Karey Donnelly Lit Theory Paper # 5 April 27, 1999 Dr. Thomas The Next Wave of Feminism: Acknowledging the Biological Imperative and Resurrecting the Mother FEMINISM: A BACKGROUND Feminism of the Western world, specifically America and England, has many permutations and manifestations. A look at its recent history reveals it has gone through stages of varying emphases, and a summary of different feminisms reveal a multitude of viewpoints, and even some that are conflicting and unreconciliable. Beginning the 19`x' century, women's oppression was not just a social arrangement ?? women as the "angel of the house," consigned to realm of morality,children, and the duties of the home (Bloom 182ff.), or a psychological enculturation (women as passive, weaker, indecisive, unintelligent, subservient creatures) ?? but it was also reinforced insidiously through cold hard legal realities that denied women, not only the right to vote, but the right to their own property and money (even if inherited or earned), the right to their own children in the event of a divorce, and the right to move freely and express herself in a man's world of business, commerce, education, sport, game, entertainment. Women were aptly compared to slaves in such public arenas as courts of law ("The Mansfield judgement," 1772), and marriages were vehicles to remove from the woman her financial, legal, and social identity ? her very self through the "Law of Coverture" in 19' century Britain. This law created the paradigm of "Husband + Wife = HusbandPlus" (Ledwon 2). Within this society, "Once a woman marries she becomes nonexistent in the eyes of the law ....She is cut adrift from the privilege of power, losing her name and becoming unnameable" (Ledwon 1). Things slowly improved as the century progressed, both in England and America, with such social and legal improvements as the repeal of the Law of Coverture in the mid?1800's, the female vote granted first in England and then in America, and the feminist movement which, from 1830 ? 1930, slowly gained other rights (education and work) for women as well (Richter 1347). The psychological and further social liberation of women picked up with the renewed feminist movement of the 1960's and 1970's. In terms of feminist literary criticism, which evolved from feminism in general, it took varying forms and branched out in different ways. The first wave of feminist literary criticism (1970's to early 1980's) attacked the established patriarchal culture, and looked at the role of women in texts written by men, the way women were viewed and interpreted by men, and the misogyny present in them. The second wave attacked the literary canon itself, primarily male, and sought a place for women writers. Some of this movement sought to entirely remake the canon; others sought to modify it with a stronger feminine influence. The third wave of feminist criticism concerned itself with the feminine language, feminine modes of creativity and expression, and feminine texts that resulted from the ostracizing of women from traditional male domains such as education and public life (Richter 1345?1346, Rivkin and Ryan 527?528). Feminism itself had undergone a differentiation in the 1970's: Constructionist feminists, who believed that "woman" was merely an arbitrary creation of patriarchy, "gender is made by culture in history," stood in irreconciliable opposition to essentialist feminists who believed in female "essence," and who felt gender was "a natural difference between men and women that is as much psychological, even linguistic, as it is biological" (Rivkin and Ryan 529). Essentialists accepted traditional female characteristics attributed to women, but championed and celebrated them. Women's bodies made them more connected with matter and nature, essentialists said, and men, conversely, were abstracted from the material world as they had to separate from mother in a way women did not. Women, not needing to undergo psychological separation from mother, could identify with, not separate from, those close to them and thus become more caring and nurturing than men. Essentialists can be further divided into (1) those that center around the body, specifically the female body, as opposed to "male reason," the mind, and (2) those that argue "against all identity ....Male reason [and patriarchal] domination through categorical analysis is impossible in the realm of matter where things flow into one another and are unameable to philosophical opposition" (Rivkin and Ryan 530). Constructionists, on the other hand, felt the ideas of femininity and masculinity were constructions of an oppressive patriarchal structure that conditioned women (and men) to exhibit these gender defined characteristics to conform with the genitals biology had arbitrarily handed them in order to make a better division of labor, a better capitalist culture. Women and men are "feminine" and "masculine" only out of obedience to "cultural codes," not due to any inherent connected relationship with natural biological characteristics. Gender is a mere "imitation of a code that refers to no natural substance" (Rivkin and Ryan 529?530). Constructionist feminists argue that men and women are essentially the same; their differences are merely perceived: "In fact, from the standpoint of nature, men and women are closer to each other than either is to anything else ? for instance, mountains, kangaroos, or coconut palms" (Rubin 546). Constructionists believe that as (if) society no longer continues to socialize women and men to convincing them that they are different, then these merely perceived sexual differences will disappear. "It is impossible to predict what will become of sexual difference ? in another time (in two to three hundred years?). But we must make no mistake: men and women are caught up in a web of age?old cultural determinations that are almost unanalyzable in their complexity. One can no more speak of `woman' than of `man' without being trapped within an ideological theater..." (Cixous 580). Not just gender, but even sexuality, is seen as an artificial construction. Heterosexuality and homosexuality are not just polar opposites, not "identities" or "categories" but specific individual acts that a person chooses to engage in. Thus, there not heteros and homos, but rather, men who sexually relate to women, men who sexually relate men as men, and men who sexually relate to men as women, and sometimes men who can relate to women as women, and any one person can have any combination of those characteristics. Sexuality and gender then becomes not rigidly defined and prescribed, but various permutations that do not have biological imperative to them. "As soon as a woman has relationship with another woman, she is homosexual, and therefore masculine ...." According to Freud, "It is only as a man that the female homosexual can desire a woman who reminds her of a man" (qtd. in Irigaray 575). Sexuality and gender, in this view, is fluid, not fixed. "Homosexuality" is forbidden, secondary, the other, not because a homosexual act is inherently wrong or different according to these feminists, but because it threatens the social order. Female homosexual relations do so, and so do male ones. "The `other' homosexual relations, masculine ones, are just as subversive, so they too are forbidden. Because they openly interpret the law according to which society operates, they threaten in fact to shift the horizon of that law" (Irigaray 574). Constructionist feminists thus say that gender and homosexuality are artificial constructions, and the traditional heterosexual, male?female union is encouraged by and only by society. Thus, the traditional family system, mother and father who have children is a mere cultural determiniation. In fact, some anthropologists and feminists and structuralists have studied kinships systems (cultural families, not necessarily biologically related to each other), and have concluded that the traditional family arrangement that we think of as biologically determined in our Western modern society, is an artificial one. Levi?Strauss's examination of kinship systems showed an "imposition of cultural organization upon the facts of biological procreation" (Rubin 540). Rubin's study of "kinship systems" is used to support that gender definition is arbitrary and capricious. She says, "Kinship systems vary wildly from one culture to the next. They contain all sorts of bewildering rules which govern whom one may or may not marry. Their internal complexity is dazzling [they contain] incest taboos, cross cousin marriage, terms of decent, relationships of avoidance or forced intimacy, clans and sections, taboos on names ...." (Rubin 540). So Rubin hypothesizes that the basic family unit is arbitrarily determined and culturally dictated, as are the sexual rules that account for the traditional division of labor between the sexes. "The division of labor by sex can therefore be seen as a `taboo': a taboo against the sameness of men and women, a taboo dividing the sexes into two mutually exclusive categories, a taboo which exacerbates the biological differences between the sexes and thereby creates gender" (Rubin 545). MOTHERHOOD: A DISTINCTLY FEMININE, BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE However, Rubin and Levi?Strauss, who see gender differences as artificial cultural constructs, and the traditional two parent family as artificial, mislead woman and men today. The fact is, there are strong inherent gender differences between men and women and a biological imperative that rears its undeniable, unavoidable, biological head at that moment when the women is experiencing that distinctly and uniquely feminine experience ? conception, pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and mothering a baby. Not only that, these are experiences that are distinctly non?cultural constructs, almost entirely tangible physically ordained and manipulative realities, that are hormonal, chemical, biological, physical alterations of the woman's body, that compel her to actions that may even be in striking discordance with a liberated working woman's, and liberated society's values. The physical changes that occur in a woman's body, distinctly and ONLY female changes, create a psychological and social change in her that makes her not only different from the male, but different from her pre?pregnant liberated self. This phenomenon is a biological imperative caused by nature, hormonal changes and bio?physical realities that causes women to exhibit marked "feminine" attributes, nurturing, caring, and even "feminine" social choices ? such as staying at home with her baby instead of going to work, despite all the encouragement society can offer, and does offer, otherwise. In fact, among women today, we often have psychological dilemma, even trauma, of the separation from the child when the woman must return to work due to the biological, hormonal instinct to be with the child which wars with the sociological imperative for a liberated woman to go out into the world and do the "mode of production" that has the greater value ? economically as it earns more money, and productively, as it is a "masculine" work mode and choice. And the interesting thing is, due to the feminist influence on modern couples/women today, most of these women will not realize this or anticipate this experience until the actual physical experience of it, of pregnancy and childbirth, when it hits them full force, and flies in the face of what they had been trained to believe. Why? Because constructionist feminists have convinced us that a woman's biological transformation and need to be with her child it does not exist ?and only the experience of it will convince a "liberated" working woman otherwise. One can argue socialization until the end of the day, but that even that mehtod of argument, according to essentialist feminists, is a masculine act, a rational act, a linear, logical engagement of the mind and reason, and in face of the feminine "body experience" of childbirthing and rearing, it fails miserably. The pregnant mother will reason: Of course, the baby will be well taken care of in day care. Of course, the mother will be more stimulated intellectually at work. But it won't work, because one can set forth all the extremely logical arguments one wishes, but when the feminine means of persuasion, experience bodily experienced occurs, the logical rational argument carries no weight whatsoever. When it comes to motherhood ? the act of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and raising the infant and toddler, the woman will still have a connection to the child, on a biological, emotional, and mental level, in a way she cannot describe and cannot anticipate until the hormones are coursing through her veins. One interesting observation is that a large proportion of these constructionist femininsts have not been married, and have not been pregnant or raised a child. I would argue that until they actually participate in this defining feature of womanhood (and I say defining, because men are biologically incapable of it, and thus it is possible to differentiate, to define the female in at least one way as the ability to conceive and bear children), they are speaking with less than all the information they need to understand the subject. In other words, ironically, they speak of female, woman, feminine roles and feminine experience, from the reasoning, abstracted stance that is attributed, by some femininists, to the masculine, and not from the body, from matter, from nature, from instinct, from experience, that is attributed to the feminine. Not having physically experienced pregnancy and childbirth, they can easily and flippantly throw out the claim that the mothering instinct, so strong in a woman, is a not a biological imperative, but merely a product of cultural and sociological conditioning. However, latter twentieth century America encourages the opposite of their woman ? go out and work, earn money, have a career, be the "father," play the man's role. And a large proportion of young, modern women, until the biological imperative hits them, until their hormones of pregnancy start flowing, and until the instinctual mother?infant bond after childbirth kicks in, will say that they will continue to work after they have their child, and use day?care, and have every intention, will, and desire to do so. It's all worked out in their minds, all logically, rationally set up and decided. Because, as feminists say, the masculine characteristics are indeed present in a woman, to varying degrees with much overlap. "Furthermore, although there is an average difference between males and females on a variety of traits, the range of variation of these traits shows considerable overlap" (Cisoux 546). Cisoux speaks correctly, and so women of today can easily hold careers, participate successfully in the "traditional" "masculine" world, and plan to retain their "masculine" identity through pregnancy and childbirth, allowing the day care center to be the mother. Life has been organized to fit with the social imperative the woman feels to continue in her career, or to contribute to increasing the family's income, and thus, status in society, or to maintain her independent means of finances for whatever reason. But motherhood changes everything. The distinctly feminine experience, biologically ordained of the individual, creates a desire in the woman to act in a way that seems, for the feminist to be at the dictates of society. It is not society, it is biology. Once the child is born, there is an intangible, unquantifiable, decidedly unreasoning and unscientific bond between the child and mother, and once that mother's (three months) maternity leave are up, a very large percentage of women either do not go back to work, or if necessary and unavoidable, go back relunctantly and painfully, often with great surprise to themselves at their reaction, which could never have been anticipated before pregnancy. Also, while they are at work, there is often a consuming concern about the child in day?care, and many women go to great inconvenience to see the child at lunch/breaks in order to nurse the baby, to do whatever is possible to be physically present, THERE, with the baby. It is almost a compulsion with these other wise rational, professional, "masculine" women. It is a physical, bodily, instinct?driven phenomenon, and these feminists can theorize all they want about arbitrary divisions of labor, but when it comes to motherhood, it is a biological imperative. And yes, it is a burden. It is a biologically imposed burden, not a sociologically imposed one, despite what our feminists may claim. But a burden nonetheless. The woman is enslaved to her instincts, to her hormones, to her body/psyche/instinctual desire to be with her infant, who is the master. And a demanding one. When women choose not to go back to work, they more often than not, are not doing so because they feel a societal pressure to stay at home (not common in the 1990's) or because they have a convenient excuse for a life of ease, eating bon?bons and watching soap operas. Actually, to stay at home with the infant is not an attractive labor choice. They are almost always choosing a greater amount of work than their traditionally masculine work requires of them. (It varies from child to child, but few infants are easier than a regular career or job.) They are, one can safely generalize, choosing far less intellectually stimulating labor. Quite often, they are usually isolated for most of the day, with little adult contact, so they are in a far less socially stimulating job. Yet, after the child is born, they still, time and time again, make the choice, even in asocial system that approves, even encourages, a woman to work in a man's world. Why? The biological imperative. KINSHIP SYSTEMS: A BIOLOGICAL NECESSITY FOR BOTH A "MOTHER" AND A "FATHER" The family unit, the kinship system, is also biologically influenced to make the weak claim, and even some might argue the strong claim, biologically ordained, despite feminist assertions otherwise. Biologically, a man and a woman are necessary to create a family. Although the times are changing, and now it is possible to artificially inseminate a woman and create a child. (Thus, unfortunately for both parties, the male's presence is only peripherally required in this particular kind of procreative act). (So although Cixous claims that patriarchal culture allows the mother to be expendable, "ultimately the world of being can function while precluding the mother. No need for mother, as long as there is some motherliness: and it is the father, then, who acts the part, who is the mother. Either woman is passive or she does not exist" (Cixous 579), it is, in fact, the father who is, on a biological level at least, expendable.) But while modern society has done away with the biological imperative that two be present participants in co?creating a new member of the species, it cannot do away with the fact that at least two must be present to nurture that member of the species to adulthood. Rubin says that "If biological and hormonal imperatives were as overwhelming as popular mythology would have them, it would hardly be necessary to insure heterosexual unions by means of economic interdependency" (Rubin 546). And as evidenced by our new, scientific methods of procreation, she would seem to be right; we do not even need a heterosexual union to propagate the species. However, Rubin's thesis is wrong. Biologically, both a mother and a father are necessary to raise a child to adulthood. And that means not just to nurture the child to the fullness of its potential, but to actually ensure the physical, biological existence and continuation of that child's life. A union (although not necessarily heterosexual) of a "mother" and a "father" is necessary, and an economic interdepency must, due to biological dictates, result between the "mother" and the "father." Now, this does not mean that the mother must necessarily be the female who biologically produced the child, or the father must be the male who inseminated the mother. It means that, in the human species, the raising of a child, especially an infant and toddler, and even a prepubescent child, requires so much time, attention, nurturing, that one adult person must devote so much of his/her time (that that adult had previously spend caring for him/herself, ensuring his/her own survival) to the full?time, incessant attention and care of the helpless infant so that it might at the very least survive, and at the most, be nurtured so that it grows into a fulfilled and fulfilling human being, not just in the "social system" (that it is, we want it to be socialized, a productive member of society, and not, say a mass murderer), but also in and of itself, fulfilled and happy. Therefore, another adult person (besides the primary caregiver) must be part of the "kinship system", support system, family unit, whatever one wishes to call it, to support the first two ? "mother" and child. It takes TWO to raise a child. Unlike Rubin's thesis that marriage is culturally arbitrary, a Marxist convenience, a device to "institute [and ensure] reciprocal dependency between the sexes" (Rubin 545), marriage (or a union of two, a "mother" and a "father") is a biological imperative for the preservation of the species. The dependency between the sexes exists because the child is dependent on one of the sexes for its every need, for is very survival, and one of the two adults must, devote full time (literally) attention and caregiving to another being (the child). Thus, the full time caregiver now needs another caregiver ? one to provide for his/her material needs. From this perspective, unlike the Marxist view, the mother is not slave to the father; she is slave to the child, and the father is slave to the mother. In the modern America, our traditional kinship system is the male and female, both of whom have been the biological parents of the child(ren) that the parents are raising. But there are growing varieties of the traditional model. However, in all of these varieties, there is always, without fail, without exception, two parents ? one a "mother," and the other, a "father." Because two parents are absolutely necessary to raise a child. In some American sub?cultures, the kinship system may consist of two women ?the African American sub?culture has statistically more single mothers and often these mothers live at home, and their mothers (the grandmothers) are the second partner in raising the child. One will work (the mother, usually) and the other (the grandmother) will stay at home and take care of the child(ren). Thus the mother is father, and the grandmother is mother, but there IS a mother and father. And quite often the children of these kinship systems are not deprived in any way ? materially or emotionally, and grow up to be perfectly well?adjusted, contributing members of society. Another sub?culture is that of the welfare mother. She (usually biologically female) is in the role of mother, staying at home with the child. The government, sending her the welfare support checks each month, then is in the role of father. Another growing American sub?culture, the divorced mother, has the mother (woman) playing the traditionally masculine role ? raising the child, while the day?care center becomes the "mother," caring for the child while the mother [in the role of father] works. In families with two working parents, both parents become the father, while the day care center, again, is the mother. However, the day?care center is only partially effective, for part of the day, in relieving the work duties of the [mother] [parents]. The division of labor is unequal between the human parent and the day?care center, because at the end of the day, the mother [who has been father] comes home and must then shift roles to do all the evening and night time domestic duties. Domestic labor in this case includes not only daily household tasks, but the feeding, bathing, clothing, nurturing, playing with the child(ren). (One must only have a child to realize the extent of the labor involved in this enterprise. No amount of description can convey this. One must not perceive this from the abstract, reasoning "masculine" view (as essentialists would call it), but from the bodily experienced, "feminine" view.) And, in families with two working parents, the mother (biological female) who is allowed to be father during the day, must then come home and resume in totality the domestic tasks of motherhood, as the biological father will only choose to act out his role of father (and quite often, does not even realize that there is work/labor at home that needs his attention While the above "kinship systems" are problematic at certain levels, and create more labor for some members of the kinship system than the traditional stay at home mother/working father roles predominant in the past, one COULD argue that they are viable means of raising a child. To a certain extent. However, closer examination reveals that while they may function well on a material, physical level in caring for the child, (and sometimes not all that smoothly, although in the case of two parents working, may actually be superior on a material level than the traditional family unit), some of these systems sacrifice in more intangible, emotional, psychological ways. The day care center cannot supply the connectedness, the nurturing, the emotional and psychological caring that is essential to a child's development. Human relationship, intimacy, is effectively and at least partially if not completely nullified, as is symbolized by the modern biological means of procreation: artificial insemination or in vitro. A very nonsweaty, non?physical, non?body, non?matter, and non?connected way of conceiving a child. The separation, alienation, from body is almost complete ?soon we will not even need the mother's womb. Love, affection, touching, intimacy are absent in artificial insemination, and they are endangered in some "kinship systems" that we have today. When a lifelong, permanent "mother" and "father" do not have participatory roles in the raising of the child(ren), effective nurturing ? love ? is at risk and quite often compromised. That is a generalization, one can argue, but it is safe to say that the day care center caregiver will usually not have the amount of love that the child's own mother will have. (That is not to say there are not many The next wave of feminism: to acknowledge that two people are necessary to effectively, enjoyably, and efficiently raise a child, and to allow two human people in intimate loving contact, in continual, life long contact with the child to do so. And to more evenly divide the labor, as the female in our culture, who used to do only one (although culturally determined) part of the labor, the "mothering," now often is doing both the "fathering" (earning money, working) as well as the majority of the mothering. Yes, the woman has more (NON?gender determined) choices in today's society in that she CAN do a "man's" work. But no, she does not have more choices in that in many cases, she HAS to do the "man's" work (due to necessity or social pressure) and, in addition, finds herself with a greater portion of the labor than the man, as she is also still doing much of the "woman's" work. At what price have we gained our choice? At what benefit? Works Cited Bloom, Harold, Ed. The Literary Criticism of John Ruskin. Da Copo Press, 1965. Cixous, Helene. "Sorties." T,i ra T Theory? n ntholo~v. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. pp. 578?584. Ledwon, Lenora. 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