In this respect, there is a significant observation made by Kate Millett with regard to the author D. H. Lawrence. She writes: ‘Lawrence’s attacks against democracy, Christianity and socialism all originate in the very same need — that of struggling against any system that presents egalitarian virtualities, whether sexual or social; for such ideas are connected’.
As remarked by Jean Cau,676 the intellectual Left has initiated a struggle against the father. ‘It detects and targets the father image everywhere: God, the employer, the coloniser, the conqueror, the teacher, etc. Not to mention the ‘ruling state’. Why? Because the Father type is the embodiment of authority, constraint and power. In order to fight against the Father, the intelligentsia proposes an alliance between his sons, all of whom are equal, with the mother, ever weary of war, acting as their accomplice (Les écuries de l’Occident,677 Table Ronde, 1973).
As regards the ‘reactionary revolution’ that Leftism has now morphed into, Mr Thierry Maulnier writes the following: ‘Reactionary revolution is a will geared towards regression and retreat in the face of a present or future that is deemed worrying. In Freudian terms, it is pervaded by a maternal imago, by a desire to return to mother-nature, to the Polynesian golden age, to the reassuring warmth of the womb where one can be carefree, a womb where one enjoys effortless nourishment, just like in a gatherer society’ (Le Figaro, 1st September, 1974).
***
Les femmes avant le patriarcat, an essay by Françoise d’Eaubonne. Payot, 244 pages.
Le féminisme,678 an essay by Françoise d’Eaubonne. Alain Moreau, 399 pages.
Male and Female, an essay by Margaret Mead. Gonthier, 348 pages.
Les rôles masculins et féminins,679 an essay by Anne-Marie Rocheblavé. Ed. Universitaires, 346 pages.
***
The Developing Woman
The writer Barbey d’Aurevilly680 used to boast that he could detect what he called the odor di femina in any text written by a woman in the space of 10 lines. He would truly have come into his own upon reading today’s feminist publications (Les pétroleuses,681 Le Torchon brûle,682 Les Femmes s’entêtent,683 Sorcières).684
In his Don Juan, novelist Saint-Paulien685 states: ‘Women have been the focus of contempt ever since proclaiming themselves to be men’s equals. What a pity, considering that prior to this, no one ever dreamt of denying their superiority’.
Such jests infuriate Kate Millett, the forty-four-year-old bespectacled intellectual with hair dangling over her nape, a double chin, and a strong awareness of contemporary neo-feminism. The co-founder of the WLM of Columbia, Ms. Millett never misses a single meeting nor fails to participate in every single parade. She brandishes the banner of revolt against the patriarchy, ‘male prejudice’, ‘male racism’, and ‘inner colonialism’; against any and all sexism, in short. Her Sexual Politics, published in France back in 1971, has become the bible of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM). So as to appreciate its very scope, one must place it into the context of a currently ongoing polemic. Indeed, there are two currents that clash with one another within the feminist movement, unable to reach agreement on the following question: are women a social class or an oppressed sex?
Gender Issues and Proletarianism
In the eyes of orthodox Marxists and certain ‘legalistic’ Leftists (particularly the Trotskyites among them), speaking of women in a global fashion, without taking into account class division, is absolute nonsense. Women represent a category, not a class of their own. An ‘exploited’ woman is far closer to a male proletarian than his ‘female colleagues in the ruling class’. Furthermore, the formula according to which ‘man is the bourgeois family member, while a woman plays the part of the proletarian’ is inadmissible, as it raises the issue of ‘bourgeois elimination’.
Mrs Evelyn Reed686 writes (in Partisans magazine, January–February 1971): ‘Those who claim that women represent a class or caste of their own are thus led to the conclusion that it is not capitalism that represents the chief enemy, but men. Such a position results in a false strategy in our struggle for liberation. In actual fact, sexism is, similarly to racism, rooted in the private property system. […] At the end of the day, the claim that women constitute a distinct caste or class must logically lead one to draw extremely pessimistic conclusions with regard to the antagonism between the sexes, thus contradicting the revolutionary optimism of the Marxists themselves.; for unless the two sexes are completely separated, or men eliminated, it would seem that there is no other option but for them to remain at war forever’.
On the contrary, Flora Tristan, a precursor of feminism that espouses Engels’ views, makes the following affirmation: ‘A woman is to a man what the proletarian is to the bourgeois’. Similarly, Christine Dupont687 declares in Partisans (July–August 1970) that ‘the abolition of capitalistic production relations does not, on its own, suffice to liberate women’. She remarks that attributing the ‘oppression of women’ to purely ideological causes in places where capitalism itself has been destroyed implies the espousal of ‘an idealistic definition of ideology as a factor that can subsist in the absence of the material oppression whose rationalisation it enables’.
In the manifesto published by the ‘Redstockings of New York’ in July 1969, one comes across these words: ‘Women are an oppressed class. […] Because we have lived so intimately with our oppressors, in isolation from each other, we have been kept from seeing our personal suffering as a political condition. This creates the illusion that a woman’s relationship with her man is a matter of interplay between two unique personalities and can be worked out individually. In reality, every such relationship is a class relationship, and the conflicts between individual men and women are political conflicts that can only be solved collectively’.
Focusing on the ‘myth of feminine frigidity’, Mrs Christiane Rochefort688 adds the following in Les enfants d’abord689 (Grasset, 1976): ‘It is all too clear that the women who have never achieved orgasm owe their condition directly to a perfectly successful repressive and political operation’.
Such is also the view espoused by American neo-suffragettes, the Dutch ‘Dolle Minas’, and the ‘Red Stockings’ in Britain, in addition to Françoise d’Eaubonne, Evelyne Sullerot, Christiane Rochefort, Marguerite Duras, Simone de Beauvoir, Michèle Manceaux and many others in France, all of whom demand an ‘equality of rights’: the right to have an equal salary, the right to happiness, the right to orgasm, the right to love, etc.
Since men are, by their very definition, the source of all ailments, Kate Millett proceeds to denounce ‘sexism’ in the numerous domains where it has allegedly been implemented throughout history, namely ideology, sociology, biology, economy, education, anthropology, and psychology. In her book, this vast undertaking of hers is only covered in approximately thirty pages from a grand total of almost 500. At times, however, she does mention genuine cases of sexual repression: ‘The sati practice in India, the foot binding tradition in China with all the resulting deformities, the ignominy of the law that imposes the lifelong wearing of the veil in Islam, the widespread persecution method that includes sequestration, confinement to the gynaecium, the purdah, phenomena such as clitoridectomy, clitoridean incision,690 the selling of women, child marriage, etc.’ Strangely enough, all these facts are characteristic of mental attitudes encountered solely in Third-World countries, remaining foreign to this European civilisation whose patriarchal foundations Kate Millett denounces, regardless of what historic period is considered.
Antifeminism and Misogyny
And yet, the rule embraced by the WLM consists in labelling ‘misogynous’ all those who assign any specific traits to masculine and feminine social roles (or dare point out their existence). A good example is that of Proudhon, who has been reproached for the content of his posthumous book entitled La pornocratie ou les femmes dans les temps modernes691 despite his stating: ‘I believe in men’s almightiness, but also in women’s pre-eminence’.
Mr J
acques Langlois692 explains: ‘In Proudhon’s eyes, men and women were not equal, but played different roles within the family. Proudhon considered women to be physically weaker and less intelligent (when it comes to rationality) but advantaged in terms of ideals, intuition, and beauty compared to men, so much so that he bestowed upon them the role of educating children; and when one is aware of the significance that Proudhon placed upon education, this was no small matter. Being gifted in different ways, spouses were thus given different functions within the family, but the complementarity of these two functions made them both indispensable for one another’ (Défense et actualité de Proudhon,693 Payot, 1976).
And here is Jean Cau’s observation on the matter: ‘The more anti-feministic a man is, the less misogynous he becomes. I would accuse all males who “practice” diehard feminism of feeling some unspecified repulsion for all that is womanly in a woman. What they love and advocate is an abstraction, for they fear reality’.
Another Alienation
The ‘housewife’ issue is more complex than that. One forgets all too often that the notion of household has evolved considerably since the 19th century. The title of ‘house mistress’ was once anything but an empty word. The advent of the bourgeoisie and, with it, the concern not to have to divide the capital between too many heirs, the decrease in large families, the dividing of large houses into ‘apartments’, and the reduction of couple life to a perpetual face-off have, in many cases, turned the ‘household’ into a place where women find it genuinely difficult to experience fulfilment. This does not imply, however, that being a ‘working woman’ is a better solution, since this may, on the contrary, result in the structural transformation of both the family and the habitat.
Nowadays, it is indeed strange to see all those who denounce the social alienation pervading production circuits attempting to accomplish women’s liberation through their integration into those very circuits.
Engels declares: ‘The first condition for a successful emancipation of women lies in having the entire feminine sex enter the public industry’; to which he adds: ‘In turn, this condition requires the suppression of the spousal family as a social economic unit’. As for Marx, he expresses his intention to turn women into ‘fully-fledged combatants in the great battle of production’. More recently, in 1965, Mr André Barjonet694 wrote: ‘Even when striving for the accomplishment of happiness within the couple and a balanced life for children, women’s work represents a fundamental positive factor’.
It has yet to be proven, however, that the best means for women to attain fulfilment lies in spooling engines and working as housekeepers, typists or sales assistants in major shops (which are inevitably the most frequent options).
In nine cases out of ten, working women are looking to receive an additional salary and, indeed, not in search of a ‘freedom’ which, all things considered, depends solely on their inner wealth and energy.
The rejection of the ‘alienation’ that allegedly results from maternity is an equally bizarre underestimation of the power that mothers enjoy as part of their educational role in their children’s lives (This applies particularly to all those who, in other regards, stress the importance of the familial environment and proclaim, alongside Freud himself, that man can never free himself of the maternal imago).
Ariana Stassinopoulos states that ‘bearing a child and bringing it into this world is an experience that cannot be compared to any other. At no other moment is one so close to creation, so close to affirming life and catching a glimpse of immortality’ (The Female Woman, Laffont, 1975).
The Real Issue
The disquiet experienced by women in today’s society is nonetheless very real indeed. And yet, its causes are not those that the WLM believes itself to have identified. In ancient European societies, the problematic of the sexes was not experienced as a conflict because these societies acknowledged the specific social role of women. This function, whose very essence was private, was not considered to be any less valuable or fundamental than the public one assumed by men. Today, however, this social function no longer exists, because it has been taken over by the community. The state, which has been endowed with new socio-economic prerogatives, is increasingly taking charge of children’s education and people’s security. Women thus find themselves stripped of the educational and ‘reassuring’ prerogatives which once belonged to their own responsibilities. As a result, they find themselves driven towards ‘liberating’ themselves from a household that has now become a hollow shell and in which they no longer have any part to play. And since the masculine social function has been maintained despite undergoing a certain transformation, the only option for women to claim new responsibilities lies in an effort to assume, as much as at all possible, the social function of men, while striving to demonstrate that ‘there are no differences’ between the sexes.
It is also a fact that, in modern societies, the prevailing ideology leads one to proclaim the ‘equality’ of the sexes in relation to an image of men that, paradoxically, remains essentially masculine. This trait is accounted for by the necessarily simplistic and diversity-negating aspect of the egalitarian ideology; for egalitarianism has a propensity towards the unique. Christianity only acknowledges one God (a threefold one, admittedly), and the latter is always depicted using masculine traits. Likewise, modern egalitarianism implicitly conveys a certain notion of men, a certain ‘normalised’ type that is always male even when it has been more or less emasculated.
From an anthropological point of view, however, it is only when taken as a whole that men and women constitute the human race. The latter can only exist as part of the synthesis and coexistence of both sexes. Diversity thus represents the very foundation of humanity, whose ‘unity’ remains an ever-postponed dream. (Hence the following affirmation made by Flora Tristan in 1841, an altogether logical affirmation according to which the equality of men and women is allegedly ‘the only way to form the human unit’.)
On its part, egalitarian feminism can therefore only accentuate the tendency towards the ‘unisex’, with the latter developing through a twofold process: on the one hand, by means of a systematic criticism of masculine values, which are considered to be intrinsically ‘oppressive’ (in contrast with feminine values, declared to be altruistic and ‘liberating’); and, on the other, by simultaneously negating the actual differences and alignments between female and male behaviour patterns.
Despite its constant denials, the WLM is very well aware of the fact that the ‘emancipation’ of women (in the sense that its members strive to give the latter) cannot be channelled through the advocacy of a femininity that it itself refuses to assume or define (and that its supporters consider to be useless to them) as much as through burdening the male sex with guilt so as to drive men to relinquish their own masculine values. This is why the neo-feminists make no attempts whatsoever to institute a collaboration between the sexes on the basis of a complementarity rooted in gender difference (with all that it entails on the institutional and social level), but strive, instead, to found gender collaboration on the reduction of male/female diversity to exclusively feminine values, which are, whether consciously or not, considered to be ‘universal’.
This leads us to what Jean Cau has termed ‘feminoidism’: ‘A far more dangerous stance than feminism itself is its little sibling, feminoidism, which consists, on the whole, in diminishing all differential values and rendering them vague and ambiguous. One proceeds to preach unisexism, recklessly singing the praise of weakness while pretending not to notice or not to be unaware of the fact that the latter is always lethal to societies; one celebrates the cult of the undifferentiated, although it is the twilight that paves the way for the arrival of wolves; one sets out to unconditionally affirm that peace and non-violence are always favourable, even when such words are whispered into our ears by those cunning enough to strengthen themselves while simultaneously disarming us; one erects the chaos of mixtures into a genuine religion without ever graspi
ng that such an attitude can only lead to identity loss and render us more susceptible to defeat. In short, we are entering a comedic kingdom that will turn us into the trembling prey of serious historical events’.
It all seems as if, in order to attain ‘liberation’, women were expected to renounce their gender-based ‘I’, to cease to be women and strive to become ‘female men’, while simultaneously transforming men into ‘masculine women’.
Are They to Become Men or Destroy the Latter?
Indeed, whenever one mentions the ‘eternal feminine’ to them, the neo-feminists begin to choke on their own fury. And yet, one can hardly see any reason why there would not be any ‘eternal feminine’ that contrasts with the ‘eternal masculine’ that the WLM constantly denounces. This was, it seems, the view espoused by Mr Maurice Clavel,695 who, a few years ago, caused quite a scandal with his article entitled Masculin Féminin696 (Le Nouvel observateur, 20th July, 1970). In it, he mocked the ‘principle of pure metaphysics’ which claims that ‘women’s capacity to produce life in their own flesh is not compensated for through any diminution or difference in their other gifts and talents’ (he made the following observation: ‘In this regard, it is now asserted that women enjoy a natural superiority, since they are endowed with all that a man possesses, without any lacks whatsoever, in addition to further abilities’). And what he denounced was ‘not women’s legal equality to men’, of which he is ‘a passionate supporter, but their novel ambition to claim the identity of men, meaning an equality of functions, purpose, aptitude, and, in short, a complete lack of differentiation’. It did not take more than this statement for him to be targeted with fractious and impassioned letters (as seen in Le Nouvel observateur on 27th July and 3rd, 10th and 17th August, 1970).
Systems and Debates Page 36