The late Susan Moller Okin was an academic who argued that multiculturalism hurts feminism. This was great. In doing so she largely argued against Will Kymlicka’s arguments for legally protecting minority’s cultural rights such as that to have polygamy. Some of the points Okin makes are useful to culturists in their arguments. And, from a culturist perspective Okin makes some major missteps. But, overall, her pointing out that multiculturalism is bad for women constitutes a significant contribution to culturist literature.
Kymlicka argues that we should protect liberal non-western minority cultures inside the West. Kymlicka supports Sharia law. Astoundingly, for an academic, Okin, notes that no other cultures are as liberal to women as the West. From women’s vantage point, every granting of indigenous rights is a slap in the face of feminism. Okin notes the slippery slope from valuing cultures in education to granting group rights. And she successfully argues the culturist point that Kymlicka and multiculturalists underestimate diversity and the West’s uniqueness.
Kymlicka wants traditional cultures to be able to have separate cultural laws and autonomy within the West. He would, however, still allow violations of individual liberties to still be taken to State courts. This is how he proposes to square western rights with illiberal cultures’ practices. Okin counters that Kymlicka underestimates the division between the private and the public. A culture indeed may not discriminate against a woman’s ability to vote, but much of her oppression takes place in the private sphere. A Muslim girl being pressured to leave 10th grade in order to marry her cousin may not have the wherewithal to go to the majority cultures’ court. If we note that not all rights are public, we understand that public law may not protect the individual rights of women in illiberal subcultures. This will be doubly true if we grant the diverse cultures group rights protections.
Within the debate we hear about girls torn between the demeaning and limiting messages they get at home and the feminist messages at school. Okin implies, but does not state, that feminist teaching could be a great wedge by which to attack multiculturalism. But she wants to use feminism to undermine all cultural restrictions, western and non-western alike. She argues that we need a universal sisterhood to attack multiculturalism. Kymlicka argues for cultural rights due to the uses the psychological benefits of having a “rich and secure cultural structure, with special language and history.” Neither he nor Okin consider using the advanced condition of women in the West as a source of common identity and meaning. This would be the culturist strategy.
Culturism does not advocate basing our actions on the universal ideal of humans liberated from their context in the way that Okin does. She decries Orthodox Jews for typecasting boys and girls. But having studied Jewish history will increase these youths ability to communicate with other westerners. Some subcultures are more compatible with western culture than others. And, more importantly, we live in a particular western culture that has been cultivated for well over two thousand years. We should not strive to release people from our own cultural limits and guidance in the name of universal ideals. The desire to go universal leads to the alienation in the West that feeds multiculturalism. Feminists should not attack the West for having had cultural ideals, they should celebrate feminist history as western and western history as feminist.
Okin has done a great job in attacking the fallacies of multiculturalism and highlighting a how feminist the West is. But her desire to protect refugees of gender discrimination undermines our sovereignty. It fails to recognize how real cultural diversity is. Her idea of universal sisterhood fails to take the viability of illiberal cultures seriously. It also overestimates our viability. If people in other nations want to become more feminist, I welcome it. But in the meantime, we can better protect feminism by celebrating and protecting the West than by undermining our pride and culture by arguing for universal sisterhoods’ war on all cultural structures. But, besides having taken a universalist stance that erodes our group pride and sovereignty, Okin has done a great service by pointing out that multiculturalism can be bad for feminism.
www.culturism.us
16 comments:
Everything that "hurts feminism" can't be all bad, so where's the fallacy?
"Okin counters that Kymlicka underestimates the division between the private and the public. A culture indeed may not discriminate against a woman’s ability to vote, but much of her oppression takes place in the private sphere. A Muslim girl being pressured to leave 10th grade in order to marry her cousin may not have the wherewithal to go to the majority cultures’ court."
I say: I am very impressed by this woman's ability to see around the Feminist Studies corner. She is like Phyllis Chesler in that regard.
"Okin implies, but does not state, that feminist teaching could be a great wedge by which to attack multiculturalism. "
I say: Feminists are ignorant in so far as they do not understand that a culture is only as tolerant as the men who make up that culture decide to be.
Because of the way our culture is structured, we generally make rational decisions, rather than always making decisions based upon instinct and power. If we were to make decisions wholly based upon power and instinct, then women as a group would once again be subdued, because women as a group could never beat men as a group in a battle.
By the way, I would not say the West is "Feminist". Instead, I would say, the West is compatible with many Feminist values.
Feminism, as a philosophical system, is in many ways, set against the Western Tradition. And, we need to remember that.
AWMEGAWD, we better stop discussing that and --specifically-- Phyllis Chesler.
You object to me bringing up Chesler as an example of a Feminist who stands up for Western Culture (to some extent)?
You read me wrong. I refused to discuss her for the sake of this forum. That is (I think) a difference.
Okey-doke.
:)
Editrix, feminism is magnificent. Like human rights and civil rights, the Left has twisted something whose idea is that all people are, well, people, to mean that, actually, only straight, white, atheist males are people, which is why they're the only ones who don't need to be made into a special, protected class due to the subhuman status ascribed to them by these very leftards. Feminism is the belief that women are people. That's all. Okin is largely right and I think John is too.
As for the Orthodox Jews, they're important to study but they should be continually called out for their separatism and sexism. It flies in the face of Western civilization and the Ten Commandments. That's why I'm a reform Jew. The question of their compatibility with Western civilization as a subculture is ridiculous, though, since Western civilization is largely based upon Judaism, like it or not. Jews were the first people to regard women as humans and the rest of the world took centuries to get with the program.
In any event, I think both her and John's bottom line is "leave your damn barbarity at the door or stay the hell away." I agree completely.
Oh, and Pasto, as for your statement that:
"Feminists are ignorant in so far as they do not understand that a culture is only as tolerant as the men who make up that culture decide to be."
You have it exactly backward. Any semblance of civilization in a society is due to the fact that women are empowered. A culture is only as tolerant as its women decide that the men will be. A woman's job on this planet (one of several) is to socialize her men. When women fail at that, you get barbaric societies. Even 5-year-old boys all want to kill each other. They don't because women do their job.
jdamn,
I think women are to be given credit for socializing men. However, I think it is ideas which keep men from doing what is instinctive. And, I don't think that is primarily the domain of women. I think, historically, it is obvious that that is the role of men.
Now, of course, women do add to the cultural resevoir of ideas. But, historically, no, I don't think so.
I think our culture starts with our religion, and moves outward from there. Western Culture is, as you said, extremely influenced by the Jewish religion. And, of course, Christian ideas have also had an enormous influence.
That is the primary civilizing force in culture, in my opinion.
Though, I do find your argument interesting.
By the way, who do you think exerts more influence over whether a boy grows up to control his anger and use of force, and harness it for the good of culture? A mother, or a father?
There are no "group rights". There are only individual rights. Get a group of "feminists" together and what you've still got is several hundred individual women with inalienable rights as human beings according to their nature. That's why I've never liked the term "feminist", it has always seemed to mean "superior to men" instead of "equal to".
Of course I spent my formative adult years hanging out with Libertarian women who took shit from nobody. We'd look down our noses at "feminists" for being so damn group oriented. Ayn Rand, who never took b.s. from anyone either, detested "feminism" because it was important to her to have men she could see as heroes.
Interesting question, Pasto. I'm with you on the religion thing. I worry about post-religion Europe. They've become suicidal in so many ways. It also turns out that religion somehow fuels people's instinct to propagate, as 'Demographic Winter' makes clear, and which religion seems to matter little. It is an organizing force and, in the cases of Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism, a civilizing force. I also didn't mean to demean Christianity's role in helping gender equality along. On the contrary, it took Judaism's beliefs to another level in that regard. I particularly love the Songs of Songs for the way it stresses and sacralizes the relationship between a man and a woman.
Religion may very well be the primary civilizing force in a society, but civilization begins at home. Now, as for your question of whether a mother or father exerts more influence on the socializing of children, I would have to say that it's about equal. Clearly, as I stated before, societies in which women are subjugated are invariably backward, brutal, barbaric, and regressive. Ideas may very well keep men from doing what is instinctive, but not if they're not taught those idea at home from a young age. But children who grow up without fathers have much higher rates of incarceration and commission of violent crimes. I don't think our points are mutually exclusive. I think they feed into each other.
RRA, feminism, in theory, is based on the belief that women are individuals and not baby factories, and that they therefore are entitled to individual rights, which they actually weren't before 1964.
RRA,
You said: Of course I spent my formative adult years hanging out with Libertarian women who took shit from nobody. We'd look down our noses at "feminists" for being so damn group oriented. Ayn Rand, who never took b.s. from anyone either, detested "feminism" because it was important to her to have men she could see as heroes.
I say: Wow, I've never known anyone like you before. I'm very impressed.
The only good thing I can say about my formative years is that I laughed outright the first time I heard the phrase "politically correct". And, then when I realized the guy was serious, I said, "Fuck that. I ain't giving in to that kind of shit."
And, I never did bow to political correctness. In fact, in college, I used to get A's and F's on my papers. Professors were constantly getting angry with me for writing things which offended their sense of "political correctness." I lost a band member one time because he was an Arab, and I told him I thought Jews were the closest thing to a superior race of people and there was no reason to hate them, and anyone who did was a fool.
But, for all that, I was an idiotic, America-hating Lefty. A complete tool.
That you spent your formative years as a person opposed to any kind of group think is very impressive.
jdamn,
You said: Ideas may very well keep men from doing what is instinctive, but not if they're not taught those idea at home from a young age. But children who grow up without fathers have much higher rates of incarceration and commission of violent crimes. I don't think our points are mutually exclusive. I think they feed into each other.
I say: yes, I think this might be one of those "chicken or egg" arguments.
;-)
I'm not understanding why feminism would prohibit women from having men as heroes. Maybe I just have my own brand of feminism. I also like to consider myself a hardcore objectivist, an old-school feminist (i.e., someone who believes that men and women are entitled to the same rights and freedoms and equal pay for equal work), and someone who is in no way supremacist but who is a firm believer in social Darwinism.
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