensibility. Ideology presents
itself as familiar in the domain of the everyday world-taken-for-granted;
while in the prestigious sites of knowledge, the universities, it presents itself
as a scarce commodity, available only to the initiated few.
Comprehensibility has been an issue within second-wave feminism from
the beginning. The issue has largely been addressed in the form of com-
plaints about the difficulty and elitism of feminist theory emanating from
the academy. For example:
To me, feminism means the personal is political, however, this is totally oppo-
site to the ethos of Academia. Academia means being detached, objective,
theoretical, impersonal, non-political and abstract. . . . By theorizing feminism I

feel removed from the day to day reality of womens oppression. (Nanette
Herbert, Letter, Trouble and Strife, 25, Winter 1992)
Such complaints are not new. In 1976, some women criticized aspects of
the Patriarchy Conference, held in London in that year, as intimidating and
mystifying (Dalston Study Group, 1978). They said that certain papers pre-
sented at the conference were no different in kind from those presented in
a male academic environment. The organization of the sessions did not
allow the listeners to intervene or contribute; the language within which the
ideas were expressed was the impoverished depersonalized analytical lan-
guage of intellectuals, which bore no relation to day to day language, and
which had the effect of making large numbers of women feel inadequate,
stupid or angry; and the papers made no reference to debates within the
womens movement on the very issues those papers were supposedly
addressing.
They suggested that the problem was partly a result of the paper-givers
failure to make their theoretical framework clear and accessible to those
who were not acquainted with the particular theoretical constructs being
used; partly a result of the isolated social position of radical intellectuals
vis vis the groups . . . whose interests their theory seeks to represent and
sharpen. They themselves were not opposed to theoretical work per se. But
they felt that theory needed to be linked to struggles and strategy and to
controversies within the movement, that arguments needed to be stated as
clearly as possible and terms not in everyday use explained, and that the
theorizer should incorporate her own process into her theorizing, clarifying
her agreements and disagreements and acknowledging her own confusions.
The problems identified by the Dalston Womens Study Group remain
unresolved over 20 years later. If anything, they have worsened under the
influence of postmodernism. The inaccessibility of academic feminist theory
was a problem then, and it is still a problem now, because the original
problem has not been overcome. The original problem is the requirement
that feminism subordinate itself to malestream thought, within either the
traditional academic disciplines or whatever intellectual fashion is current.
There is a sense in which combining feminism with already recognized
academic disciplines is a reasonable endeavour. Feminism did not start as
an academic discipline, but as a groundswell of discontent arising out of
womens changed perceptions of their own experience. This discontent was
inchoate and untheorized, sometimes confused and confusing, sometimes
prematurely closed off to debate. Already established academic disciplines
seemed to promise intellectually rigorous ways of organizing and managing
the changing consciousness of the world and womens place in it. But as the
members of the Dalston Study Group pointed out, those best placed for
doing the theorizing failed to stay in touch with the womens movement and
their own experience of feminist politics. They allowed themselves to be
seduced by the intricacies and sophistication of what they encountered in
the institutions of higher learning. They failed to take adequate account of

the complicity of malestream intellectual traditions with the Man of
Reason paradigm identified by Genevieve Lloyd in the context of Western
philosophy (Lloyd, 1984). This does not mean that there is an irrevocable
incompatibility between feminism and academe. It does mean that there
needs to be far more clarity and decisiveness about what feminism is, and
constant watchfulness against inadvertent support for ideology.
To insist that theory, like truth, is inevitably dominating is to see theory
as some kind of private possession of the ruling class, and not something
that women who are concerned about oppression ought to do, because it
sets up invidious distinctions between women and privileges some women
over others. This kind of argument contains a grain of truth. Systems of for-
mal education, especially university education, favour the economically
privileged, and it is difficult to get access to formal education without
money. None the less, theory is vital if feminism is to clarify where it has
come from, its meanings, values and aims, and if it is not to become bogged
down in dogma, infighting, irrelevance and eventual silence.
Demands for instant comprehensibility rest on this belief that theory is
inherently dominating, that difficulties in understanding are invariably the
result of powerful vested interests. But they fail to take into account the pos-
sibility that what is well known and easily understood may also be complicit
with domination. As Sneja Gunew and Anna Yeatman have pointed out, it
is hegemonic discourses which tend to define the familiar (Gunew and
Yeatman, 1993: xx). Appeals to the familiar are typically couched in terms
of experience. The difficulty of theory is criticized on the grounds that it
does not relate to womens experience. But such a criticism rests on the
assumption that experience is some kind of realm of authenticity, a safe and
secure haven which provides all the answers as long as we remain true to it
(and to ourselves). Such appeals to experience ignore the fact that it is
already constituted within the meanings and values of the social order into
which we are born. Given the prevalence of domination, the familiar will
tend to be that which operates in its service. That tendency is not inevi-
table. No system of domination, even the most totalitarian, is monolithic
and inexorable, without conflict, contradiction, ambiguity, resistance and
refusal. The very existence of feminism is evidence that challenging domi-
nation is possible. But if the challenge is to be sustained, appeals to experi-
ence need to be couched in terms which clarify what is at stake morally and
politically.
The choice is not between theory on the one hand, and experience, the
familiar, the already known and easily grasped, on the other. Rather, the
choice is between different forms of theorizing, between familiar and largely
automatic and unconscious categories, meanings, values and reality on the
one hand, and deliberate structuring and restructuring of the world in accor-
dance with a feminist morality and politics on the other. Experience, that
which feels most our own,6 is already theory-laden by interests which alien-
ate us from the potentialities opened up by feminism. To suggest, as some
theorists have (Trebilcot, 1991: 49), that we substitute stories for theory
allows no way of deciding between stories which reinforce the meanings and
values of domination, and those which illustrate the meaning of feminism
for womens lives. It is to ignore the fact that the experience which gener-
ates the stories is already theory-laden. Simply telling stories without any
analysis or critique threatens to allow free rein to those meanings and values
which already constitute experience as real. To fail to acknowledge the
social conditions within which experience is already embedded is to reduce
the political to the personal, to a matter of opinion with no way of adjudi-
cating between conflicting accounts of the way the world is. This outcome
is entirely functional in maintaining the dominant status quo. If conflicts
cannot even be addressed, because everyone is simply entitled to her own
opinion, they cannot be resolved. Theory is what provides the moral and
political meaning, purpose and value of experience. If the theorizing is not
done deliberately, it happens anyway; and since structures of domination
operate most efficiently through the acquiescence of subordinated popula-
tions, opposition to relations of power requires constant vigilance if they are
to be challenged and complicity avoided. Theory in this sense is vital to the
continued existence of feminist politics.
Feminism gives rise to certain kinds of questions, names the kinds of
things it names, uncovers certain kinds of facts, and interprets the world in
the way it does, because of its prior moral and political commitment to
opposing male domination in the interests of women first, a priority made
necessary in a world in which women are placed last or nowhere at all. The
feminist project involves both meaning and truth. It is feminisms politics
and morality which give it its meaning, that is, the ways in which feminist
understanding happens and the world makes sense from a feminist stand-
point. The truth of feminism arises out of its system of meanings, in the
sense that, with the advent of feminism, certain questions could be asked,
certain facts appeared, and certain answers became possible, which were
previously inconceivable. Feminist knowledge acquires its meaning through
its political understanding of relations of power, and through its project of
re-interpreting and changing reality in order to create possibilities for
women to control the terms of our own existence, a project which proceeds
at the expense of men only to the extent that men remain committed to a
human status acquired at womens expense. Feminism uncovers certain
facts about the world, and in that sense can lay claims to truth. But although
feminist theory is an empirical endeavour, concerned with discovering facts
about the world and organizing and explaining those facts, the empirical
content of feminist theory is not its most important aspect. Given the social
power of the forces of male supremacy, the facts will frequently be against
us anyway.
Since feminist knowledge is explicitly neither value-free nor disinterested,
the knowledge which it generates is based on, and productive of, identifiable
interests and values. It is formulated in the interests of women, in particular
womens interest in seeing an end to male domination, and in opposition to
those vested and powerful interests which maintain the male as the human
norm, and which enforce the interests and human rights of some individuals
at the expense of others. The moral values which feminism espouses are those
of a genuinely human status available to all. The primary feminist value is a
commitment to the ideal of human dignity, of the right of every human being
to a dignified standard of human existence. The question of human dignity is
an ethical one, not an empirical matter. That the ethic of human dignity is
constantly violated in fact does not invalidate the moral judgement that
people ought to be treated with respect. This commitment starts from the
standpoint of women, because the exclusion of women from human rights
and dignities is the most systematic and widely distributed of all human
exclusions, because men have too much to lose, namely their masculinity
defined at womens expense (although everything to gain), and because
women already provide a model of the human unencumbered by the rapa-
cious demands of the phallus. Women can be complicit with the meanings
and values of male supremacy, and men can resist. But womens lack of the
supreme value of phallocratic reality, suggests that women also lack the chief
barrier to connecting with other human beings as unique and valuable ends
in themselves, and provides a starting point for a revolution in the terms and
conditions of human existence.
Notes
1 To use the term in this way is to confine it to one of its many meanings
(Eagleton, 1991). Any meaning which deletes the connotations of domination, how-
ever, bowdlerizes the word and deprives it of its political import.
2 The question of why women stay with violent men is an ideological one, as is
the explanation that they stay because they like being beaten. Both question and
answer ignore the structural constraints of economic dependence and male posses-
siveness which marriage still imposes on women. It also ignores the fact that many
of the women killed by the men they have been intimate with, are killed after they
leave, that is, they are killed because they have left.
3 Or science. For a discussion of the science versus ideology debates, see
Larrain, 1979.
4 It is a fascinating exercise to ask oneself what is the sex of the children por-
trayed in the public media films, television, newspapers, advertisements, novels.
They are almost invariably male, especially if the child is active and adventurous.
5 Interestingly, Jane Flax concludes her book with a distinction between meaning
and truth. She suggests the possibility of displac[ing] truth / falsity with problems of
meaning(s) (Flax, 1990: 222). She does not discuss in detail what that might involve,
and she is doubtful about its feasibility. Perhaps it is better only to analyze desires for
meaning and to learn to live without grounds, she says (p. 223). However, having
located domination wholly on the side of truth, she does not perceive that questions
of meaning, of how the world is known and understood, of communication, clarity,
intelligibility and accountability, also involve questions about domination.
6 This is a variation on a statement by Catharine MacKinnon: Sexuality is to
feminism what work is to marxism: that which is most ones own, yet most taken
away (MacKinnon, 1982: 1).
3 Ideology enabling and
disguising domination
Pleasure and Desire
A bove all, ideology is intended to be made true. One of the chief ways in
which consent to oppression is managed is through the cultivation of
desire, the constitution of subjects who embrace relations of domination
because they want to, because it is pleasurable to do so. Pleasure and desire
enable the continuation of the social conditions of male supremacy. This
cannot be left to chance or nature, but must be constantly reinforced and
endlessly reiterated.
The medium which expresses male supremacist desire most clearly, with-
out apology, equivocation or adornment, is pornography. In what follows, I
locate the pornographic imagination with men because what I am criticizing
is the ideological construction of sex around the penis. As such, porno-
graphy and its practices operate in the interests of men in complicity with
the belief that humanity depends on penis-possession. But although the
primary motivating force and raison dtre of pornography is the eroticizing
of mens domination of women, the pleasures and desires of domination are
restricted neither to the male psyche nor to heterosexuality. The purpose of
ideology is to purvey the interests of the dominators as the interests of all,
and it serves its purpose to the extent that anyone can be complicit with the
pornographic imagination. The meanings and values of domination, while
they originate in the phallic mandate that women service the penis, can be,
and are, generalized to any human interaction whatsoever. Women can be
complicit with the ideology of pornography to the extent that they accept a
second-rate human status for themselves and eroticize their own subordi-
nation. This is exemplified in conventional heterosexual relations where
women believe that they cannot live without a man, that they are empty and
unfulfilled unless they are in a relationship with a man, and who structure
their lives around that desire. Alternatively, women can also be complicit to
the extent that they strive to be like men, finding value only in men, hold-
ing women in contempt, and accepting an erotics of domination as their
own desire. The latter is exemplified in lesbian sadomasochism. Although in
lesbian relationships there is no actual penis present, sadomasochism is phal-
lic desire. Not only are sadomasochistic practices the acting out of desire for
domination and subordination, the penis is frequently present in effigy, as a
I D E O L O G Y E N A B L I N G A N D D I S G U I S I N G D O M I N AT I O N 37
dildo (Jeffreys, 1993: 2830). Gay male sexual practices, too, can be complicit
with phallic desire, even though there are no women present, to the extent
that those practices are sadomasochistic; and again, women are frequently
present in effigy, as drag. Both lesbian and gay male relationships can
mimic heterosexuality. None the less, although the ideology of pornography
reaches beyond the male psyche and the heterosexual context, I have con-
fined it to that context in order to show the central significance of porno-
graphy most clearly and succinctly.
The central symbol structuring male supremacist desire is the penis-as-
phallus. Because the following discussion focuses on those social conditions
under which the penis is the phallus, that is, the chief value structuring the
social conditions of phallocratic reality, I use the two terms, penis and phal-
lus, interchangeably. Used in this sense, the penis is not simply anatomy.
I am not referring to it as some kind of in itself biological organ, since such
a usage (to the extent that it makes any sense at all) would mean that phallic
domination is inevitable and unchangeable. Rather, what I am referring to is
the meaning the penis carries under male supremacist conditions, a meaning
which can be changed without doing any damage to the organ in itself. As
should already be obvious, I believe not only that the penis can be severed
from its role as primary symbol of domination, but also that that separation
must be a present possibility (rather than a future hope), otherwise it would
be inconceivable. But although it is already possible to conceive of the penis
as just another bodily organ, possible on the part of both sexes although more
possible for women because they have less at stake in the hyper-valuation of
the penis and more to gain by reducing its significance, there is a great deal
of feminist work still to be done before the penis-as-phallus is abolished and
a genuinely human status becomes available to all.
The chief meaning and value of male supremacist conditions is that penis-
possession stands for human status (Dworkin, 1981; Thompson, 1991).
Those who have penises are automatically human; those who do not, are
not, although that lack can always be contested and frequently is. Because
the penis is the central symbol of human status under conditions of male
supremacy, the chief pleasures and desires of those conditions centre around
the penis. Because the penis means sex, the chief pleasures and desires of
male supremacist conditions are those of sex.1 The ideology of the natural
operates to keep sex out of the domain of the moral and the political, to ren-
der it beyond questioning and debate (unless it goes too far, in which case
its excesses are located with isolated pathological individual men, or blamed
on women). Under the ideological imperative of penis-possession, sex is the
last bastion of the natural and men are its bearers. Although for most pur-
poses male supremacist ideology equates women with nature, because both
must be dominated by men as resources to be mined to fuel male power,
within the ideology of phallic sexuality it is men who are entirely natural.
That ungovernable male sex drive must be allowed to operate at any cost
because it is nature, only nature and nothing but nature. It is mens nature,
therefore it is human nature. It is beyond investigation, beyond political
and moral critique. It exists and the lives of everyone must be structured
around it. The problems resulting from its unchecked impetus rape, pros-
titution, world over-population, AIDS, enforced pregnancy, for example
can only be managed, not abolished, because the penis must never be
hampered in its progress. Men cannot help themselves because the penis has
a life of its own and is not subject to the conscious will. What the penis
obeys is nature, its desire and activity a direct and automatic result of the
effect of hormonal secretions on the male body. Hormones are natural,
penile activity is caused by hormones, male sexual activity is governed by the
rule of nature.
From a feminist standpoint, however, this is nothing but male suprema-
cist ideology. Far from being natural, phallic sexuality is a moral and politi-
cal activity. Men do have a choice and they can be held to account when
they exercise their freedom to choose at womens expense. Mens sexual
behaviour is not caused by hormonal dictates. It is because the penis serves
the ideological function of symbolizing human status that it is so heavily
charged with erotic energy, and not because it is driven by testosterone. Men
must keep using it because they need to keep proving that they exist, that
their humanity is inextricably entwined with penis-possession; women
must be constantly used by it to prove that men exist, that the sum total of
a man is his penis. Because there is no humanity beyond the penis, what the
penis can do it ought to do. Anything and everything must be subordinated
to penile activity if men are to be what phallic ideology requires them to be.
Although there are penalties and sanctions against the worst excesses of the
penis, ranging from disapproval to imprisonment, the culture of male
supremacy still gives permission for those excesses. There are prison sen-
tences for rape, the murder of women, incest, for example, but there is also
a plethora of excuses provided to demonstrate that nothing happened, or
nothing of any importance.
Pornography is the ideology of male supremacist masculine desire writ
large and shameless. It is the clearest, most unequivocal expression of male
supremacist ideology in existence. As Sheila Jeffreys has said:
Pornography made it clear that what constituted sex under male supremacy was
precisely the eroticised subordination of women. Inequality was sexy and the
sexiness of this inequality was the grease that oiled the machinery of male
supremacy. The sexiness of male supremacy . . . was the unacknowledged motor
force of male supremacy. Through sexual fantasy men were able to reinforce the
sense of their power and of womens inferiority daily and be rewarded for every
thought and image of women subordinated with sexual pleasure; a pleasure
acknowledged to be the most valuable form of pleasure in male-supremacist
culture. (Jeffreys, 1990: 2523)
Pornography is the ideology which reinforces the phallic desire of men who
already want it because they seek it out and pay for it. It depicts the worst that
men can do to women and encourages them to do it. It tells men they have a
right to do whatever they want to do with their penises. It tells them that
women are infinitely available to men, that they are endlessly compliant, that
they are enamoured of the penis and enchanted with what it can do, that they
will take anything, anything at all, and beg for more. It says that women are
there for men to fuck, that that is the sole reason for female existence. It says
that women are nothing but things, a collection of fetishized body parts,
breasts, buttocks, hair, faces and legs arrayed for male delectation, orifices
serving as receptacles for the penis. Because it portrays women as objects, it
gives men permission to harm women. It tells them that women are not
human, that they do not suffer, whatever is done to them. It tells men that
they can hurt women because it is already being done and no one is com-
plaining, including the women portrayed. Pornography is the theory; sexual
violence, rape, prostitution and compulsory heterosexuality are the practices.
This does not mean that pornography causes male sexual violence, that it is
separate from sexual violence and prior to it. Male sexual violence is not
caused by anything. To frame it in such a way is to be complicit with the ideo-
logical belief that male sexuality is natural. Rather, male sexual violence is
a moral evil for which the men who do it are responsible and about which
they have choices. Pornography is an apologia for male sexual violence. It
provides it with meaning, gives men permission for it, and deadens male
ethical sensibilities.
The misogynist social implications of pornography, however, are largely
hidden from women. Although some of its less blatant icons appear in
public media, especially advertising which cynically evokes desires already
in place, the worst productions of the pornographic imagination are still
closeted in adult bookstores, video shops and movie houses. Although men
bring it home, they do so as individuals, and hence its systematic nature is
disguised. It is for this reason that the struggle against pornography has
come to occupy such a central position in the radical feminist critique of
male supremacist relations of power. Radical feminist campaigns against
pornography are intended to tell women how men are willingly being
trained to view them. As Andrea Dworkin said:
Women did not know. . . . I decided that I wanted women to see what I saw. This
may be the most ruthless choice I have ever made. But . . . it was the only choice
that enables me to triumph over my subject by showing it, remaking it, turning
it into something that we define and use rather than letting it remain something
that defines and uses us. (Dworkin, 1981: 304)
From the standpoint of male supremacist ideology, the meaning of

pornography is that it is only fantasy, nothing but images and text used by
individuals for their own personal private satisfaction, and the business of
nobody but the isolated individual using it. In a backlash to the feminist
challenge, it has also come to mean free speech, both of those who pro-
duce it and those who consume it. From a feminist standpoint, however, it
is very real activity indeed. It is real for the women who are used in its pro-
duction; it is real for the women who are used by the men it trains; it is real
for the men it teaches; and it is real when they apply what they have learned
to themselves and in their relations with others. From a feminist standpoint

pornography means womens oppression. It obliterates womens humanity
by portraying them as nothing but objects for the gratification of the penis.
Those whose speech is free are those who validate and reinforce relations
of domination and subordination. Those who protest against domination,
those who expose domination as domination, are not only not free to speak
and be heard, they are permitted no right of reply and no redress for the
harm caused.
What is purveyed by the ideology of pornography are the values of sado-
masochism. These values are obvious, they cannot be hidden. They are pre-
sented as positive goods, as pleasures to be enjoyed, as the gratification of
the needs of desiring individuals who have a right to act on their desires, a
right to their own personal, private satisfactions, a right to do anything
and everything to avoid sexual frustration. That sadomasochism is the eroti-
cization of domination and subordination is not denied by the ideology of
pornography. But instead of being rejected as a moral evil, it is validated and
glorified as delightful and beneficial, as innocent fun and pure enjoyment.
Humiliation and degradation, violence, physical pain and mutilation, even
death, the use on people of chains, whips, bonds, weapons, the torture of
human bodies, are all valued as pleasure, only pleasure and nothing but
pleasure.
The morality espoused by the pornographic imagination is explicitly to
transgress the morality of human dignity. As such it requires fetishism, what
feminism has called objectification. Fetishism is the phallic desire which
depends on an equation between human beings and things for its gratifica-
tion. In the classic psychoanalytic case, an object an article of clothing, a
part of the body is substituted for a person. The sexual urge is focused on
the object, and sexual gratification is impossible without it. In Freuds
account, the fetish symbolized the penis: we may say that the normal proto-
type of fetishes is a mans penis (Freud, 1977b: 357). The fetish was a penis-
substitute for men who could not have sex with women without feeling
threatened with castration. According to Freud, the sight of the female geni-
tals aroused castration anxiety in these men because females lacked penises.
The fetish stood in for the absent female penis, and allowed these men to
engage in heterosexual sex without fear that they might lose their penises.
The price they paid (although Freud did not mention this) was an inability
to relate to women as human beings. Although a woman must be a human
being if the lack of a penis is so threatening, and hence although male cast-
ration anxiety is an acknowledgement that to be female is to be human too,
the logic of male supremacy requires that the anxiety be managed by deny-
ing that women are human. Fetishism is a way of managing the contradic-
tion between women as human beings, and womens lack of the symbol of
human status, that is, the penis. It is both a recognition of womens human-
ness and a denial of it. The fetish manages the contradiction between
women as human beings and their non-humanity required by phallocratic
conditions, by deflecting male sexual desire towards objects.
Freuds fetishist coped with womens humanness by avoiding it, by erecting

the barrier of the fetish between himself and importunate female humanity.
Pornography turns women themselves into objects. If women are nothing
but objects, their lacking penises does not matter because they are not
human beings anyway. They can be used and re-used endlessly without
arousing male castration anxiety, because there is no non-phallic humanity
there to elicit it. Within the pornographic scenario, both sexes are fetishized.
Men are nothing but their penises, women are nothing but objects to be
used in its service. Because men are the penis-bearers, everything is permit-
ted to them as long as it contributes to the gratification of the penis; because
women are not penis-bearers, nothing is permitted to them unless it con-
tributes to the gratification of the penis. Since women are only things, they
can be used as a means towards the end of sexual gratification of the penis.
That end has an absolute and essential priority to which everything must be
subordinated. As things, the human beings used in the pornographic sce-
nario have no rights. They exist simply as objects to be manipulated in the
service of pornographys aim. The rights of human beings to be treated with
respect, to be recognized as unique ends in themselves, to live free from
coercion and harm, to engage in their own freely chosen projects, are all
violated by the main motivating force of pornography: the gratification of
the penis.
Within the terms of the pornographic imagination and under male
supremacist conditions, sex is a male prerogative. Men want it, will fight for
it, defend it at any cost, pay any price for it. This is not just a metaphor. Men
do in fact pay money for sex. Prostitution exists. Male supremacist propa-
ganda would have us believe that it has always existed. It is the worlds old-
est profession. If it has always existed, it must serve an ineradicable male
need. It must be a necessity, regrettable perhaps, but inevitable because male
sexuality is a natural need like hunger or thirst or sleep. Prostitution can-
not be abolished because it is human nature. But if the existence of prosti-
tution is questioned from a feminist standpoint, it becomes a very bizarre
thing indeed. From a feminist standpoint, prostitution exposes something
very strange about male sexuality. Its sole reason for existence is so that men
can pay money to have their penises stimulated to ejaculation by strangers
whom they hold in contempt. These strangers are usually women, some-
times feminized males, and sometimes children of either sex. Prostitution
involves human relationships which consist of nothing but penises stimu-
lated to orgasm. It exists for men who need another human being to do the
stimulating, but the other human being must then be fetishized into some-
thing less than human. Although the other human being is nothing but an
object to stimulate the penis, not just any object will do. The object must be
a human being because only a human being can recognize the paying cus-
tomer as a penis-bearer, although the human being must be an object
because she is there only to stimulate the penis. She has no desires, needs,
feelings, thoughts or life of her own, or none that he is interested in or cares
about.
Although the only reason for the existence of prostitution is to service

male sexual desire, prostitution is, bizarrely, blamed on women. The persis-
tent challenge which the humanity of the women poses to the continued
existence of prostitution, is managed by holding women responsible for it.
The dictionary definition of prostitution provides a telling example of how
domination operates through the control of meaning. The Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary defines prostitution in the following terms: 1. Of
women: The offering of the body to indiscriminate lewdness for hire (esp.
as a practice or institution). In a figurative sense it means: 2. Devotion to
an unworthy use; degradation, debasement, corruption. The definition
does not mention men at all, despite the glaringly obvious fact that serving
male sexual needs is the only reason the institution of prostitution exists.
The lewdness belongs with the men who require women offering their
bodies for hire. It would not be possible for women to do the offering in
the first place unless men demanded it. And yet that crucial defining charac-
teristic of prostitution is absent from the dictionary definition. Thus does
the OED collude with the blaming of women for a corruption which actu-
ally belongs with men.
Concerned attempts to abolish prostitution are typically directed towards
women. It is the women who are arrested, fined, gaoled, confined to certain
areas and excluded from others. It is the women who are bashed, raped,
murdered, who are held in contempt, who carry the burden of opprobrium
and who are visited with the effects of the disgust felt by decent citizens.
The blame for the disreputableness of prostitution is laid on the women who
solicit (prostitutes), rather than on the men who maintain prostitution
through their patronage and their desire (and for whom there is no name).
The moral disgrace of prostitution is located with women, rather than with
the men who continue to use female human beings as things, whose obses-
sion with their penises and what they can do overrides any ethical consider-
ations whatsoever. If prostitution is to be abolished, it is men who will have
to change because it is male desire which maintains it, not female desire.
What women want is sufficient income to live in comfort and dignity. And
yet the disrepute of prostitutes is intrinsically connected to the penis.
Women who are prostitutes are women who are used by the penis. If it
is being used by the penis which brings women in to disrepute, then the
negative values of degradation, debasement and corruption belong with the
penis. If it is the penis which disgraces women, then it is the penis which is
the original disgrace. Thus does male supremacy expose itself for those with
the will to see. The same connection between disgrace and the penis can be
seen in the social construct of virginity. To the extent that loss of virginity
brings shame upon a woman, it is the penis which has brought it. The dis-
repute which is culturally located with whores, loose women (etc., end-
lessly) is actually a moral lack in men projected, in a strict psychoanalytic
sense, on to women.
As the reverse of the morality of human dignity, the chief value espoused
by prostitution and pornography is contempt. Used in this sense, the term
contempt does not refer only to a personal emotion belonging to individuals.

It must be that too if populations are to consent to relations of domination.
Social values operate as psychic mechanisms as long as people embrace
them by accepting them as their own motivations, by referring to them as
their own reasons for acting, by defending them when they are threatened,
by ignoring or not seeing alternatives and to the extent that people refuse
to comply, those mechanisms fail to operate. But contempt is more impor-
tantly a social value which ensures the making of meaningful, systematic
distinctions between categories of individuals. As a hierarchically ordered
social environment, where some people are structurally defined as less
worthy than others of access to the means for ensuring even the most basic
level of human dignity, male supremacy is a culture of contempt.
Within the parameters of male supremacy, under conditions where only
men are human, social recognition of women as human subjects in their
own right is lacking. Pornography and prostitution express and constitute
that lack clearly and unequivocally. By defining women as nothing but
things to be used in the service of the penis, they reinforce and maintain
womens lack of social recognition. They function in accordance with the
values of compulsory, that is, normal, heterosexuality to keep women in
their place in the minds of men.
Individualism
An ideology of desire is also an ideology of individualism. If the interests of
the ruling class are to be presented as the interests of all, their systematic
nature as domination must be disguised. Where better to hide the dominat-
ing nature of relations of ruling than in the depths of the individual psyche?
If domination is desired, it cannot be challenged and opposed. If it consti-
tutes the very roots of personal identity, it cannot be seen as systematic. If it
operates by means of feelings and emotions, it belongs in the realm of pri-
vate satisfaction, not public politics. If domination is fragmented and dis-
persed among individuals, it cannot provide the basis for common interests
among the oppressed.
The ideology of individualism depicts humanity as a set of isolated
selves, floating freely in a space which is social only to the extent that there
are many selves. Each self is detached from every other, and contains within
itself all that is necessary for identification as human. Desires, needs, inter-
ests, beliefs, actions, feelings, attitudes and behaviours, are perceived as per-
sonal properties intrinsic to each individual, and as arising fully formed
within each individual psyche. The desires, etc., of any one individual can
come into conflict or competition with those of any other, or can provide a
reason for co-operation. But social interaction happens only after those
desires, etc., have been identified, after they have been located as the inher-
ent property of an individual person.
In contrast, a feminist politics needs to be able to see that male domina-
tion is a social system of ideological meanings and values which certainly
influence the hearts and minds of individuals, but which are not co-extensive
with them. Although that influence is not monolithic and inevitable, it is
intransigent to the extent that those meanings are perceived as essential
attributes of individuals, rather than as ideological requirements of relations
of ruling. If relations of domination and subordination are interpreted as
nothing but properties of individuals, they cannot be seen as relations of rul-
ing at all. They become simply a matter of preferences and choices engaged
in by discrete individuals who have no responsibilities beyond their own
immediate pleasures and satisfactions. In this libertarian discourse, politics
vanishes. If only individuals exist, political critique can only be seen as per-
sonal insult or annihilation of the self, and disagreement becomes assertion
of the self against threatening and hostile others. Freedom is reduced to the
absence of constraint, either on the part of the self or of others. The dam-
age done to self and others by relations of ruling is either not addressed, or
is purveyed as a positive good emanating from within desiring individuals.
The clearest examples of this kind of unthinking commitment to the ideo-
logy of the atomized individual can be found in the libertarian defence of sex
radicals, sexual outlaws or erotic dissidents. In Gayle Rubins paper,
Thinking Sex (Rubin, 1984), this defence is couched in terms of an account
constructed around a set of unjustly treated individuals paedophiles,
fetishists, sadomasochists, etc. who just happen to have a certain kind of
intrinsic sexual desire which structures and informs their personal identity and
makes them the kinds of individuals they are. As individuals with particular
sexual needs, they have a right to the expression of their sexual desire, a
right which they are unfairly prevented from exercising by moralistic prohi-
bitions and sanctions which Rubin perceives as emanating both from the domi-
nant heterosexual society and from feminism. Within the terms of Rubins
account, these sexual desires are self-evidently not socially constructed,
because they are treated with social disapproval and moral outrage. Rubin
assumes without question that these desiring individuals cannot possibly be
socially constituted because they are despised and rejected. They are subjected
to forms of social control only after they are recognized as the kinds of indi-
viduals they are. Society only arrives on the scene once these individuals have
been recognized for what they are, and the best thing society can do is to
leave them alone to exercise their individual rights and freedoms in peace and
in private. It is no accident that Rubins defence is couched in wholly indivi-
dualistic terms, in terms of fetishists rather than fetishism, sadomasochists
rather than sadomasochism, etc., in terms of people rather than in terms of
social practices with shared meanings and values. By keeping her focus firmly
fixed on people, she can surreptitiously appeal to the whole range of assump-
tions embedded in the ideology of individualism the public / private dis-
tinction, the dichotomy between individual and society, and the idea of
freedom as lack of constraint, of rights as the untrammelled exercise of the
will, and of desire as the personal property of single individuals. By avoiding
addressing desire as social practice, Rubin can avoid addressing the origins of
desire in the social conditions of male domination.
The ideology of individualism masquerades as collective interests via the

notion of identity. Within the terms of the ideology, people can organize
collectively around a common identity, but the source of that identity is
located within each individual. It does not become social until it is recognized
by other individuals, and either embraced as theirs too, or morally dis-
approved of and rejected. For example, in a book review, Mina Kumar says:
In the strongest essays [in the book under review], rural lesbians reclaim
their heritage from stereotypes about rednecks, the last permissible target
of ethnic jokes. [One of the authors] worries that privileged lesbian-feminists
plan for getting rid of lesbian-bashing and women-hating and racism is to
get rid of my kind of people (Kumar, 1994: 76). Here, the moral and politi-
cal phenomena of misogyny and racism are seen as inherent qualities of
people, and political critique is interpreted as attacking individuals.
Opposition to misogyny and racism is viewed as attempting to get rid of
people because misogyny and racism are seen as what makes them the kind
of people they are. So intrinsic to their identity is lesbian-bashing, women-
hating and racism that without it these people would cease to exist as an
identifiable group. But while it is certainly the case that the responsibility for
harmful attitudes and behaviours lies with individuals, those attitudes and
behaviours are not inalienable properties which people just happen to have;
they are systematic meanings and values about which people have moral and
political choices. Misogyny and racism are not of the same order as being a
woman under conditions of male domination, or being black under condi-
tions of white supremacy, or being deprived of a dignified standard of living
under conditions of capitalism. One is not responsible for ones sex or ones
ethnic origin, neither of which would be a problem were it not for the sys-
tems of domination which ensure that those so identified are deprived of
human rights. Neither is one responsible for being poor. Characterizing
poverty as an inherent property of poor individuals is a favourite ideological
ploy of those who approve of economic policies which generate obscene
accumulations of wealth in the hands of the few. In contrast to being a
woman or a member of a minority ethnic group, misogyny and racism are
questions of moral responsibility. To interpret them as something inherent in
people is to ignore the social and political milieu within which others are
harmed by these attitudes and behaviours. To see them as an ethnic identity
is to obliterate their status as moral choices and to extract them from the
social system of domination within which they arise in the first place.
There is a sense in which the above examples are instances of essentialism.
Not only are they couched in terms of putative facts about individuals, those
facts are seen as inherent in individuals. They are thus placed beyond politi-
cal contestation and moral debate. Sadomasochistic desire, or misogyny and
racism, simply exist as a kind of bedrock beyond which no questions need
to be asked, and about which no decisions need to be made. Racist and
misogynist meanings and values are made into a form of ethnic identity, and
social values are interpreted as natural properties of individuals, rather than
as forms of social interaction involving moral responsibilities and political
quiescence in the face of conditions of domination. Essentialism, however,

has become a politically bankrupt term as a result of its use to vilify radical
feminism. And what is at stake is more accurately identified as the ideology
of individualism since its political function is to purvey certain beliefs about
what it means to be a person. The ideology of individualism conveys
messages about what people can do and what they cannot. It enables
what does not threaten relations of ruling, for example, the choices of super-
market consumerism (one of the prime examples of which is that slipping and
sliding concept of gender); and it defines any challenge to current relations
of power as impossible, meaningless or non-existent, as beyond the sphere of
individual action and responsibility because it is not available for debate.
Above all, the ideology of individualism must disguise the actual relations of
ruling, and it does that by locating all agency within the domain of an atom-
ized individual radically independent of others, and existing prior to any
form of social interaction.
The individual purveyed by the ideology of individualism is masculine.
In the sense in which I am using the term here, masculinity is not just a per-
sonality characteristic of male persons. It is a social phenomenon, a system
of meanings and values structured around relations of and with the penis, a
system which women can embrace as well as men. It refers to ways of being
a man under conditions of male supremacy although its maintenance does
not depend only on men. Neither are men involuntarily implicated in ways
outside their control. It is a moral and political phenomenon and hence
resistible. It is none the less hegemonic in the sense that it constitutes the
dominant reality for both women and men, for men as its bearers and for
women whose exclusion from human status is the unacknowledged pre-
requisite for its continued existence. Women cannot be masculine in any
sense which implies that women can take on the rights, benefits and pre-
rogatives of men (except in those rare cases where women have passed
themselves off as men and been believed). But women can uphold the mean-
ings and values of masculinity. This happens in the normal case through the
embracing of femininity and its function in shoring up the masculine ego.
Masculinity and femininity are not complementary characteristics, attached,
rigidly or otherwise, to their respective sexes. Rather, they constitute a value
hierarchy whereby the male individual has the right to his own autonomous
human status and the benefits which flow from that, and the female has no
rights other than to recognize, validate and maintain the human status of
the male. Femininity is not an other to masculinity; it is a subset of it.
Femininity exists to reinforce masculinity. It is the residual vestige of
humanity women are allowed, so that men can continue to define them-
selves at womens expense. As Virginia Woolf expressed it: Women have
served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and deli-
cious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size (Woolf,
1946: 53).
Female support for masculinity can also take more transgressive forms.
For example, the sexual libertarianism which puts sex outside political
critique, lesbian sadomasochism and lesbianandgay2 politics, involve women

seeing the world and acting within it from a standpoint which, as Sheila
Jeffreys points out, is palatable to men, a palatability which also involves a
deliberate and active campaign of vilification of feminism. But whether
normal or transgressive, womens embracing of the ethos of masculinity
involves a commitment to the ideology that only men are human. Femininity
is an acceptance of second-rate status for women; libertarian transgression
involves futile attempts at equality. But neither questions the construct of
the male as the human norm.
The maintenance of masculinity requires suppression of the knowledge
that men depend on women for maintaining the basic necessities of human
existence. The basic form that suppression takes is denial of the maternal
relation, the systematic forgetting of our infant origins in helpless depen-
dence on a supremely powerful woman mother.3 That forgetting is engi-
neered by interpreting the interdependence of the maternal relation as the
mothers power-over the infant, a perceived domination which is fended
off through contempt for the female who need not be considered human
because she lacks the penis. Without knowledge of that primary social rela-
tion, society consists of no more than scattered adult individuals who came
from nowhere because they have forgotten their origins. The ideology of
individualism is entirely complicit with male supremacist conditions. The
belief in the autonomous individual who can make and re-make himself at
will depends on the obliteration of any awareness of the origin of all social
relationships in our infant dependency on a woman. It also depends on
obliterating knowledge of the social importance of women except to the
extent that they provide selfless service to the male. With no memory of that
primal helplessness, and with the systematic forgetting of the social contri-
bution of women, social relationships are detached from their connecting
links. From this standpoint, the social appears as nothing but scattered
entities, essentially antagonistic until they are brought together by fear or
contract.4
Despite the above-mentioned connection between the belief in the male
as the human norm and the ideology of individualism, that ideology tends
to exert a subterranean influence within feminist discourse itself, as is evi-
denced by the examples discussed above. But to criticize the ideology of
individualism does not mean that feminism can dispense altogether with a
concept of the individual. That our individual selves are unique and irre-
placeable, that we have rights and dignities and are entitled to respect sim-
ply because we exist, that we are able to act and make a difference, and that
we can take responsibility for our actions, are all vital ingredients of a femi-
nist politics committed to creating a human status for women. Sarah
Hoaglands concept of moral agency under oppression postulates this kind
of the human individual. Her account avoids both the determinism of a
system of domination to which the individual is subjected and within which
she is a passive victim of circumstances beyond her control, and the notion
of a free will available to all without constraint. Hoagland argues against the
idea that moral agency means control, of self, of others, or of situations.

Given the reality of oppressive conditions, attempts at control are either
futile since we are not in control, or complicit with the values of domina-
tion. Instead, she argues that
moral agency simply is the ability to choose in limited situations, to pursue one
possibility rather than another, to thereby create value through what we choose,
and to conceive of ourselves as ones who are able to and do make choices and
thus as ones who are able to make a difference for ourselves and each other in
this living. . . . It is not because we are free and moral agents that we are able to
make moral choices. Rather, it is because we make choices, choose from among
alternatives, act in the face of limits, that we declare ourselves to be moral
beings. (Hoagland, 1988: 231 her emphasis)
For Hoagland the individual is the locus of moral choice, not absolutely,
but within constraints. This means that, even under conditions of male
domination, we do have alternatives and can make choices between them,
and to the extent that this is possible we are responsible for our actions and
hence free agents. At the same time, however, to the extent that we are sub-
jected under conditions of domination, not only through outright coercion
(violence, economic deprivation, etc.), but also through ideological manipu-
lation of our hearts and minds, there will frequently be occasions when we
are not responsible, either wholly or in part. In this account, the individual
is she who makes decisions between accepting responsibility and refusing it,
who acts when she can make a difference and refrains from acting, or with-
draws, when she cant, and avoids de-moralization by struggling constantly
against succumbing to the meanings and values of domination and holding
fast to the values of a genuinely human status for all.
This work of Hoagland is in contrast to other attempts to open up a space
of effective action within the domain of everyday life, which fail because
they do not acknowledge the ideological structuring of everyday experience.
Dorothy Smith, for example, interprets the lived actualities of peoples
lives as a form of authenticity which she contrasts to the ideological appa-
ratuses of the relations of ruling. Her purpose is to give sociology a human
face by extricating it from the objectivized forms of knowledge of its pre-
sent location in the textual realities of administration, management, pro-
fessional discourse, and the like, and locating it in the lived actualities as
people know them in their everyday / everynight lives (Smith, 1990: 97
and passim). But despite her clear perceptions of particular manifestations
of male domination, especially in her earlier book (Smith, 1987), Smith sees
domination only in its bureaucratic forms, and not in its mundane aspects
as manifested in everyday life. Instead, she appeals to everyday life, in the
form of womens experience, as a corrective to the traditional masculine
bias of sociology. She interprets domination as confined to objectified,
bureaucratic forms of relations of ruling, and fails to see that the womens
experience to which she appeals is already structured within relations of
male domination.
On the other hand, however, there is an element of truth in appeals to

what Smith calls lived actualities, to the extent that they are attempts to
open a space for resistance to domination in the domain within which
people actually live. The problem with such accounts is that they say noth-
ing about the ways in which domination already operates in this domain. As
a consequence, they fail to recognize the vital role which the recognition of
domination plays in the struggle against it. None the less, it remains true
that, if domination operates in the sphere of everyday / everynight lives
(wherever else it operates as well), it can also be resisted there.
Within the terms of feminist theory, experience is agency within a life
world. It is the activity and receptivity for which the individual bears her
own responsibility, in so far as she has access to the information which will
allow her to decide whether or not she is responsible. For feminist purposes,
experience is neither the passive reception of internal and external stimuli,
nor the value-free perception of what is, nor the mute acceptance of autho-
rized versions of the world-taken-for-granted. It is an active presence in the
world, claiming the fullest possible responsibility for her place within it.
That does not mean that we are responsible for everything that happens to
us. To the extent that domination debars us from exercising the fullest pos-
sible control over our lives, obviously we are not. But we can still be respon-
sible for how we act within oppressive conditions, and for deciding the
extent and limitations of our freedom and constraint.
But if experience is no guarantee of the truth, accuracy, relevance or ade-
quacy of theory, it is also the only guarantee there is. Without theory, experi-
ence is at best a blind groping in the dark, at worst a reinforcement of and
collusion with the status quo; but without experience, theory becomes an
esoteric mystery, a game for academic troglodytes. That game has tradition-
ally been played best by those who can demand the services of others to
take care of their mundane needs. The detached, disinterested nature of
malestream theory is a function of the amount of distance the theorist can
put between himself (or herself ) and the messy, tiresome demands of every-
day life. That distance depends on someone else doing the work of neces-
sity, traditionally a woman or women. Distancing oneself from the everyday
world, as feminist standpoint theorists have pointed out, threatens to
divorce intellectual work from human concerns. Hence, theory must be
visibly tied to experience. But neither provides any guarantee for the other.
Theory can be impeccably ideologically sound, and still do grave damage
to experiential reality; experience can be intense, pleasurable and deeply
felt, and yet require theorizing which radically questions and undermines.
Experience can be deceptive, and theory is only more or less adequate.
None the less, there is a stopping point, which is also a starting point, which
gives meaning, purpose and coherence to feminist theory and beyond which
the questions and explanations must cease. That point is ethical. Feminist
theory is, above and beyond anything else, a moral commitment to the kind
of world we want to live in, and a moral resistance to the kind of world
which, by and large, it actually is.
For not all meaning and value serve domination. For those not in the
direst straits, for those who have access to the basic necessities of human
existence food, shelter, physical safety, freedom of movement and associa-
tion, etc. there is always the possibility of manoeuvre, negotiation and
innovation, and meanings and values can be changed, although not easily. In
that sense, anyone can be complicit and anyone can resist. But the two are
not, of course, symmetrical. For the most part compliance requires no more
than unthinking acceptance of what everyone knows to be the case, pro-
ceeding as usual without deliberation or reflection, knowing how to go on
without thinking about it, although even here there is room to move.
Resistance, however, requires a greater degree of self-reflection and deliber-
ate choice, questioning the world-taken-for-granted, espousing some
values and rejecting others, seeing the world in one way and not in another.
It involves recognizing both freedom and constraint, both the extent to
which one is responsible and the extent to which one is not. And because
these decisions cannot be made once and for all, it involves a constant readi-
ness to reconsider.
What any particular individual might or might not do, ought or ought not
to do, cannot be stated in general terms. Feminism does not lay down rules
and regulations, prohibitions and prescriptions, for individuals to follow or
avoid. What actions follow from any particular critique is for each of us to
decide for herself (or himself ). I would assert, as an ethical first principle, that
human beings ought to be free to choose between alternatives, and that, as a
matter of fact, we frequently are, at least those of us who are already provided
with basic necessities. The individual is a free agent to the extent that she has
access to alternatives, allows herself to recognize that alternatives exist, and
acts with knowledge of the extent and limits of her responsibility. No one can
do it completely alone. Non-compliance with dominant meanings and values
involves risking social rejection, non-acceptance or irrelevance, and some-
times violence, or (because society is not only out there but also in here)
madness. Effective refusal to comply requires an alternative body of mutual
knowledge, of shared meanings and values, which provides a social context
for resistance. This is what feminism supplies.
But just as male domination is not monolithic, rigid and static, neither is
feminism an absolute alternative. Feminisms primary commitment is to the
interests of women (and, not incidentally, also to the interests of men, to the
extent that men can see that a human status achieved at no ones expense is
in their interests too). Feminism is not concerned to criticize, or even theo-
rize, current social arrangements as long as they do not operate against
womens interests either by including women as mens subordinates, or by
excluding women from humanly valuable forms of life. Neither is feminism
critical of current arrangements which do not validate domination, which
allow for mutual recognition, respect and caring between people. Male
domination is a theoretical construct devised for a certain purpose, to focus
attention on those aspects of reality which must be denied if the social
system that is male domination is to be maintained. The feminist focus on
male domination provides a standpoint from which certain questions can be

asked, and certain answers and actions can become conceivable. Because
those answers and actions rebound on forms of life, they cannot be dictated.
Everyone must decide for themselves. But the decisions cannot be made
unless the questions are asked in the first place. The role of feminism is to
provide the questions which allow the possibility of resistance and challenge
to relations of domination.
In Part Two, I discuss a number of other ways in which feminism has been
interpreted, other, that is, than defining the feminist political project in
terms of the opposition to male supremacy. Many feminist texts have an
ambivalent relationship to the concept of male domination. No feminist text
can avoid acknowledging its existence, in however tangential, peripheral or
covert a fashion. Feminisms evident concern for women means that even
the most cursory examination of the situation of women is going to uncover
the workings of male supremacy in womens lives. But in too many texts
labelled feminist, the significance of that insight is missed, so that male
domination either becomes just one problem among many; or it is reduced
to a secondary phenomenon caused by something more basic, capitalism,
perhaps, or pregnancy and childbirth, or womens mothering, or the public /
private distinction, binary oppositions or dichotomies; or it is confined
to one particular social context the family, or the work place, or the role
of wife; or it is displaced entirely in favour of something else, usually
womens oppression or gender; or it is given a neutral-sounding title like
the sex / gender system. Part Two is an extended discussion of some of these
ways of evading what I have argued is feminisms central problematic, the
existence of male domination.
Notes
1 This has been noted by a number of radical feminist theorists, among whom
are Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin and Sheila Jeffreys.
2 The term is Sheila Jeffreys. She says: I use the term lesbianandgay to
describe those theorists who apparently make no distinction between lesbians and
gay men in their theory. They avoid feminist insights about the different sex class
positions of women and men and homogenize experience to create a universal gay
theory in which lesbian specificity disappears (Jeffreys, 1993: 18 n. 2).
3 I am greatly indebted to Mia Campioni for countless conversations over many
years on the male supremacist constitution of the maternal relation and the crucial
part it plays in the management of male power (Campioni, 1987, 1991, 1997).
4 Hence the preoccupation throughout the history of malestream social thought,
from Hobbes to Foucault, with the problem of social order, a preoccupation which
establishes conflict and antagonism as the primal reality, as that which must be over-
come in order for society to exist. Malestream social thought has focused on the
question: How is society possible given the original antagonism of the war of each
against all? Feminism, however, starts from the diametrically opposite question:
How do antagonism and conflict come about, given that we all originate from
within a social relationship?
P a r t Tw o Misunderstanding
Fe m i n i s m
4 Fe m i n i s m u n d e f i n e d
T he obvious place to look for definitions is, of course, a dictionary, and

feminist dictionaries do exist. But they are no more useful for clarifying
the meaning of feminism than any other text. Because their purpose is to
provide as comprehensive an overview as possible, their main criterion for
selection is anything called feminist. As a consequence, they tend to repro-
duce the conflicts and contradictions without resolving them. The entries
under feminism are so disparate as to be little help in getting any coherent
sense of what feminism is.
This is often a deliberate strategy on the part of the compilers since their
aim is to include as wide a range as possible of what women have said about
each topic designated by a word entry. But the word feminist has a differ-
ent status from all the other entries. When it appears in the title it provides
the definitional focus for everything else. Hence, the place to look for this
dictionarys definition of feminism is the compilers statement of their aims
and intentions. Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler, for example, initially
stated these largely in terms of women, for example to document words,
definitions, and conceptualizations that illustrate womens linguistic contri-
butions (Kramarae and Treichler, 1985: 1). However, they were aware that
for the purposes of a feminist dictionary, references to women alone were
not sufficient. They said that they called the book a feminist dictionary
rather than a womens dictionary because they were particularly interested
in what has been said in opposition to male definition, defamation, and
ignorance of women and their lives (p. 12). In other words, they were
aware that the need to focus on women arises out of male supremacist con-
ditions, although in the interests of diversity that awareness does not appear
clearly and unambiguously under the entry feminism within the text itself.
Usually, though, this pluralist approach means that feminism comes to be
defined only in terms of women. The editors of an overview of Australian
feminism said that they did not even attempt to impose a singular defini-
tion of feminism . . . because of the diversity in, and constant movement
54 M I S U N D E R S TA N D I N G F E M I N I S M
of, feminist terrain. They did, however, offer a definition of feminism in

terms of a concern with womens oppression and how to change that
with reference to womens citizenship and participation in social life (Caine
et al., 1998: x). Maggie Humm, too, defined feminism largely in terms of
women equal rights for women, in general, feminism is the ideology of
womens liberation, the theory of the womans point of view, etc. (Humm,
1989). Feminism is also characterized in terms of women in the Preface:
feminist theory is fundamentally about womens experience (p. xi). Under
the heading Domination, she does acknowledge that A distinctive part of
contemporary feminist theory is its analysis of male dominance and all femi-
nist theory is designed to show how a male domination of women can be
ended (p. 55); and there is an entry for male dominance. But that aware-
ness is not included in the definition of feminism.
I know of only one text which explicitly addresses the issue of defining
feminism. Karen Offen (1988) did present feminism in terms of male domi-
nation as the crucial issue for feminist politics. Feminism was a critical
analysis of male privilege and womens subordination within any given
society, and a political challenge to male authority and hierarchy in the most
profound sense (pp. 151, 152). But her chief concern was why the word
feminism so often evoked antagonism. She suggested that it was the indivi-
dualist emphasis which alienated many women (and men), because it dis-
missed womens traditional experience and womens differences from men.
She argued that the solution was to recognize the important role relational
feminism had played historically. Relational feminism, she said, empha-
sized womens rights as women (defined principally by their childbearing
and / or nurturing capacities) in relation to men. It insisted on womens dis-
tinctive contributions in these roles to the broader society and made claims
on the commonwealth on the basis of these contributions (p. 136 her
emphases). She acknowledged that arguments for womens distinctiveness
and complementarity of the sexes had often been appropriated once again
to endorse male privilege (p. 154). But she believed that a feminism which
valued womens traditional capacities for nurturance and relationship would
appeal to more women than one which relied solely on abstract (and male-
defined) concepts of individual rights and personal autonomy.
However, while she was right to argue that there is much that is valu-
able in womens traditional capacities, she misperceived the source of the
antagonism towards feminism. Feminism antagonizes, not because it is too
abstract and individualistic, but because it identifies male domination. The
feminist problem with womens traditional roles is not that women in fact
perform them, but that they ensure womens subservience to men. The
problem is not that women are nurturant and caring (if they are), but that
women are required to nurture men without reciprocity. It is the prospect
of women withdrawing from servicing men that is so alienating, to men
because they will lose womens unreciprocated recognition of their human
status, and to women because they will lose the only access to intimacy and
human status allowed them under male supremacist conditions. But Offen
F E M I N I S M U N D E F I N E D 55
did not recognize that it is feminisms very opposition to male supremacy,

an opposition which she herself found unproblematic, which is the source
of the antagonism.
Too often feminist texts equivocate on the question of male domination,
even, oddly enough, where it is explicitly named. Sandra Harding, for
example, clearly recognizes the existence of male domination, since she
defines sex / gender as a system of male dominance made possible by
mens control of womens productive and reproductive labor (Harding,
1983: 311). Male domination is synonymous with sex / gender system
throughout the paper. She tells us that it is probably unwise to assume that
anything like the sex / gender system we know is a universal trait of human
social life, and so confines the scope of her generalization to the vast
majority of cultures to which we will ever have historical access (p. 323
n. 10 her emphasis). Hence any (hypothetical) cultures which were not
male dominant would, it would seem, lack a sex / gender system. But if
male domination is the common and invariable characteristic of sex / gender
systems, why is there any need to substitute sex / gender system for male
domination? Given how prevalent is the evasion of naming male domina-
tion, the substitution is not innocent. It too often functions as a euphemistic
denial of the relations of power challenged by feminism. Why it should
appear in a text which otherwise identifies the power relations clearly, is
puzzling.
While most self-identified feminist texts which fail to acknowledge male
domination as feminisms prime antagonist do so implicitly and by omission,
there are some texts which explicitly argue against it. For example, there is
Judith Butlers argument against what she characterizes as the notion that
the oppression of women has some singular form discernible in the univer-
sal or hegemonic structure of patriarchy or masculine domination. She goes
on to say:
The notion of a universal patriarchy has been widely criticised in recent years
for its failure to account for the workings of gender oppression in the concrete
cultural contexts in which it exists. Where those various contexts have been
consulted within such theories, it has been to find examples or illustrations
of a universal principle that is assumed from the start. That form of feminist
theorizing has come under criticism for its efforts to colonize and appropriate
non-Western cultures to support highly Western notions of oppression, [and]
because they tend as well to construct a Third World or even an Orient in
which gender oppression is subtly explained as symptomatic of an essential,
non-Western barbarism. The urgency of feminism to establish a universal status
for patriarchy in order to strengthen the appearance of feminisms own claims
to be representative has occasionally motivated the shortcut to a categorial or
fictive universality of the structure of domination, held to produce womens
common subjugated experience. (Butler, 1990: 34)
This single paragraph comprises the whole of Butlers critique within this text.
The scantness of the argument indicates both Butlers belief in the self-evident
nature of the critique, and her scorn for the form of feminist theorizing she
is rejecting. No evidence for or examples of fictive universality are provided,

so that the charge is impossible to evaluate in this particular instance. We are
not told where the notion of a universal patriarchy appears, nor where it has
been criticized. We cannot therefore decide for ourselves whether or not there
are any forms of feminist theorizing which colonize and appropriate non-
Western cultures and construct them as barbarous, nor which forms they
might be.
Her argument is an instance of the false universalism charge, and it func-
tions in the same way all such charges against feminist theory function, that
is, to deny male domination. She characterizes patriarchy as a highly
Western notion. She insists that it is inappropriate when applied to the
workings of gender oppression and womens subjugated experience in
cultures other than Western ones, thus denying that the concept of patri-
archy is relevant to cultures other than the West. She does, however,
acknowledge that gender oppression and womens subjugation exist in
cultures other than the West. But if womens subjugation is not the result
of male domination, where does it come from? It would appear that uni-
versalism is only false when what is being universalized is male domina-
tion. There is no problem, it would seem, with seeing womens oppression
as universal in the sense that it exists in cultures other than the West.
What is forbidden by the accusation of false universalism is the naming of
the enemy.
To locate the cause of womens subordination in male domination is
not to universalize a peculiarly Western notion and apply it to other
cultures. To identify the domination of women by men (and of some men by
other men) is not to assert that there is only one singular form of male
domination. Even in the West, it takes a multiplicity of different forms.
Wherever mens interests prevail at womens expense, and the interests of
some men override the interests of other men, male domination exists, what-
ever form it takes. While it is sometimes violent and blatantly dehumani-
zing, it is also as multifarious and all-pervasive as everyday life. While it
takes different forms in different cultures and under different historical
conditions, as long as human existence continues to be defined in terms of
the male, and the human existence of some men is bought at the expense
of other men, it remains male domination, in all its endless variety and
monotonous similarity (Fraser and Nicholson, 1990: 35).1
This reluctance among many who identify as feminists to name and iden-
tify male domination requires explanation. One frequently reiterated reason
is a reluctance to characterize women as victims. Focusing on male domi-
nation, so the argument goes, makes men out to be more powerful than they
are, and can only make women feel trapped and helpless. To dwell at length
on male power, to see it as all-pervasive, to find it everywhere encroaching
on us, invading our lives, penetrating the deepest recesses of our psyches,
entrenched in our most intimate acts, is to portray women as nothing but
passive and helpless victims of men, or so it is argued.
F E M I N I S M U N D E F I N E D 57
This kind of argument is common in academic feminist circles. Lois

McNay, for example, says that the tendency to regard women as powerless
and innocent victims of patriarchal social structures . . . hamper[s] many
types of feminist analysis (McNay, 1992: 63, 66). She says that it fails to
account for the potential of womens creativity and agency within social
constraints. It is also oppressive to some women because it does not recog-
nize that gender is not the only determining influence on womens lives,
and because it takes white womens experiences as the norm and general-
izes them. She gives no examples of feminist work which supposedly
exhibits this trait because, she says, it is well documented (pp. 634). Yet
she also says that there are undoubtedly . . . structures of domination, in
particular constructions of gender, which ensure the overall subordinate
position of women in society (pp. 667). She does not perceive a contra-
diction between rejecting patriarchal social structures with their attendant
powerless and innocent victims on the one hand, and accepting structures
of gender domination and womens overall subordination on the other. It
is not clear what kind of distinction is being drawn here.
Arguments like this make the same mistake they supposedly find else-
where. They interpret references to male domination in terms of something
monolithic and inevitable. But feminisms exposure of the victimization of
women is intended to challenge it, not maintain it. If it cannot be named, it
cannot be challenged. And the project of women creating for ourselves non-
exclusionary and non-oppressive ways of being human is sufficient evidence
that feminism does not define women only as victims. This kind of objec-
tion fails to take into account the sense of power, triumph and relief which
comes with seeing the world clearly. It fails to take into account the press-
ing need we have to see just how bad things really are, and the sense of
liberation which comes with knowledge. It ignores the political necessity of
knowing what we are up against if we are to do anything about it. Those
fearful of confining women to perpetual victimhood seem to have forgotten
(or never to have known) the relief of hearing ones oppression named as
oppression, rather than merely as a personal, idiosyncratic failing. It is a
liberation all in itself to realize that the fault lies, not in ones flawed self,
but in a reality to which one can say no. This is a vital step in the process
of extricating oneself from oppressive conditions. We probably all have a
sticking point, a point at which we can take no more, a point at which
enough is enough and the misery outweighs the relief. But the misery is not
alleviated by refusing to see male domination when it is manifestly present,
by calling it something less horrendous (like gender), or by portraying
women as powerful when we are not. Recognizing the constraints to which
one is subjected is intrinsic to acknowledging ones own moral agency under
oppression (Hoagland, 1988). Moral agency requires an ability to decide
not only the scope but also the limits of ones own responsibility, the extent
to which one is not responsible as well as the extent to which one is, when
one cannot act, as well as when one can.
So naming male domination is not to portray women as nothing but

victims. Women can also be collaborators, can embrace male supremacist
meanings and values as their own and defend them vigorously. The system
offers limited, but not thereby unimportant, benefits and advantages. It
entices and seduces while it oppresses. Women can also be courageous and
clear-sighted resisters. There is a sense in which feminisms challenge to
male domination is not about women at all. It refers to a social system
which certainly operates to womens detriment, but with which anyone can
be complicit and which anyone can resist. But it is important to be clear that
women are its chief victims. To refrain from naming victimization is a fail-
ure to name oppression. By the same logic, we ought not to name any of the
other great oppressions in history either. Should we also refrain from speak-
ing about the Holocaust or colonialism? These great evils produced count-
less millions of innocent and powerless victims. Why can these victims be
named as such, but not the women who are victims of male supremacy?
How are we to know the extent of the harm done to women if we are for-
bidden to name the harm? To the extent that academic feminism sup-
presses any reference to women as victims, it is in collusion with
domination.
Note
1 These authors apply the phrase to womens oppression, not to patriarchy or
male domination.
5 Other definitions
T he central concern of feminist politics has been variously identified,

usually implicitly, in a number of ways. Feminism has been seen to be
concerned with: patriarchy (capitalist or otherwise); sexism; women; gender;
race, class and gender; diversity; social construction. It has often been seen
as a matter of self-definition, that is, anything said or done by anyone who
identifies as a feminist, even to the point where feminism becomes little
more than doing what you want to do and not doing what you dont want
to do (as long as youre a woman). But interpreting something as feminist
simply because some women want it, is inadequate for a feminist politics
because relations of domination can operate through the most intimate
levels of desire. Although liberation partly involves being free to act on what
we feel, what we feel can also be implicated in relations of power. Because
feminism is a political analysis which identifies, challenges and resists how
we are situated within relations of power, it also involves questioning our
feelings and desires. To embrace without question our own desire to domi-
nate or be dominated is not to challenge and eventually overcome it, but to
remain fixedly embedded within the values of domination.
Most of the above issues are interrelated, and all of them have some bear-
ing on feminist politics. But none of them clearly identifies the primary
social problem exposed by feminism as male domination. Some of them
come closer than others. Patriarchy and sexism, for example, usually
mean male domination of females, whereas the term gender often seems to
have been deliberately coined to avoid naming the enemy. But patriarchy
literally means the rule of the father, the domination, not only of women
by men, but of sons by fathers, younger men by older men, powerless men
by powerful men. And men do not acquire their dominant status because
they are fathers, but because they are men. And although sexism is some-
times used in an analogy to racism, that is, by identifying sex as the basis
of oppression in comparison with race as the basis of oppression, it can be
(and is) used by men to complain about their exclusion from affirmative
action policies and women-only spaces.
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is the term most commonly used to designate the social problem
identified by feminism (or it used to be it would appear that it has
been supplanted by gender). But in its usual meaning of rule of the father,
the term patriarchy is a misnomer applied to the form of domination
challenged by feminism. The paternal domination portrayed in western
history, myth and literature is the rule of the father over the son. It involves
the imposition of, or struggles against, the ascendancy of some men over
other men. Patriarchy in this sense is an affair between men, and is rele-
vant to women only derivatively through our implication in power hierar-
chies among men.
But whatever the status of some males in relation to other males, the
problem identified by feminism is the subjection of women to men. Or
rather, because women have always resisted subjugation and asserted our
own worth despite the male monopolization of the human norm, as well
as acquiesced, accommodated ourselves, manoeuvred for some space and
freedom of movement, beat the oppressor at his own game, used his obses-
sions and weaknesses against him, etc., it is the male supremacist dream and
reality of female subjection which is of concern to feminism, not struggles
for ascendancy among men. To the extent that women aid the sons in their
battles with the fathers, no matter how worthy the cause, no matter how
justified the sons complaints, women are once again working in mens
interests. These may indeed be womens interests as well, but that cannot be
decided unless it is possible to see womens interests in the first place.
By identifying the enemy as patriarchy, feminism has somewhat mis-
named it, although it has not always misrecognized it. To the extent that the
problem of power-as-domination addressed by feminism is recognized as
male domination, it is identified accurately, whatever it is called. Kate
Millett, for example, named the problem patriarchy, but defined it pri-
marily in terms of male supremacy: If one takes patriarchal government to
be the institution whereby that half of the populace which is female is con-
trolled by that half which is male, the principles of patriarchy appear to be
twofold: male shall dominate female, elder male shall dominate younger
(Millett, 1970: 25). Ti-Grace Atkinson did not use the term patriarchy, but
she did identify the problem addressed by feminism as the domination of
women by men. Her preferred designation was the sex-class system:
The . . . radical feminist analysis of the persecution of women . . . begins with

the . . . raison dtre that women are a class, that this class is political in nature,
and that this political class is oppressed. . . . If women are a political class and
women are being oppressed, it must be that some other political class is oppres-
sing the class of women. Since the very definition of women entails that only
one other class could possibly be relevant to it, only one other class could pos-
sibly be oppressing women: the class of men. . . . Women exist as the corollaries
of men, and exist as human beings only insofar as they are those corollaries.
(Atkinson, 1974: 41)
Socialist feminisms use of the term patriarchy was usually equivocal.

While socialist feminists were on the whole disinclined to use the term on the
grounds that it was ahistorical and universalistic, some were reluctantly
OT H E R D E F I N I T I O N S 61
prepared to accept it as a designator of the political problem addressed by

feminism, although it tended to mean neither male supremacy nor the rule of
the father. Although socialist feminism purported to resolve the question of
which had political priority, capitalism or patriarchy, by asserting that capi-
talism was the latest historical form of patriarchy, and hence that capitalism
was one form of patriarchy (Eisenstein, 1979), in fact within the socialist
feminist context, patriarchy was usually simply a form of capitalism. It was
a capitalism expanded to include issues of concern to women domestic
labour, reproduction both social and biological, the family, the constitution
of femininity, sex segmentation of the work force but a capitalism none the
less. Under this schema, patriarchy was defined solely with reference to the
oppression (or subordination) of women, with the source of that oppression
either left unstated or reduced to just another aspect of capitalism. Hence, in
this usage, patriarchy had no referent as a form of domination.
Veronica Beechey considered whether or not the term should be aban-
doned. She argued, however, that it served a purpose for feminism by point-
ing to real political and theoretical problems, and that it should be
retained, at least until we find some other more satisfactory way of con-
ceptualizing male domination and female subordination, and, for Marxist
feminism, of relating this to the organization of the mode of production as
a whole (Beechey, 1979: 68). She did not say why conceptualizing male
domination as male domination was unsatisfactory.
Her criticism of previous conceptualizations of patriarchy is itself less than
satisfactory. Her single example of a radical feminist text was Kate Milletts
book.1 Her criticism was that it provided us with a description of patriarchal
relationships . . . [but] is unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of their
foundations (p. 69 her emphasis). True enough, and I am sure Millett
would be among the first to agree. But Beechey herself gave us no pointers
towards what might constitute an explanation as opposed to a description.
Nor, in her concluding remarks, did she appear to regard explanatory power
as a prerequisite for a more satisfactory account of patriarchy. Rather, her
concern was that a satisfactory theory of patriarchy should be historically
specific and should explore the forms of patriarchy which exist within par-
ticular modes of production . . . [and] in particular social institutions (p. 80).
But she did not tell us how this would raise the theoretical enterprise from
the level of mere description to that of explanation.
Neither did she tell us what a mode of production might be, a not
insignificant omission given the inconclusiveness of the debates within
Marxism about that very concept (Coward, 1978). It would appear to relate
to the question of historical specificity. Extrapolating from that single text
by Millett to radical feminism as a whole, Beechey asserted that radical femi-
nism . . . leaves unexplained specific forms of male domination and female
subordination (1979: 69). But what she meant by this is unclear. Leaving
aside the question of explanation which Beechey herself never resolved,
did she mean that radical feminism is not historically and culturally specific
when it designates male domination and female subordination as the
problem? If this is what she meant, then she is wrong. Given that feminist
theory and practice is grounded in experience, it would seem obvious that
it always takes culturally specific forms, namely the forms and variations
which the feminist knows from her own experience. There may be problems
with generalizing from one specific historical and cultural context to other
historical periods and cultures. But those problems occur, not because the
original account was not specific enough, but because it was inaccurately
generalized to contexts where it did not apply (in which case its non-
application needs to be argued for, not simply asserted as self-evident). On
the other hand, if she meant that radical feminism is at fault because it
leaves unexplained every specific form of male domination and female sub-
ordination, then she was demanding the impossible.
This appeal to historical (and cultural) specificity played an important
role in socialist feminist attempts to amend what was regarded as the faults
and naveties of radical feminism. Michle Barrett also objected to early
radical feminist uses of the term patriarchy, on the grounds that such uses
invoke an apparently universal and trans-historical category of male domi-
nance, leaving us with little hope of change (Barrett, 1984: 12). But it is not
clear what the charge amounts to. Why would invoking male dominance
leave us with little hope of change? On the contrary, it is only by identify-
ing the problem as male dominance that there is any hope of change at all.
Unlike Beechey, Barrett did not feel that the term patriarchy was retriev-
able for present feminist purposes. She proposed to use it to refer only to soci-
eties where male domination is expressed through the power of the father.
Such societies, she said, are not capitalist ones (pp. 2501). However, this left
her without a term to refer to those current relations of ruling challenged by
feminism. Her preferred term for the problem addressed by feminism was
womens oppression, and she did sometimes use the term male domination.
But she did not connect the two by attributing womens oppression to male
domination, as of course she could not, because such an endeavour would be,
in her own terms, universal and trans-historical. As a consequence she could
only account for womens oppression in terms of contemporary capitalism.
But while it is certainly the case that women are oppressed by capitalism, there
are dimensions to that oppression male sexual violence, to name just one
which even the most thorough investigation of capitalism would never
uncover, and hence open the way to change. Barrett tried to resist arguing that
womens oppression was a consequence of capitalism. She criticized attempts
to account for womens oppression in terms of the supposed needs of capi-
talism itself (p. 248), or as a functional pre-requisite of capitalism (p. 249).
But her own insistence on confining the account of womens oppression to
a material basis in the relations of production and reproduction of capitalism
today (p. 249) left her with no alternative.
I would suggest that the term patriarchy has a limited usefulness for femi-
nism, given its tendency to slide back into its original meaning of the rule of
the father, and its socialist feminist history as a term emptied of meaning.
At the very least, feminists need to be alert to traps laid for the unwary by
ill-considered uses of the term. At the same time, it does have an honourable
feminist history, and with a little feminist caution it can still provide good
service.
Sexism
The problem with the term sexism is that it does not contain domination
as its immediate referent, and hence does not immediately identify the
sex which dominates. It fits too easily into the individualist terminology of
liberalism, of rights, discrimination, attitudes, and prejudices. To the
extent that sexism means no more than distinctions based on sex, it
assumes an original equality between sexed individuals, an equality which is
transgressed by any action favouring one sex over another, including actions
taken by women in defence of their own interests. As a consequence it can
be used against actions taken to redress the wrongs done to women, as well
as against attempts by women to establish (literal or metaphorical) space
outside male intervention and control.
Although the term was widely used in the 1970s, it did not receive much
theoretical discussion. There was some discussion in Australia which
revealed the basic flaw in the idea, but instead of resolving it, the debate
reproduced the confusion. Sexism continued to be defined in the bland,
neutral terminology of liberal pluralism, despite the discussants awareness
that such a definition depoliticized the term and rendered it useless for femi-
nist politics (Refractory Girl, 1974a, 1974b; Summers, 1975: 22).
The Hobart Womens Action Group (HWAG) defined it in terms of
organizing people according to sex and sexual behaviour, and attributing
various behaviour, personality and status traits to people on the basis of sex
(Refractory Girl, 1974a: 30). The authors took some pains to argue that
sexism was not identical with a patriarchal society. A society in which
women ruled (matriarchy), or one in which the sexes had equal power and
influence although in different spheres, would also be sexist, they argued,
because it would still be structured along sex lines.
On another occasion, however, the HWAG did acknowledge a connection
between sexism and patriarchy. They pointed out that, although it might
be theoretically possible to have forms of sexism which were power-neutral
in that they were divisions of roles and personality without subordination, or
even to have a matriarchal form of sexism where women ruled men, in
actual fact, they emphasized, the only sexism that we know is sexism in its
patriarchal manifestation. They criticized uses of the term which were purely
theoretical in the sense that those uses did not locate sexism within current
patriarchal society. At the same time, however, they themselves defined it
solely in theoretical terms, by denying that it meant the institutionalized
subordination of women to men (Refractory Girl, 1974b: 23).
Despite the writers own strictures against using sexism in senses other
than the patriarchal one, that was exactly what they themselves were doing.
They did not give any reasons why the purely theoretical sense should be
retained even though it referred to nothing in our society. If those forms

do not exist in the here and now, and never have existed, why retain the
idea of them? Although the writers saw the neutral concept of sexism as
problematic, they also saw it as more basic than patriarchy/ male domina-
tion. Sexism was a precondition for patriarchy, since without sexism, patri-
archy is deprived of its organizing principle. But this makes no sense. It
attributes something real the patriarchal manifestation of sexism to
something non-existent.
Confused though this argument is, it is permitted by the fact that the term
sexism does not explicitly identify the relations of power involved and
name which sex is dominant and which subordinate. This neutrality also
permits it to be used as a pejorative label tied to any action which discrimi-
nates on the ground of sex, even those intended to challenge current rela-
tions of power. One example of this occurred in an editorial in the same
journal discussing the reasons for producing an issue devoted specifically to
lesbianism. One of the reasons given was the popularity of the idea that
lesbianism is the most radical position possible for a feminist to adopt
(Refractory Girl, 1974a: 2). The editors comment on this was that it seems
inherently sexist. Because it excluded men and, perhaps, heterosexual
women, they said, it was a form of sexual apartheid. This is the sort of
thing which is permitted by the HWAGs power-neutral definition of sex-
ism. It was not a genuine criticism of the idea of lesbianism as politically
radical, because it made a nonsense of the actual relations of power. It
ignored the political meaning of lesbianism as a challenge to the male right
of automatic sexual access to women. It also ignored the fact that women
themselves were discovering a hitherto unrecognized lesbianism which
included all forms of loving identification between women. In that feminist
sense, lesbianism did not discriminate against heterosexual women it
was available to all women whether or not they availed themselves of it. By
ignoring these implications, the editors colluded with the suppression of the
lesbian possibility, even as they purported to challenge that suppression by
producing a special issue focused on lesbianism.
In acknowledging the problems entailed by the concept of sexism, how-
ever, I am not arguing for its complete rejection. It still has its uses, as long
as the depoliticizing tendency is recognized and allowed for. It identifies sex
as the ground of oppression, as the term racism identifies the oppression of
race. While neither term identifies which sex or race is dominant, both can
still serve as handy short-hand descriptions of discriminatory behaviour.
Wo m e n
Feminism is necessarily concerned with women. It is the womens move-
ment, and it is womens liberation which is at stake. It is women who are
harmed, women who are oppressed and subordinated, women whose con-
sciousness changed to see oppression for what it was, and to see, too, that
it wasnt inescapable or natural and that it could be challenged. Feminism

originated with womens experience, womens discontent, womens outrage
at the confidence tricks perpetrated to keep us subservient, womens sense
of betrayal at being excluded from all kinds of rights, benefits and privileges.
The dangers of failing to retain the focus on women are illustrated by
Pierre Bourdieus work on la domination masculine (Bourdieu, 1990).2 As
Nicole-Claude Mathieu has pointed out, not only does Bourdieu tend to
ignore most of the feminist work in the area, especially that produced in
France (while making sweeping generalizations about feminisms supposed
faults and failings), his emphasis sets up a symmetry between the sexes
which does not exist (Mathieu, 1999). In Bourdieus account, women are
complicit with male domination, and men are also trapped. While this is
true, it is also misleading. Men are not trapped in male supremacy any more
than the slave-owner is trapped in the institution of slavery. They are pri-
marily perpetrators and beneficiaries. And although women can be com-
plicit with the system which oppresses them, the system also operates
through actual violence, intimidation and deprivation. This is not, however,
a distinction between the symbolic and the real (as Mathieu sometimes
seems to be implying). Bourdieu is right to emphasize the important role of
the symbolic (or of meaning as I would prefer to call it) in generating and
maintaining the reality of domination. The problem is that Bourdieus socio-
logical perspective does not automatically translate into political awareness.
It is still the case that the social positioning of privileged men engenders
blindness to what is at stake for women, especially as women are still strug-
gling to understand the ramifications and reach of male supremacist rela-
tions of power. Mathieu sees Bourdieus work as a particularly telling
example of male domination in its suppression or distortion of the experi-
ences and analyses of women. She quotes Voltaires famous advice to a
young man: My friend, your work contains much that is good and new.
Unfortunately, what is good is not new and what is new is not good.
Mathieu adds: what is bad is not new either (Mathieu, 1999: 298).
None the less, it is not sufficient to define feminism only in terms of
women. In the first place, a concern with women is not always a feminist
enterprise. Gynaecology, for example, is concerned only with women, as is
any misogynist discourse. The simple fact of being focused on women does
not in and of itself make something feminist. What distinguishes feminism
from other concerns with women is its explicit acknowledgement of and
opposition to the social system which is male domination. Feminisms con-
cern with women arises in the first place out of a concern with the harm
done to women under the social conditions of male supremacy, with the aim
of providing women with the means to take control of our lives into our
own hands, insofar as that is possible and while recognizing the constraints
and limitations placed on women by mens rule over the world. It is only
acknowledging the social system of male supremacy as the main enemy that
gives meaning to feminisms concern with women.
In the second place, confining the meaning of feminism solely to women

has unfortunate political consequences. Focusing political attention exclu-
sively on women means that the only relations of power which can be seen
are those which operate among women. Womens oppression then becomes
something that women do to other women. It is true that women are
divided from each other in a myriad of ways, through their intimate rela-
tionships with individual men, through their domestic isolation with sole
responsibility for children, through their identification with and member-
ship of hierarchically arranged social collectivities such as race / culture /
ethnicity and class. But to define feminism only in terms of these differ-
ences fragments the feminist project into a multiplicity of competing inter-
est groups among women who have nothing in common because some are
more (and some less) privileged than others. Feminism is reduced to noth-
ing but a series of different and essentially antagonistic categories of women.
That is not to say that differences of privilege and access to human rights
and dignity among women are not feminist issues. They are. The problem is
locating them only in differences among women. This is a political dead
end. Without the acknowledgement of male supremacy, all that women have
in common is that they are women as women are currently constituted. All
that women have in common are those traditional roles which tie them into
their subordination to men, that is, nothing very much in common at all
because the interests of men must take priority in womens lives. Unless it is
possible to name the problem common to all women, and hence womens
common interest in opposing the source of oppression, it is these hierarchi-
cal and oppressive differences between women which define feminism.
The solution to the problems of confining feminism to women is not to
widen the focus to include men. That is to fall into the politically paralysing
trap of the ideology of individualism. To pose the problem only in terms of
women and men is to pose the problem in terms of types of individuals.
This makes feminism vulnerable to attack on the grounds that some indivi-
duals do not possess the characteristics in question. But if feminism is not in
the first place about women in this individualist sense, there is no need to
include men. Feminisms identification of and opposition to the ideological
construct of the male as the human norm already includes men as the
bearers and beneficiaries of the social relations of male supremacy.
Demonstrating that some men refuse complicity with domination, or that
some women acquiesce, is not an objection to feminism construed as the
opposition to male domination, as long as male domination continues to
exist despite the best will and intentions on the part of individuals. (For a
further discussion of this in relation to heterosexuality, see Thompson,
1994, 1995.)
There is already some awareness within academic feminism that there
are problems with defining feminism solely in terms of women. However,
none of these arguments recognizes male domination as the central prob-
lematic of feminist politics. Rosalind Delmar, for example, identified a num-
ber of problems with defining feminism as a concern with womens issues
(Delmar, 1986). She said that such a concern was not specific to feminists,
that it threatened to marginalize women and maintain their exclusion from
the general field of human endeavour, and that it implied a unity and
homogeneity among women which did not exist. Although she kept return-
ing to a definition of feminism as a concern with womens issues, she did
not commit herself (or feminism) to any one definition, since she disagreed
with the idea that there can be any true and authentic feminism (p. 9).
She provided what she regarded as a minimalist definition of a feminist as
at the very least . . . someone who holds that women suffer discrimination
because of their sex, that they have specific needs which remain negated and
unsatisfied, and that the satisfaction of these needs would require a radical
change (some would say a revolution even) in the social, economic and
political order (p. 8). She found this definition unsatisfactory, not, however,
because it failed to mention male domination, but because things were
more complicated than this.
She mentioned male domination, briefly and dismissively, only twice. She
rejected any strong desire to pin feminism down by means of a preoccu-
pation with central concerns like sexual division and male domination,
because of disagreements about the reasons for womens situation and about
what should be done about it, and bitter, at times virulent disputes (p. 9).
The second mention occurred in the context of a discussion of sexual poli-
tics. She regarded this as a new concept involving the idea of women as a
social group dominated by men as a social group (male domination / female
oppression). But she did not follow up this insight, concluding instead
with the assertion that the feminist idea of sexual politics was primarily
focused on the pursuit of questions about the female body and its sexual
needs (pp. 267). She did not discuss the possibility that feminisms con-
cern with the female body might be inspired by a need to challenge male
proprietorship of female bodies. It is not therefore surprising that Delmar
found feminisms concern with women unsatisfactory, since she failed to
acknowledge the reason why feminism might be so concerned, that is,
womens exclusion from human status.
Naomi Schors definition of feminism, despite its inclusion within femi-
nism of mutually exclusive positions, does implicitly characterize feminism
as a concern with women:
I would propose a definition of feminism that makes of it a sum of contradic-

tions, the nodal point where dissatisfactions with contemporary society and the
place it assigns women, claims for equality, claims for singular or plural differ-
ences, assertions of an essential and transhistorical female nature, denunciations
of a subaltern condition due to specifically historical and contingent factors clash
and intertwine. In all feminism in the broadest sense of the term there would be
equal parts of conservative and contestatory forces, of maternalism and anti-
maternalism, of familialism and antifamilialism, of separatism and assimilation-
ism. The apparently irreconcilable debate that currently opposes essentialists and
constructionists is a false debate in that neither of the warring forces has an
exclusive hold on the truth. Feminism is the debate itself. (Schor, 1992: 46)
As well as its concern with women the place [society] assigns women,
female nature, maternalism, familialism, etc. this definition also dis-
plays a concern to challenge womens subordination denunciations of a
subaltern condition. Hence it would presumably exclude from the ambit of
feminism discourses which did not identify and oppose womens subordi-
nation. But it does not locate the reasons for womens subordination with
male supremacy, and it is so inclusive as to be useless for feminist politics.
The tolerant acceptance of contradictory positions closes down debate and
precludes any possibility of clarifying, much less resolving, the contradic-
tions. For example, the characterization of the essentialism debate as a
matter of warring forces misrepresents it. There are not two symmetrical
camps, one claiming an essentialist position and the other a constructionist
one. No one deliberately embraces essentialism as their own position.
There is only one position here, and that involves the accusation that cer-
tain feminist writings, usually designated radical or cultural feminism, are
essentialist (Eisenstein, 1984; Segal, 1984). Those so accused neither
espouse essentialism nor speak in their own defence, and hence cannot be
seen to hold a position in the debate at all (Thompson, 1991). Schors all-
embracing characterization of feminism reduces it to nothing more than
what is said by anyone who identifies as a feminist.
But women have varying degrees of awareness of and opposition to the
realities of male domination. To define feminism only in terms of what
women say, does not provide any criteria for distinguishing feminist state-
ments from anti-feminist or misogynist pronouncements by women. To cite
another example: to define feminism, as Carol Bacchi does (citing Linda
Gordon), as a sharing in an impulse to increase the power and autonomy
of women in their families, communities and / or society (Bacchi, 1990:
xix), allows no way of identifying as anti-feminist right-wing discourses on
women. Right-wing women sometimes co-opt the feminist terminology for
use in their anti-feminist crusade. For example, Babette Francis is a founder
of the anti-feminist group Women Who Want To Be Women, a member of
a number of pro-life (that is, anti-abortion) groups, and a committee mem-
ber of the right-wing Council for a Free Australia. She considers herself,
however, a feminist in the true sense of the word, that is, a believer in
equal rights for women (Rowland, 1984: 1301). Francis speaks in terms
of rights rather than in terms of increasing womens power and autonomy.
But she is certainly concerned with womens place in their families, com-
munities and / or society. Unless the limitations on womens power, auto-
nomy and rights are located with male domination, there is too little to
distinguish Francis view of feminism from a genuinely feminist one.
In fact, however, Bacchi does not confine herself to this definition of
feminism, which she acknowledges is used loosely in her text. Central to
her own feminism is a social model which includes women in the human
standard (Bacchi, 1990: 266 her emphasis). It is this model which pro-
vides the crux of her argument against the sameness / difference model of
relations between the sexes. In that sense, her account is not about women
at all, but about those conditions which cause us to lose sight of the fact that
what is at issue are necessary social arrangements for humane living (p. xv).
In another sense, however, she is centrally concerned with women, but in a
way which clearly distinguishes her account from right-wing discourses on
women. By acknowledging the feminist project as working for the inclusion
of women in the human standard, she is also acknowledging womens exclu-
sion from that standard as the problem. In doing so, she is also acknowl-
edging male domination as the problem, even though she does not use the
terminology.
The chief problem with the category of women, or so it is said, is that it
is essentialist. While I argue that feminism is not in fact defined solely in
terms of women, the anti-essentialist argument is that feminism is defined
in terms of women but that it ought not to be. Judith Butlers is one such
argument (Butler, 1990). She disagrees with what she sees as the feminist
assumption that there is some existing identity, understood through the
category women, who not only initiates feminist interests and goals within
discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political representation is
pursued (p. 1). She says that, because identities are inescapably formed
within a field of power, no appeals can be made on their behalf as a way
out of relations of power. There is no subject outside or before the law
which can provide a basis for challenging the law. The identity of the femi-
nist subject, she says, ought not to be the foundation of feminist politics, if
the formation of the subject takes place within a field of power regularly
buried through the assertion of that foundation (p. 6). In other words, femi-
nism cannot appeal to women as the basis for its refusal of relations of
power because women are already constituted by those very relations.
But arguments like this depend on assuming that the foundation of femi-
nist politics is the category women, instead of male domination. Feminism
needs to be able to refer to women if the harm done to women by the
dehumanizing procedures of male supremacy is to be addressed. But the
word does not refer to any asocial and monolithic essence. It has perfectly
serviceable uses. Sometimes the purposes for which it is used are male
supremacist in meaning and value (although the prevalence of ladies and
girls suggests some discomfort with the word women). Sometimes the
purposes are feminist. But it serves no feminist purpose to abandon the
word simply because some of its uses are male supremacist.
Arguments like Butlers are politically stultifying. Such a move abolishes
feminist politics, not only because it abandons the category women, but
because it abolishes any possibility of ethical refusal of relations of domina-
tion. If the terms of the debate are so arranged that relations of domination
constitute the whole of the social, because there is no way out of the
social (as everyone knows), there is also no way out of relations of domi-
nation, and hence no possibility of resistance and refusal. Putting it in these
terms is to commit the same solecism the accusers of essentialism suppos-
edly find elsewhere. It is to reify the social into a monolithic totality out-
side the individuals who live and act within it. The fact remains that it is
possible to refuse certain meanings, values and actions for certain purposes.
People do it all the time. Whether something is an embracing of relations of
domination, or whether it is a refusal, can only be decided by allowing that
both possibilities exist. And such possibilities can only be seen to exist if
male domination is not the whole of the social.
The word women is undoubtedly a social category. (What else could it
be?) But that does not mean that it cannot be used for the feminist purpose
of refusing complicity with male domination. Such refusals are not outside
the social in any absolute sense (if that makes any sense at all). They are a
constant process of engagement with the social order which is male
supremacy. If ever male supremacy ceases to exist, what will have gone is not
the social per se, but its nature as male supremacist. But short of such a
utopian outcome, those occasions which are already refusals of complicity
with male domination and they must exist otherwise opposing male
supremacy would not be thinkable are not thereby outside the social. To
assume without question that they must be, is to fall into the very trap of
essentialism which is supposedly being avoided. It is also to argue for politi-
cal passivity. If we cannot refuse domination because that would require
being outside the social, there is nothing to be done and political activism is
futile. Butler appears to be perfectly satisfied with this conclusion. I am not.
Neither is it necessary. The subject of feminism is not women, either in
the sense of theoretical subject matter, or in the sense of that identity in
whose name feminist politics proceeds. The subject matter of feminism is
male supremacy. The theory and practice of feminism proceed in the inter-
ests of women because women are the chief victims of male supremacist
relations of power, because women are more likely to be in a position to
perceive the problems (although those perceptions are not automatic or
inevitable), and because current relations of power benefit men at womens
expense. The task of feminism is neither to improve the situation of women
within conventional and subordinated statuses, nor to abolish them
absolutely, but to recognize the importance, worth and human dignity of
women, and to create (or maintain) possibilities for genuinely human
choices for women however and wherever we are placed. More importantly,
feminism is concerned with the whole of the human condition, and not just
with that restricted sphere conventionally allocated to women (although still
controlled by and for the benefit of men). Feminism is as much concerned
with war as it is with nurturing, as much with planetary pollution as with
housework, with capitalist accumulation as well as equal pay, with a revolu-
tion in meanings and values as well as childbirth, with reason as well as emo-
tion, with the mind as well as the body. Nothing is outside feminist concern
as long as male supremacy continues to exist.
Neither is feminism only, or primarily, about womens experience.
Feminism must remain grounded in experience, in some sense at least, if it
is not to deteriorate into a set of academic exercises. But feminist theory
cannot remain simply at the level of experience in the sense of incommen-
surable individual life histories, because experience is already theory-laden,
context-dependent and collective. There is no experience outside already

constituted relations of power which provides experience with its meaning,
purpose and value. There is no pure experience which guarantees the truth
of feminist theory. Neither experience nor any particular social location is a
guarantee of feminist commitment. Since feminism is a politics and a moral-
ity, it requires more than a litany of appeals to experience. It requires a
change in consciousness and a deliberate political choice so that relations of
domination and subordination, and our own positioning within those rela-
tions, can be perceived and challenged. It is feminist theory, and the ethical
and political insights which inform it, which reinterpret the meaning and
value of experience by challenging its male supremacist connotations.
To define feminism only in terms of women is actively to discourage
feminist politics. It does not distinguish feminism from other discourses
which also address themselves to the question of women, including miso-
gynist and anti-feminist discourses. It focuses on hierarchies of privilege
between and among women, and interprets social oppressions only in terms
of antagonisms between women. And it means that feminism can be too
easily hijacked. Because it does not allow us to identify something as anti-
feminist as long as it is said by women in the name of feminism, it can be
put into service to defend anti-feminist positions simply because they are
held by women. If feminism is only concerned with women, then how do
we decide between conflicting views of what women want as long as those
conflicts emanate from the mouths of women? While feminism is certainly
concerned with womens interests, and while each of us has to make her
own decisions about where her priorities lie, unless feminism is defined first
and foremost in terms of opposition to male domination, it becomes at best
nothing more than a set of pallid opinions; at worst, outright conflict
between women with no hope of resolution.
It seems to me, thinking back, that we used to know this once. The appeal
of early feminist consciousness-raising to womens experience was not a
reassuring sharing, but a transforming of the meaning of those experiences,
from a set of personal failings and deficiencies into a consequence of
womens positioning within phallocratic reality. In this sense feminism was
never an identity politics. To define feminism as an identity as a feminist
is to remain caught up in the ideology of individualism. Since everyone is
undoubtedly entitled to define her own identity, it stops debate before it
even starts, and prevents any possibility of judging on feminist criteria any-
thing said by anyone who identifies as a feminist. This kind of relativism is
ideological because it operates in male supremacist interests. By interpreting
conflicting claims made in the name of feminism as conflicts between femi-
nists, it silences the feminist challenge. If feminism is an identity, dis-
agreement becomes personal offence because it is an attack on ones sense of
self. In contrast, if feminism is clearly seen to be non-exclusionary, conflicts
can hopefully be argued through without offending anyone because no ones
identity is at stake. The question is not what women are or have been, but
what women might become once we throw off the dead hand of phallocratic
history and start seeing ourselves with our own eyes and living our lives in
our own interests.
Gender
One way of describing the problem with much academic feminist writing is
to characterize it as idealism in the sense in which the term ideology was
used by Marx and Engels (1974). Transferring concepts from their original
context to another context altogether, in this case from Marxist historical
materialism to feminism, needs to be done with caution. None the less there
does seem to be a similarity between the problem addressed by Marx and
Engels in the middle of the nineteenth century, and a tendency in much aca-
demic feminist writing to avoid challenging male domination. Marx and
Engels characterized a purportedly revolutionary critique which failed to
consider the real-life activity of human beings and their actual situation
within capitalist relations of power, as a battle in the realm of pure thought.
In doing so, they were not suggesting that philosophers stop thinking and
start acting. Rather, they were arguing that a philosophy which purported
to give an account of the human condition without acknowledging the power
relations in society was not just out of touch with reality, its obliviousness
served a purpose. That purpose was to deny the existence of relations of
power and disguise them as something neutral and universal. Hence, ideal-
ism does not mean working with ideas rather than fomenting revolution on
the factory floor or at the barricades. It means working with ideas which are
detached from, and fail to acknowledge, social relations of domination.
Since the relations of domination opposed by feminism are those of male
supremacy, feminist accounts which fail to acknowledge this are idealist in
this sense.
So the problem of idealism, in the sense in which I am using the term, is
not just a problem of a split between ideas and reality, but of the kind of
reality those ideas studiously ignore, that is, the reality of domination. My
use of the term takes on its meaning in the context of a critique of ideo-
logy. Idealism is one form ideology takes. Although Marx and Engels did
not make the distinction, it is a useful one because it makes the point that
ideology is not just a matter of ideas, that it reaches into every sphere of
human existence, including what is most intimate and commonplace.
Idealism is that form of ideology to which academe is especially prone. It
refers to the tendency for academic work to divorce ideas from the world
of the mundane. That tendency is not inevitable. To the extent that ideas
do not reinforce relations of ruling, they cannot be called idealist in this
sense, no matter how esoteric, abstract or removed from experience they
may be. But because playing with ideas is endlessly fascinating in itself the
disconnection can only be resisted through a conscious and deliberate com-
mitment to a moral and political framework which maintains the link
between ideas and what those ideas are for. Concepts like gender fail to
maintain that link.
In fact the term is meaningless, so much so that it is sometimes difficult

to work out exactly what is being said. Linda J. Poole, for example, quotes
the following sentence from a text on women and international relations:
Ideologies can certainly wreak havoc on organizational performance, and
gender ideology is no exception. Pooles comment on this statement is:
This from a woman who has been an active proponent on the issue of gen-
der advocacies! (Poole, 1993: 134). Poole seems to have read gender ideo-
logy to mean feminism. Her comment implies that the author of the
sentence is reneging on her earlier feminism by asserting that the introduc-
tion of feminist aims and values could wreak havoc on organizational per-
formance. However, gender ideology could also mean male supremacist
ideology, and the sentence could mean that it was the ideologies which
favoured men at womens expense and which were inefficient in terms of
organizational performance. On the other hand, male supremacist ideology
is unlikely to wreak havoc since the organizations are already structured
along those lines. So perhaps Poole is right after all, and gender ideology
in this context does mean feminism. The point, though, is that it is simply
not possible to decide.
The meaninglessness of the term gender is a consequence both of the
euphemistic role it plays within academic feminism (and the media, and
wherever the word sex would do instead), and of the incoherence of its
origins. Gender softens the harsh, uncompromising ring of male domina-
tion. It provides the appearance of a subject-matter while at the same time
enabling the real problems to be avoided. Originally it was set up in oppo-
sition to sex, to stress the point that the differences between the sexes are
socially constructed, not natural. But the sex / gender distinction does not
challenge the society / nature opposition it remains wholly within it. If
the social is gender, and sex is something other than gender, then sex
is something other than social. If it is not social, then all that is left is the
residual category of the natural, and sex remains as natural as it ever
was. As a consequence the sex / gender distinction does not disrupt and
unsettle the society / nature opposition, but reinforces it because it is the
same kind of distinction.
I have argued elsewhere that it functions as a depoliticizing strategy by
separating sex differences out from the domain of the social and locating
them in biology. Since, as everyone knows, biology does not cause sex dif-
ferences, this ploy allows the social construction of sex differences to
remain unexamined. The substitution of gender for sex places the debate
at two removes from the actual relations of power challenged by feminism.
It prevents the discussion of sex differences by extracting them from the
realm of the social and allocating them to biology; and by preventing dis-
cussion of sex differences, it prevents discussion of that crucial site for the
investigation of male supremacist relations of power the maintenance of
sex differences as they are currently constituted, and of compulsory hetero-
sexuality as the mechanism for managing womens consent to their subor-
dination to men (Thompson, 1991: 16876; see also Gatens, 1983). But
since feminism is a politics it is already concerned with the level of the

social, the moral and the political. There is no need for gender since the
feminist concern with sex is already moral and political, and hence a social,
not a biological, concern (whatever that might be outside the realm of the
social).
Jane Flax says that The single most important advance in and result
of feminist theories and practices is that the existence of gender has been
problematized (Flax, 1990: 21). Although she does not say what gender
is, it is clear that it is not male domination. She sees male dominance as
merely one form of gender relations, and as a hindrance to the adequate
investigation of those relations. The nature of gender relations has been
obscured by the existence of male dominance, she says (pp. 224). But this
is idealist in the sense described above. (It also bears a striking similarity to
the HWAGs account of sexism discussed above.) It extracts gender rela-
tions from the social conditions of male supremacy within which the rela-
tions between the sexes are currently structured, and posits a really real of
gender relations outside the only terms within which they are knowable. If
gender relations are not those we are acquainted with at present, what are
they and how can we know them? It may be that what Flax is trying to say
is that relations between the sexes ought not to be structured in terms of
male dominance, and that feminism needs to allow for that possibility. But
unless male domination can be identified, it cannot be challenged and
opposed. Far from obscuring the nature of the relations between the sexes,
identifying male domination clarifies what feminism is struggling against. It
is only feminisms focus on the problematic of male domination which
allows us to understand what is at stake.
On another occasion Flax appears to be defining gender in terms of any
social location at all. She tells us that there are at least three dimensions to
gender. The first dimension is that gender is a social relationship and a
form of power . . . [which] affects our theories and practices of justice. But
the only social categories she mentions in this context of justice are race and
economic status. Throughout her discussion of the other two dimensions of
gender as a category of thought, and as a central constituting element
in each persons sense of self and . . . of what it means to be a person there
is no mention of the two sexes, women and men. It is not until the very end
of the discussion, when she criticizes the idea of sex roles, that we are given
any hint that gender might be connected to the existence of two sexes
(pp. 256). She makes no mention of the fact that feminisms concern with
justice involves first and foremost justice for women, including women
located within the dominating hierarchies of race and class, but primarily
women as women assigned the subordinate role in the dominating hierarchy
of sex. On this account, gender means race and class before it means
sex.
This defining of gender in terms of any social location at all is a conse-
quence of detaching it from its original referent, sex. But this seeming
ability of gender to be unhooked from sex leaves sex still immersed in

biology as its only source of truth. As Ann Oakley once argued (Oakley,
1972), the cultural construction which is gender is merely superficial, a
matter of prejudice (p. 16), of distortion and apparent differences
(p. 103 emphasis added), simply . . . the beliefs people hold (p. 189),
something that is learned (p. 173) and hence can be unlearned. Biology, on
the other hand, is fundamental (p. 46). Oakleys account is replete with
appeals to biology. To be entirely accurate, it must be said that she appeals
to biology only when biology looks as though it substantiates her argument
that there are no important differences between the sexes. She needs to
argue against the existence of sex differences because she confounds differ-
ence with inequality and inferiority. She wants to demonstrate that women
are not really unequal and inferior to men because they are not different.
But wherever it is possible to do so, it is biology which is used to demon-
strate the truth of that lack of difference.
The proponents of gender deal with this ongoing subterranean connec-
tion between biology and truth by attempting to abandon any claims to
truth. But the price of any such attempts is that same incoherence with
which the sex / gender distinction began. Gender is (a) representation,3
says Teresa de Lauretis (1987: 3). The real and the sexually factic are
phantasmatic constructions illusions of substance, says Judith Butler
(1990: 146). But words like representation, phantasmatic, illusion only
have meaning in terms of their opposites. To say that something is a repre-
sentation is at the same time to say that there is something else it is a repre-
sentation of; to say that something is a phantasm entails that there be
something else which is real; and to say that something is illusion logically
requires something else which is true. Otherwise, what is being implied
that everything is representation, phantasmatic or illusion? In that case it
would make as much sense to say that everything is real, although it would
not make any more sense, since the concept of the real also implies its oppo-
site. The words only gain their meaning from the distinctions they make. If
no distinctions are being made, why use these words rather than their oppo-
sites? But, of course, a distinction is being made. It is the same distinction
which has bedevilled the detachment of sex from gender from the begin-
ning, the separation of the biological from the social, and the character-
izing of the social as in some way unreal. But if there is an unreal, there is
also a real. Since it is biology which is societys other in this discourse of
gender, it is biology which is real in the face of the unreality which
is society. That this is so, is clearly, although inadvertently, stated by
de Lauretis, when she says that gender is not sex, [which is] a state of
nature (de Lauretis, 1987: 5). So if gender is a representation, then what
gender is not (namely sex, a state of nature) is also not a representation,
but the original reality which gender is a representation of.
Although de Lauretis appeared to be unaware of these implications,
Judith Butler explicitly attempted to deal with them. She argued that
gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also [sic] the discursive /
cultural means by which sexed nature or a natural sex is produced and estab-
lished as prediscursive, prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which
culture acts. . . . This production of sex as the prediscursive ought to be under-
stood as the effect of the apparatus of cultural construction designated by
gender. (Butler, 1990: 7 her emphases)
In arguing that sex is itself a social construct, and hence not natural or bio-
logical at all in so far as it is of concern to feminism, Butler is perfectly cor-
rect. But if that is the case, if sex is already social, what part is played by the
term gender? What does using gender add, that is not already contained
in sex viewed from a feminist standpoint? According to Butler, gender is
an apparatus of cultural construction which purveys sex as natural. But
that can be said without recourse to gender, namely, sex is a social con-
struction which presents itself as natural. To say it like that is far more direct
and challenging to conventional wisdom than interpolating gender between
sex and its social construction. It is after all sex which is the social construct,
and not something other than sex. Using a different word, gender, for the
social construct, implies that sex is something other than the social construct.
Butler herself is at least partly aware of this problem. She says: If the
immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called sex
is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already
gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender
turns out to be no distinction at all (p. 7). But she does not take the next
step in the argument and dispense with the word gender, to focus instead
on sex and its discontents. Retaining sex and rejecting gender would not
fit in with her purpose, which is to open up a theoretical space within what
she sees as feminism, for those incoherent or discontinuous gendered
beings who appear to be persons but who fail to conform to the gendered
norms of cultural intelligibility by which persons are defined . . . [and whose]
persistence and proliferation . . . open up within the very terms of that
matrix of intelligibility rival and subversive matrices of gender disorder
(p. 17). The examples she mentions in her text of such gender disorder are
lesbians, especially those who destabilize and displace the heterosexual
norms of masculinity and femininity through butch / femme role play
(p. 123), Foucaults hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, male homosexuality
(pp. 1312), and drag and cross-dressing (both male, although she does not
say so) (p. 137). The term gender is perfect for this purpose just because
of its incoherence and idealism. Because it has no definite meaning, and
because it is detached from the only referent that makes any sense, namely
sex, it can take on any meaning at all. It is much more difficult to interpret
sex as a multiple interpretation, as a free-floating artifice, as a shifting
phenomenon, as a complexity whose totality is permanently deferred,
never fully what it is at any given juncture in time, as fictive, phantas-
matic and illusory. Sex remains too tied in with its ordinary meanings of
male and female, and heterosexual desire and activity, and hence too close
to those traditional sites of male supremacy.
Butler is not concerned to identify the ways in which sex is constructed

under male supremacist conditions, with the aim of challenging, resisting,
refusing and changing those conditions. On the contrary, she regards such
an enterprise as impossible. There is no radical repudiation of a culturally
constructed sexuality, she says. She agrees with what she refers to as the
pro-sexuality movement within feminist theory and practice that sexuality
is always constructed within the terms of discourse and power. The most
we can expect to accomplish by way of subversion is how to acknowledge
and do the construction one is invariably in. The only political option
available involves possibilities of doing gender [which] repeat and displace
through hyperbole, dissonance, internal confusion, and proliferation the
very constructs by which they are mobilized (pp. 301).
She herself does not believe in the invariability of gender, since she is
at some pains to argue that gender is choice, and that it is possible to
engage in the exercise of gender freedom (Butler, 1987: 131, 132). But she
never examines what is involved in this question of choice. The goodness
of choice is self-evident, and the more the better because it allows more
freedom. But she never asks what this freedom is for, and her account closes
off any possibility of identifying some choices as bad. This libertarian stance
enables her to avoid addressing the ethical issues raised by feminisms expo-
sure of sex as socially constructed under male supremacist conditions.
Although she herself would presumably not want to take a morally neutral
stance in relation to the worst forms of male sexual behaviour, on her
account such evils as male sexual abuse of children, rape, sexual harassment,
prostitution, pornography, are nothing more than choices. She does not, of
course, say so. She simply avoids discussing these issues.
Martha Nussbaum concludes that Butlers argument collaborates with
evil because of the absence of an explicitly ethical stance on questions of
social justice and human dignity, an absence which leaves a void at the heart
of [her] notion of politics (Nussbaum, 1999: 9), and because it can only
recommend political quiescence in the face of obvious and pressing social
wrongs (p. 12). While I would prefer to say that Butlers account is com-
plicit with domination, I agree with Nussbaum that political defeatism is a
consequence of Butlers theoretical schema. She insists that because we are
socially constituted there is nothing very much we can do about oppressive
social structures, except reenact them as parody while continuing to
embrace them as our own sense of identity. In her later work, according to
Nussbaum, Butler argues that the identities conferred on us by institution-
alized oppression are not only inevitable and beyond the reach of any politi-
cal resistance whatsoever, they are a positive good: because a certain
narcissism takes hold of any term that confers existence, I am led to embrace
the terms that injure me because they constitute me socially (quoted on
p. 9). Although Nussbaum does not mention this, Butler is quite correct in
saying that the injuries of social domination constitute the identities of those
it holds in subjection. Where Butler is wrong is in her insistence that this is
irreparable and must be eagerly accepted with pleasure and joy. To the
extent that my sexual desire, for example, motivates me to harm myself or

others, I am not doomed to endlessly repeat it. I can refuse to act on it, and
if that means that I am thereby deprived of immediate sexual pleasure, then
so be it. I may in fact find pleasure in divesting myself of complicity with
something I find detestable, a pleasure which may lack the excitement of
sexual degradation, but which provides compensations in my feeling that I
am taking control of my own emotional life. Nussbaum locates Butlers
work within the context of a new, disquieting trend in feminist theory, a
trend which demonstrates a marked obliviousness to the real situation of
real women, in favour of academic publications of lofty obscurity and dis-
dainful abstractness (p. 2).4 The term gender is central to that disquieting
trend.
There are some feminist theorists who use the word gender, and who
explicitly reject the separation between biology and society, and have no
qualms about identifying male domination. But the term still generates con-
fusion. Miriam M. Johnson uses gender to refer to ones civil status as
male or female, while reserving the word sex to refer to genital erotic
activity (sex in bed) (Johnson, 1988: 202).5 Johnson uses this distinction
between sex as sexual activity and gender as social role, in order to avoid
what she sees as the dominant tendency to define gender in terms of sex.
She wants to avoid the assumption that the inequalities in the social situa-
tions of women and men are somehow caused by the male dominant /
female submissive differences between male and female sexuality. She says:
Using the word sex to describe sexual activity and the difference between
males and females attests to the degree to which gender has been conflated
with sex (p. 220). The problem with this conflation, as Johnson sees it, is
that women have been defined in terms of femininity, passivity and sub-
mission, and men in terms of masculinity, dominance and aggression,
because that is the way it happens in bed. Separating gender from sex, she
says, helps to break up this assumption. She argues that the influence is
the other way around, that male and female sexuality are different because
the social roles of women and men are different and unequal. It is not the
case that sexual activity, defined in this way, is definitive of what she calls
gender. On the contrary, it is gender, defined as male dominance and
female submission, which has been reflected in the differences between
female and male sexuality.
But although she is correct in this, separating sex from gender merely
confuses the issue. Once again, if gender refers to the social, then sex must
refer to something else. But heterosexual sex is also social. It is part of the
social definition of female and male, not something other than it. The dis-
tinction remains an idealist solution, that is, it is a distinction in thought, not
in the actual social relations of male power. Merely saying something is not
so will not make it go away. And there is the danger that making the verbal
distinction will mask the feminist perception of the ongoing social reality.
Gender ought to be expunged from the feminist vocabulary, unless it is
confined to its original grammatical and linguistic context. Words have gender,
people have sex in both senses of the word, in the sense that there are two
sexes, and in the sense of sexual desire and activity. That they are usually
confused, as Johnson pointed out, is a consequence of the heterosexual
hegemony sexuality happens because there are two sexes, that is, sex is
always heterosexual. Substituting gender for sex compounds the confusion
because it evades the necessity for disentangling it. More importantly,
because in most of its usages gender is meaningless, it can take on any
meaning at all, including anti-feminist ones. By being detached from its ordi-
nary language referent sex, it floats freely in a discursive space far removed
from the actual social relations of male supremacy. It is politically unlocat-
able. The frequency with which this happens gives rise to the suspicion that
that is what has been intended all along.
Dichotomies
Another way of designating the problem addressed by feminism is through
a critique of dichotomies (or binary oppositions or dualisms). Such criti-
cisms do recognize a hierarchical relation between the two terms whereby
one term is always valued over the other, as well as locating the valued term
with the male and the devalued one with the female. But they tend towards
idealism to the extent that they see the oppositional logic as the basic
problem generating the differential valuations of men and women, rather
than seeing that logic as itself a consequence of the social relations of male
supremacy.
Moira Gatens, for example, summarizes her overview of some of the ways
philosophy has conceived of women as follows:
In the introduction, it was suggested that the mind / body, reason / passion and
nature / culture dichotomies interact with the male / female dichotomy in
extremely complex ways, often prejudicial to women. What has been shown in
the ensuing chapters is the way that these dichotomies function in the work of
particular philosophers and the consequences of this functioning for their views
on sexual difference. It has become apparent in the course of this analysis that
in contemporary thought it is the private / public distinction which organizes
these dualisms and gives them their distinctively sexually specific character.
(Gatens, 1991: 122)
Despite her frequent insights into the ways in which the human norm is
purveyed as only male, by substituting dichotomies organized around the
private / public distinction for the explicit acknowledgement of male
supremacist relations of ruling, she reduces mens rule to an effect of some-
thing more basic. In this account, the feminist political task is not to mount
a direct challenge to male domination. Rather, it becomes a matter of work-
ing towards the break[ing] down of the coherence of Western culture in
order that it may be reassembl[ed] in a more viable and polyvalent form
(p. 121 first interpolation in the original). The problem to be addressed is
the coherence of Western culture, and the solution is to break this down in
the interests of polyvalence. Whatever this might mean, it involves no

reference to the actual relations of power within which women are subjected,
nor to the possibility of a new world for women free of male definition and
control.
Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell also interpret feminist politics in
terms of binary oppositions (and gender). They ask:
where do we go beyond the politics of gender? To a radical transcendence of the
logic of binary oppositions altogether or to a utopian realization of forms of
otherness, immanent in present psychosexual arrangements, but currently
frozen within the confines of rigid genderized thinking? (Benhabib and Cornell,
1987: 15)
The problem here is the opposition itself and its rigidity, not the fact that
that opposition (between the sexes) constructs the male as the norm, as the
only human subject, at the expense of any interests females might have in
our own human status. But it is not the fact that the differences between the
sexes are rigid or even opposed that is the main problem for feminism,
but the fact that the differences encode and enforce male supremacy
(MacKinnon, 1990). The feminist task, then, is not to shatter and fragment
the grand dichotomy of male and female into a multiplicity of fluid and
shifting genders, sexualities, identities or forms of otherness (other
than whom?), but to continue to oppose male domination, however and
wherever it manifests itself, in the interests of a female human status which
is not defined at the expense of anyone at all.
Notes
1 Before she discussed socialist feminist writings, Beechey expressed some dis-
quiet at the possibility that she might be being unfair to particular writers by con-
fining her discussion to an incomplete survey, instead of providing a comprehensive
review of the Marxist feminist literature (1979: 72). She did not express any such
disquiet at the incompleteness of her review of radical feminist literature.
2 Bourdieu later expanded this paper into a book (Bourdieu, 1998).
3 The parenthetical a is not meant to imply the first of a series, to be followed
by b, c, d, etc. It signals that the sentence is actually two sentences compressed
into one Gender is representation and Gender is a representation.
4 Nussbaums review evoked a number of protests (The New Republic, 1999).
But even those sympathetic to Butlers work have been known to express many of the
same concerns as Nussbaum. Seyla Benhabib, who was one of those who protested at
Nussbaums review, has said: in Gender Trouble at least, Butler subscribes to an overly
constructivist view of selfhood and agency that leaves little room for explaining the
possibilities of creativity and resistance (Benhabib, 1999: p. 2 of 17).
5 Catharine MacKinnon makes the same kind of distinction (MacKinnon, 1987,
1991: xiii). She says that she tends to use the words sex and gender interchange-
ably, since she does not agree with the distinction between biology and society
entailed in the sex / gender distinction. I prefer not to use the word gender at all
because of its apolitical connotations.
6 Difference
A s Hester Eisenstein has pointed out, the feminist concept of difference

has two aspects to it: differences between the sexes, and differences
between and among women. Both aspects have been consistent preoccupa-
tions of second-wave feminism. That does not mean, however, that the
theme of difference has been integral to modern feminist thought, as
Eisenstein goes on to assert (Eisenstein, 1985: xv; see also Eisenstein, 1984:
passim). On the contrary, far from being integral to feminism, the concept
of difference has too often functioned as a diversionary tactic. Whether the
focus is on differences between the sexes, or on differences between and
among women, male domination tends to be accorded a subsidiary status or
ignored altogether.
In the case of differences between the sexes, male domination (when it is
acknowledged) is usually presented as a secondary formation, or euphemisti-
cally designated sexual or gender inequality or womens inequality.
Given that feminist debates about sex differences have tended to confound
difference with inequality,1 an initial feminist response was to argue those dif-
ferences away (Oakley, 1972). A more recent response was to grant a limited
and strategic value to womens differences from men, because failure to
acknowledge female specificity, biological or social, sometimes works against
womens interests (Rhode, 1990).
In the case of differences between and among women, acknowledgement
of male domination tends to be displaced in favour of race and / or class and
to drop out of the analysis altogether. Invidious distinctions between women
are attributed to feminism or to the attitudes and behaviour of (usually
unidentified) white middle-class feminists, and the origin of those distinc-
tions in hierarchies established among men is ignored. In the most general
sense, difference functions, like gender, as a euphemism to avoid naming
the main enemy, male domination.
Differences between the Sexes

The problem with focusing feminist attention on differences between the
sexes has already been adequately criticized in the literature (Jaggar, 1990;
MacKinnon, 1987, 1990). As Catharine MacKinnon in particular has pointed
out, whether women are asserted to be the same as or different from men,
the male remains the norm against which women are measured. Keeping the
debate at the level of sex differences serves the purpose of avoiding the
question of the systematic subordination of women to men. Once this is
recognized, the question of whether women are the same as or different
from men becomes irrelevant. Women can be the same as men, and still be
subordinated. Exceptional women can be isolated from other women to
supply a token female representation in hierarchical positions normally
reserved for men, while those positions continue to function in the interests
of men and against the interests of women. And although womens difference
from men is usually justification for womens subordination, it can also be
a source of women-only power and identification.
I have identified three contexts within which the question of differences
between the sexes has been discussed within second-wave feminism, the
first two of which I mention only briefly here. The first of these debates
originated in psychology, with token excursions into sociology, anthro-
pology, primatology, ethology, endocrinology and the medical model in gen-
eral. There is a fairly extensive literature on the subject, but it has limited
use for feminist theorizing because it tends to be empiricist and positivist. It
assumes unquestioningly that sex differences are objective matters of fact
discoverable through the purportedly value-free methods of psychological
testing, some of which involve only animals and not human beings at all
(e.g. Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974). In its commitment to objectivity, it fails
to address the values which are an inherent part of relations between the
sexes, a failure which drains its investigations of meaning. Refusing to
address value questions directly within the inherently moral arena of human
interactions does not abolish moral judgements. It merely ensures that those
moral judgements which do structure and inform the research will be those
of the status quo, of the world-taken-for-granted which feminism is chal-
lenging. Painstaking and detailed though much of this work was, it was
ultimately pointless because it failed to ask recognizably human questions
about sex differences.
The second context in which discussion of sex differences is supposedly
to be found is what has been called French feminism. But this designation
covers such a large and disparate group of theorists that it is impossible to
discuss them under a single heading. Since any attempt to do so must fail,
given the intricacies and sheer volume of these works, I mention them only
in passing.2
Feminist Object Relations Theor y

The third context is feminist object relations theory (Benjamin, 1989;
Chodorow, 1978, 1989; Dinnerstein, 1976; Keller, 1985). Although there
are a number of problems with the theory so far, it is more fruitful for femi-
nist theorizing than the positivistic approach which treats sex differences
as empirical data. The kinds of sex differences feminist object relations
theory exposes the relational, caring, nurturing female, and the detached,
D I F F E R E N C E 83
contemptuous, masculine individual are the kinds of differences which

might be expected given current conditions of male domination. Its empha-
sis on infancy and early childhood makes it one of the few social theories
which does not assume that we enter social relationships as fully formed
adults. And it does at least attempt to challenge the male supremacist
demand that only women mother, even if it does not take that challenge far
enough.
It is already a partial acknowledgement of male domination, in that it is
an account of social inequalities that are sexed (even if it does call them
gender). Although its critique of masculinity does not go deeply enough, it
does have one. Nancy Chodorow tells us that mens nurturant capacities
and needs have been systematically curtailed and repressed, that men have
tended to repress their affective relational needs (Chodorow, 1978: 7, 199).
Men are incapable of relating to women, she says, because of mens intense
ambivalence towards women: men defend themselves against the threat
posed by love . . . demanding of women what men are at the same time
afraid of receiving (pp. 196, 199). She describes mens feelings towards
women in terms of contempt, disparagement and devaluation on the one
hand, and resentment, fear and dread on the other. She also says that men
are incapable of relating to other men, because their training for masculin-
ity and repression of affective relational needs, and their primary non-
emotional and impersonal relationships in the public world make deep
primary relationships with other men hard to come by (p. 196), and
because they tend to develop ties based more on categorical and abstract role
expectations (p. 199). Moreover, they are incapable of relating to children
because the relational basis for mothering is . .. inhibited in men, who experi-
ence themselves as more separate and distinct from others (p. 207).
Not only did Chodorow not draw out the implications of her own
descriptions of masculinity, she held that current arrangements of mother-
ing by women were responsible for reproducing it. But she did not tell us
how mothering by women reproduced masculinity, apart from references to
the need for boys to separate from their mothers. Neither did she tell us why
misogyny and contempt for women are so integral a part of the masculine
psyche. On the one occasion where she attempted to do so, she omitted the
crux of the matter. She said, quoting Freud, that A boys struggle to free
himself from his mother and become masculine generates the contempt felt
by men for a sex which is the lesser 3 (Chodorow, 1978: 182). But it is not
the boys struggle which generates the contempt, but rather the contempt
which provides the motivating force for the struggle. Or rather, because
children of both sexes grow out of the helplessness and dependency of
infancy, it is contempt which provides the extra impetus for the male under
male supremacist conditions. Chodorow got it the wrong way round
because she left out the key step in the process, the threat of castration. It
is this threat which Freud said leads to two reactions, which . . . permanently
determine the boys relations to women: horror of the mutilated creature or
triumphant contempt for her (Freud, 1977a: 336). On Freuds account, the
devaluation of women is a direct consequence of the female lack of the

penis. Freud was wrong in the way he characterized the meaning and value
of the penis. Penis-envy and the devaluing of those who lack penises are
secondary formations (to use his own terminology), the result of the male
supremacist cultures glorification of the phallus penis-possession as the
symbol of human status which Freud himself never questioned. None the
less, his account does supply us with the reason for misogyny and contempt
for women. Within those male supremacist terms so clearly exposed by
Freud, women are contemptible because we lack penises. Masculinity is
reproduced through the over-valuation of penis-possession. It depends on
contempt for and hatred of the female, because to acknowledge the human-
ity of women would be to render the penis meaningless as the symbol of
human status. Male castration anxiety is a dread of the loss of meaning of
penis-possession, a loss which the very existence of women constantly
threatens. The masculine psyche develops at the expense of a human status
for women, and must guard itself against the horror of human beings who
lack the necessary symbol.
The extent to which men are incapable of human relationships is exactly
the extent to which the penis-as-phallus comes between the male self and
others, and blocks the possibility of recognizing others as fully human indi-
viduals lacking nothing. Masculinity renders men incapable of the mutual
recognition necessary for reaching out to others when penis-possession
stands as a barrier between the male self and others. Men are unable to
relate to women when men are complicit with the phallocratic requirement
that women be treated as non-human. They are unable to relate to each
other if their humanity is already impaired by that same phallocratic
requirement. By acquiring their human status by denying it to women, men
render themselves unfit for any genuine human interaction. In treating
women as things, they fetishize themselves and each other into objects
whose worth is measured by positions on hierarchies of extraneous criteria,
of which the two most obvious are race and class. By the same token,
women are more able to involve themselves in human relationships because
they are more capable of recognizing the humanity of others. It is not
because women are inherently more nurturant, caring or loving than men,
but because women do not have any masculinity to defend at others
expense. Women, not having penises, have less at stake in defending the
meanings and values of penis-possession,4 and hence lack the chief barrier
to relating to others as unique and irreplaceable ends in themselves. By
deliberately abandoning the original Freudian insight into the hypervalua-
tion of penis-possession, feminist object relations theory has rejected the key
insight into the meaning of masculinity.
Feminist object relations theory gives an inadequate account of sex
differences because it fails to ask the right questions in the first place. It is
agreed that there is a difference between mother and male infant. It is in
fact the crux of the argument. In Nancy Chodorows account, males are
incapable of mothering because they are so different from mother, and
mothering is reproduced in females because they are the same as mother.

In Jessica Benjamins account, women lack subjectivity because they are
mothered by women who lack subjectivity and girls are the same as their
mothers, while men are subjects in their own right because as boys they are
different from their mothers and can identify with their fathers (Benjamin,
1989). But the theory never asks how the distinction is noted. What counts
as male and female? What is the difference which establishes and maintains
the acculturation process which makes infants into sexed individuals? In
their understandable haste to disassociate themselves from penis envy,
feminist object relations theorists move too far away from Freud, and aban-
don his important insights (misnamed though they were) into the meaning
of penis-possession. To assert, as Benjamin does, that it is not anatomy . . .
that explains womens lack (p. 86), is to extract anatomy from the social
order within which it acquires meaning and value. The lack of female sub-
jectivity which Benjamin calls a fault line in female development (p. 78)
does not originate with women, although it manifests itself in womens lives,
but with a male supremacist culture which refuses to allow women a fully
human status because they do not possess the prized anatomical organ. To
locate the fault line with women is to fail to see that the penis is already
glorified as the sign of sexual difference, as the marker of a valued presence
and a contemptible absence, as that which sets the process in train and
which structures the cultural context into which each individual is born.
Unless the phallus is situated at the centre of sexual domination, its role as
the justification for male domination cannot be exposed.
Feminist object relations theory is also flawed by its tendency to reverse
the logic of the social causation involved. By locating the causes of male
domination in the activities and developmental processes of individuals in
familial environments, rather than interpreting those familial environments
as structured and made meaningful by the social system which is male domi-
nation, the theory gets it the wrong way round. Unless familial arrange-
ments are identified as generated by the requirements of present historical
conditions of male supremacy, they tend to assume an unwarranted explana-
tory importance, as the cause,5 rather than as a consequence, of the social
arrangements of male supremacy. One aspect of current social arrangements
usually mothering by women is made responsible for the whole of the
society which is male supremacy. While mothering by women is a neces-
sary prerequisite for the maintenance of the social relationships of male
supremacy, that is not because it causes those social relationships, but
because mothering by women is what is required if men are to continue to
feel justified in demanding of women selfless devotion to male interests,
needs, projects and desires, and if women are to continue to acquiesce in
those requirements.
Jessica Benjamins task was to elucidate the failure of mutual recognition
between the sexes within our culture under conditions of gender domi-
nation. Her purpose was to show how and why the balance between asser-
tion of the self and recognition of the other breaks down into relationships
of domination and subordination. Like Chodorows, her account, too,

attempted to explain society (our culture) in terms of one of its parts. Her
focus on familial relationships reads as an argument to the effect that domi-
nation originates within families, and is then taken out into the wider
society, where it persists because individuals are already structured that way.
As she herself says, she aims to show how the structure of domination can
be traced from the relationship between mother and infant into adult eroti-
cism, from the earliest awareness of the difference between mother and
father to the global images of male and female in the culture (Benjamin,
1989: 8). On another occasion she says that she will offer some observations
on how the split that constitutes gender polarity is replicated in intellectual
and social life, and how it eliminates the possibilities of mutual recognition
in society as a whole (p. 184). On Benjamins account, the family is not
only the basic unit of society, it structures the whole of it. Her failure to
characterize as male supremacist the culture within which dominant and
submissive individuals are constituted, means that that culture is reduced
to an epiphenomenon of the family. Society is the family writ large.
This is a consequence of her refusal to locate the phallus at the centre
of the meanings and values of male supremacy. She tells us that it is the
father not the phallus [which] is the locus of power (Benjamin, 1989:
96). The father represents access to the wonderful, exciting world outside
the motherinfant relationship, for both sexes. But whereas he accepts his
sons identification with him, and encourages the boys striving for inde-
pendence and activity, he rejects his daughters and withdraws from her. As
a consequence, daughters are pushed back to their mothers, where they have
no possibility of developing a sense of self because the only avenue to indi-
viduation is blocked. Benjamin does not ask how it is that fathers (and
mothers and others) distinguish between sons and daughters. Yet this is
surely the crucial question. In infancy there is only one discernible differ-
ence between females and males sex. And the distinguishing mark of sex
is the presence or absence of the penis, a sign which has been recognized and
whose significance has been operative since birth. The father recognizes his
son as a penis-bearer with the potential for autonomous subjecthood like
himself, and refuses to recognize his daughter because she lacks that symbol
of identity, in the sense both of likeness to him and of selfhood. But it is not
the fathers fatherhood with which the boy identifies, and the girl tries to,
but his maleness. Because of this insistence on the centrality of the father
rather than the phallus in the establishment of psychic patterns of domina-
tion, the only adult males who appear in Benjamins account are fathers (and
sometimes husbands, who are, however, also called fathers because of the
significance for the children of their dominant position in relation to the
mother). Fathers, in terms of Benjamins analysis, are not men. Or rather, by
avoiding the question of phallic supremacy, her analysis provides us with no
account of fathers as men.
None the less, Benjamins account of what is already involved in mother
infant relationships despite male supremacy, is a welcome antidote to certain
currently popular theories which portray the motherinfant couple as an

undifferentiated, symbiotic unity into which the phallus must intervene in
order to wrench the child into the symbolic order. As Benjamin puts it in her
critical comment on this aspect of the work of the child analyst, Margaret
Mahler:
The problem with this formulation [of an initial unity] is the idea of a separa-
tion from oneness; it contains the implicit assumption that we grow out of rela-
tionships rather than becoming more active and sovereign within them, that we
start in a state of dual oneness and wind up in a state of singular oneness . . . the
issue is not only how we separate from oneness, but also how we connect to and
recognise others; the issue is not how we become free of the other, but how we
actively engage and make ourselves known in relationship to the other. (Benjamin,
1989: 18 her emphasis)
Benjamin argues that the infant is active in relation to the mother from
birth. The baby can respond to soothing and holding or resist, co-operate or
turn away, focus on the mothers face, react to the mothers voice, and
(although Benjamin does not mention this) smile, during the first few weeks
of life. The possibility of mutual recognition, of emotional attunement,
mutual influence, affective mutuality, sharing states of mind (p. 16) between
mother and infant is there from the beginning. The motherinfant relation-
ship is one already capable of mutual recognition. Infants are active partici-
pants who help shape the responses of their environment, and create their
own objects . . . the infants capacity to relate to the world is incipiently pre-
sent at birth and develops all along (pp. 16, 17); and real mothers in
our culture, for better or worse, devote most of their energy to fostering
independence (p. 152).
The implication of Benjamins argument concerning the first bond
(between mother and child) is that it is only the relationship between
mother and child which holds the potential for generating mutual recogni-
tion, and that the fathers intervention irrevocably destroys the possibility of
mutuality between the sexes, at least under present conditions and to the
extent that adult individuals do not resist the dominant trend. The fathers
intrusion ruptures, not a solipsistic oneness, not an undifferentiated unity,
but a mutuality, a flexible balance of separation and connection responsive
to the needs and desires of both mother and infant, a reciprocity of give and
take which is already present. Mothers and infants, it would seem, do very
well all by themselves. As Benjamin herself says: if . . . we believe that
infants take pleasure in interpersonal connection and are motivated by
curiosity and responsiveness to the outside world, we need not agree to the
idea that human beings must be pulled by their fathers away from maternal
bliss into a reality they resent (p. 174).
What Benjamins account suggests (although she herself does not draw
out the implication) is that women cannot be left alone to get on with it if
male supremacy is to be maintained. Women are not to be trusted to be
whole-hearted in the male cause. They must not be left to raise children,
especially male children, without intervention. Once the child starts reaching
out to the world, the disruptive intrusion of the father becomes necessary.
Not, however, as a father, either literally or symbolically, nor merely as the
first outsider . . . represent[ing] the principle of freedom as denial of depen-
dency (p. 221), as Benjamin puts it, but as the nearest significant adult male.
Single mothers of sons are gravely cautioned about the dire consequences
for their sons masculinity of the absence of male role models. The small
male must be provided with a model of what he can aspire to, one who is
personally present and who actively intervenes to show the boy the kind of
place waiting for him once he has repudiated the world of the feminine. He
has his own little symbol of all that he is heir to, but it is little and mother
is still powerful, loving, nurturant and needed. The small female must start
her lessons in heterosexuality. She must learn that full human status is not
her birthright, and that her only access to it is second-rate and via subordi-
nation to those who bear its anatomical symbol. Ideally, she should learn to
love it. But given the prevalence of fatherdaughter incest, and its social
condonation by way of silence and denial, love is obviously not a prerequi-
site for the females training in heterosexual desire. Indeed, if the female is
to be trained in sexual subservience, then sexual violence from an early age
would seem to be entirely functional for that training process.
In light of this analysis, the solution to whatever problems might be con-
nected with womens mothering is not shared parenting, as feminist object
relations theory recommends, at least not in the foreseeable future. Given
that the theory itself points out the unlikelihood of fathers mothering to the
same extent that women do, it is not clear how it might be brought about. If
current arrangements of mothering render males more or less incapable of
human relationships, and if that incapability is not just an unwillingness, but
is an intrinsic aspect of the masculine sense of self, deeply embedded in
unconscious processes of fear and desire, hatred and contempt, then male
mothering will not become a social norm simply through conscious decision
and rational choice on the part of men. The very meaning of masculinity
itself must change. It must be divested of its contempt for and dread of the
female (and of the reverence and adoration which serve as a superficial gloss
masking the actual relations of power), of its competitiveness, aggression,
violence and addiction to hierarchy, and of its eroticized obsession with
penis-possession, in favour of a genuine humanity which excludes no one
from human rights and dignities.
Until and unless that happens, it is dangerous to suggest that men take on
the care of infants and small children. Even if they were to do so in any num-
bers, a large if given the great hurdle of male reluctance, at the very least
they would simply dominate mothering at the expense of women, just as
they dominate everything else. But there is an even greater danger involved
as long as the penis continues to function as the symbol of the only human
status allowed, and that is male sexual abuse of children. It is foolhardy to
recommend that men have greater access to children, unless the glorification
of penis-possession has first been acknowledged and overcome.6 What must
also be overcome is the demand for self-abnegation placed on women by the

kind of mothering required under conditions of male supremacy. Instead of
focusing yet again on men, what is needed is support for the women who
already mother, especially those women who are mothering without men,
since this is already a challenge to male control of mothering. If those mother-
ing arrangements are to be changed in the interests of everyone, social
resources, both material (such as adequate income and child-care) and intan-
gible (such as respect), need to be provided in abundance for the women who
already mother.
As should be obvious by now, it is not feminist object relations theory as it
currently stands that I find fruitful for feminist theory, but the role it serves
as an accessible way into certain issues of vital importance to feminism.
Although it refuses to acknowledge the phallus, explicitly in Benjamins case,
the gap that refusal leaves is marked by its failure to account for male
supremacist relations of ruling. It does set up a logic of causes, and then pro-
ceed to get the determinants the wrong way round by arguing that the struc-
ture of the family determines our culture, rather than regarding a particular
family formation as a requirement of more systemic relations of power. But
it also brings out into the open the fact that it is women who mother, and
challenges the denial and suppression to which that surely unremarkable fact
is subjected under male supremacist conditions. And it insists that sex differ-
ences are neither deliberately imposed nor consciously adopted, but result
from processes originally beyond the control and awareness of the immature
psyche of the helpless and dependent little individuals we all are to begin
with. As Chodorow put it: The capacities and orientations I describe must
be built into personality; they are not behavioral acquisitions (1978: 39);
and as Jessica Benjamin said: submission [is] the desire of the dominated as
well as their helpless fate (1989: 52 her emphasis).7 It is an attempt to
explain why current social relations are so intransigent, and has implications
for explaining the strength of the resistance to the feminist challenge to those
relations. It is important for a feminist politics to be able to give an account
of the ways in which relationships of domination and subordination are
embraced by individuals out of what is experientially felt to be intrinsic
desire, rather than portraying those relationships only as impositions.
Feminist object relations theory is not yet that account, but it gives suggestive
hints for how to go about providing one.
In discussing a number of the ways in which feminism has come to be defined

implicitly, I have argued that these definitions pay insufficient attention to
male supremacy. As a consequence, these ways of seeing feminism are more
or less inadequate as programmes for feminist political change. The term
patriarchy is arguably the least inadequate, since it is usually used in a femi-
nist context to mean male supremacy. But its conventional meaning of rule
of the father has led some feminist theorists to locate male ruling with
fathers rather than with men (Benjamin, 1989; Mitchell, 1974a, 1974b). This
has adverse consequences for feminist politics. It largely ignores the present
dangers for women and children of the male supremacist structuring of

intimate relations, and diverts attention away from the need to validate
womens mothering and rearrange the social conditions within which women
mother. By according familial relations a causal role in determining social
relations in general, it confines feminist attention to the family. The term
sexism can be used as a short-hand reference to male supremacy. But its neu-
trality on the question of which sex is dominant means that it can be too eas-
ily co-opted to serve mens interests at the expense of women. Couching the
feminist critique in terms of such phenomena as dichotomies, binary oppo-
sitions and dualisms does acknowledge the hierarchical valuing of one term
over the other, and usually allows that the male / female distinction is the
basic principle underlying all the others. But it is difficult to see what follows
from that in practical political terms. Should feminism refrain from
dichotomies altogether? In that case, it is a recommendation that feminism
refrain from alluding to those meanings and values to which it is utterly
opposed, that is, those which serve the interests of male supremacy. Or is it
a recommendation to refrain only from those dichotomies listed? But if
feminism cannot allude to the distinction between male and female, once
again it cannot address the social order of male supremacy which creates the
antagonisms between women and men in the first place. As for the term gen-
der, in most of its usages it serves anti-feminist purposes by appearing to
supply feminism with a subject-matter, while actually obliterating the central
concern of feminist politics. All it can recommend by way of feminist prac-
tice is a limitless plurality of personal choices, unrestrained by any ethical
considerations whatsoever (or none that are mentioned). With its covert
appeal to something other than the social as the truth of human existence,
gender transforms society into nothing but unfair and (implicitly) unnatu-
ral constraint, and interprets the social as a superficial and dispensable gloss
on the essential reality of the desiring individual.
Defining feminism in terms of women would seem to be the most plau-
sible way of characterizing it, since feminism is clearly concerned with the
struggle of women by women and for women. It becomes inadequate as
politics, however, when the focus is only on women, and feminism as the
struggle against male domination is omitted, denied or ignored. Without the
centralizing focus of opposition to male supremacy, feminism is reduced to
antagonisms between and among women. In what follows, I look at some of
the ways in which those antagonisms have been played out in the context of
that crucial category of race.
Notes
1 Alison Jaggar recognizes the confounding as a problem but does not resolve it
(Jaggar, 1990).
2 French feminism in the Anglophone academic context has been criticized as
an Anglo-American construct which misrepresents the actual history of feminism in
France (Delphy, 1996; Moses, 1998; Winter, 1997).
3 Interestingly, this quote appears in Freuds text in the context of a discussion

of the consequences for girls of envy for the penis. Freud said: After a woman has
become aware of the wound to her narcissism, she develops, like a scar, a sense of
inferiority. . . . she begins to share the contempt felt by men for a sex which is the
lesser in so important a respect (Freud, 1977: 337).
4 That is not to say that women have nothing at all at stake in those meanings
and values. To the extent that women, too, can see no alternative to the male as the
human norm, and no alternative for themselves but a secondary status as mens
auxiliaries, women too have a stake in maintaining penis-possession as the symbol of
human value.
5 Or a cause. Chodorow was later to acknowledge that she was mistaken in her
earlier writings in implying that womens mothering was the cause or prime mover
of male dominance (1989: 6 her emphasis). She felt that womens inequality may
be multiply caused and situated. But this is still seeing the problem the wrong way
round. The problem lies in seeing womens mothering as having any causal role at
all in generating the social system which is male supremacy, rather than seeing it as
a consequence and a requirement.
There is, of course, another problem with characterizing social phenomena in
terms of causes, and that is the implication of determinism. To talk about causes
in social life is to imply that people have no choice, that they are nothing but bear-
ers of social relations and / or the inert outcomes of what happened to them in
infancy and early childhood. But to the extent that human beings are moral crea-
tures, we do have choices, as long as we have knowledge of alternatives. The main-
tenance of relations of domination requires the suppression of that knowledge, a
suppression that manifests as repression and the unconscious at the level of the indi-
vidual psyche.
6 There are, of course, men who do not define their humanity solely in terms of
penis-possession, who are not obsessively driven to use their penises with complete
disregard for the rights and feelings of others, and who are deeply horrified by child
sexual abuse and rape. But they remain individual exceptions to the general rule of
male dominance which still prevails, as long as there is no general recognition of the
problem of over-valuation of penis-possession.
7 Once again, the postulation of unconscious processes and desires for subordi-
nation originating in infancy gives rise to questions about determinism. But the shape
of desire is not fixed for all time in childhood. It is possible to change ones desire,
although not easily, and not at all if there is no access to alternative readings of the
way the world is. Psychoanalysis itself holds out the promise that desire can be
reconstructed (although that promise is weakened by psychoanalysis individualism
and continuing complicity with male supremacy).
7 Differences among women
T he question of differences between and among women revolves chiefly

around the contentious issues of race and class. What is being said in
these debates is that some women are in a dominant position in relation to
other women, that some women oppress other women because they are
more privileged than other women white women in comparison with
black or third-world women or women of other ethnic minorities, middle-
class women in comparison with working-class women or women of poverty.
To the extent that this focus on differences between women allows no room
for locating the invidious and hierarchical differences within a culture of
male domination, it fragments the feminist project into a myriad of oppres-
sive distinctions among women with no common meeting ground. To the
extent that it appeals only to a hierarchy of oppressions among women, it
reinforces that hierarchy. It displaces the source of domination from the
male power system to women themselves, and by ignoring the nature, mani-
festations, scope and influence of male domination, it misrepresents the
feminist project. And because these invidious and hierarchical distinctions
undoubtedly exist among feminists, those accused react with guilt, self-
recrimination or shamed silence. This problem of differences among
women has at times reached such a pitch that it occupied a large part of the
feminist terrain, paralysing debate, and too often diverting feminist energy
away from the main enemy.
Feminism cannot afford to give priority to the politics of race or class while
ignoring male supremacy. As I have been arguing throughout, to ignore male
supremacy is to empty feminist politics of its central meaning. With that
central meaning in place, the political challenge to pernicious distinctions
based on race and class takes on a different appearance. The categories of
race and class also contain men, and any category which includes men
tends to be dominated by the interests of men. Because men are more secure
in their human status, they tend to have a clearer apprehension of their exclu-
sion from human rights than women do. Men tend to know what they are
entitled to and what they are being deprived of. Racism or class exploitation
are more readily perceivable than the oppression of women, because they
involve the dehumanization of men. Moreover, the allocation of people in
terms of racial categories tends to reproduce the ideology of the male as the
human norm, so that the categories are automatically male unless women
D I F F E R E N C E S A M O N G W O M E N 93
are specifically mentioned. Because women are still struggling for a human
status, we frequently cannot even express what we want, much less get access
to the necessary resources, especially if womens needs come into conflict
with what men perceive as their justified claims against other men. Too often,
women become the terrain over which battles for supremacy among men are
waged, unless the feminist insight into the male supremacist defining of the
human as only male is kept constantly in mind.
That is not to say that feminists cannot give political priority to race
and / or class. There are times when politically committed women must
challenge the oppressions of class and / or race directly because the urgency
of the situation demands it. Andrea Dworkin argued this in terms of states
of primary emergency. What she meant by this was that, in certain con-
texts, certain identities brought with them more pressing, immediate and
dangerous problems than others. She gave the examples of the Jew in Nazi
Germany, and the Native American during the colonization of the US. That
first identity, she said, the one which brings with it as part of its definition
death, is the identity of primary emergency (Dworkin, 1974: 23). Even
short of death, the economic deprivation which capitalism visits upon a
large proportion of the worlds population, and the dehumanizing effects of
racism, require their own specific politics. But unless feminism is a constant
presence in those politics, women will continue to be excluded from agen-
das devised by men in their own interests. As long as feminism is conceived
as a commitment to the human dignity of all, it is already a commitment to
opposing race and class oppression. But feminist involvement in these poli-
tics focuses on the effects on women of the hierarchies of class and race,
both the ways in which those hierarchies specifically disadvantage women,
and the ways in which women reproduce those hierarchies among ourselves.
Once male domination is identified as the main problem addressed by a
feminist politics, it can be acknowledged that women experience male domi-
nation differently, depending on where they are situated in relation to race,
class, or any other social location.
I am not going to discuss class in this present work, despite the lack of
resolution of many of the questions involved in discussions of women and
class the difficulty of allocating women to class positions (not to mention
the difficulty of allocating men); the derivative nature of class for women
and its dependence on their relationships to men;1 confusions about what
class means, whether it can be accounted for in terms of status, prestige,
privilege and access to resources, or whether it is confined to the Marxist
concept of ownership and non-ownership of the means of production (in
which case it is irrelevant to women); and, most importantly, the absence of
any acknowledgement of the existence of a ruling class. Although there are
some discussions in the feminist literature which deal explicitly with class (for
example, Lesbian Ethics, 1991; Phillips, 1987), within the category of dif-
ferences between and among women it is the question of race which has
received the most attention. Class has tended to play a subsidiary role, men-
tioned only briefly and tangentially in discussions primarily concerned with
race. Moreover, the main problem with the feminist race debate the
ignoring or denial of male domination and the concomitant focus on hierar-
chies among women is also to be found in discussions of class. Hence,
much of what is said about race is also relevant to class.
Feminism and Race

In raising questions about the race debate within feminism, I am not
intending to cast doubt on the occurrence of racism among feminists, much
less its existence more generally. There can be no doubt about its existence.
A feminist stance does not mean that women cannot behave in racist ways;
nor does it mean that anything and everything said in the name of feminism
is automatically excluded from criticism on the grounds of racism. Racism
is not always violent, blatant and overt. It can be subtle, devious and some-
times ambiguous, and hence difficult to identify and describe. But it is not
helpful to refer to such instances as feminism. Rather, they are failures of
feminist insight. Seeing them as examples of feminism is one example of the
consequences of not defining feminism. Feminism becomes anything said or
done by anyone identified as a feminist. Feminists are no more immune
from errors of judgement than anyone else, but without a clear idea of what
counts as feminism, it is not possible to decide what counts as an error.
Racism is undoubtedly an important issue. But attempts to theorize it in
a feminist context have not so far met with much success. Feelings of being
excluded may be real enough, but it is not helpful to define feminism as
some kind of private property of white, middle-class women, and of no
relevance to women variously identified as women of colour, black women,
third-world women, indigenous women, or women from ethnic minorities.
The construct of false universalism which is meant to warn against femi-
nist complicity with Western imperialism is too confused to be useful. The
three categories of gender, race and class fail as an account of domination
because the categories remain both too distinct and separated, and focus on
categories of the oppressed rather than on the social structures which
oppress. Most importantly, the race debate lacks an account of the male
supremacist aspects of race and class and largely ignores the problematic of
male domination. But it is only the focusing of feminist attention on the
social construct of male monopolization of the human which promises to
address that sense so many women have of feeling excluded from much of
what is labelled feminism. It is only that political focus which can make
sense of feminism for women everywhere subjected in a multitude of dif-
ferent ways to the dehumanization inherent in the social order of male
supremacy.
If the debate has been, at the very least, unhelpful for feminist politics, it
has also been inadequate as an anti-racist politics for the same reason that it
is inadequate as a feminist politics, that is, its deletion of the question of
male domination.2 There is too little discussion of the male-dominated
nature of the human categories on whose behalf the anti-racist struggle is
waged, categories which contain only men unless women are explicitly
mentioned. The exclusion of black women or women of colour is blamed
on a white womens movement, when the original exclusion is a male
supremacist one, that is, the exclusion of women from every human cate-
gory because they are not men. In contrast, starting from the standpoint of
opposition to male domination allows the problem of womens exclusion
from all human categories to be addressed directly, in a way that focusing
exclusively on race does not. Texts authored in the name of feminism can
be complicit with this exclusion of women from categories defined in terms
of race, but it does not originate there. Rather, it originates with the male
supremacist ideology that only men count as human. Starting with that
same ideological construct in mind also promises to throw light on the male
supremacist aspects of racism and imperialism, connections between racism
and masculinity which are hinted at in some of the malestream anti-racist
and post-colonialist literature, but which remain at the level of suggestive
insights for lack of a feminist analysis. Ignoring the ideological constitution
of the male as the human norm means failing to identify the ways in which
racism and imperialism have mirrored the domination of women by men,
and the male supremacist nature of the anti-racist and post-colonialist strug-
gle itself.
Although raising these issues goes against the grain of most of what has
been said in the name of an anti-racist feminism, there is no benefit to be
gained, either for feminism or for the anti-racist struggle, in refusing to
address the problems because they are too hard, too confusing, or too
threatening. Ignoring the problems will not make them go away. Silence,
whether well-intentioned or guilt-stricken, leads nowhere except to political
paralysis. As it stands at the moment, the debate provides no ground from
which to start righting the wrongs which are supposedly at issue. A feminist
anti-racist politics must involve more than the simple acceptance and meek
reiteration of anything and everything said by or on behalf of women of
colour without challenge, argument or debate. Otherwise it does a grave
injustice both to feminisms own insights and political priorities, and to
those of the anti-racist struggle.
Exclusion
One of the chief complaints levelled against feminism is that it has excluded
women of colour. Roxana Ng, for example, said, Working in the womens
movement . . . women of colour . . . feel silenced from time to time. Our
unique experiences as women of colour are frequently overlooked in dis-
cussions about womens oppression (Ng, 1993: 197). Ng does not identify
any agents of this silencing and overlooking. She does not say what it might
be that leads to women of colour to feel this way, but given the prevalence
of the problem I have called academic feminism, women of colour are not
alone in feelings of alienation and irrelevance in relation to much of what is
published as feminism.
Alice Walker (1982) also gives some examples of this kind of exclusion.
The first involved Patricia Meyer Spacks book, The Female Imagination
(1976). Spacks herself acknowledged that her research was confined to writ-
ings by white, middle-class women, because, she said, she was reluctant to
theorize about experiences she hadnt had (1976: 5). But, as Walker pointed
out, this was an inadequate excuse for excluding writings by US black
women, since Spacks included the Bronts although she had no experience
of nineteenth-century Yorkshire either. But the problem with Spacks book
went further than this. Not only did she fail to include writings by black
women, she did so in the face of a golden opportunity to expand her own
female imagination. At the time she was writing the book, she was sharing
an office with Alice Walker who was teaching a course on Black women
writers, and who was prepared to share the fruits of her own research with
Spacks. Walkers second example involved Judy Chicagos exhibition, The
Dinner Party, which included only one plate referring to black women,
the one devoted to Sojourner Truth. Walkers objection was not just to the
tokenism of including only a single example. It was also directed to the kind
of example it was. Although all the other plates depicted stylized vaginas,
the Sojourner Truth plate did not. Instead, it depicted three faces, one weep-
ing, one screaming and one smiling. Walker commented that, although there
is something to be said for depicting women in terms of faces rather than
vaginas, that was not what the exhibition was about, and the faces were
nothing but tired old clichs about black women. Walkers third example
involved a brief exchange at an exhibition of women painters at the
Brooklyn museum. In response to one womans question about whether
there were any black women painters represented, another woman replied:
Its a womens exhibit!
These are the kinds of things for which a feminist politics needs to be alert,
and to resist. But it is not clear that couching the problem in terms of exclu-
sion is an adequate way of addressing it. It implies that the solution is inclu-
sion, and any attempt to include solely on the grounds of race threatens to
become tokenistic. This may be motivated by the best of intentions, to rec-
tify the structural inequality of exclusion and as a form of positive discrimi-
nation in favour of those who are automatically discriminated against unless
deliberate action is taken to include them. But because it involves sorting
women into racial categories, it threatens to relapse into the very racism it is
designed to combat. To the extent that it is only race which matters, at the
expense of any other criteria of judgement, it reinforces racial divisions
among women, and reaffirms white in the dominant position of being able
to afford magnanimity. I do not think there is any general solution to this
dilemma. The problem could be partly redressed, however, if those who have
the power to make decisions about inclusion and exclusion for example,
organizers of conferences, editors of anthologies, publishers kept feminism
in the forefront of the decision-making process, and refrained from making
race the sole criterion of judgement. But that involves being clear about what
feminism is in the first place.
Couching the problem in terms of exclusion (and the solution in terms of

inclusion) does tend to have the unfortunate consequence of dividing femi-
nists into them and us if decisions are to be made about who is to be
included on the grounds of race. The consequence is that they are once
again other than us, even to the extent that feminism becomes identified
as ours (although its errors and omissions are deplored). Marilyn Lake, for
example, tells us that there is currently a fifth and final phase of feminism
which she calls post-colonial feminism. She says that indigenous women
and women of non-Anglo backgrounds have powerfully challenged what
she sees as the basic assumption that has traditionally informed feminism,
the assumption that the category women is a meaningful one for theoreti-
cal and political purposes. As a consequence, she says, feminists have had
to fundamentally reconceptualize their relationships with these other
women and to reformulate feminism (Lake, 1998: 135). This implies both
that these other women are not feminists, and that only those who are
feminists have the power to reconceptualize and reformulate it (or not).
Even when the speaking position is reversed, when the other (in Lakes
terms) is us, the dichotomy still constructs a category of women who
define and monopolize what counts as feminism. Barbara Omolade, for
example, held women she designated as white, middle- and upper-class
responsible for preventing US black women from speaking:
The question of . . . why [US] black women have not joined the womens move-
ment in large numbers and have been generally hostile to feminism . . . has been
raised . . . by white feminists in order to develop better ways to recruit black
women into their movement. . . . In discussing this issue, there is a need to put
aside the narrow and limited confines of feminism as defined and dominated by
mainly middle- and upper-class white women to reach a broader analysis that
could include the experiences of all women under white male domination. . . .
white feminists . . . have objectively excluded [women of color] from equal par-
ticipation in the womens movement. . . . the racism of white women will not
allow them to give us the right to speak on our own behalf. (Omolade, 1985:
247, 256)
Omolade herself admitted that white feminists had at least attempted to

recruit black women. Perhaps those attempts at recruitment were attempts
to reach a broader analysis and include women of colour within feminism.
In the absence of any account of what those methods of recruitment were,
we cannot know how or why they failed. But putting it in terms of recruit-
ment attributes an unrealistic level of power to those middle- and upper-
class white women. It implies that these women have the power to
monopolize feminism as their own private property, to invite other women
in or refuse them admission. It says that feminism belongs to one particular
category of women to the exclusion of women who do not belong to that
category. It also implies that feminism is some kind of scarce resource
or commodity which can be monopolized by particular groups of women at
the expense of other women. It characterizes those who are not white as
supplicants who can only demand concessions, and who have no power to
create feminism themselves because feminism belongs to someone else and
hence is something other than their own conviction. But that cannot be so.
Perhaps what she was talking about was access to resources like academic
credibility, respectability and employment, publishing, invitations to speak,
etc. And it is true that not all feminists, not even all feminists who want to
write, speak and publish, have access to these resources. But if this was her
point, it was not entirely accurate. Even at the time she was writing (1980),
US black women (the we of her text) had been writing and publishing
within feminism for at least ten years (for example, Beal, 1970; Black
Womens Liberation Group, 1970; Kennedy, 1970; Norton, 1970; Ware,
1970) and presumably they were doing so out of their own feminist insights.
Without the unifying practice of struggling against male domination,
feminism becomes simply a question of women who have nothing in
common to the extent that not all women share all forms of oppression. bell
hooks, for example, defines feminism as the struggle to end sexist oppres-
sion (hooks, 1984). The term sexist oppression does not refer to the social
system of male domination and hence focus attention on the sex whose
interests are maintained by sexist oppression, the sex which benefits from
permission to oppress women. Rather, the sex referred to by hooks con-
cept of sexist oppression is the female sex. The concept refers to any
oppression suffered by women:
By repudiating the popular notion that the focus of feminist movement should
be social equality of the sexes and emphasizing eradicating the cultural basis of
group oppression, our own analysis would require an exploration of all aspects
of womens political reality. This would mean that race and class oppression
would be recognized as feminist issues with as much relevance as sexism.
When feminism is defined in such a way that it calls attention to the diversity
of womens social and political reality, it centralizes the experiences of all
women, especially the women whose social conditions have been least written
about, studied, or changed by political movements. (hooks, 1984: 25)
But this involves an unacknowledged contradiction. It abolishes the distinc-

tions between sex, race and class which hooks herself wants to maintain. She
defines sex, race and class only in terms of oppression suffered by women,
and yet she wants to maintain that they are distinct forms of oppression
because not all women are subjected to all three. She frequently refers to
white bourgeois women who not only do not suffer race and class oppres-
sion, but who oppress other women on those very grounds. While white
bourgeois women are subjected to sexism, in the case of race and class
oppression they are themselves the oppressors, according to hooks. But not
only does the concept of sexist oppression as hooks defines it have unfor-
tunate consequences for feminist politics because it locates hierarchies of
oppression and domination only among women, its contradictory nature
makes it inadequate for any other form of politics as well. It cannot be used
to designate the form of oppression peculiar to women because it refers to
different forms of oppression among women; and it cannot be used to

designate those different forms, such as race, because it does not name them.
Naming feminisms chief antagonist as sexist oppression would be a move
in the right direction, if the referent of this form of oppression were con-
fined to sex, and if the sex which is dominant were clearly identified. But
it merely confuses the issue to include race and class under the heading of
sexism.
By confining her analysis of domination to race and class hierarchies
among women, hooks argues that the primary, if not the only, problem faced
by US black feminists and by feminists belonging to minority cultures is the
racism of white, middle-class feminists, and that male domination is not a
problem in US minority cultures. She does recognize some manifestations of
male domination within what she refers to as lower class and poor groups,
particularly those who are non-white. She refers to the relative privilege of
the men of those groups in comparison with the women, and to exagger-
ated expressions of male chauvinism on the part of black men. But she
attributes those exaggerated expressions to the males sense of himself as
powerless and ineffectual in relation to ruling male groups, rather than an
expression of an overall privileged social status (hooks, 1984: 18). While
this is certainly true, it also raises questions about black mens complicity
with the meanings and values of masculinity. She does not ask why these
men should take out their rage and frustration (if that is the import of the
phrase exaggerated expressions) on women who are even more powerless
than the men themselves, and who are certainly not responsible for the
mens powerlessness.
In hooks view, identifying the oppressor as either men or male domina-
tion is simplistic and individualistic. It might indeed be simplistic to assert
no more than that men are the enemy, since women too can despise
women, treat women with contempt, and uphold the male as the human
norm. But challenging male supremacy and the ideology of sexism is no
more individualistic (hooks, 1984: 25) than challenging racism or capital-
ism. This refusal to name male domination rules out the possibility of ask-
ing questions about the complicity of black men with the meanings and
values of male supremacy, a complicity which works to the disadvantage of
women, including black women. And it confines feminism to struggles
between women, struggles which are irresolvable to the extent that they are
identified in terms of a personal characteristic, namely white, which is not
moral and political because no one can do anything to change it. This does
not mean that racism is irrelevant to the feminist struggle. On the contrary,
pursuing the feminist aim of a human status for women at no ones expense
requires a constant readiness on the part of all feminists to refuse to be
implicated in racist meanings and values. But that cannot happen unless it is
possible to identify what counts as racism and what does not.
The dichotomous dividing of women into white and other fails to
throw any light on this question. Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis, for example,
designate something they call the White womens movement which, they
say, has had its own explicit form of racism in the way it has given high
priority to certain aspects of struggles and neglected others, and it has often
been blind and ignorant about the conditions of [US] Black womens lives
(Joseph and Lewis, 1981: 4). They do not identify this White womens
movement any further. They do not tell us which struggles have been given
priority in which feminist writings or practices, nor which aspects have been
neglected. Instead, they go on to tell us that the movement was bound to
emphasize some things and ignore others, because it was started by women
who experienced specific White realities. But this is by no means self-
evident. If we look at the issues raised by feminism rape and other forms
of male violence, for example, or womens access to a living wage, or con-
trol over our own reproductive capacities, or freedom from male imposition
and constraint it is not at all obvious that these are only White realities.
Neither do we know whether feminism was started by white women, or
even if the idea of feminism being started by anyone makes any sense,
given the long and varied history of womens resistance to male power, a
history which has not always been written down, but which must have
existed because male domination is nowhere absolute.
But the authors do not address any of these questions. Once they have
labelled feminism, even in part, as the white womens movement, its
racism appears as a kind of logical necessity. On this account, the white
womens movement was inevitably and inescapably racist because it was
white. The authors do acknowledge that womens liberation did and does
touch on questions which in different ways affect all womens lives and
mens lives too (emphasis in the original), that is, that womens liberation
is not only white. But if it is not only white, then its supposed racism can-
not be the result of being concerned only with white women. There must
be other reasons why feminism, or the white aspects of it, is racist. But
the authors do not give us any other reasons, or at least, no other reason
which makes any sense. They do give us one other reason, and that is that
the movement did not begin with women who had some all-encompassing
political and historical knowledge (p. 4). But in that case, they are blaming
feminism, or that aspect of it they designate the White womens move-
ment, for not doing the impossible, for not having some all-encompassing
political and historical knowledge.
It cannot be the case that racism is nothing but an aspect of being white.3
In the first place, racism is a moral issue. It involves attitudes and behaviours
about which people have choices. It is possible to refuse to be implicated in
racism, and those who are complicit with racism can be held responsible.
And in the second place, racism is a manifestation of the social system of
racial supremacy which purveys white as the criterion of human status. As
such, its meanings and values insidiously influence the choices, decisions
and world views, not only of those who qualify for the benefits and privi-
leges of being white, but also of those it most oppresses. As a consequence,
it cannot be assumed that the social system of white supremacy has no influ-
ence on those who are not white. That is not to say that negative attitudes
towards whites on the part of, say, Aboriginal people are racist, even when
those attitudes explicitly refer to race. Because the system of domination is
white supremacy, blacks cannot be racist towards whites. In white suprema-
cist terms, white is always the reference point of highest value against
which other racial groups are measured and found wanting, and it occupies
that supreme position by virtue of being not a race at all, but a signifier of
the universal human. But because white supremacy is a social system of
meanings and values, complicity can be found even among those most
oppressed by the system. Like any system of domination, it operates through
the inculcation of self-hatred and self-depreciation among the oppressed, as
well as through blatant imposition.
For example, in her study of the writings of a number of US Afro-
American women, Mary Helen Washington discussed what she had found
was a persistent and revealing theme in the lives and literature of Black
women. She called this theme the intimidation of color. By this she meant
the harsh judgements made, sometimes by black women about themselves,
sometimes by both women and men about other black women, judgements
which made invidious comparisons between black skin and Afro hair on the
one hand, and white standards of beauty on the other. She quoted from the
Introduction to a volume of short stories by Afro-American women in which
the author wrote: In almost every novel or autobiography written by a
black woman, there is at least one incident in which the dark-skinned girl
wishes to be either white or light-skinned with good hair (Washington,
1982: 210). Michele Wallace provides another example. She tells us what
happened when, at the age of 13, she went to school one day with her hair
openly displayed in an Afro, instead of being hidden in braids disguised in a
long flowing scarf. She said that black men on street corners began to
whoop and holler at her. When she asked someone why, she was told:
They think youre a whore, sugar (Wallace, 1982: 56). This experience
of Wallace illustrates the intertwining of white supremacy with male
supremacy. The black men, debarred from fully human status themselves by
the system of white supremacy, could still embrace the values of that system
by judging black women according to male supremacist criteria. Such atti-
tudes are not strictly speaking racist, since racism involves attitudes and
behaviours on the part of members of the dominant group imposed on those
judged inferior. The point at issue here is that they are not separate from
racism, they too are part of the social system of white supremacy which
needs to be challenged by a feminism committed to womens interests, as
indeed they have been, particularly in the writings of US Afro-American
women.
The solution to the problem of a self-styled feminism which is either
incomprehensible or actively hostile to what many of us know as feminism,
lies in feminists taking responsibility for feminism, for its significance for
and relevance to our own lives, for what we will accept as feminism and
what we will not, for contesting and debating its meaning, for continuing to
struggle for access to resources. Feminism is never located somewhere else
apart from the speakers own position. It is not something other than the
speakers own political engagement. It is not the prerogative of any particu-
lar category of women with the power to invite or exclude other women. It
is a political and moral struggle available to anyone. If a woman of colour
engages in that struggle, then that is where feminism is, wherever else it may
be as well. As Alice Walker put it:
There was never a time when Our Mother [i.e., herself] thought, when someone
spoke of the womens movement, that this referred only to the womens move-
ment in America. When she thought of women moving, she automatically
thought of women all over the world. She recognized that to contemplate the
womens movement in isolation from the rest of the world would be given the
racism, sexism, elitism, and ignorance of so many American feminists extremely
defeating to solidarity among women as well as depressing to the most opti-
mistic spirit. Our Mother had travelled and had every reason to understand that
womens freedom was an idea whose time had come, and that it was an idea
sweeping the world. (Walker, 1982: 41)
Irrelevance
Another objection which has been raised against feminism in the context of
the race debate is that it is irrelevant to the lives of women subjected to
racial oppression. At the beginning of this second wave of feminism in
Australia, there were many Aboriginal women who expressed this view.4
The Aboriginal women at the Women and Politics conference in Canberra
in 1975 did not see themselves as feminists, but located their political prio-
rities with the struggles of Aboriginal people. They regarded the oppression
of Aboriginal people by white society as the most urgent problem, and the
Aboriginal struggle as far more important than what they perceived to be
the comparatively trivial concerns of women they saw as more privileged
than themselves. They also saw themselves as less in need of feminism than
white women, because Aboriginal culture allowed women more equality
than white culture did, because Aboriginal women were already in the fore-
front of the movement for Aboriginal self-determination, and because
Aboriginal women had always had supportive networks among themselves
(Aboriginal and Islander Women, 1975a, 1975b).
This stance on the part of Aboriginal women is not surprising, based as it
was on a well-founded suspicion on the part of Aboriginal women of any-
thing seen to emanate from white Australia. But the seeming antagonisms
between Aboriginal politics and feminist politics were due to a number of
misinterpretations. Feminism was often trivialized by Aboriginal women
activists, as mak[ing] men do the washing up (Grimshaw, 1981: 88), as
chatter . . . about sexual oppression and the competitive orgasm (Sykes,
1975: 318), as a struggle for a more equal distribution of power between
the white sexes (Sykes, 1984: 66), as the opposition to male chauvinism
and as an extremely anti-male ideology (Venceremos Brigade, 1975).
Another common misinterpretation concerned the perception of feminism
in terms of a white womens movement consisting of organized groups.

Since Aboriginal women refused to join these groups, they interpreted this
as a refusal to join feminism. But the refusal of Aboriginal women activists
to join groups organized by white women did not mean that feminism was
irrelevant to Aboriginal women (although that was the way some of them
saw it). Given that feminism is a struggle on the part of women for their
own rights, self-respect and human dignity, the struggles of Aboriginal
women on their own behalf is itself a feminist struggle.
Another misinterpretation was to see feminism as responsible for antago-
nisms between women and men. Hilary Saunders said: we can only hope to
achieve [self-determination] as one people not a race of men, nor a race of
women but of black People United (Saunders, 1975). Vi Stanton said: I
cant get interested in womens liberation. To me, as an Aboriginal, its not
relevant, for the simple reason that our whole people have to be liberated.
I dont consider that we split forces here, between women and men (quoted
in Grimshaw, 1981: 87). Eve Fesl commented: One aspect that sets our
womens groups apart from most non-Aboriginal womens groups is that we
work along with, and stand as partners beside, our men we do not as a
whole oppose men per se. (It seems to some of us that in Euro-Australian
womens groups there is often an element of man-hatred) (Fesl, 1984: 114;
see also Huggins, 1994). This argument was reiterated by a group of
Aboriginal women more recently. We continually find, they said, we are
being jockeyed into the position of fighting and separating from our men
and we will not. We are women and men together who have suffered grave
injustices by the white invaders. We have all suffered (Huggins et al., 1991:
506). This objection has also been raised by other women engaged in anti-
racist and anti-imperialist struggles, who have rejected feminism on the
grounds that they need to work alongside their men in struggling to liberate
all their people.
But it is not feminism which is responsible for antagonisms between the
sexes. Rather, those antagonisms are the result of the male violence against
and contempt for women which feminism is struggling against. That this is
so even within Aboriginal communities, has become increasingly apparent
(Atkinson, 1990a, 1990b, 1990c; Bell, 1991a, 1991b; Bell and Nelson,
1989; Bligh, 1983; Langton, 1989; Mosey, 1994; Queensland Domestic
Violence Task Force, 1988; Sculthorpe, 1990). To the extent that there are
antagonisms between Aboriginal women and men, those antagonisms are
not a consequence of feminism, but of the behaviour of men. Aboriginal
men do not refrain from violence towards women and children just because
they are Aboriginal. While it is true that Aboriginal people as a whole have
been subjected to genocidal policies, and it is also true that Aboriginal
women and men work together in their struggle against a common oppres-
sion, yet Aboriginal women, like women everywhere, suffer at the hands of
men, and not only men of the dominant classes. Within Aboriginal commu-
nities, as elsewhere, the interests of women and men can come into conflict.
For example, Aboriginal women have been denied legal representation by
the Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) in cases of domestic violence where their
partners are also Aboriginal. Because of its policy of not acting in any case
against an Aboriginal person, the ALS will not represent Aboriginal women
who charge Aboriginal men with violence (Hole, 1994).
Struggling against male domination is antagonistic to men only to the
extent that men are committed to male domination. The feminist practice
of excluding men from women-only groups, events and activities was
sometimes perceived by Aboriginal women as man-hating (for example,
Fesl, 1984: 110). But it is no more than a strategic decision to provide for
women some space, always temporary and sometimes contested, which
men cannot dominate because they are not present. Provision of women-
only occasions, spaces and support networks was part of many traditional
Aboriginal societies, and continues among Aboriginal people today (Bell,
1983, 1987; Hamilton, 1981).
The political struggles of Aboriginal women for their own identity and
dignity as women in solidarity with each other, bring Aboriginal women into
conflict with Aboriginal men only if Aboriginal men are committed to the
meanings and values of male domination, only if Aboriginal men, too, are
violent towards women, and collude with male contempt for the female. In
opposing the racism of white Australia, Aboriginal women are also oppos-
ing male supremacy, because the colonization of Australia, and what was
done to Aboriginal people by the European settlers, was male supremacist
as well as white supremacist. Aboriginal women were not raped by white
women. Neither were the massacres of Aboriginal people perpetrated by
women. That does not mean that European women were innocent of
racism. They may have been complicit with the actions of the male coloni-
zers. Many white women exploited the labour of Aboriginal women and
girls as unpaid domestic servants (Tucker, 1977; Ward, 1987), although it is
as well to remember that the chief beneficiaries of the domestic labour of
Aboriginal women were white men, and that the households were managed
for the ease and comfort of the husbands, sons, fathers and brothers of the
white mistresses. European women may have blamed Aboriginal women for
the sexual misbehaviour of white men; they may have condoned, excused or
justified the massacres. But whether they protested or not, women have
never had the social power necessary to colonize and subdue people. The
European women involved in the colonization of Australia were mostly
wives, prostitutes and servants, that is, under male control.
The male supremacist nature of the colonization of Australia appears not
to have been recognized by some of the participants in the debate. For exam-
ple, Bobbi Sykes all too brief history of black women in Australia (1975),
is a history of the rape of Aboriginal women by white men. This issue of rape,
which is so clearly of concern to all women, was used by Sykes to argue for
the irrelevance of feminism to Aboriginal women. She was able to do this,
firstly by ignoring the inherently male supremacist nature of rape, and defin-
ing it instead as an aspect of racism, and secondly by characterizing feminism
as white womens groups which Aboriginal women refused to join. But the
feminism of Aboriginal women is not dependent on their membership of

groups organized by white women, whether or not Aboriginal women
choose to characterize their political commitment as feminist (and some do,
at least for some purposes).
Another example of the male supremacist nature of the European colo-
nization of Australia concerns the differential effect of colonization on the
lives of Aboriginal women and men. Both sexes suffered under European
colonization. But Aboriginal women, like the women of all invaded or colo-
nized peoples, were subjected to the extra burden of sexual exploitation and
violence (Grimshaw, 1981: 90). Moreover, to the extent that the European
colonizers dealt with Aboriginal people as human beings, they dealt only
with Aboriginal men, defining only men as breadwinners, paid workers,
informants, cultural experts and owners of the land. This European com-
mitment to the ideology of the male as the human norm undermined the
economic arrangements of traditional Aboriginal societies whereby the sur-
vival of everyone depended on the food-providing activities of Aboriginal
women. It also obliterated womens cultural knowledge, spiritual expertise
and relationship to the land. To the extent that the domination of European
culture was successful (and it has not always been), Aboriginal women lost
a great deal of the independence they had within traditional societies
(Hamilton, 1975, 1981).
And yet, looked at in another way, the disruptive effect of colonization on
Aboriginal culture has been more demoralizing for men than for women. The
Queensland Domestic Violence Task Force report partly located the causes of
the high level of domestic violence in Aboriginal and Islander communities
in the breakdown of traditional culture. The report pointed out that
Aboriginal mens roles have been seriously undermined as a result of
European settlement. The attempts by various authorities to manage the
so-called Aboriginal problem , and the murder and maltreatment of
Aboriginal persons, the report commented, has meant that Aboriginal mens
opportunities for mastery and positive achievement in the new culture have
not been effectively realized. The report went on to say that Aboriginal
women do not appear to have suffered such dramatic changes in their roles,
and attributed this to their ongoing role as child bearers and rearers. They
have had to cope for the sake of their children. The report quoted from a
submission to the task force, arguing that the traditional role of men in
Aboriginal society has been eroded with the result . . . [that] in a lot of cases
the men [use] violence on the women folk to re-assert their authority
(Queensland Domestic Violence Task Force, 1988: 2589). Patricia Grimshaw
also suggested that men of a colonized culture experience greater shock and
disruption than women do, because the men have more to lose. She said that,
because men are the religious and political leaders, male identity is more
closely tied up with their culture than is female identity, and hence men
suffer greater dislocation when their culture is threatened. Women at least
have some continuity in their responsibilities for children and in their female
support networks (Grimshaw, 1981: 90).
But there are problems with this kind of account. There are indications
from the work of female anthropologists that this supposed cultural leader-
ship of men is a construct of the male supremacist nature of colonization.
Given the important part played by women in the cultural life of the people
in traditional Aboriginal societies, it is not at all clear that men were the
spiritual leaders in traditional societies (leaving aside the question of what
might count as a leader in those societies). Both sexes had spiritual respon-
sibilities. Sometimes these were joint responsibilities, but sometimes they
were so separate and distinct that men were not permitted knowledge of
womens rites, and vice versa. As men, whether as anthropologists, govern-
ment officials or curious individuals, the colonizers would not be informed
of womens business, and hence it would appear that the spiritual life of
the people was largely mens business. Although I would agree that there
is a sense in which men are more demoralized by the destructive effects of
colonization than women, I would suggest that that is yet another conse-
quence of the male supremacist values of the dominant culture, which
promises colonized men a human status and deprives them of it at one and
the same time. They are human because they are men, but they are also
less than human because they are not members of the dominant race. It is
in this sense that Aboriginal men have more to lose than Aboriginal women,
not in the sense that they are deprived of something they once had, but in
the sense of a savage double-bind which women escape because they are not
given the promise of human status in the first place. The colonizer is
unlikely to grant to the women of what he sees as an inferior race what he
does not allow to the women of his own race.
Sometimes the relevance of feminism has been acknowledged by Aboriginal
women. For example, Hilary Saunders said: Womens Liberation has played
a part in bringing about a certain form of awareness in Black women. She
went on to qualify that statement by saying that Aboriginal women could
not afford to let that awareness go too far because of the injustices suffered
by Aboriginal people as a whole. But she did point out that Aboriginal
women needed to struggle against attempts by Aboriginal men to protect
them, thereby placing Aboriginal women in a subservient role and denying
them the right to speak and to take up positions of leadership (Saunders,
1975). But often Aboriginal women activists spoke as though there were no
common meeting ground between Aboriginal women and white women, as
though the only men who ever caused women any trouble were white men,
as though Aboriginal men were only comrades, kin and fellow sufferers
in oppression, and never raped, bashed or molested women and children.
The motive behind the silence about Aboriginal male violence against
women and children (and each other and themselves) is understandable. No
one committed to the interests of Aboriginal people wants to provide
ammunition for racists. But the silence has been lethal for Aboriginal
women (Queensland Domestic Violence Task Force, 1988). As Diane Bell
put it:
by framing violence as a racial problem (i.e., it is Whites oppressing Blacks),

women are rendered mute. . . . It is helpful to ask the question feminists asked
when scrutinising the violence hidden in the home: In whose interests is silence
maintained? Under what conditions may women be able to put their safety and
that of their children above the needs of the men who beat and rape them? . . .
the need to work from within the race construct has constrained findings that
might empower women. (Bell, 1991a: 389)
It has been argued with some justification that manifestations of male

dominance, including the level of male violence, within present-day
Aboriginal communities is a consequence of European colonization, that
traditional Aboriginal societies allowed women far more autonomy, inde-
pendence and influence, and that that female autonomy has been eroded by
the cultural imperialism of white Australia. There is a great deal of evidence
to support that argument (Bell, 1983, 1987; Grimshaw, 1981; Hamilton,
1975, 1981). But traditional Aboriginal society no longer exists uninflu-
enced by European imperialism. Many Aboriginal people are generations
away from traditional society. Even among the desert people who have
retained their languages, spiritual life and connections to the land despite
the depredations of European settlement, government, policies and prac-
tices, those very depredations have irrevocably changed Aboriginal society.
The worst evils of male dominance may indeed have been imposed on
Aboriginal people by European imperialism. But that makes feminism, and
its championing of the cause of women, more relevant to Aboriginal
women, not less. As Aboriginal activist Marcia Langton has pointed out:
without the concerted effort of feminists to raise the issue of domestic violence
over the past two or more decades, Aboriginal women would face a grim
future. . . . In my view, the determining character of the imbalance in gender
relationships is the ability of men to use force, in the last analysis, to preserve
male dominance in ideology, in structures and in relationships. (Langton, 1989)
Hence, feminism is relevant to Aboriginal women, because Aboriginal women,

like women everywhere, suffer under the regime which is male domination.
Denying Male Domination

The chief problem with much of the race debate within feminism is the
denial of the existence of male supremacy. Sometimes this denial is explicit.
Hazel V. Carby, for example, uses the racist oppression of black men as an
argument against feminism. She argues that the concept of patriarchy
should be abandoned by feminism because black men are subordinated to
white men. This point is reiterated a number of times throughout the paper,
for example, Racism ensures that black men do not have the same relations
to patriarchal / capitalist hierarchies as white men (Carby, 1982: 213). But
this is not an argument against feminism. That some men are oppressed
by other men is a consequence of the male supremacist regime of power
challenged by feminism, and not a construct of feminism itself. Carbys

objections rest on her assumption that the feminist concept of patriarchy
means that all men are equal, and that, since all men are not equal, the term
should be dropped from the feminist repertoire because it makes false, and
racist, assumptions about black men. But feminism has never argued that all
men are equal.
Chandra Mohanty also objects to any use of the term patriarchy. There
is, she says, no universal patriarchal framework . . . unless one posits an
international male conspiracy or a monolithic, ahistorical power hierarchy
(Mohanty, 1988: 63). She goes on to acknowledge the existence of a par-
ticular world balance of power, which she characterizes (quoting Anouar
Abdel-Malek) as including: the military-industrial complex and the hege-
monic cultural centers of the West . . . monopoly and finance capital . . . the
scientific and technological revolution and the second industrial revolution
itself (p. 63). That this world balance of power may itself be an inter-
national patriarchal framework, consisting of the concentration of the
worlds wealth in the hands of a few men, in the interests of their own
power and prestige and at the expense of the majority of people, is not a
connection Mohanty makes.
Denying the existence of male domination is central to her task of expos-
ing the ways in which some examples of Western feminist writing on
women in the third world are, as she sees it, complicit with this world bal-
ance of power. These writings, she argues, demonstrate their complicity
with the colonization of women in the third world through the production
of the Third World Woman as a singular monolithic subject, a discursive
construct which results in the suppression . . . of the heterogeneity of the
subject(s) in question (p. 61). There is certainly something like this involved
in the defining of women only in terms of race along a white / non-white
axis. But Mohanty is not talking about this. Instead, what she dismisses as
appropriating and colonizing are writings which explicitly identify male
domination.
One of the strategies she uses to finesse questions about male domination
involves exaggerated terminology like universal, conspiracy, monolithic
and ahistorical. Such language functions to stop any discussion before it
starts. It supposedly shows the absurdity of the concept of male domination
without actually providing any argument or evidence against it. The naming
of male domination is characterized as a process of homogenization and
systematization of the oppression of women in the third world, and as an
exercise of power over third-world women on the part of much recent
Western feminist discourse (p. 63). But she writes as though third-world
women were not in fact oppressed by male violence, colonialism, economic
development, etc., as though they were not powerless in the face of parti-
cular socio-economic systems, as though the only problem is that Western
feminist discourse says they are: in these texts . . . women are defined
consistently as the victims of male control (p. 67 her emphasis). She
clearly means this as a criticism of these texts, the implication being that
third-world women are not victims of male control, but are merely portrayed
as such by Western feminism.
This strategy draws distinctions which are terminological rather than sub-
stantive, since they are distinctions between something described in neutral
language and something described pejoratively. For example, in her criticism
of Fran Hoskens work on genital mutilation, she acknowledges that it
is true that the potential of male violence against women circumscribes
and elucidates their social position to a certain extent. But, she goes on to
say, defining women as archetypal victims freezes them into objects-
who-defend-themselves, men into subjects-who-perpetrate-violence, and
(every) society into powerless (read: women) and powerful (read: men)
groups of people (p. 67). The difference in emotional tone between these
two statements points to another difference between them. In the second
statement, men are named as the perpetrators of violence against women,
whereas in the first they are not. Male violence against women is only
potential; it not only circumscribes, it also elucidates (whatever that
might mean in this context); and it does not even circumscribe women, but
only their social position, and only that to a certain extent. The implica-
tion is that, if the responsibility of men for their violence against women is
to be named, it must at the same time be rendered non-existent by being
exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Hence, Mohantys denial of male
domination also involves denying mens responsibility in the maintenance of
womens subordination.
Mohanty insists that writings on third-world women must confine them-
selves to empirical studies of gender differences (p. 77), which she con-
trasts with universalistic, ahistorical categories (p. 78). She says that she is
not arguing against generalization, but against those generalizations which
are not careful, historically specific and complex (p. 77). The difference
appears to be whether or not men are identified as the beneficiaries or per-
petrators of womens subordination. The single Western feminist text
which she views favourably does not mention men, or at least not in the
quoted excerpt. The women lace-makers discussed in this text are exploited
by a hegemonic . . . world market, a production system, a culturally speci-
fic mode of patriarchal organization, a housewife ideology, etc., but not
by men it would seem (p. 74).5 In contrast, in a criticism of a book on
women in Africa, Mohanty says that she does not object to the use of uni-
versal groupings for descriptive purposes, such as the phrase all the women
of Africa. The problem, she says, is that descriptive gender differences are
transformed into the division between men and women. She clarifies the
nature of this division in the next sentence: Women are constituted as a
group via dependency relationships vis-a-vis men, who are implicitly held
responsible for these relationships (p. 68). The generalization she objects
to here is holding men responsible. (And once again it appears that such
divisions are solely a construct of Western feminist discourses and that
none exist in reality.) The distinction Mohanty herself supposedly draws
between those generalizations of which she approves, and those of which
she disapproves, is one between generalizations confined to a single cultural

context, such as the lace-makers of Narsapur, India, and generalizations
across cultures, for example, all the women of Africa, or third-world
women. But it is only some cross-cultural generalizations she disagrees
with, that is, those involving men and male domination. Although she
couches the generalizations she disagrees with in terms of women all the
women of Africa, etc. in fact, she does not disagree with this generaliza-
tion until it is transformed into the division between men and women. She
is also quite happy with cross-cultural generalizations which are sufficiently
abstract, a hegemonic, exploitative world market, for example. It is indeed
unhelpful to couch the problem solely in the individualistic terminology of
men and women, rather than in terms of social systems of male domina-
tion. But to recommend silence on the question of male agency in defend-
ing their benefits and privileges at womens expense, often violently, is to
recommend political quiescence.
What Mohanty is criticizing in the texts she discusses, what she is inter-
preting as a form of Western domination, is any attempt to bring feminist
insights to bear on the situations of third-world women. In doing so, how-
ever, she abolishes the possibility of acknowledging, and hence struggling
against, any form of domination at all. It is not possible to give an account
of domination, however it is characterized, without identifying both its vic-
tims and its beneficiaries. To disqualify talk of victims is also to disqualify
talking about oppression. But there is also a sense in which to talk about
domination is not at all to talk about victims. Rather, it allows people the
opportunity to make decisions they would not otherwise have been able to
make, because seeing domination and the forms it takes provides people
with alternatives they would not otherwise have had. To prohibit discussion
of domination is to place a ban on alternative ways of seeing the world and
ones place in it. As well, to disqualify explanation and analysis is to dis-
qualify theory and politics, because both theory and politics are ways of
understanding systematic regularities. Forms of domination cannot be chal-
lenged unless those regularities are made explicit by a theory and a politics
which reaches beyond mere description. To demand that feminist accounts
restrict themselves to description is to demand that they abandon theory
and politics. It is a demand that they leave the status quo intact, and refrain
from challenging those regularities which already structure conditions as
oppressive. It is a demand which ensures a retreat from political engage-
ment. If male domination cannot even be acknowledged, wherever it is to
be found, however varied its subtle or brutal manifestations may be, it can-
not be challenged and opposed, and feminism ceases to exist.
Notes
1 As Virginia Woolf so elegantly put it, struggling with the same issue in the
British context: Our ideology is still so inveterately anthropocentric that it has been
necessary to coin this clumsy term educated mans daughter to describe the class
whose fathers have been educated at public schools and universities. Obviously, if the
term bourgeois fits her brother, it is grossly incorrect to use it of one who differs
so profoundly in the two prime characteristics of the bourgeoisie capital and envi-
ronment (Woolf, 1952: 265 n. 2).
2 There are exceptions (Lorde, 1978, 1979a; Wallace, 1990).
3 Racism does not always take the form of white supremacy, although it always
involves domination and subordination. The racism of Japanese society, for exam-
ple, is not directed against Koreans or the indigenous people, the Ainu, because they
are not white, but because they are not Japanese. Even in the West there are forms
of racism, such as anti-semitism, which are not white supremacist.
4 There were also Aboriginal women who were feminists, who had had harsh
personal experience of male violence and who were committed to feminism as the
struggle against it (Janne Ellen (Reid), personal communication, March 1995). Their
presence has been expunged from the record.
5 In fact, Maria Mies makes it quite clear that it is men who exploit the women
and benefit from their labour: [The] men may belong to different classes, but they
have in common that their own productive activity is based on the exploitation of
female labour, both of their own women as well as that of other women (Mies,
1982: 109).
8
What does it mean
to call feminism white
and middle-class?
T here do exist feminist texts which seem to obliterate the existence of

women of racial, ethnic and cultural minorities. This obliteration, at
least as it relates to US black women, is succinctly expressed in the title of
an anthology of writings on Black Womens Studies: All the Women Are
White, All the Blacks Are Men (Hull et al., 1982). Two papers by Catharine
Stimpson, dating from 1970 and 1971, and reprinted in 1988, exemplify
the problem. The first paper is an account of the political contradictions
faced by a white teacher teaching black literature. With the benefit of hind-
sight gained since the paper was first published, Stimpson herself recognizes
that this text excludes black women writers. It makes grievous, ironic errors.
Using the generic he, I write as if all black writers are male. This pronomial
reductiveness erases black women writers and their daunting, renewing texts
(Stimpson, 1988: xv). The paper was reprinted without amendment, how-
ever, and she did not comment on the second paper although it, too, tended
to erase the existence of black women. For example, towards the end of
the paper, Stimpson says: women [sic] use blacks to describe themselves.
She goes on to quote at some length from a womens liberation pamphlet
which draws the analogy between women and blacks no less than eleven
times: 1. Women, like black slaves, belong to a master. . . . 2. Women, like
black slaves, have a personal relationship to the men who are their masters.
3. Women, like blacks, get their identity and status from white men.
Stimpson admits to liking this pamphlet, although she eventually disagrees
with it not, however, because of its erasure of black women, but because
it is parasitic on black politics. That women have been excluded from the
category black, she does not appear to notice.
The argument sets up two separate and symmetrical categories, women
and blacks, which leave no place for those who live in both categories. This
is a consequence of ignoring the feminist insight that all human categories
are automatically male unless care is taken to focus attention on women.
The crucial error, for feminist purposes, of such arguments is their failure to
apply the feminist insight into the male supremacist constitution of the male
as the human norm. All human categories under male supremacist condi-
tions are male, unless specifically stated otherwise, or marked, to use a
W H I T E A N D M I D D L E - C L A S S ? 113
linguistic term (Spender, 1980: 1924). The category blacks, too, is male;
here also, male is the default option, the neutral referent which switches
in automatically, and which can be displaced only by adding extra qualifiers.
It may be that it is this kind of exclusion that black feminists are referring
to when they accuse feminism of being white, middle-class. But the error
in Stimpsons paper, as with all such arguments, is due to a failure of femi-
nist commitment, a failure to recognize the male supremacist implications
of using any term referring to a category of human individuals without
explicitly rectifying the exclusion of the female.
Elizabeth Spelman places a great deal of emphasis on this women and
other oppressed groups usage as evidence for the white, middle-class
nature of feminism (Spelman, 1988). She quite rightly points out that equat-
ing the social position of women with the social positions of other oppressed
groups, such as blacks, slaves, proletariat, ignores the existence of the
women of the other oppressed groups, women who are blacks or slaves or
exploited workers. If women are contrasted with other oppressed groups,
then the only women being referred to are privileged women who are not
members of other (than women) oppressed groups. But her argument
depends on how important the women and other oppressed groups analogy
is to feminism. She obviously regards this analogy as at least important, if not
central, to dominant Western feminist thought, since she gives it a great deal
of attention.
It is true that the early radical feminists sometimes referred to oppressed
groups other than women as though those groups contained no women.
For example, Ti-Grace Atkinson said: Women have been murdered by their
so-called function of childbearing exactly as the black people were mur-
dered by their function of color (and black women by both, although
Atkinson did not say so) (Atkinson, 1974: 5 her emphasis). But the ana-
logy has rarely been used by feminists, simply because it excludes categories
of women. As Robin Morgan put it at the beginning of this second wave
of feminism: It . . . seems obvious that half of all oppressed peoples,
black, brown, and otherwise, are women, and that I, as a not-starving white
American woman living in the very belly of the beast, must fight for those
sisters to survive before we can even talk together as oppressed women
(Morgan, 1970: xxxix her emphasis).
Far from being a vital component of feminist theory, as Spelman seems
to think, the parallel between women and other oppressed groups has
never been anything but an aside, an extra bit of special pleading. In the
early 1970s it was a reference to the political movements feminists had
been active in and were leaving behind because of those movements male
dominance the anti-Vietnam war protests, and anti-racist and civil rights
movements. It was an attempt to argue the case for womens oppression by
pointing out the similarities between the oppression of women and other
forms of oppression. It was also (and still is) a product of frustration. It is
usually used in the context of a stubborn refusal to see womens oppression.
Drawing a parallel between oppression on the grounds of sex and oppression
on the grounds of race is an attempt to make womens oppression more

visible. But the analogy is problematic for feminist purposes, because it
tends to undermine the feminist challenge to the male monopolization of
human status. Not only does it exclude women, that female exclusion is a
consequence of the male supremacist belief that all human categories are
only male. The analogy does seem to confine the referent of women to
women of the privileged race and class, that is, to women who are not
among the oppressed, as Spelman points out. But it also portrays oppressed
groups as only male, and in doing so colludes with the male supremacist
belief that only males matter.
bell hooks also criticized the analogy between women and blacks on
the grounds that it obliterates the existence of black women (hooks, 1981:
13844). As indeed it does. She attributed this to the racism of white
women who refused to find common cause with black women. But she
failed to see that the women and blacks usage obliterates black women, not
because they are not white, but because they are not men. All women have
a common interest in combating the automatic belief that only the male is
human. This common interest may or may not translate into practical poli-
tics. But failing to recognize manifestations of male domination will not
advance the cause of feminism.
Exactly what is involved in the charge that feminism is white and middle-
class is by no means clear. Audre Lorde, for example, criticized Mary Dalys
Gyn / Ecology on the grounds that it dismissed my heritage and the heritage
of all other noneuropean women and depicted those women only as
victims and preyers-upon each other (Lorde, 1979b: 678). Dalys book,
said Lorde, portrayed only white, western-european, judeo-christian . . .
goddess-images while ignoring images of powerful and divine women from
Africa. But this objection is beside the point because it rests on a misinter-
pretation of what Dalys book was about. Dalys purpose was not to present
a feminist mythology within which women could find images of female
strength and divinity, but rather to criticize and expose the ways in which
Western European patriarchal religion and mythology had co-opted and dis-
torted the goddess-worship which preceded it. On that interpretation,
Dalys confining of the discussion to Europe was intrinsic to her purpose.1
As well, Dalys discussion of goddesses did not portray them as figures of
female strength and divinity, since she saw them as already containing elements
of male supremacist distortion. For Daly they hardly provided unambiguous
role models for women to emulate or look up to, since they were already
characterizations of male supremacist purposes and values.
Daly did not, it is true, portray any black foremothers, black womens
heritage or images of noneuropean female strength and power. But nei-
ther did she portray any images of European female strength and power. It
has never been her purpose to provide historical examples of female
strength and power because, for her, history is invariably patriarchal. For
Daly, womens strength starts now, with radical feminism, and with
womens complete separation from patriarchal institutions, meanings and
values. Whatever objections might be raised against the possibility of that

project, it is in principle available to all women without exception.
Lordes second objection to Dalys text that it depicted women of other
cultures only as victims is one that can (and has been) levelled against femi-
nisms depiction of women in general. But how is it possible to speak about
the atrocities committed against women without talking about the victimiza-
tion of women? All women are victims of patriarchal practices (if that is the
way it must be interpreted). Besides, Daly did not confine her depiction of
womens victimization to other cultures most of the second part of her
book is devoted to Western Europe, to the witchcrazes and modern Western
medical practices. Moreover, Dalys critique was not primarily a depiction of
women at all, but an exposure of the workings of male supremacy. Women
are its chief (although not the only) victims because male supremacy thrives
at womens expense. But to demand that women not be portrayed as victims
is to demand that the critique of male supremacy cease.
Gyn / Ecology has, however, been subjected to other criticisms. Elly Bulkin
criticized Dalys selective quotation from two of the texts she used in her
research (Bulkin, 1991). Bulkin argued that Daly discussed the first of these
books, Katherine Mayos Mother India, published in 1927, only in
favourable terms, while ignoring its racism. Bulkin illustrated this racism
with excerpts from Mayos book. Mayo depicted the Indian in terms of
inertia, helplessness, lack of initiative and originality, lack of staying power
and of sustained loyalties, sterility of enthusiasm, weakness of life-vigor
itself . She also described Indian men as broken-nerved, low-spirited, petu-
lant ancients, in comparison with the Anglo-Saxon of the same age, who
is just coming into the full glory of manhood. She also said that Indians
would never be free of British rule because their hands are too weak, too
fluttering, to seize or hold the reins of government (Bulkin, 1991: 1256).
These descriptions are undoubtedly racist, and it is true that Daly did not
mention them in her discussion of Mayos text. But Dalys omission can be
defended, at least in part, in light of the reason why Mayo was so scathingly
contemptuous of Indian men. That reason was the entrenched practice
within the Indian higher castes of marrying off very young girls. Mayos
argument was that men who had been mothered by these children would
never be fit to rule. Her intemperate racist language was a consequence of
her horror at the cruelties which marital rape visited on girl children. She
was also outraged that widows were forced to throw themselves, or were
forcibly thrown, on to their husbands funeral pyres. The racism of her text
was directed towards men who treated women and girl children abominably.
While that does not excuse it her outrage could have been expressed in
other ways, and racism is also abominable it does make it more under-
standable. Her argument can also be criticized on other grounds, for exam-
ple, her implicit belief that men mothered by adult women are fit to rule;
her lack of awareness that high-caste male children were unlikely to have
been cared for by their child mothers, but by adult female servants; 2 and her
lack of awareness that the rape of female children is not confined to the
Indian subcontinent. None the less, what must not be forgotten in any
criticism of Mayos work is her exposure of what are atrocities by any
criterion. It must also not be forgotten that she was fighting in the interests
of women, for a world where such things as the mutilation and casual
murder of girl children and the enforced immolation of women would not
exist. The racism in Mayos text was directed towards the very men who
were responsible for the suffering. Challenging the racism would mean
defending the men who systematically raped and murdered women and
children. It is not uncommon in the feminist race debate, to find that chal-
lenging racism means defending the men of the subordinated race (for
example, Spelman, 1988), rather than black or third-world or indigenous
women whose interests are once again elided in favour of men. That Daly
refused or neglected to do this is not altogether to her discredit.
Bulkin does, however, make a more cogent point in relation to her dis-
cussion of another text cited by Daly.3 Daly used this text as a source of
information about the career of J. Marion Simms, known in the US at the
time of his death in 1883 as the father of gynecology. Daly quite rightly
points out that Simms was a brutal butcher who perpetrated the most
appalling tortures on women in the guise of science, and who was honoured
by the male medical establishment for doing so. But as Bulkin points out,
although Daly does acknowledge that Simms originally learned his vile trade
on the bodies of black female slaves, that acknowledgement is cursory. And
yet Barker-Benfields text describes Simms experiments on black women in
some detail, along with Simms own admission that he used black women,
some of whom he bought for the purpose, because as slaves they had no
power to refuse and no right of redress. If Dalys purpose was to expose the
worst excesses of male brutality towards women, her failure to present her
readers with an account of what Simms did to black women can be seen as
complicity with the racist belief that what happens to black women is unim-
portant. The same suspicion arises in relation to Dalys discussion of the
experimental use on women of contraceptive technology. She allows that
low-income and nonwhite women are victimized in a special way, but she
says no more about this, and immediately proceeds to discuss well-educated
(miseducated) upper-middle-class women. While her discussion is apt and
to the point, in failing to discuss what was done to black and third-world
women she once again passed up an opportunity to expose some of the most
chilling aspects of gynocide (Bulkin, 1991: 1267; Daly, 1978: 2257, 259).
Perhaps it is this kind of thing that Audre Lorde was alluding to in her criti-
cisms of Gyn / Ecology, but she did not say so.
False Universalism
One of the chief ways in which feminism is held to be white and middle-
class (and Western and imperialist) is through the charge of false univer-
salism. Linda Nicholson says, for example: From the late 1960s to the
mid-1980s, feminist theory exhibited a recurrent pattern: Its analyses
tended to reflect the viewpoints of white, middle-class women of North

America and Western Europe (Nicholson, 1990: 1). Along with Nancy
Fraser, she asserted that some modes of theorizing, which the authors iden-
tified as philosophy and some forms of feminist theory, are insufficiently
attentive to historical and cultural diversity, and they falsely universalize
features of the theorists own era, society, culture, class, sexual orientation,
and ethnic, or racial group (Fraser and Nicholson, 1990: 27). Arguments
like those of Shulamith Firestone were essentialist because they project
onto all women and men qualities which develop under historically specific
conditions (p. 28). Firestones appeal to biological differences between
women and men did not allow for the way these differences varied across
cultures and throughout history (Nicholson, 1990: 5), and hence falsely
universalized Western cultural values.
But although Nicholson is quite right to point out that Firestones
argument is wrong, she does so for the wrong reasons. It is true that, as
Nicholson says, childbirth is not the cause of womens oppression, as
Firestone argued it was. But what is wrong with Firestones argument is not
that she falsely universalizes childbirth as a biological difference between
the sexes it is, after all, universal. What is wrong about Firestones argu-
ment is wrong for any cultural context, including her own. She perceived
pregnancy and childbirth as inherently oppressive of women, and hence
could only recommend that they be abolished by technological means.4 She
did not see that their oppressiveness to women was a consequence of their
happening under conditions of male domination, and that they could be a
source of joy and excitement if women had control over the conditions
under which they got pregnant and gave birth. Hence, the problem with
Firestones argument was not that she made inappropriate generalizations
from her own culture to other cultures; the problem was that it was false for
her own culture as well. Childbirth is not inherently oppressive, even in the
West. And neither is womens lack of control over the conditions under
which they get pregnant and give birth peculiar to the West. Nor does the
issue of womens taking control over their own bodies and reproductive
capacities have relevance only for white, middle-class women.
Other examples Nicholson gives of theory that generalizes from the
experiences of Western, white, middle-class women involved attempts by
many feminist theorists to locate the cause of womens oppression, by
the postulation by many influential feminist anthropologists in the 1970s of a

cross-cultural domestic / public separation, . . . later appeals in the late 1970s and
early 1980s to womens labor, to womens sexuality, and to womens primary
responsibility for childbearing [sic does she mean childrearing? How can
women not have responsibility for childbearing?]. In all of these cases, aspects
of modern Western culture were postulated as present in all or most of human
history. (Nicholson, 1990: 56)
Nicholson does not tell us which aspects or forms of womens labor and
womens sexuality are Western, etc., and which are not. In the case of
womens labour, if she is referring to the domestic labour debate, it failed

to give an account of womens oppression, not because it was extrapolated
to other cultures, but because the Marxist concepts within which it was
couched could not be stretched to fit feminist concerns. Like Firestones
argument, it was false for its own cultural context, let alone any other. In
the case of womens sexuality, if she is referring to lesbianism, it is not in
fact confined to the West, even as a simple sexual preference. As a feminist
practice, it has relevance for women wherever they are subjected to male
sexual imposition, and that is not confined to the West either. As for the
domestic / public separation, even women who are not white or middle-
class have to struggle with the conflicting demands of paid work in the
public sphere and unpaid work in the domestic sphere, of dependence on a
male wage, or lack of access to one. And given the world-wide domination
of Western economic and cultural imperialism, criticism of Western values,
institutions and practices is not entirely irrelevant to the other cultures.
Once again, the problem with these postulations is not that they are pecu-
liar to modern Western culture, but that they are inadequate as explana-
tions for womens oppression even in the West unless they are situated
within the context of an exposure of male supremacy.
The lack of clarity starts with the term false universalism itself. It is
unclear whether it is an instance of redundancy if universalizing per se is
false, then it does not need to be named as such or whether it means
exactly what it says the qualifier false implies that there are some univer-
sals which are true. Given the feminist principle that feminism must be rele-
vant to all women, it might be assumed that it is the latter meaning which is
intended, that is, that there are some true universals at least as far as women
are concerned, although the particular universals under discussion are not
among them. But those who level the charge of false universalism do not
provide any instances of true ones, and they are dismissive of those they do
encounter (or believe they do). So it is more likely to mean that universaliz-
ing in itself is false, that is, that it cannot be done, that no statement in a uni-
versal form can possibly be true. In that case, the charge both accuses (some
forms of) feminism of universalizing and at the same time asserts its impos-
sibility. But if it is not possible to universalize, how can anyone be doing it?
If it is something which cannot be done, the question of whether it ought
not to be done does not arise. There is no point in disapproving of some-
thing which does not happen because it cannot. If universalism does not
exist, it is pointless to judge it as ethically wrong.
Empirical universals are indeed not possible, in the sense that no one can
ever be in a position to know every instance of anything (although it is rea-
sonable to allow that there are some human empirical universals that
everyone is born of woman, for example, and that everyone dies). But
theory and politics require empirical generalizations. And if no generaliza-
tion can be universally inclusive, neither can its limits be specified, because
to do so would require that very universal vision which is impossible. To the
extent that excluding something involves saying what it is that is being

excluded, it is included.
The confusions contained within the term false universalism carry over
into the feminist attempts to avoid it. Those attempts involve the require-
ment that what the feminist theorist says be confined to her own cultural
and historical context. At best, the requirement is nothing but a tick the
boxes exercise, delineating a set of social characteristics which say nothing
at all about the moral and political, and hence the feminist, stance of the
speaker. At worst, it involves a logical impossibility I cannot know what is
only mine unless I also know that it is not yours; but to do that I would have
to know what is yours, and that is just what I cannot know, according to the
requirement that I remain confined to what is mine. In order to draw the
boundaries, I need to know what is outside as well as what is inside; but if
I know what is outside, then it is already inside. It is true that I (or anyone
else) can speak only from within my own culture and experience. But to say
as much is to say nothing substantive, since it is unavoidable. No one can do
otherwise. It is not possible to speak from outside the only form of life one
knows. But in that case, it makes no sense to insist on remaining inside,
because without an outside there is no inside either.
There is a boundary between comprehension and incomprehension,
although it is not one that can be drawn in language. Across that boundary,
I could not hear what was said since I could not understand it. But once I
have understood it, there is no longer any boundary. That does not mean
that there are no longer any problems. There is the possibility of misunder-
standing (which is still a kind of understanding, a false one it is not the
same as incomprehension). It is still possible to disagree, to dispute or reject.
To understand is not necessarily to forgive, to tolerate or to accept. Neither
does understanding automatically bring equality, since it might arise out of
a framework which bolsters my own superiority at someone elses expense.
None the less, when I listen to what others say from their own different
locations (Lugones, 1987), it is incorporated into my own world. When I
engage with it, it becomes part of the way I situate myself in the world.
Whether that understanding reinforces relations of domination, or whether
it challenges them, is a separate issue which must be addressed with refer-
ence to the particular instance in question. It is not resolved by reciting a list
of social indicators.
For Fraser and Nicholson, philosophy is the primary site of false univer-
salism. Feminist writings are implicated only to the extent that those writ-
ings continue to cling to the canons of traditional Western philosophy.
Fraser and Nicholson argue that this complicity remains despite feminist
criticism exposing the contingent, partial, and historically situated charac-
ter of what has passed in the mainstream for necessary, universal, and ahis-
torical truths (Fraser and Nicholson, 1990: 26). But although the feminist
critique may have these implications, that is not primarily what it is about.
The problem with Western philosophy from a feminist standpoint is not
primarily that consists of particular and partial viewpoints masquerading as

timeless truth, but that it operates in male supremacist interests while defin-
ing itself as in the interests of all. Constructs of the universal human are
false, not because they are factually inaccurate or partial, but to the extent
that they are ideological, that is, to the extent that they purvey the interests
of domination as the interests of all, by constructing reality in such a way
that relations of ruling vanish from sight because they are the only reality
given meaning and value. The feminist task, then, is not to provide an alter-
native (womens) framework to set alongside, or replace, the existent con-
tingent, partial and historically situated (male) one. Feminisms task in
relation to the Western intellectual tradition is to evaluate whether or not,
and if so to what extent, frameworks owe allegiance to male supremacist
interests, meanings and values, and to challenge and oppose those frame-
works in the interests of a human status for all.
This is not the way Fraser and Nicholson characterize feminism, however.
Rather, because they pose the problem in terms of false universalism, all they
can recommend as a solution is attentiveness to a plethora of particular
oppressions. They see this as already exemplified in postmodern-feminist
theory. This framework, they assert, would replace unitary notions of
woman and feminine gender identity with plural and complexly constructed
conceptions of social identity, treating gender as one relevant strand among
others, attending also to class, race, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation
(Fraser and Nicholson, 1990: 345). But this limitless multiplication of
separate tasks is unnecessary if feminism is construed as the struggle against
male domination. If feminisms concern with women is a consequence of
that struggle, the question of feminine gender identity, whether unitary
or multiplicitous, does not arise. Or rather, it does not arise as a general
theoretical problem for feminism, although it certainly arises for each indi-
vidual feminist grappling with the problem of how to locate herself in rela-
tion to male supremacist relations of ruling. But that process cannot even
begin unless male supremacy is recognized in the first place.
As it currently stands, the false universalism problematic focuses on
the differences between women, instead of on womens common interest in
opposing male domination whatever its particular manifestations, and it
locates relations of domination primarily among women. It sets up a
dichotomy between those women who have the power to hear, those labelled
white and middle-class or Western, and those who have no obligation to
listen because they do not have the power to be heard, those identified as
black women, third-world women, women of colour, indigenous women.
The dichotomy depicts two antagonistic categories of women, with all the
duties and obligations on one side, and all the rights and entitlements on the
other. All it can recommend is magnanimity on the part of the former
towards the latter, while from the latter nothing is expected. It creates a
fantasized category of white and middle-class or Western women who are
portrayed as more powerful than women have ever been. It is an attribution
of power to women who, in the grand scheme of things, have relatively
little. Women do not have the power to universalize because women are not
even human in our own right, a state of affairs which feminism is centrally
concerned to address. Women can, and frequently do, support men in their
projects, embrace mens interests as their own, set aside, ignore, deny or
actively seek to undermine their own needs, and by so doing, acquire some
modicum of recognition and some small participation in the universal
human that man has made to suit his own interests. But no women anywhere
have the power to universalize in their own name. The most women can do
is reproduce male supremacist universals. If that is what is being done in the
name of feminism, then it certainly needs to be addressed. It is not, however,
addressed by the construct of false universalism, the nonsense of which
arises from construing universal as meaning all-inclusive as a matter of fact.
Since no content can be given to any claims about all the facts of human
existence, this is meaningless. Feminism does not need to try and confine
itself to one particular cultural context in order to avoid (empirical) univer-
salism. If universalism is not possible, nothing need be done to avoid it.
There has recently been some tentative re-thinking of universalism on
the part of those who had previously been opposed to accepting any such
notion (Benhabib, 1999). Seyla Benhabib says that there is a renewed
respect for the universal, largely because of the atrocities committed in
the name of particular ethnic, cultural and religious identities. Quoting
Naomi Schor, she instances the fact that Nazism was opposed to the
Enlightenment ideal of universalism , implying that there must be some-
thing positive in an ideal which was so antithetical to Nazi and fascist ideo-
logy. Schor is also quoted as saying that the ongoing ethnic cleansing
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, has if not revived universalism then called into
question the celebration of particularisms, at least in their regressive
ethnic form (Benhabib, 1999: pp. 1011). So a link is starting to be made
between the absence of any ideal of a common human condition and the
worst forms of inhumanity.
Benhabib distorts feminist history, however, when she attributes suspi-
cion of generalizations to the feminist movement of the 1980s across the
board. In a masterpiece of agent deletion, she asserts:
Every claim to generalization was suspected of hiding a claim to power on the

part of a specific group; every attempt to speak in the name of women was
countered by myriad differences of race, class, culture, and sexual orientation
that were said to divide women. The category woman itself became suspect;
feminist theorizing about woman or the female of the species was dubbed the
hegemonic discourse of white, middle-class, professional, heterosexual women.
We are still reeling from the many divisions and splinterings, the amoeba-like
splittings, of the womens movements. (Benhabib, 1999: p. 10 of 17)
Benhabib is quite right in her account of what happened, and in pointing out
that this has had deleterious consequences for feminist politics. But she is
wrong in her belief that these kinds of accusations emanated from the
womens movement as a whole. On the contrary, it is not the case that
feminists in general are only now starting to realize that an ethical insistence
on a common humanity is a basic feminist requirement. Some of us have
known it all along. The accusations were usually levelled by one or another
variety of academic feminism against radical feminisms insistence that
women had a common interest in combating male supremacy (Bell and
Klein, 1996). Benhabib may indeed have been led to rethink her rejection of
concepts of the universal human by her recognition that appeals to cultural
particularity can lead to gross abuses of human rights and dignity. But she
remains unaware of what was at stake for feminist politics in the ban on
universalism, that is, a denial of womens common interest in challenging
male supremacy and claiming a human status of our own.
The sense in which feminist theory is universal does not entail that femi-
nism is as a matter of fact all-inclusive, either of women or the human race,
but that it is open-ended and non-exclusionary. Feminism has a universal
relevance because it addresses itself to the human condition. It is an ethical
insistence on the human rights and dignity of women (and of men too to the
extent that they can divest themselves of their phallocratic interests). As
such, it is precisely non-empirical, since if women were already in fact recog-
nized as full members of the human race, there would be no need for femi-
nism. As Marx and Engels once pointed out, each new revolutionary class
speaks in the name of the universal human (Marx and Engels, 1974).
Unfortunately, with the exception of feminism, all revolutionary classes have
fought only for the humanity of men. None the less, if it is the case that
the oppressed, those deprived of human dignity and status under conditions
of domination, must appeal to a universal human in making claims for their
own humanity, then to demand that feminism dispense with universal claims
is to demand that feminism refrain from claiming a human status for
women.
The construct of false universalism purports to demonstrate the falsity
of feminisms claims to universal relevance. It says that feminism, too, is
limited in its ethical claims, that it confines itself to the interests of compara-
tively privileged women, and by so doing is complicit with domination. But,
as Marx and Engels pointed out, the claim by the revolutionary class to rep-
resent the interests of all the non-ruling classes is true in the beginning, that
is, it is true as long as the revolutionary class does not become the new rul-
ing class. The claim to universal relevance only becomes an illusion when
the revolutionary class acquires a vested interest in domination, and defends
that interest as the interests of all (Marx and Engels, 1974: 656). It is
unlikely that feminisms ethical claim to universal relevance has yet devel-
oped into this kind of illusion, given that nowhere are women the new rul-
ing class (although they can be complicit with the old male supremacist
one), and given that feminism has consistently demonstrated a readiness to
oppose any and every form of domination. That opposition is a conse-
quence of the fact that all forms of domination harm women, including
that form which no other revolutionary class has ever recognized: male
domination.
To sum up: the charge of false universalism is misleading. It is incoherent

in asserting an impossibility, that forms of theorizing are universalizing
when they cannot be; and it misses the point, both about what is wrong with
some of the theories propounded in a feminist context, and about the nature
of domination. To the extent that the theories criticized under the banner of
false universalism are wrong, they are wrong simply because they are
wrong and not because they are culturally specific or because they purport
to be cross-cultural when they are not. And the form of domination femi-
nism is centrally concerned with, male domination, is not confined to any
particular cultural context but can be found wherever men monopolize
human status and women are confined to roles and statuses in subordina-
tion to men, that is, potentially anywhere. There is no false universalism.
Instead, there are various feminist attempts to come to grips with the pheno-
menon of male supremacy. To the extent that we cannot specify any limits
to male domination, neither can we specify any limits to feminism.
Imperialism
Whatever is happening to elicit the charge of false universalism, and the
correlative demand that the theorist confine what she says to her own
culture, it is not universalizing but something else altogether. It is an
attempt to warn against feminist complicity with Western imperialism.
While this is an important issue, it needs to be carefully and cogently
argued, and it needs to keep the feminist exposure of male domination at
the centre of the critique. Too often, the charge of feminist complicity with
Western imperialism is neither apposite nor accurate, and functions to
deny the existence of male domination in other cultures (Mohanty, 1988).
Hazel Carby does make one point which appears to support her claim to
find a Western imperialist bias within feminism. She says that some feminist
writings portray the third world as backward and the West as more
enlightened or progressive . She provides two quotations from a paper
by Maxine Molyneux, the second one of which does indeed appear to sup-
port Carbys contention. That quotation reads:
There can be little doubt that on balance the position of women within imperi-
alist, i.e., advanced capitalist societies is, for all its limitations, more advanced
than in less developed capitalist and non-capitalist societies. In this sense the
changes brought by imperialism to Third World societies may, in some circum-
stances, have been historically progressive. (Molyneux, 1981: 4 cited in Carby,
1982: 217)
Carby interprets this to mean that since Third World women are outside
of capitalist relations of production, entering capitalist relations is, neces-
sarily, an emancipating move (Carby, 1982: 217).
But Carby misses the point of Molyneuxs argument, which was that if
colonialism led to the abolition of such traditional practices as polygyny,
the brideprice, child marriages, seclusion, and forms of mutilation such as
footbinding or female circumcision (Molyneux, 1981: 3), that could only

advance the cause of womens emancipation. Molyneux acknowledged that
of course imperialism has also had negative consequences for women. She
said that capitalist employment conditions for women in the third world
are often extremely oppressive whether in urban sweat-shops, free-zone
economies or rural plantations. She said that development programmes
have often worsened womens situations by eroding the respected statuses
women had before colonization, and by making use of existing forms of
womens subordination. And she deplored the growth of large-scale prosti-
tution and sex tourism as consequences of Western imperialism (pp. 45).
Molyneux did not believe, as Carby said she did, that it is only through the
development of a Western-style industrial capitalism and the resultant entry
of women into waged labour that the potential for the liberation of women
can increase (Carby, 1982: 222). On the contrary, she referred to the
economism and reductionism of such a view. She pointed out that it involved
a failure either to problematize relations between the sexes or to acknowl-
edge the differential effect of class relations on men and women (Molyneux,
1981: 9). Her task anyway was not to compare third world countries with
advanced capitalist ones, but to evaluate the record of socialist countries in
the light of their official stated policies on womens emancipation. In the
case of the third world, far from arguing for the progressiveness of capi-
talist relations, Molyneux argued the exact opposite. Whatever the failures
of socialist society, she said, it is evident that in the Third World its record
is none the less impressive when matched against capitalist societies of com-
parable levels of development and religio-cultural background (p. 5).
She did not argue that third world countries were backward in compari-
son with the progressive West, as Carby said she did: Maxine Molyneux
falls straight into this trap of Third Worldism as backwardness . . . foot-
binding, clitoridectomy, female circumcision and other forms of mutila-
tion of the female body have been described as feudal residues . . . linked
in reductionist ways to a lack of technological development (Carby, 1982:
216, 222). Although Molyneux used the term feudal residues, she was not
presenting this as her own opinion. She was pointing out that this was the
way traditional practices were viewed in the official literature of Third
World post-revolutionary states when those practices were seen by the rul-
ing parties in those states as an obstacle to economic and social develop-
ment (Molyneux, 1981: 4). Her point of comparison was the historical past
of those countries themselves, not the West. She was concerned with the
degree to which women had been emancipated within nation states which
claimed to be working towards that goal. On the feminist criterion of
womens liberation, the abolition of cruelty and injustice towards women is
progress, and it is unlikely to be only Western feminists who are saying so.
This seems to be a difficult message to get across. It invariably arouses
hostility, even though there is also a large measure of agreement, including
within the United Nations (United Nations, 1995, 1996). Some of the
reactions to a recent argument of Susan Moller Okin are a case in point.
Okin argued that multiculturalism is antagonistic to feminist aims to the

extent that it is insufficiently critical of the ways in which culture too often
depends on the subordination of women. In the course of her argument,
Okin provided a number of examples of cultural practices which deprived
some of the members of minority communities, notably the women, of even
the most basic liberal democratic rights, including the ways in which those
practices are justified by appeal to religious tradition. She argued that the
role of liberal democratic states should be to support the rights of women
against group rights when they come into conflict (Cohen et al., 1999).
Many of those who responded to her arguments agreed wholeheartedly.
Others, however, disagreed more or less vehemently. The disagreement
which is most relevant for present purposes is the accusation that Okin was
speaking for or about the women of oppressed cultural minorities and not
allowing them to speak on their own behalf. In other words, her argument
was complicit with Western imperialism. Azizah Y. Al-Hibri, for example,
asserted that Okin was speaking in her dominant voice about the inessen-
tial Other. She went on to say: So inessential is this Other that, even when
included in the discussion, it is rendered remarkably indistinguishable and
voiceless. It is allowed into the discussion only through the voice and per-
ceptions of the dominant I (Cohen et al., 1999: 42). As Okin herself
pointed out, however, it was not she who was silencing women, but the
male-dominated religions with which they live, together with those femi-
nists who downplay the patriarchy of many variants of their religions, but
who enjoy every moment of their own lives freedoms which are unthink-
able to those Others whose voices they think I am drowning out (p. 123).
Okins response is to the point, since even Al-Hibri herself acknowledged
that this Other was included in the discussion.
Those who raise objections about the imperialism of Western feminism
are not saying that Western feminists should ignore the wrongs done to
women in other cultures, that they should focus on their own wrongs and
leave other women to worry about theirs. They are saying that the cultures
in question are not as male dominated as Western feminists say they are.
But if the women whose cultures they are say so (even if not all of them do),
and if womens control over their own lives is demonstrably curtailed by
their subordination to men, then this argument is patently false. It may
indeed be the case, as Al-Hibri argues, that Islam is not in principle male-
dominated. (Martha Nussbaum argues the same case for reform Judaism
Cohen et al., 1999: 10514.) But if womens subordination is constantly
justified on religious grounds, this needs to be said, rather than, as Okin says
(p. 123), being denied or played down.
Whatever the objections raised to Okins argument, it was clear that
defending the interests of women meant coming into conflict with culture
in some form or another. Okin herself tried to maintain a balance between
the interests of women and the interests of cultural difference, but the sub-
sequent debate emphasized once again the antagonistic nature of the rela-
tion between women and culture. As Katha Pollitt put it:
In its demand for equality for women, feminism sets itself in opposition to
virtually every culture on earth. You could say that multiculturalism demands
respect for all cultural traditions, while feminism interrogates and challenges
all cultural traditions. . . . fundamentally, the ethical claims of feminism run
counter to the cultural relativism of group rights multiculturalism. (Cohen
et al., 1999: 27)
Race, Class and Gender

The expectation that feminism should address all forms of oppression
because all forms of oppression harm women is an important enterprise, but
it is not clear from the debate so far how it should be done. The usual form
the debate takes involves attempts to combine different forms of oppression
under the headings race, class and gender. But this is unsatisfactory. Such
attempts misrepresent the feminist project by excluding the problem of male
domination from the outset. Calling the central concern of feminist politics
gender ensures that male domination will not even be seen, much less chal-
lenged and addressed. But the categories are also unsatisfactory in their own
terms. If race, class and gender need to be combined, then they must have
been separated out in the first place. The categories have their own separate
objects of knowledge race, class, gender; their own separate forms of
oppression racism, classism, sexism; their own separate constituencies
of the oppressed blacks (etc.), workers, women; and their own forms of
politics anti-racism, socialism,5 feminism. Once they have been separated
in this symmetrical way, the categories have nothing in common.
This problem is a consequence of the politically neutral language within
which the debate has been couched. The terms race, class and gender have
already deleted any reference to domination. No form of domination is
acknowledged, however characterized (apart from passing, and increasingly
rare, references to capitalism). There is no identifiable ruling class; the
debate focuses exclusively on categories of the oppressed who are subjected
to power relations which are never located in the vested interests of the
powerful. If, in contrast, we enter the debate by recognizing the existence of
male supremacy in the first place, then it is possible to identify the social
system of meanings and values by which domination is maintained. While it
is important to delineate the ways in which domination is resisted and the
human spirit survives under even the most degrading conditions, it is also
important to clarify the nature of the system which oppresses. It might be
argued that this problem of the neutralization of political focus could
equally well be addressed by entering the debate from the standpoint of
resistance to capitalist domination or to racial supremacy. But both these
forms of politics suffer from the so far insurmountable problem, from the
feminist standpoint, of ignoring or subordinating the interests of women. It
is only feminism, with its explicit acknowledgement of the ideological belief
that only men are human, which promises to throw new light on those
forms of domination which have traditionally focused only on the interests
of men. Bringing feminist insights to bear on race and class domination

keeps political attention focused on women, attention which is too easily
diverted given the ongoing reality of the male monopolization of who
counts as human. But it also promises to illuminate the phenomenon of
domination more generally, in ways in which confining attention to the
interests of men, no matter how justified, does not.
One text which illustrates the problems with the race, class and gender
debate is Elizabeth Spelmans Inessential Woman. This is a brave attempt
to fill out the details of a feminist anti-racist position. It ultimately fails,
however, largely because feminism is defined only in terms of sexism and
gender rather than in terms of the struggle against male domination.
Typically, the book proceeds by way of a number of accusations that domi-
nant Western feminist thought has taken the experiences of white middle-
class women to be representative of, indeed normative for, the experiences
of all women (Spelman, 1988: ix). She does discuss the work of a number
of feminist theorists, but she gives us no concrete examples from these
writings of what might count as experiences of white, middle-class women;
nor does she tell us how these might differ from the experiences of those
women who provide her main counter-example, that is, US black women.
Moreover, since many of the targets of her criticism are not feminist on any
criterion, those criticisms are irrelevant to her purported task of demon-
strating the limitations of feminist theory. Her criticisms of the writings of
Plato and Aristotle, for example, may be accurate and appropriate, but they
hardly qualify as feminist thought; nor does the work of the other male
writers she cites (for example, pp. 11922); nor do the hypothetical exam-
ples which she devises for the purposes of her own argument (such as in
Chapter 6, especially p. 140), but which she did not find in any feminist
writings.
Spelman holds feminism responsible for the separation between race,
class and gender:
the attempt to isolate gender from other elements of human identity such as
race and class, along with parallel attempts to isolate sexism from other forms
of oppression such as racism and classism, has been instrumental in the preser-
vation of white middle-class privilege in feminist theory. (Spelman, 1988: 16)
But it is the very setting up of the categories which keeps them distinct. In
fact Spelman never manages to combine them. Class is only ever men-
tioned as an occasional aside; and gender becomes another aspect of race.
This usually involves defining gender as different ways of being a man,
and pointing out that black men are not superior to white women. In doing
so, she not only misses the male supremacist connotations of her own
examples, she also misses crucial aspects of the racism. To give just one
example: she mentions that Emmet Till was murdered by white men for
talking to a white woman. This example occurs in the context of a discus-
sion of the ideology of masculinity in the United States which, Spelman
says, hardly includes the idea that Black men are superior to white women
(p. 89). But this interpretation misses the point. Till was not murdered by
white women, and he was not murdered because he was inferior to white
women, but because, in the minds of his male racist murderers, he was infe-
rior to white men. In the evil logic of racism, he was murdered because he
dared to behave like a white man towards a white woman, and because, as
a black male, he did not have a white mans prerogatives. His status as male
was crucial in his murderers perception of him as above himself . The
question of his social ranking in relation to white women did not arise
because the woman was no more than a pawn in a lethal white mans game.
Spelman gives us no information about the white woman Till spoke to.
Did this woman complain about his speaking to her, or did Tills murderers
act without her knowledge or consent? Did she collude with the murderers,
demanding that Till be punished because he dared to speak to her? Or was
she horrified at the murder? Did she protest, or did she not know what was
happening until it was all over? The answers to such questions are vital if
what is at issue is the complicity of white women with racism. By deleting
all reference to the woman in the case, Spelman is complicit with the male
supremacist belief that women are unimportant. In Spelmans account, all
the actors in the evil scenario were male. The woman had no moral agency.
We are not told whether she consented or protested, nor whether her
protests would have made any difference to the outcome. She is nothing but
an icon of white supremacist masculinity, useful as a justification for murder
in the racist male mind, but allowed no will of her own. The issue is not
whether or not she was inferior to Emmet Till; the issue is that she did not
exist at all in her own right. That Spelman missed the point is a consequence
of keeping the race and gender categories separate and distinct, and sub-
stituting the infinitely malleable concept of gender for male supremacy.
Spelman does attempt to argue the case for the white, middle-class
nature of feminism in other ways than the women and other oppressed
groups argument (discussed above). She says that feminisms exclusive focus
on gender and its concomitant oppression, sexism, has meant that womens
race and class identity, and the racism and classism some women face and
other women help perpetuate (pp. 11213), have been peripheral to, or
ignored by, feminist politics. As a consequence, the only kind of gender,
that is, the only way of being a woman, which feminism has acknowledged,
is that of women who are not subjected to racism and classism namely,
white middle-class women of Western industrialized countries (p. 3). The
solution, then, is to combine all three forms. We need to ask, she says, about
the ways in which race and class identity may be intertwined with gender
identity (p. 112).
While Spelman is right about the need to combine the three great forms
of oppression, her own attempt fails because she fails to get the feminism
right. Feminisms main concern is not gender or sexism, or even women
in the sense of what women are, but male supremacy. The question of
womens identity is problematic, not in and of itself, but because of the
male supremacist requirement that the only human identity permissible is
male. That some men are more (and less) human than other men is also an
aspect of male domination. There is sufficient evidence for the domination
of men by men in Spelmans own text, as well as for feminisms awareness
of this. And yet she uses this evidence as a weapon against feminism, and
argues against the common position of women by pointing to relations of
domination among men. As might be expected, the discussion then proceeds
to focus on the oppression of men, with women cast in the role of oppres-
sors of men. (One example of this is her reference to the murder of Emmet
Till, discussed above.)
Another example occurs in her discussion of Simone de Beauvoirs The
Second Sex (Spelman, 1988: pp. 634). She disagrees with Beauvoirs state-
ments to the effect that the world belongs to men, and that everything in
girls experience confirms them in their belief in masculine superiority, by
pointing out that some women hold positions of superiority over some men:
a white girl [and] Black men . . . girls of the upper classes [and] working-
class men. But Spelman herself has already located these oppressions of
race and class in hierarchies among men prince and pauper, master and
slave . . . are all male. She also allows the same point by quoting without
comment Beauvoirs statement: In the upper classes women are eager
accomplices of their masters (emphasis added). If women are accomplices
rather than instigators, and men are masters, then what is at stake is pri-
marily the interests of men. That class relations and racial domination are
maintained at the expense of some men, makes them no less male interests.
That these interests are also defended by women does not make them
womens interests in any feminist sense, since they are based on womens
subordination. Women benefit from class privilege only to the extent that
they embrace their own subjugation to men. This does not mean that
women are innocent of racism or class privilege. But it does mean that, to
the extent that women defend race or class privilege, they are acting in com-
plicity with male supremacist values.
There is a sense in which the demand that feminism address all forms of
oppression is redundant. That is exactly what feminism is already doing
because feminism is happening wherever women committed to feminism are
situated. All feminists are already included because they are women strug-
gling against male supremacy and for their own human dignity. The issues
which feminism has placed on the public agenda are already relevant to all
women. Exposing male violence, especially sexual violence, or asserting
womens human right to control over the conditions of their own existence,
including the secure integrity of their own bodies, for example, are not
issues of concern only to relatively privileged women. Indeed, the less privi-
leged women are, the fewer resources they have, economic or otherwise, the
more pressing and vital such issues become. Feminism raises no barriers
against the participation of any woman (or the understanding of any man)
because all that is required for a feminist commitment is a feminist commit-
ment. That is not to say that there are no barriers in the way of womens
embracing of feminism. There are. Chief among those barriers are those
distortions, largely purveyed by the mass media, but also exemplified by

much of what I have identified as academic feminism, which alienate
women from feminism by presenting it as something trivial, ridiculous,
offensive or incomprehensible.
If, however, what is being demanded in the name of anti-racism is that
every feminist text without exception should include discussions of racism,
that is unreasonable. Complying with that demand would be itself a form of
racism. Unless the discussion of racism was intrinsic to the purpose of the
text, to introduce it would be no more than a tokenistic using of women of
colour to prove ones anti-racist credentials. It also involves an impossibil-
ity. Once women have been divided into a multiplicity of races, how many
races, and which ones, must be cited if one is to avoid excluding someone?
No one can cite them all, because no one can ever be in a position to know
them all, even supposing there is an all to know. And it threatens to estab-
lish a new hegemony, with white being displaced from the dominant posi-
tion in the same moment as it is recognized as such, and replaced with the
most vocal, literate and published representatives of other races.
As long as the debate remains confined within the terms of race, class and
gender, no progress can be made in exposing the connections between all
forms of domination. Not only are the categories as they stand too sepa-
rated ever to be brought together, setting the debate up in this way puts
difficulties in the way of recognizing domination at all, because it focuses
attention on categories of the oppressed while leaving unspecified what it is
that the oppressed are oppressed by. Just as the situations of women differ
culturally and historically, so do the particular social problems which must
be addressed in womens interests. But just as male domination is every-
where the same in its insistence that only men are human, so do women
have a common interest in combating it. The forms that opposition takes
may differ, but their meaning and value will be the same, a struggle for the
human status of women at no ones expense.
A vivid sense of what is involved in the assertion that feminism is white
and middle-class is conveyed by a cartoon in The Sydney Morning Herald on
8 March 2000, commenting on the fact that it is International Womens Day
(IWD). Along the top of the drawing is written: International Womens
Day Somewhere in Ethiopia. Four black women, one of them with two
children, are depicted sitting around a small fire, with grass huts in the back-
ground and a couple of trees on the horizon. Each of the women is saying
something. First woman: I just put my kids into child-care and enrolled in
a business course; second woman: I was glad to get my career off to a good
start before I had my kids; third woman: I told my husband, when we had
kids, he had to share the load; fourth woman: Ive been so flat out enjoy-
ing my career, I havent even thought of kids.
At the risk of spoiling the fun, the anti-feminism of this piece of male
supremacist propaganda needs to be spelled out. It says that the demands of
Australian women are unimportant, even ludicrous, when we look at what
Ethiopian women need. Women in Ethiopia, it says, do not even have basic
necessities like adequate shelter (they are sitting on the ground in the open
air and they only have grass huts to live in), food (there are six people but
only two plates, and anyway this is Ethiopia, notorious for its famines),
water (the trees are spindly and there is no other vegetation), cooking facili-
ties (the camp fire), or any of the other benefits enjoyed by women in
Australia. In comparison the IWD concerns of Australian women are trivial,
it says, a mere matter of careers and getting husbands to help with the
housework. Australian women (it is implied) are selfish and uncaring
either they see their careers as more important than their children whom
they put into child-care, or they dont have children at all, thus ignoring what
ought to be their primary mission in life. Either way, they are so privileged
that they dont really have anything to complain about when other women
are so deprived.
But there are other ways of looking at these issues. Wanting a career has
nothing to do with womens selfishness. (The question of mens selfishness
never arises unless the men are very, very rich, in which case it is called
greed, and quite rightly so.) Women need to establish their own financial
independence because being dependent on a man deprives a woman of the
most basic form of control over her own life and, not incidentally, her con-
trol over the conditions her children live under. It is true that, once women
have access to adequate resources, they have fewer children or none at all.
But it is also true that over-population is a major world problem. In the light
of that well-documented fact, it could even be said that having fewer
children, far from being a selfish act, is an altruistic one, a contribution to
world peace and security and sustainable development. As for the plight of
Ethiopian women, that is the fault and responsibility of men: of the men
who demand wives who are children in order to guarantee virginity; of the
men of the Ethiopian ruling class (the detestable Mengistu is no longer dic-
tator but he was neither the first, the last nor the only ruler of Ethiopia to
keep the population in misery); of the men who control a world economic
order which keeps nation states like Ethiopia beggared and poverty-stricken.
Whose interests are served by these invidious comparisons between
women? It is certainly not the interests of Australian women whose concerns
are distorted into something trivial and unimportant, and derided by being
placed in the mouths of Ethiopian women. But it is also not in the inter-
ests of Ethiopian women to be depicted as primitives living in grass huts and
squatting on the ground. Comparing and contrasting categories of women
is not in womens interests at all, as long as it deflects attention away from
the real problem by disguising or ignoring the workings of male supremacy,
or by reducing feminism to nothing but the trivial preoccupations of the
privileged.
Notes
1 Daly made the same point in her autobiography where she said that she
had pointed out in a conversation with Audre Lorde that Gyn / Ecology was not a
compendium of goddesses, but was intended as a discussion of those goddesses

which were direct sources of christian myth (Daly, 1993: 232).
2 For a similar argument to Mayos, in relation to the British ruling class and its
custom of the Nanny, see Gathorne-Hardy, 1972.
3 This is G.J. Barker-Benfields The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male
Attitudes Toward Women in Nineteenth Century America, published in 1976.
4 My judgement that Firestones argument is wrong is confined to this particu-
lar aspect of it. Although this is her central argument, there is much more in her
book which is eloquent and insightful about the workings of male supremacy.
5 Socialism is rarely mentioned within the race, class, gender categories debate
as the politics which is specific to class. This omission indicates that constructing the
categories in this way is as inadequate for class politics as it is for feminist and anti-
racist politics.
9 Masculinity
and dehumanization
The Radical Feminist Account

There is, however, another way to characterize a feminist account of race,
which does not set up antagonistic categories of women, white and middle-
class and the rest, or an irresolvable distinction between gender, race and
class, and which starts from the feminist problematic of male domination,
or at least implicitly refers to it.
Second-wave radical feminism has from the beginning been concerned
with all forms of oppression which affect the life chances and human dig-
nity of women, that is, with all forms of oppression. By attributing all forms
of oppression to male domination, the early radical feminist account linked
them together, and provided the beginnings of a framework for under-
standing all forms of invidious hierarchical distinctions between categories
of human beings. This early radical feminist account has never been chal-
lenged. It appears to have dropped out of the debate altogether and been
forgotten. In what follows I take up this early radical feminist insight into
the primacy of male domination, arguing that it was basically correct despite
the problems.
One of those problems was a tendency to locate the primacy of male
domination in history. The oppression of women, it was argued, provided
the model for all other forms of oppression because it happened first in
human history. Women were the first social group to be enslaved. Once men
learned that other human beings, namely women, could be enslaved, they
applied that model to other groups of men. THE FEMINISTS, a group of
radical feminists formed in New York in October 1968, said in their mani-
festo: Women, or females, were the first class to be separated out from
humanity and thus denied their humanity (THE FEMINISTS, 1969: 360).
The New York Redstockings said in 1970:
Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination. All other forms
of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc.) are exten-
sions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest.
All power structures throughout history have been male-dominated and male-
oriented. (Redstockings, 1970: 599)
Ti-Grace Atkinson said:
The oppression of women by men is the source of all the corrupt values
throughout the world. . . . Since the oppression of women is generally agreed to
be the beginning of the class system and women the first exploited class, every
culture or institution or value since that time contains that oppression as a major
foundational ingredient and renders all political constructs after that initial
model of human oppression at the very least suspect. (Atkinson, 1974: 5, 30
her emphases)
Robin Morgan said:
women . . . comprise the oldest oppressed group on the face of the planet. . . .
[There is a] profoundly radical analysis beginning to emerge from revolutionary
feminism: that capitalism, imperialism, and racism are symptoms of male
supremacy sexism. Racism as a major contradiction, for example, is surely
based on the first alienizing act: the basic primary contradiction that occurred
with the enslavement of half the human species by the other half. (Morgan,
1970: xxiii, xxxix her emphasis)
Shulamith Firestone said:
the natural reproductive difference between the sexes led directly to the first
division of labor at the origins of class, as well as furnishing the paradigm of
caste (discrimination based on biological characteristics). . . . [Radical feminism]
sees feminist issues not only as womens first priority, but as central to any larger
revolutionary analysis. . . . the current leftist analysis . . . does not relate the struc-
tures of the economic class system to its origins in the sexual class system, the
model for all other exploitative systems, and thus the tapeworm which must be
eliminated first by any true revolution. (Firestone, 1981: 9, 37 her emphasis)
But locating the link in hypothetical accounts of the origins of patriarchy,

in a distant past before the advent of written records, is not entirely satis-
factory as a theoretical enterprise. It is more akin to myth-making than to
historical research (Dunbar, 1970; for more recent and more convincing
attempts, see Eisler, 1987; Lerner, 1986). The historical facts appealed to as
evidence are few and far between. Given that the historical times referred to
have left few traces, we cannot really know what happened thousands of
years ago. Neither would the knowledge have much relevance for present
purposes given that the conditions described no longer exist, that is, societies
untouched by the rapacious demands of world-wide capitalism. However,
the appeal to history was not integral to the early radical feminist account.
It need not be taken literally, but can be read as a metaphor for the perva-
siveness and intransigence of domination, and as a genuine attempt to under-
stand all forms of domination.
It can also be interpreted as no more than a necessary rejoinder to the
male left insistence on putting socialism first. All feminists, including social-
ist feminists, were aware that socialism, as least as it had been traditionally
defined by men, would not automatically lead to the liberation of women.
M A S C U L I N I T Y A N D D E H U M A N I Z AT I O N 135
Feminists became tired of being told by male politicos that the liberation of
women could wait until after the socialist revolution, that, because womens
subordination was connected to the private ownership of the means of pro-
duction, the abolition of that private ownership would automatically mean
the abolition of womens subordination. Experiences in organizations of the
male left, of being pushed into the background and used as domestic and
sexual servicers, had led to a healthy scepticism on the part of politically
committed women. Insisting on the primacy of womens oppression was a
way of theorizing the need for women to organize independently.
But the radical feminist emphasis on the primacy of womens oppression,
and hence the primacy of male domination, went further than this. It was
not simply an organizational strategy for establishing political priorities,
although it was certainly that. It was also a radically different way of look-
ing at the world, different, that is, from the male dominant status quo. It
placed the interests of women first, and from that standpoint spoke in the
name of the universal human by asserting that the overcoming of womens
subordination would mean the overcoming of all other forms of subordina-
tion as well. For Ti-Grace Atkinson, for example, the oppression of women
by men created a world where no one could be free:
A human being is not born from the womb; it must create itself. It must be free,
self-generative. A human being must feel that it can grow in a world where
injustice, inequity, hatred, sadism are not directed at it. No person can grow into
a life within these conditions; it is enough of a miracle to survive as a function-
ing organism. (Atkinson, 1974: 5 her emphases)
On the radical feminist account, the struggle against male domination had
political priority over other forms of politics, not only because of a pressing
need to redress the harms done to women, but also because the liberation of
women would mean the liberation of all. But although the early radical
feminists saw all forms of domination as the result of male domination, they
did not tell us how this was so, apart from the appeal to history. They
tended simply to assert a link without analysing it. The present task, then, is
to extend this early radical feminist insight by identifying the links between
male domination and social domination in general.
Racism, Masculinity and Dehumanization

There is some support in the anti-racist literature for the early radical femi-
nist argument that all forms of domination are variations on the theme of
male domination. It usually takes the form of asserting some kind of link
between racism on the one hand, and masculinity and what is referred to as
sexuality but which is actually male sexuality, on the other. This link is not
given a central emphasis. In fact it is not even a link at all except in the sense
that both racism and masculinity / (male) sexuality are mentioned in the same
breath. It is referred to only tangentially and briefly, as an addition to the
main theme, an interesting by-product but never the crux of the matter. It
would appear that the reason for this is, once again, the male supremacist
belief that only men are human. In other words, nothing very much has
been said by connecting racism and masculinity, because all that has been said
is that racism is part of being human, masculinity being humanity per se.
The implications for racism of the fact that women are not masculine
remain undiscussed. What is also not discussed are the ways in which ideo-
logical justifications for the domination of men by men mimic those already
operating in the domination of women by men.
Linking racism with masculinity does not mean that women have some
special immunity to racism (or misogyny or any other form of elitist exclu-
sion). Although women do not have the social power to wreak the havoc
that men do, there have always been women who have supported men in
their projects, no matter how evil, as well as identifying their own interests
with those of men. Supporting and identifying with men is the only way
women are permitted access to the human under male supremacist condi-
tions, although that does not mean that women are not responsible for what
they do. Both sexes can fall into the easy automatic patterns of institutional-
ized racism. But it can be argued (although the anti-racist literature does
not) that masculinity is the meaning of racism in the sense that it operates
to render someone else subhuman in order to bolster ones own masculin-
ity, or, in the case of women, the masculinity of the men they identify with
or want to be recognized by. The link between masculinity and domination
is dehumanization. Domination requires the dehumanization of those whose
human rights cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the vested interests
of the powerful, just as masculinity requires the dehumanization of women.
But the parallel is not drawn in the anti-racist literature.
Ali Rattansi, for example, briefly mentions masculinity in the context of
racism without drawing any inferences. He says:
both working-class and middle-class masculinities are involved . . . [in] racial

harassment and violence . . . with defences of the neighbourhood against racial-
ized others which Cohen refers to as the nationalism of the neighbourhood . . . ;
the proving of masculinity by beating up Pakis . . . ; the sexual harassment of
black women; and an aspect that deserves much greater research, in the middle-
class and professional context, the complex intertwining of masculinity, class and
racism in the exclusion of blacks from employment or promotion by white male
managers. (Rattansi, 1992: 27)
Apart from a later brief discussion of the complex intertwining of racism

with sexuality (pp. 2930), where he refers to the irrationality and intran-
sigence of racism, Rattansi does not develop this theme any further. Although
he appears to be suggesting here that the racism is in some sense a conse-
quence of the masculinity and sexuality, he does not draw any implica-
tions. He does not say anything about the masculinity of black men. The
masculinities referred to are the prerogative of white males. But black men
are masculine too. Does black male masculinity differ from white male
masculinity, given that the proving ground of masculinity is beating up

Pakis ? What happens to black male masculinity in the context of racist
dehumanization? And what are we to make of the inclusion in this list of the
reference to the sexual harassment of black women? Black women are not
sexually harassed only by white men, and neither are black women the only
women to suffer sexual harassment. None the less, despite these problems,
it is clear that Rattansi does perceive a link between masculinity and racism.
The link between masculinity and imperialism / racism wends a curious
trajectory through Edward W. Saids Orientalism (1987). It is obvious from
a number of references and discussions throughout the text that, for Said,
there is a connection. What is less obvious is the exact nature of the con-
nection and the importance Said assigns to it. It often appears in the text
without his remarking on it, suggesting the possibility that on at least some
occasions, he is not even aware the connection has been made.
It appears most frequently in the form of suggestive hints arising out of
the connotations of the terms used. For example, Said characterizes Western
Orientalisms own view of itself as involving a stripping [of the Orient] of
its veils (p. 76). He says that Western Orientalist scholars have a learned
reliance on the Orient as a kind of womb out of which they were brought
forth (p. 88), that they survey[ed] . . . the passive, seminal, feminine East
(p. 138), and that the colonizers poured out their exuberant activity onto
the fairly supine, feminine Orient (p. 220). He summarizes Orientalist
assumptions about the East as involving the separateness of the Orient,
its eccentricity, its backwardness, its silent indifference, its feminine pene-
trability, its supine malleability (p. 206). He mentions a number of times
that the Orient was penetrated and possessed by the West. He quotes one
Orientalist as saying, A society colonizes when . . . it brings to virility a new
society to which it has given birth (p. 219). And in a statement whose
significance is obviously lost on him because he does not comment on it, he
says that the effect of the new US social science on the Arab or Islamic Orient
is to keep the region and its peoples emasculated, reduced to attitudes,
trends, statistics: in short, dehumanized (p. 291 emphasis added).
But even when he discusses the connection in some detail, he fails to draw
out the male supremacist implications. At one early point in the book, he
illustrates the discourse of Orientalism, by which the West made [the
Orient] Oriental (his emphasis), with a discussion of Flauberts encounter
with an Egyptian courtesan. This account by Flaubert produced, he said, a
widely influential model of the Oriental woman:
she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or
history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively
wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him
not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak for her and tell his
readers in what way she was typically Oriental. My argument is that Flauberts
situation of strength in relation to Kuchuk Hanem was not an isolated instance.
It fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between East and West, and
the discourse about the Orient that it enabled. (p. 6 his emphasis)
He concludes a later, more detailed, discussion of the work of Flaubert by

commenting:
Woven through all of Flauberts Oriental experiences, exciting or disappointing,

is an almost uniform association between the Orient and sex. In making this
association Flaubert was neither the first nor the most exaggerated instance of
a remarkably persistent motif in Western attitudes to the Orient. And indeed,
the motif itself is singularly unvaried. . . . Why the Orient seems still to suggest
not only fecundity but sexual promise (and threat), untiring sensuality, unlimi-
ted desire, deep generative energies, is something on which one could speculate.
(p. 188)
Said himself, however, refrains from doing so. He ends the discussion by
saying: it is not the province of my analysis here, alas, despite its frequently
noted appearance (p. 188). He did not comment on the fact that Flauberts
depiction of the Oriental woman differed not at all from standard phallo-
cratic depictions of any women anywhere. Neither did he comment on the
fact that it was a text about a woman which so aptly illustrated Orientalisms
approach to the East in general. If a text about a woman is typical of this
approach, if it can stand for the pattern of relative strength between East
and West, if it is an instance of a singularly unvaried and remarkably per-
sistent motif in Western attitudes to the Orient, then the fact that it is a text
about a woman is not just an interesting side issue. It is a vital clue to the
operation of that form of domination which is Western imperialism, of
which Orientalism is one manifestation.
There emerges from Saids text a coherent constellation of themes which
provides an unexpected substantiation of the early radical feminist insight
that the domination of women by men is the model for all forms of domi-
nation. Within the discourse of Orientalism, the Orient is feminized. It is
made like a woman.1 It is given female characteristics and treated the way
women are treated. It is never allowed to speak for or represent itself. He,
the European male, speaks for her. The differences between the West and
the Orient line up in the same way as male supremacist discourses construe
the differences between the sexes. For example, Lord Cromer, Orientalist
scholar and British governor of Egypt which he ruled almost single-handedly
between 1883 and 1907, summed up the differences as follows: The
European is a close reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid of any ambi-
guity; he is a natural logician, albeit he may not have studied logic; he is by
nature sceptical and requires proof before he can accept the truth of any
proposition; his trained intelligence works like a piece of mechanism (Said,
1994: 23940). Having delineated the supreme quality of the European
intellect to his own satisfaction, Cromer proceeded to contrast this with
what he variously designated the mind of the Oriental, the Egyptian, and
the present-day Arab. The thinking of this personage is, according to
Cromer, eminently wanting in symmetry and is of the most slipshod
description. He is singularly deficient in the logical faculty and incapable
of drawing the most obvious conclusions. He is much given to lengthy
explanations which are wanting in lucidity, and will probably contradict

himself half-a-dozen times before he has finished (Said, 1978: 38).
Substitute male for European and female for Oriental in this passage,
and it could be transposed to any of a myriad of texts expatiating on the
nature of the feminine.
But above all, in the discourse of Orientalism the East is there to be
fucked. This is partly a figure of speech. The whole the Orient is
reduced to a part the female part.2 But in another sense it is not a figure
of speech at all. European men actually went to the Orient to use their
penises. Or rather, having feminized the Orient, they behaved towards it in
the fashion appropriate to its feminine status. They imperialized and colo-
nized the Orient, along with most of the rest of the non-European world,
using their penises as well as other weapons of warfare. This is not surpris-
ing. Colonization is a kind of warfare, one in which there is a gross dispar-
ity of power, and men have always used their penises as weapons, that is,
raped, in war (and not only in war). Neither is it surprising that this aspect
of Western domination has received so little attention, given the continuing
hegemony of male interests, and in particular the male interest in keeping
sex out of the arena of public political debate and safely ensconced in the
realm of the natural, the private, the pre-ordained and the unarguable, an
interest which is not confined to white Western men. Even Said, who pro-
vides clear evidence of it, does not put it in such stark terms. Instead he
refers to a non-specific sexuality, the meaning of which wavers between a
licentiousness attributed to the Oriental male, a sensuality attributed to the
whole Orient, and the actual sexual practices of European men. These are,
of course, all aspects of the same thing, a male sexuality used to conquer and
control, which is justified by projecting the responsibility for it on to the
other it is the Orient which grabs the Western conquerors penis and
makes him use it, just as women do everywhere. But Said does not bring the
strands together. Significantly, sexuality does not appear as an entry in the
index and hence cannot be traced throughout the text.
Once the suggestive hints are extricated and combined, however, the con-
nection between masculinity and imperialism becomes clear. Imperialism,
whether it takes the form of outright slavery, of the colonial dispossession
of indigenous peoples, of the multinational control and exploitation of
distant lands and their national economies, or of the forcible imposing
of foreign cultures, requires the defining of subjugated populations as
less than human. This removes all ethical barriers to exploitation since it
characterizes people as not belonging to Mankind. The abolition of moral
restraint allows domination free rein to expand unchecked by any humani-
tarian consideration for those who are not entitled to human rights and
dignity because their land and lives are forfeit in the interests of the domi-
nators. Hence imperialism requires dehumanization. But so does masculin-
ity in the sense that it is a human status bought at someone elses expense.
Domination already has a model of human beings who are not fully
human women.
Applying that model to other men does, of course, involve a contradiction

those men defined as inferior are both men and not-men at one and the
same time. The contradiction is managed by interpreting the maleness of
racially inferior men as a hyper-masculinity. Any maleness at all in men of
the inferior races is too much. Since it cannot be abolished despite the best
efforts of the white dominators, it must have an intransigent power unavail-
able to the dominators, for whom masculinity is a precarious achievement
constantly under threat from women who remain human despite the best
efforts of the male supremacists. That intransigent masculinity of inferior
men functions as a repository for the worst excesses of the dominators fan-
tasies of phallic power. An apt depiction of this ideology of white male
supremacy can be found in the work of Frantz Fanon. Speaking in the voice
of the white supremacist ideologue, he said:
As for the Negroes, they have tremendous sexual powers. What do you expect,
with all the freedom they have in their jungles! They copulate at all times and
in all places. They are really genital. They have so many children that they can-
not even count them. Be careful, or they will flood us with little mulattos.
(Fanon, 1952: 111)
Fanon accounted for beliefs of this kind in terms of the over-intellectualization

of the civilized white man who retains an irrational longing for unusual
eras of sexual licence, of orgiastic scenes, of unpunished rapes, of unre-
pressed incest. Every intellectual gain, he said, requires a loss in sexual
potential (p. 117). He also referred to an intrinsic link between sexuality
and violence: We know how much of sexuality there is in all cruelties, tor-
tures, beatings (p. 113). These pre-logical and infantile longings are pro-
jected on to the Negro who, said Fanon, symbolizes the biological
(p. 118). Like sex, the Negro is uncivilized. His natural habitat is the jungle,
and he lives in the open air unconfined by the rules and prohibitions of
civilization. Like sex, he is wholly Nature. Sex is Nature, the Negro is
Nature, therefore the Negro is sex.
But although Fanon was right about the existential terror felt by the white
male dominator faced with the man he has dehumanized, he failed to
account for the fact that that terror took a sexual form. Certainly white
supremacist ideology presents the Negro as Nature, but that can be
accounted for by exposing the ideology of dehumanization: He is not
Man, therefore he is animal-like. In itself, this provides no reason for the
obsessive focus on sex. Fanon was right to perceive the problem in terms of
the Negros exclusion from a human status, and the solution in terms of a
recognition of his right to human dignity. He was also right to expose the
oppressiveness of whiteness as the model of the universal human. However,
he failed to see what was at stake in the link between racism and sex
because he too subscribed to a model of the human which was only male.
This is partly a consequence of the constant reiteration of the word man
throughout the text. (Presumably in the original French text, the word
homme was repeated as resoundingly.) What he said is sometimes relevant
to women without qualification, for example: I find myself suddenly in the

world and I recognize I have one right alone: that of demanding human
behaviour from the other (Fanon, 1952: 163). But at other times it is diffi-
cult or impossible to substitute woman for man and retain Fanons mean-
ing. When he said man that was exactly what he meant, and not woman.
Man is not the genuinely universal human, that is, including women too,
in Fanons text.
But the male interests of Fanons text betray themselves in other ways as
well. In his book, women appear only as the bearers of white supremacist
ideology. They are white women who profess to be terrified of being raped
by a black man, but whose noisy protestations he believed concealed an
active desire for sexual degradation and violence at the hands of black men:
Basically, does this fear of rape not itself cry out for rape? Just as there are
faces that ask to be slapped, can one not speak of women who ask to be
raped? (p. 110 his emphasis). Or they are light-skinned women of colour
who scornfully reject black men as husbands, preferring degradation and
maltreatment by a white man to marriage with a black man (Chapter 2). Or
they are white prostitutes deluded by the myth of black male sexual potency.
Of women of colour he knows nothing, apart from the all-but-whites
who regard black men as violent and inferior (p. 127).
Fanon did not completely ignore the possibility that men, too, could be
bearers of white supremacist ideology, but he referred to white men in this
context only fleetingly. At one point he raised the issue in a series of rhetor-
ical questions suggesting that white men who hated black men were yield-
ing to a feeling of impotence or of sexual inferiority, that they saw the
Negro as a penis symbol, and used lynching as sexual revenge (p. 113).
But he did not discuss these issues any further. On another occasion he raised
the issue in a statement which located the blame firstly with women, with
men tacked on as an afterthought: One thing must be mentioned in this
connection: a white woman who has had a Negro lover finds it difficult to
return to white men. Or so at least it is believed, particularly by white men
(pp. 1212).
Throughout his discussion of sexuality and race it is women who are pri-
marily to blame for the ideology which connects sexual violence and black
men. For Fanon, the link was deeply embedded in the white female psyche,
and he made it clear that it was white women he was talking about, since he
admitted he knew nothing about the woman of colour. He took pains to
argue the point at some length. Starting from a premise which he found in
the work of Marie Bonaparte, he stated categorically that the desexualiza-
tion of aggression in a girl is less complete than in a boy. This might seem
an odd assertion given that sexual aggression is typically male, but what he
meant was that the aggression was turned inward. The girl directed it
against herself. At between five and nine years of age, he said, the girl tries
to get her father to respond to the aggression that her unconscious demands
of him. The father refuses in a way (a significant qualification given the
prevalence of fatherdaughter rape?), and so the girl looks around for
another vehicle on which to project her desire to be subjected to sexual

aggression. Since she is of an age to be aware of the folklore and culture
around her, it is the Negro, demonized by her culture, who becomes the
predestined repository of this aggression, said Fanon. But because it is her
own wish, it is a form of self-aggression. It is a well-known fact about
women, commonplace, said Fanon, that they want to be hurt during the
sex act. Hence, when a woman lives the fantasy of rape by a Negro . . . it is
the woman who rapes herself (pp. 1267).
This is vicious misogyny, and like all forms of woman-hating, it serves a
purpose, that is, to absolve men of responsibility for the harm they do
women. This discussion by Fanon occurred in the context of a chapter
headed The Negro and Psychopathology. But the psychopathology was
simply a belief on the part of white women that they were more likely to be
raped by black men. The desire to be raped was characteristic of all (white)
women. It was only pathological when white women directed this desire
exclusively towards black men who, according to Fanon, were no more sex-
ual than white men. In fact, Fanon absolved all men, of whatever colour,
himself included, of responsibility for rape. If women want it, then men
who rape are merely complying with what women want. Rapists are nothing
but passive tools in the hands of avid women. Thus was Fanon complicit
with the male supremacist ideology which holds women to blame for the
depredations of men.
Fanon failed to identify the nature and origin of the ideology which
attributed a hyper-sexuality to black men, because he failed to locate it first
and foremost with racist white men. For Fanon, white men were brothers.
True, they were deluded, and as genocidal colonizers and racist torturers
and murderers, worse than deluded. But it was Fanons belief and hope that
black and white men would eventually be capable of mutual recognition and
respect once the evils of European imperialism had finally been overcome.
The white man was his chief interlocutor, his aim was to show the white
man that he is at once the perpetrator and the victim of a delusion (p. 160).
It was to him that Fanon addressed his arguments. It was with the white man
that Fanon claimed equality and with whom he shared a common humanity
despite the terrible history of colonialism. Those who would eventually hold
hands across the great chasm of colonialism and racism were all men, black
and white together at last beyond hatred and contempt. The hero of his text
was the black man. It was the black man who must learn to extricate him-
self from the psychological ravages of colonialism, who in a sense makes
himself abnormal (p. 160) by envying the white man and his culture, by
trying to elicit guilt in the colonizer, by trying to ape the white man and his
ways. And it is the black man who is the chief victim of the neurotic sexu-
ality of white supremacy, who is dehumanized by being portrayed as nothing
but a penis symbol, who is deprived of a sexuality by the woman of
colours dismissive scorn. The Negro who aspired to full human status
despite the centuries of dehumanization was not a woman. Black women do
not appear in Fanons text at all, neither as those who need to be shown the
ways in which black people can be unwittingly complicit with their own
oppression, nor as those whose admission to full membership of the human
race cannot be long delayed. But without women, how can men be human?
Fanon did not ask the question.
Neither did Said. Although Said was more careful than Fanon to avoid
the ritualistic repetition of the word man, and although he sporadically
included references to work by women and to the importance of feminism,
no more than Fanon did he show any awareness that the original model of
dehumanization is male supremacy, the exclusion of women from human
status because we are not men.3 Indeed, by equating dehumanization with
being emasculated (see above) he is fully complicit with the ideological
belief that only men are human. If dehumanization means being deprived
of masculinity (emasculated), only men can lose their human status since
women do not have any masculinity to lose. It is not in fact the whole
region and its peoples who are emasculated, conceptually or otherwise,
by US social science, only the men, although all are dehumanized. It may be
that this is merely a terminological quibble. It is not a term Said used fre-
quently. But it is symptomatic of the continuing effectiveness of male
supremacys chief blind spot, namely the humanity of women. The solution
is not to include women while everything else remains the same. There is
in fact no immediately obvious solution to the problem of womens exclu-
sion from humanity. But acknowledging that it is in fact the case in the
ideological structures and processes of male supremacy, while insisting that
it ought not to be and acting to change it, is a necessary first step towards
ending domination.
A suggestive, if brief, account of the connections between masculinity and
domination in all its forms is provided by Sandra Hardings description of
the establishment, maintenance and reproduction of the stereotypically
masculine personality . . . the natures of the humans who design and control
patriarchy and capital. Harding went on to say:
The frantic maintenance of dualisms between mind and body, between culture
and nature, between highly-valued self and devalued others, take their first forms
in the process of becoming a male person who must individuate himself from
a devalued woman. Thus infant boys psychological birth in families with our
division of labor by gender produces men . . . who will need to dominate. . . . It
produces misogyny and male-bonding as prototypes of appropriate social rela-
tions with others perceived to be respectively unlike and like themselves. . . .
From this perspective . . . the vast panorama of the history of race relations
becomes one more male drama in which the more powerful group of men works
out its infantile project of dominating the other. (Harding, 1981: 152, 153)4
And, it might be added, the vast panorama of the history of capitalism, whose
chief value is the accumulation of limitless hoards of wealth by greedy men
obsessively proving to each other who has the biggest. The obscenity of
capitalism is the concentration of the worlds wealth in the hands of a few
men, including those salaried employees of capitalist enterprises, managers,
entrepreneurs, skilled artisans of profit-producing technology, paid at grossly

inflated rates because they keep the wealth coming, while a large proportion
of the worlds population, in every country but especially in the third world,
lacks access to even the barest minimum of resources to ensure lives of com-
fort, happiness and dignity, and while the earths resources are depleted and
the biosphere polluted. The obscenity is compounded by the refusal or
incapacity of national governments to tax the rich and redistribute wealth
more equitably, a reluctance which is not confined to Western nations. Those
men responsible for maintaining institutions of domination remain heedless
of the horrendous consequences of their actions because they are committed
to the values of dehumanization.
I am not arguing that racism, colonialism, imperialism or the worst
aspects of capitalism can be wholly accounted for in terms of male suprema-
cist masculinity. I do not know whether or not explaining masculinity will
explain all forms of domination, whether, as Ti-Grace Atkinson put it, the
oppression of women by men is the source of all the corrupt values through-
out the world, or not (Atkinson, 1974: 5 her emphases). What I am argu-
ing is that no account of domination is adequate unless it is also seen in its
male supremacist aspects. For whatever else those forms of domination are,
they are also forms of masculinity, of that moral and political phenomenon
whereby the male sense of self is maintained at the expense of someone
elses human dignity. That someone else is always initially female. It is in this
sense that male domination is the earliest and primary form of domination,
not in the sense that it happened first in history, but in the sense that it hap-
pens first in the life of each individual and provides the mould from which
all forms of dehumanization are cast. What links all forms of domination
together is contempt. The holding of other human beings in contempt is
what they all have in common, what gives domination its meaning and
force. The first object of contempt is female, the mother who is con-
temptible because she is a woman lacking the symbol of human status, the
penis. The primacy of male domination, chronologically and motivationally
in the lives of individuals, is due to the fact that contempt is first learned in
connection with the inculcation of masculinity. Contempt is the psychic
mechanism which ensures that male infants will become men, and that
women will have no alternative but to serve men because that is the only
way they can get access to the human, a subsidiary and despised access
though it might be.
Contempt is the chief meaning and value of a world ruled by men.
Although all men have a special ontological status at womens expense
under conditions of male supremacy because they bear emblazoned on their
bodies the symbol of human value, the world of men is not a realm of
equality. Some men are less worthy than others because they occupy low
positions in the hierarchies of power which organize the male world. Such
men are both feminized and hyper-masculinized. They both partake of
the devalued status accorded women, and continue to be men because they
possess the penis. Lacking power, they become like women, without rights,
without access to decision-making, without control over the conditions of

their existence, without protection against exploitation, violence and mur-
der. But as penis-bearers they are also human in the only way recognized
by the dominators. To the extent that men of the subordinated groups
adhere to the belief that penis-possession signifies human status, by ignor-
ing the existence of women, by giving themselves permission to treat women
with contempt, by demanding the same masculine prerogatives as the domi-
nators, they remain complicit with the meanings and values of a world in
which no one can be free.
Notes
1 There is one sentence in Saids text which, if read in a certain way, says exactly
that. The full sentence reads: as early as Aeschyluss play The Persians the Orient is
transformed from a very far distant and often threatening Otherness into figures that
are relatively familiar (in Aeschyluss case, grieving Asiatic women) (p. 21). If we
read only the underlined words, the sentence becomes: the Orient is transformed
into women. But even taking the whole sentence into account, the meaning remains.
The Orient is transformed from a threat into familiarity by being depicted as women.
It is presumably irrelevant that the women are not in fact familiar, since they are
Asiatics. Obviously all women are the same in not posing any threat.
2 And sometimes boys too a land of cut-rate boys and women, as Frantz
Fanon once said (Fanon, 1952: 161).
3 In this context, it must be noted that Said did not receive any help from most
of what has been published as feminism, as I have been at pains to point out
throughout this present work. It must also be noted that these texts by Said and
Fanon are no worse than any of a myriad of others I could have chosen to illustrate
the ongoing hegemony of the male monopolization of human status. The problem
is not a personal deficiency of these two authors, but a social system of meanings and
values with which individuals can be complicit but which they can also resist and
challenge as long as they know about alternatives.
4 Unfortunately, Harding was later to repudiate this kind of insight, without,
however, either acknowledging her own earlier embracing of it, or providing any
reason for the shift in her point of view (Harding, 1986: 185).
Conclusion
My task throughout has been to argue that, without acknowledgement of

the meanings and values of male supremacy which structure a reality where
only men are human, feminism has no unifying point of reference. I have
argued that feminisms obvious concern with women only makes sense as a
concern to expose the ways in which women are dehumanized under con-
ditions of male supremacy, while attempting to rectify that dehumanization
through women taking our lives and destinies into our own hands by extri-
cating ourselves from male-defined institutions, and by creating or reassert-
ing our own meanings and values outside male control. I have also argued
that that enterprise involves women striving for a human status which does
not depend on the diminution of anyone elses human rights and dignities.
I have suggested that that enterprise is already possible because it is in many
ways already conceivable, although the task is by no means ended because
male supremacy has not yet been overcome. Indeed the struggle has just
begun. Despite the centuries of womens resistance to male definition and
control, feminism has made little headway against the hydra-headed mons-
ter of male hegemony. None the less, the struggle must continue.
I began with an extended definition of feminism which detailed what is
involved in the idea of social construction. Although a social construc-
tionist perspective is central to feminist theorizing, it tends to be confined
to challenging arguments appealing to nature, and hence to be too narrow
in scope to allow other important implications of the concept of social con-
struction to be addressed. There is too little awareness of the extent to
which the human individual is a social being all the way through, and of the
implications of that for the feminist project of exposing and transforming
the political dimensions of personal life. Taking seriously the idea that femi-
nisms primary antagonist is a social system was necessary, I felt, if feminism
was to resolve some of the contradictions into which it has been driven by
a continuing covert adherence to a belief in the ontological primacy of indi-
viduals. If the subject-matter of feminism is a social system rather than just
women, it becomes possible to evaluate what is said by women in the name
of feminism on moral and political criteria, rather than on the basis of the
experiences or feelings of women as discrete individuals. It becomes possi-
ble to challenge anti-feminist positions which masquerade as feminism sim-
ply because they are held by women who identify as feminist; and it
becomes possible to keep feminist energy and attention focused on the main
enemy rather than dissipated throughout a multitude of differences among
women. If the subject-matter of feminism is a social system rather than a
C O N C L U S I O N 147
matter of female personal experience, it becomes possible to identify ways

in which even women can consent to our own oppression and adhere to
meanings and values which operate against our own best interests; and it
becomes possible to hold men accountable for the wrongs they do to
women, while still acknowledging that they have choices and can refuse to
comply with male supremacist requirements that men treat women as less
than human. Within the schema of a social system, individuals are both
bearers of social relations and the loci of moral and political judgement,
decision and action which can lead to resistance and refusal.
I went on to define what kind of social system it is that feminism
is opposing, that is, the social system of male supremacy structured by mean-
ings and values which maintain the male as the human norm. I argued that
feminisms undoubted concern for women arises out of the recognition that
women are debarred from human status under conditions of male
supremacy, and that that is the source of the atrocities against women iden-
tified by feminism. In other words, women are problematic in feminist
terms because the relations of ruling under which we live are maintained at
our expense. Feminism is unquestionably concerned with the multitude of
ways in which women are human too, including not only the various ways
in which we live our lives, but also the very fact that we exist at all. But I
also pointed out that, unless the feminist standpoint is acknowledged in the
first place as the moral and political opposition to male supremacy, femi-
nism loses its central unifying focus, and women become nothing but the
occupants of their present social locations, caught up in mutual antago-
nisms to the extent that some social locations are more privileged than
others. I argued that without the explicit identification of male supremacy
as the problem, there is no feminist standpoint, that womens life activity
or womens experience is not alone sufficient to define feminist politics.
In Part Two, I argued in some detail that there is much that is labelled
feminism which is complicit with male supremacist relations of ruling
because it refuses, or neglects, to name them as such, or because it actively
sets out to destroy the feminist standpoint which does. The academy is an
important site for the formation and distribution of meaning, far too impor-
tant to allow it to be turned against the ruling interests. The gates must be
kept barred against the bad crazy women threatening to cut off the phallic
source of all meaning and pleasure. Unfortunately for the success of this
endeavour to exclude threats to phallic supremacy, the master needs
trusties. He needs discourses defending his interests visibly authored by
women in order to demonstrate that his interests are womens too. But
women are notoriously untrustworthy as defenders of phallocracy. There is
no unequivocal sign marking off the reliable good women from the bad cast-
rating ones. Sometimes the gatekeeping fails because the good woman and
the bad woman are the same woman, struggling with the seductions and
coercions of malestream thought, at one point losing her way in the tangled
thickets of what counts as knowledge, at another point finding the way
clearly marked by the interests of women in opposing male supremacy, only
148 C O N C L U S I O N
to lose it as the jungle closes in around her once again. Sometimes the
gatekeeping fails because the master is fooled into believing that she is work-
ing in his interests because she is working in a traditional malestream disci-
pline, whereas what she is actually doing is using her feminist insight to
challenge and transform that discipline. Sometimes, sadly, it is the feminist
who is deceived into believing that she is operating in womens interests by
the mere fact that she is working in the field of Womens Studies, a self-
deception which can only be exacerbated by the tendency to re-name
Womens Studies Gender Studies.1 Sometimes the gatekeeping simply fails
for no perceptible reason (apart, that is, from the general reason that no
form of domination is inevitable).
I have said nothing in these pages about what is to be done in activist
terms. My task has not been to address any of the various ways in which
feminists in academe have struggled to place feminism on the intellectual
agenda. Rather, my task has been to clarify what feminism is in the most
general terms, to provide a number of illustrative examples of academic
feminist writings which fall short of feminist aims, and to discuss some of
the ways in which that happens. Certainly the theoretical schema I have out-
lined here has a multitude of practical implications. But decisions about
what needs to be done, including what needs to be done within the acade-
mic domain, are the prerogative of those who are doing it. My own contri-
bution to the struggle has been the clarification of feminist politics on the
level of meaning. How that meaning translates into practical activism will
depend on the particular problems and difficulties individual activists are
faced with. How one engages with specific realities cannot be dictated
beforehand. Each of us has to decide for herself (and himself) what is to be
done, whether or not anything can be done, and how far one can go before
the monstrous regime makes it too hard to go on. As Phyllis Chesler put it
in the titles of the first and last chapters of her book: Heroism is our only
alternative and Sister, fear has no place here (Chesler, 1994). Women are
no strangers to heroism, despite its traditional monopolization by men; and
although fear is an appropriate response to the Leviathan of male supremacy,
we cannot allow fear alone to stop us.
Note
1 Jocelyn Pixley has suggested that Gender Studies might have been justified
originally as an improvement on Womens Studies, because the designation
Womens Studies implies that the problems are only womens, whereas Gender
Studies would facilitate dealing with men as well. But although the word gender is
sometimes used to mean male domination, its chief use and function is to deny it.
And academic departments of Gender Studies are in fact devoted to anti-feminist
substitutions for feminism, of which the most fashionable at the moment is queer
theory.
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Index
Abercrombie, Nicholas, 23 Bourdieu, Pierre, 65

Aboriginal women, 1027 Bulkin, Elly, 11516
academic feminism, 12 Butler, Judith, 556, 69, 758
comprehensibility of, 312
concept of victims, 578 Caine, Barbara, 54
examples of, 3, 72, 78 Campioni, Mia, 2
exclusion, 956 capitalism, 16, 45, 93, 126, 134,
academy 1434
feminism and gatekeeping in, and patriarchy, 61
1478 and womens oppression, 62
radical feminism in, 1 Carby, Hazel, 1078, 1234
Al-Hibri, Azizah Y., 125 castration, threat of, 834
anti-racism causation, in object relations
men and women working theory, 85
together, 103 Chicago, Judy, 96
neglect of male domination, 945 childbirth, 117
rejection of feminism, 103 children see familial relationships
Atkinson, Ti-Grace, 60, 113, Chodorow, Nancy, 83, 845, 89
134, 135 class
categories of oppression, 12631
Bacchi, Carol, 689 false universalism, 11623
Barrett, Michle, 23, 24, 62 and feminist politics, 93
Beauvoir, Simone de, 12, 129 imperialism, 1236
Beechey, Veronica, 612 and male domination, 92
Bell, Diane, 1067 problems of analysing, 934
Benhabib, Seyla, 80, 1212 and race in feminism, 11216
Benjamin, Jessica, 858, 89 class relations, and ideology, 23
binary oppositions see dichotomies colonization
biology as white and male supremacist,
as societys other, 735 1046
and truth, 75 see also imperialism
black, as male category, 11213 compliance with male domination,
black people, compared with 22, 245, 367, 50
women, 11314 comprehensibility, of feminist
black women theory, 314
absent from feminist texts, 112, contempt, as supremacist value,
113, 114 423, 83, 144
see also women of colour Cornell, Drucilla, 80
160 I N D E X
culture dominant ideology thesis, 234

and colonization, 1056 domination
and women, 1256 and control of meaning, 31
and equality in lesbianism, 14
Dalston Study Group, 32 link with ideology, 229
Daly, Mary, 11416 maintenance of, 22
de Lauretis, Teresa, 75 neglected in categories of
dehumanization, 13644 oppression, 1267
and male supremacy, 8, 13, and truth, 2931
56, 69, 94 see also male domination
and men, 92 dualisms see dichotomies
and racism, 93 Dworkin, Andrea, 39, 93
Delmar, Rosalind, 667
desire economic sphere
domination enabled by, 9, 22, and ideology, 23
25, 3643, 59, 78, 89 see also capitalism
heterosexual, 14, 76, 79, 85, 88 Eisenstein, Hester, 81
individualism and, 434 Engels, Frederick, 72
dichotomies equality, and lesbianism, 14
feminist concept of, 7980, 90 essentialism
of race and class among women, and the category women, 69
1201 in feminist debate, 68
and racial exclusion, 97, 99101 and individualism, 456
difference, feminist concept of, 81 everyday life
differences among women, 66, 92 male domination and, 24, 489
categories of oppression, 12631 see also experience
class, 934 exclusion, and race in feminism,
class and race in feminism, 95102
11216 experience
as diversion from male influence of social system
domination, 923 and, 1467
false universalism, 11623 relationship with domination,
hierarchies of oppression, 989 489
imperialism, 1236 and theory, 334, 49, 701
male domination neglected in
race debate, 945, 989, false universalism, 56, 94, 11623
1035, 10610 falsehood, 301
race debate, 945 familial relationships, 859
racial exclusion, 95102 family, and society, 86
racism in feminism, 94 Fanon, Frantz, 1403
relevance of feminism for women fathers, 86, 879
of colour, 1027 femininity, and masculinity, 467
differences between sexes, 812 feminism
object relations theory, 829 antagonism toward, 1, 545
domestic violence, 1034, 105, concept of dichotomies,
1067 7980, 90
I N D E X 161
feminism, cont. feminist object relations theory,

concept of difference see 829
difference feminist standpoint, 1721
concept of gender, 729, 90 feminist texts
concept of patriarchy, 5963, absence of women of colour,
8990 112, 113, 114
concept of sexism, 634, 90 definition of feminism, 538
concept of women, 13, examples used, 3
6472, 90 recognition of male domination,
defining, 3, 56, 1617 558
false universalism, 11623 feminist theory
feminist texts, 538 comprehensibility of, 314
frameworks of, 1, 17 and womens experience, 334,
and gatekeeping in academy, 49, 701
1478 FEMINISTS, THE (radical
human status, 1, 8, 1215 feminist group), 133
imperialism, 1236 Fesl, Eve, 103
lesbianism, 1315 fetishism, 401, 84
male domination, 813, Firestone, Shulamith, 25, 117, 134
8990, 146 Flax, Jane, 2930, 74
moral aspects, 7 Foucault, Michel, 257
political aspects, 78 Francis, Babette, 68
post-colonial feminism, 97 Fraser, Nancy, 117, 11920
and race see race; race debate; French feminism, 82
racism Freud, Sigmund, 40, 834
race, class and gender categories,
12631 Gatens, Moira, 79
in realm of meaning, 16 gay men
relational feminism, 54 lesbianandgay politics, 467
relevant to all, 16, 1012, 129 sexual practices, 37
resistance to male domination, gender
13, 501 Butlers use of term, 76
second wave, 2 categories of race, class
separatism, 1516 and, 12631
social construction, 67, 8, feminist concept of, 5, 46,
9, 146 57, 59, 60, 729, 81, 90
socialist feminism, 20, 602 sex/gender distinction, 739
truth, meaning and values, 345 Gender Studies, 148
use of term, 23 Giddens, Anthony, 910
as white and middle class, Grimshaw, Patricia, 105
11216 gynecology, 116
see also academic feminism;
radical feminism Harding, Sandra, 19, 55, 143
feminisms, 1, 17 Hartsock, Nancy, 1819
feminist activism, 148 heterosexual desire, 14
feminist identity, 71 hierarchies of oppression, 989
162 I N D E X
Hoagland, Sarah, 478 irrelevance, of feminism for women

Hobart Womens Action Group of colour, 1027
(HWAG), 634
hooks, bell, 989, 114 Jaggar, Alison, 1920
human status Jardine, Alice, 5
dehumanization, 13644 Jeffreys, Sheila, 38, 47
ideology of, 279 Johnson, Miriam M., 78
as male, 1213, 27, 11213, 114 Joseph, Gloria, 99100
and masculinity, 467
and penis-possession, 379, Kramarae, Cheris, 53
401, 84, 85 Kumar, Mina, 45
and pornography, 36, 3840, 41
and race debate, 945, 105, 106 Lake, Marilyn, 97
and relationships, 84 Langton, Marcia, 107
and violence against women, lesbian sadomasochism, 367
289 lesbianandgay politics, 467
of women, 1213, 18, 279, lesbianism
143, 147 and concept of sexism, 64
Humm, Maggie, 5, 54 and defining feminism, 1315
Lewis, Jill, 99100
idealism, 72, 78 lived actualities
identity and domination, 489
feminist, 71 see also experience
and individualism, 45 Lorde, Audre, 11415
identity of primary emergency, 93 Lukes, Steven, 11
ideology
concept of, 229 McNay, Lois, 57
Foucaults objections to, 257 Mahler, Margaret, 87
link with domination, 229 male domination
pornography as expression of, academic feminist approach
3841, 43 to, 12
of romantic love, 25 and antagonism towards
and truth, 269 feminism, 545
see also idealism and concept of dichotomies, 80
imperialism and concept of difference, 81, 83
in feminism, 1236 and concept of feminism,
link with masculinity, 1379 813, 8990, 146
and male domination, 95 and concept of gender, 74, 77
see also colonization and concept of women, 65,
individual 67, 69, 70
lived actualities of, 489 disguised by individualism, 437
moral agency of, 478, 57 enabled by pleasure and
resistance to male domination, desire, 3643
501 and everyday life, 24, 489
individualism, domination disguised and familial relationships, 859
by, 437 and feminist standpoint, 1821
I N D E X 163
male domination, cont. Molyneux, Maxine, 1234

link with other oppressions, moral agency, 478, 57
13545 morality, and feminism, 7
neglected in categories of Morgan, Robin, 113, 134
oppression, 1267 motherinfant relationship,
neglected in idealism, 72 47, 878
neglected in race debate, 945, mothering
989, 1035, 10610 and male domination, 859
in philosophy, 120 and masculinity, 47, 83, 845
and power, 1012 multiculturalism, 125, 126
as prime oppression, 1335, 144
recognition in feminist texts natural, sex as, 378
of, 558 nature/society distinction, and
resistance to, 13, 501 sex/gender, 737
women as victims of, 568, Ng, Roxana, 95
109, 110, 115 Nicholson, Linda, 11618,
womens compliance and 11920
consent to, 22, 245, 367, 50 Nussbaum, Martha, 778
womens differences as
diversion from, 923 Oakley, Ann, 75
Marx, Karl, 72 object relations theory, 829
masculinity objectification, 401
concept of, 467 Offen, Karen, 54
mothering and, 47, 83, 845 Okin, Susan Moller, 1245
object relations critique of, 834 Omolade, Barbara, 978
racism, dehumanization and, oppression
13544 Barretts concept of
maternal relation see mothering womens, 62
Mathieu, Nicole-Claude, 65 feminist categories of, 12631
Mayo, Katherine, 11516 hierarchies of, 989
meaning link between types of, 13545
defining feminism in realm of, 16 radical feminist approach to,
domination and control of, 31 1335, 144
and ideology, 22 womens and others, 11314
truth and values of feminism, Orientalism, 1379
1, 34 other, and race in feminism, 97,
men 99101, 1201
domination by see male
domination patriarchy
humanity of see human status and capitalism, 61
impact of colonization on, 1056 dismissed as male domination,
and women in anti-racist 556
struggles, 103 feminist concept of, 5963,
see also masculinity 8990
Millett, Kate, 60, 61 and race, 1078
Mohanty, Chandra, 10810 penis, and disgrace, 42
164 I N D E X
penis-as-phallus, 37, 84 racism

penis-possession feminism and, 94, 1001
human status and, 379, 401, male domination and, 945
84, 85 masculinity, dehumanization
and object-relations theory, and, 13544
84, 85 of Mayos text, 115
philosophy, false universalism of, radical feminism
11920 in academy, 1
pleasure, domination enabled by, attacks on, 1, 456, 122
3643 criticisms of, 20, 612
political nature of feminism, 78 and the primacy of male
Pollitt, Katha, 1256 domination, 1335, 144
Poole, Linda J., 73 theory and, 34
pornography rape, 28, 142
campaigns against, 39 Rattansi, Ali, 136
domination and complicity, Redstockings, 133
367 relational feminism, 54
and male ideology, 3841, 43 relationships
post-colonial feminism, 97 familial, 859
postmodernism, 2 and sex differences, 84
power, and domination, 1012 resistance, to male domination,
private/public distinction, 78, 24 13, 501
prostitution, 412, 43 romantic love, ideology of, 25
psychology Rubin, Gayle, 44
and concept of sex
differences, 82 sadomasochism, 367, 40
see also object relations theory Said, Edward W., 1379, 143
public/private distinction, 78, 24 Saunders, Hilary, 103, 106
Schor, Naomi, 678, 121
Queensland Domestic Violence second wave feminism, 2
Task Force, 105 separatism, concept of, 1516
sex, social construction of, 6, 76
race sex differences, 819
categories of oppression, sex/gender distinction, 739
12631 sexism, feminist concept of,
and class in feminism, 11216 634, 90
dichotomies of white and sexist oppression, hooks concept
other, 97, 99101, 1201 of, 989
false universalism, 11623 sexual activity, sex and, 78
and feminist politics, 93 sexual practices
imperialism, 1236 equality and domination in
and male domination, 923 lesbian, 14
race debate, 92132 gay male, 37
and feminism, 945 sexual violence
neglect of male domination in, and human status, 28
945, 989, 1035, and pornography, 39
10610 and race, 1412
I N D E X 165
sexuality violence against women, cont.

and race, 140 and ideology, 289
see also desire see also sexual violence
Simms, J. Marion, 116
Smith, Dorothy, 48 Walker, Alice, 96, 102
social construction, 613, 76, 146 Wallace, Michele, 101
socialism, approach to oppression, Washington, Mary Helen, 101
1345 Weedon, Chris, 30
socialist feminism, 20, 602 white supremacy
society/nature distinction, and and male supremacy, 101, 104
sex/gender, 737 and masculinity, 140
Spacks, Patricia Meyer, 96 see also imperialism
Spelman, Elizabeth, 113, 1279 white womens movement,
Stanton, Vi, 103 99100, 103
states of primary emergency, 93 women
Stimpson, Catharine, 112 compliance with domination,
subject, and ideology, 26 22, 245, 367, 50
subjectivity, sex differences in, 85 and culture, 1256
Sykes, Bobbi, 104 dichotomies of race and class,
1201
theory differences among see differences
comprehensibility of feminist, among women
314 feminist concept of, 13,
and experience, 334, 49, 701 6472, 90
and radical feminism, 34 human status of, 1213, 18,
third-world women, 1089, 1234 279, 143, 147
Till, Emmet, 1278 and other oppressed groups,
Treichler, Paula, 53 11314
truth as victims of domination, 568,
and biology, 75 109, 110, 115
and domination, 2931 women of colour
feminist meaning and, 1, 34 absent from feminist texts,
and ideology, 269 112, 113, 114
exclusion from feminism, 95102
universalism see false universalism irrelevance of feminism for,
1027
values, feminist, 345
Womens Liberation Movement, 2
victims, women as, 568, 109,
womens oppression, Barretts
110, 115
concept of, 62
violence against women
Womens Studies, 148
and denial of male
Woolf, Virginia, 46
domination, 109
domestic violence, 1034,
105, 1067

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Radical Feminism

eBook covers_pj orange.indd 59 20/2/08 6:28:13 pm

First published 2001

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or

SAGE Publications Ltd

SAGE Publications Inc

SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is

ISBN 0 7619 6340 5

Library of Congress Control Number available

Typeset by SIVA Math Setters, Chennai, India

Part One Understanding Feminism 5

2 Ideology Justifying Domination 22

3 Ideology Enabling and Disguising Domination 36

Part Two Misunderstanding Feminism 53

7 Differences Among Women 92

8 What Does it Mean to Call Feminism

9 Masculinity and Dehumanization 133

T he general tenor of the arguments in this book is that radical feminism is

question of male domination. While this may be inadvertent, it is none the

U nderstanding what feminism is is not a straightforward task because

the opportunity to enter into debate. No discourse belongs solely to its

improvement on arguments from nature, it has a limited use for feminist

as well as men, the mutual knowledge of social actors (Giddens, 1984:

Hence, people can willingly act to reproduce relations of domination and

domination is a moral one, and, as such, it depends on voluntary actions and

withdrawal of recognition from men as the only human individuals, and a

only unrealistic, it is also individualistic. It interprets male domination only

unpaid work and women themselves as appropriated by men rather than

Feminism is a thoroughgoing critique of male domination wherever it is

D omination is routinely maintained through the willing, albeit manipu-

tend to insist that there is an inextricable connection between ideology and

This is true enough as far as it goes, and it is important to keep pointing

These effects do not have to be total for it to be identified as ideology. That

to briefly while the message is conveyed that their right to speaking-time is

Although there is a real problem being alluded to by arguments like these,

a concomitant idea of truth. Both are judgements about what is asserted.

Meaning and Understanding

theoretical, impersonal, non-political and abstract. . . . By theorizing feminism I

the institutions of higher learning. They failed to take adequate account of

Pleasure and Desire

From the standpoint of male supremacist ideology, the meaning of

to themselves and in their relations with others. From a feminist standpoint

Freuds fetishist coped with womens humanness by avoiding it, by erecting

Although the only reason for the existence of prostitution is to service

contempt does not refer only to a personal emotion belonging to individuals.

The ideology of individualism masquerades as collective interests via the

quiescence in the face of conditions of domination. Essentialism, however,

critique, lesbian sadomasochism and lesbianandgay2 politics, involve women

idea that moral agency means control, of self, of others, or of situations.

On the other hand, however, there is an element of truth in appeals to

male domination provides a standpoint from which certain questions can be

T he obvious place to look for definitions is, of course, a dictionary, and

of, feminist terrain. They did, however, offer a definition of feminism in

did not recognize that it is feminisms very opposition to male supremacy,

is rejecting. No evidence for or examples of fictive universality are provided,

This kind of argument is common in academic feminist circles. Lois

So naming male domination is not to portray women as nothing but