Week 4: Monique Wittig: One is Not Born a Woman (p. 265-271) and Elsa Barkley Brown: “What has Happened Here”(p. 272-287)

Monique Wittig: One is Not Born a Woman (p. 265-271)

Summary:

Simone de Beauvoir said: “One is not born, but becomes a woman” (p. 265). Wittig states that there is no “natural woman” and that the idea of being feminine is created by society. She also notes that since a lesbian society does exist, this defeats the idea of “natural woman.” However, Wittig recognizes that many people still believe the oppression of women is “biological as well as historical” (p. 266). Wittig explains further that this could never be a lesbian approach to women’s oppression because it is based on the idea that the beginning of society is heterosexuality. Also, biology (or the capability of having children) is not enough to define Woman. Wittig also discusses the idea that sex is like race in the sense that it is visible and therefore seems to belong to some kind of natural order. This leads to the lesbian perspective that this perception of Woman is very “unnatural” because it was created and based before the women’s liberation movement. Wittig states: “To refuse to be a woman, however, does not mean that one has to become a man” (p. 267). Meaning, that refusing to “be a woman” is simply just refusing to accept imposed ideas of femininity. She also clarifies: “Thus a lesbian has to be something else, a not-woman, a not-man, a product of society, not a product of nature, for there is no nature is society” (p. 267). It is not enough to simply promote women (“woman is wonderful” concept); it is the idea of being a man or a woman “which are political categories and not natural givens” (p. 267) that needs to be rejected.

A materialist feminist approach sees women and men as separate classes. Therefore, the goal is “to suppress men as a class, not through a genocidal, but a political struggle” (p. 267). This means that if there was no longer a class called “men,” there would no longer be a class called “women.” The first step would be to dispel the myth of Woman. Wittig states that “‘woman’ is there to confuse us, to hide the reality ‘women’” (p. 268). She believes that the new focus would be on personal identity.

Wittig also presents a Marxist perspective. She states that Marxism lead to two results for women: the order of men and women was assumed to be natural and the conflict between men and women was hidden behind a “natural division of labor” (p. 270). Also, if women united it would threaten the strength of the people in a Marxist society.

Wittig concludes by calling attention again to the rejection of the myth of Woman. She believes that the categories of sex must be destroyed and that all sciences that use these definitions should also be rejected. She again comes back to the model of lesbianism; she states that this is the only category that goes beyond woman and man currently. So, in order to reject this myth of Woman we must destroy “heterosexuality as a social system which is based on the oppression of women by men and which produces the doctrine of the difference between the sexes to justify this oppression” (p. 271).



Response:


I thought this article was really clear in explaining the categories of sex. It seems to me that the categories presented by Wittig are Man, Woman, and Lesbian. However, Man and Woman are based on supposedly “natural” categories and need to be destroyed in order to eliminate this myth of Woman. I had never thought of lesbianism as a category comparable to the Man/Woman model, but it really makes sense. It rejects both categories of Man and Woman to create a new sexless category. I also really feel that by emulating this new category, it would destroy the Man/Woman model. Although, this is all theoretical, I think that if the heterosexual society model could be destroyed and a sexless system was created, then it would be much easier to stop the oppression to women.




Elsa Barkley Brown: “What has Happened Here” The Politics of Difference in Women’s History and Feminist Politics (p. 272-287)


Summary:


Brown introduces this article with the idea of diversity of women’s experiences and history. She suggests that others see highlighting differences within the women’s movement as counterproductive. However, she suggests that the underlying thinking behind women’s history and politics needs to be restructured to incorporate and celebrate diversity. Next, Brown discusses the problem of history by comparing it to jazz music. She states that jazz relies on improvisation and responding quickly to the music created by others in the group. In this way, everyone gets to play, but works together to create something unique. History should be looked at the same way because it is not a series of isolated events experienced by one person at a time. Instead, many people are experiencing the same event at the same time, but in potentially different ways. Brown also suggests that simply tying all women together with the word “gender” is equally limiting because all women do not share the exact same experience. She continues her explanation stating that acknowledging difference is not enough, we must also understand the “relational nature of those differences” (p. 275). She provides an example of women of color being exploited by multinational corporations who export jobs, which leads to higher unemployment for women of minorities and a growth in employment available to mostly white middle-class women. This split leads to different experiences amongst women. Brown also recognizes that most historians acknowledge differences and then ignore them, however, she states: “The effect of this is that acknowledging difference becomes a way of reinforcing the notion that the experiences of white middle-class women are the norm; all others become deviant—different from” (p. 276). Basically, by thinking this way, it is furthering the oppression of women because it assumes that the white woman is the standard. Brown continues: “We have still to recognize that all women do not have the same gender” (p. 276). She also explains that in women’s history being different means non-white and non-heterosexual, thus underlining the fact that this is the norm in our society and everything else is deviant or different. Also, this gives white heterosexual women privilege in the recording of women’s history.

Next, Brown discusses the case of Anita Hill in 1991. Hill was sexually harassed and became a “universal symbol, evidence of the common bonds of womanhood” (p. 278). However, her race was never addressed; her experience was simply reduced to the experience of a woman. Brown argues that in order to understand her experience, we must consider it from her perspective of not only being a woman, but also being “a young black woman, the daughter of Oklahoma farmers, whose family and community expected her to do well” (p. 278). Simply looking at her case from a woman’s perspective is not enough; it does not convey the uniqueness of her experience or represent the different pressures that she faced. Also, the stereotypes of African American women were not addressed or the fact that Hill was speaking against an African American man and potentially upsetting the entire African American community. Brown acknowledges that telling Hill’s story from these different angles would be very complicated, but could have “created a much broader base of understanding and support for issues of sexual harassment” (p. 280). She returns to the idea of chaos in her conclusion stating that people fear “layering multiple and asymmetrical stories will only result in chaos with no women’s history or women’s story to tell” (p. 281). Brown wants us to think past these ideas in order to gain a better understanding of women’s identity that is not explicitly based on gender, but on different experiences.


Response:

I was initially surprised to think that women’s differences were not celebrated within the women’s movement. However, Brown’s logic made it clear that they are not, or that if they are they are only recognized and thus create further walls between what is considered normal and deviant. The case of Anita Hill was interesting in the sense that hypothetically the case could have been treated differently if all of Hill’s identity markers were considered. It could have also potentially opened up the issue of sexual harassment even further. I also really liked Brown’s conclusion that we should be open to change the way we look at women’s history, so that each unique experience can be included. Some people see celebrating differences as detrimental to the women’s movement, but in reality looking at women as normal (white/heterosexual) and deviant (everything else) are much more damaging and limiting.