Feminism: By Sandra Schneiders From Schneiders book Beyond Patching: Faith and Feminism The Catholic Church, pp. 5- 36 Introduction Most people understand the term "feminism" sufficiently well to react viscerally when it is used. But if asked to define the term, much less come to agreement with others about what it means or designates, they often find themselves reduced to vague generalities. This situation is easily explained by the fact that, on the one hand, there is extreme theoretical and practical diversity within the feminist movement and among feminists themselves while, on the other hand, there is a family resemblance among feminists, even those who represent the most diverse types of feminist thought and styles of feminist commitment. In the face of such a situation one is tempted to shrug one's mental shoulders and blandly agree that feminism 's whatever feminists think and do and feminists are those who claim to be, I do not think such intellectual defeatism is necessary or wise because, whatever else feminism may be, it is a powerful worldwide phenomenon which is deeply affecting all social reality.' Pope John XXIII, in his 1963 encyclical Pacem In Terns, linked the emergence of women into public life with the rise of the working class and the emergence of new nations as one of the "distinctive characteristics" of our age, a "sign of the times" to which we must attend if we are effectively to live and preach the gospel in the twentieth century.' Therefore, it would seem that it is worth our while to try to understand the nature and goals of feminism because only such understanding will enable us to carry on meaningful conversations about this world-transforming movement and to make responsible decisions about our own participation in its agenda. Our first task, then, is to achieve at least a basic understanding of feminism as the foundation for a discussion of Christian feminism and finally of Christian feminist spirituality. II. Mapping the Linguistic Terrain Although there is no universal agreement among feminists on the vocabulary of feminism I think it is possible to map the linguistic terrain with enough accuracy that first time visitors to the area can orient themselves and more experienced travelers can recognize their positions. I will begin by defining three terms which are fairly basic and about which there is considerable agreement, mainly because they are defined historically rather then ontologically: women's movement, women's emancipation movement, and women's liberation movement. Women's movement is probably the widest term and can be applied to a large number of movements throughout history which were born in the collective realization by some women that they were disadvantaged in relation to men within their particular familial, cultural, social, or religious settings. This realization led to some kind of organized action by these women to better their situation or to right the perceived wrongs. Many of these women's movements, especially those predating the nineteenth century, would not be considered feminist movements' because those who engaged in them were not motivated by what has come to be called "feminist consciousness," I.e. by an awareness of the systemic and structural character of women's oppression and a commitment not merely to obtaining redress of grievances but to the structural transformation of society.' However, the term "women's movement" is usually used today to denote the widespread social and political stirring of women, first in Europe in the late nineteenth century, then in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century, and finally increasingly in third world countries in our own day. This modem women's movement is feminist in the technical sense of the word, and this accounts for the understandable tendency to use the two terms, women's movement and feminism, interchangeably. It is useful, nevertheless, to distinguish between them because there are contemporary women's movements, the organized collective efforts by women to further their own interests, which feminists in general would repudiate precisely because these women define their own interests in patriarchal terms.' Our second term, women's emancipation, is narrower In application than women's movement and usually denotes; at least in the United States, the movement for women's political and legal equality which began in the first decade of this century and whose "first wave" culminated in 1920 with the ratification of the nineteenth amendment to the U.S. C ; institution giving women the right to vote The primary objective of this movement, as Its name indicates, was the freeing of women from their status as political minors. The right to vote made women adult participants in the republic. However, just as the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves did not achieve equality for blacks in this country, so suffrage did not achieve equality for women. What it did was create the fundamental structural possibility for women's achieving equality, a process that is still far from complete. The "second wave" of this process began in the 1960s, at the same time and fueled by the same energies as the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, and it is embodied most visibly today in the effort to obtain ratification for the Equal Rights Amendment.' The women's emancipation movement was, from the beginning, explicitly feminist in that those who struggled for women's suffrage, even though not all had exactly the same motivation, were all motivated by the conviction that according women the vote established the possibility of changing the basic structures of society in the direction of justice. For some women the structures that needed changing were those which excluded women from full adult participation in political life. For others, the structures that needed changing were slavery, child labor, and the threat to the family represented by male alcoholism, all of which, these women believed, they would be able to change once they could vote. Thus, both those who espoused full political and legal equality for women and those who would never have voted for such a radical and widespread change in social arrangements could come together on the limited issue of suffrage. Such unity has not been achieved in regard to the Equal Rights Amendments which was introduced into Congress just three years after the ratification of the nineteenth amendment and which has still not been ratified, due largely to opposition from women who do not equate women's rights with equal rights. We will return to this point later. Our third term, women's liberation, is much broader than women's emancipation and is the form that the women's movement in this country took as the so-called "second wave" developed in the 1960s. The women's liberation movement is not only explicitly feminist in that It arises from a developed feminist consciousness, but it is much more inclusive in its agenda than was the women's emancipation movement of the early 1900s, The liberation which contemporary feminists seek is not merely freedom from marginalization, oppression, discrimination, and violence but freedom for self-definition, self-affirmation, and self-determination; in other words, the effective recognition of their full humanity as persons and the freedom to exercise that personhood in every sphere. Thus, the contemporary movement envisions not only political and legal rights for women equal to those of men but the liberation of women (and men) into the fullness of human personhood. This liberation will require not merely the reform of current societal arrangements but a total transformation of Ideology and structures, a re-imagining of personal and social reality that will leave no person, group, or institution unchanged. If these three terms are fairly easy to define because they refer to recognizable historical movements, there are two correlated terms crucial to an understanding of feminism which are much disputed, namely, equality and rights. The basic reason for the deep divisions not only between feminists and non-feminists but also among feminists themselves around these concepts is that women as an oppressed group are unlike any other oppressed class. While women are the most oppressed in every class to which they belong, they do not really constitute a class as such. Women belong to every class, including oppressor classes such as whites or the wealthy. What women have in common is not class but s, and sex is not, like skin color, ethnic origin, language, age, or economic status, either irrelevant in the area of rights or remediable. Skin color is irrelevant and poverty is remediable. But sex is neither and most feminists do not want to argue otherwise. What women have in common across all class lines, and that which is the basis of their oppression, is femaleness defined in opposition to maleness and that means essentially in terms of women's different role in reproduction. This puts women in a "Catch-22." To argue that femaleness is not really different in any significant way from maleness and therefore that there is no basis for differential treatment of women (the absolute equal rights argument) is to surrender precisely what women have come to value, namely their unique worth as women which grounds their specific and irreplaceable contribution to the human enterprise including but by no means limited to their preponderant role in procreation. However, to accept that there is a real difference between women and men and that that difference is based on sexuality is to open women to the arguments for defining women in terms of gender, (something never done in regard to men as men who are always defined in terms of their humanity), reducing women to their reproductive identity and roles, and thus limiting women's rights, denying them equality, and in general affirming their current structural oppression because they are something other: than and therefore less than simply human. This dilemma is sometimes referred to as the problem of "sameness versus difference." The question becomes: Is women's agenda better furthered by insisting on the humanity which women share with men (sameness) or on their femaleness which is not equitable to maleness (difference)? Should women be struggling for human rights or for women's rights?' And does not the very acceptance of that distinction constitute acceptance of the equation of male with human and thus the definition of non-childbearing maleness as the norm for humanity from which women diverge in giving life? The term "equal rights" muddles the water even more because, in liberation movements in general, equal rights means rights for the oppressed equal to those enjoyed by the oppressor, e.g. rights for blacks equal to those enjoyed by whites. But in the case of women, because male has been equated with human, equal rights and human rights both amount to male rights for women. Thus, the very attaining of equal rights constitutes an acceptance of the normativity of the male, an admission that the best way to be a woman, because it is the only way to be fully human, is to be like a man. 'Obviously, this is not acceptable to most feminists. A final complication of this whole issue is introduced by the difference between the Anglo-American and other political traditions. In the Anglo-American tradition the individual is the basic unit of society and the personal subject of inalienable rights. Thus, the argument is that human rights are individual rights of the person, regardless of sex. However, in many other cultures the family, either nuclear as in Europe or extended as in many third world countries, is regarded as the basic unit of society. In these cultures there is a strong -tendency to understand women's rights as complementary to men's rights within the relational unity of the family.14 Women's rights are then closely related to their different role in procreation, i.e. to motherhood, which Is therefore the legitimate basis for special claims. Such an understanding of women's rights can lead to a strong feminist position which rejects any domination of women by men or societal discrimination against women while insisting that society be structured to foster and respect women's special role in the procreative process. However, is can also lead both to the romantic exaltation of womanhood in the "feminine mystique" with its ideology of complementarily and to the legitimization of the definition of women in reproductive terms and their consequent limitation to the private domain of home and family. Thus, many American Roman Catholic feminists find papal documents on women such as John Paul II's recent Mulieres Dignitatem's to be distressing examples of an unhealthy and unrealistic romanticizing of womanhood as motherhood combined with complementarily arguments for denying women their proper role as adults in society and as baptized Christians in the church. However, the basic type of argumentation embodied in the papal document, although not necessarily its discriminatory conclusions, would find acceptance among some feminists whose credentials are impeccable.' In other words, not all relational feminism is romantic and not all individualist feminism is unisex. But relational feminism, especially in apatriarchal culture, is particularly susceptible to identifying with male circumscriptions of women's personhood in terms of gender and reproductive function; and individualist feminism, especially in an androcentric society, is particularly susceptible to accepting the equation of maleness and male rights with humanity and human rights. In my opinion, any solution to this complicated dilemma will have to incorporate two basic tenets. First, it must eschew both unisex denials of women's uniqueness and complementarily as a model for male-female relations. Second, it will have to embrace both individual rights and relational responsibilities for both men and women on the basis of the self-definition and self-determination of both, not the self-determination of men and the male definition of women. First, feminists of all persuasions are becoming Increasingly convinced that the cause of women is ill-served by denying the differences between women and men and that, beyond ensuring the dignity and safety of women against male oppression and abuse, feminism is committed to enabling women to make their specific contribution as women to the entire human enterprise. Humanity will not be fully human until women contribute as women and as equals with men to its definition and its realization. However, whatever may be said for complementarily as a theoretical position, it is politically non-viable. While it may be argued that women and men "complete" one another, at least in the area of reproduction, the term complete has never meant the same thing for women as for men. Women have been seen to complete men the way a second coat of paint completes a house, whereas men have been seen to complete women the way a motor completes a car. In other words, completion can be accidental or essential, and there is probably no way to rescue the category of complementarily from its historical bias toward seeing women as decorations or adjuncts to the essentially self-sufficient male considered as normative human being. Second, both women and men are the subjects of individual rights and both have relational responsibilities. The system of ascribing individual rights to men and then granting to women, byway of privilege, only those rights which do not conflict with what men regard as women's relational responsibilities cannot be accepted, In most respects and in the vast majority of situations the individual humanity of men and women is identical and equal rights are, indeed, Identical rights. However, in those areas In which the differences between men and women are real and significant, justice requires structures that ensure individuals equitable rather than identical opportunity and access to society's resources and advantages. Thus, since women alone bear children, the economic structures of society must ensure that this unique contribution to the good of society does not disadvantage women. On the other hand, men have exactly the same responsibilities as women do to raise the children they engender, and economic structures must recognize the equal obligations of both parents and ensure that both have equal opportunities to fulfill their responsibilities. In other words, where the natural situation is not identical, equity must insure substantial equality. Where the natural situation is Identical, patriarchal definitions of humanity must not create disadvantages for women. The obstacle to realizing such a just social arrangement Is that men have enjoyed, from time immemorial, a position of dominance from which they could define women as not only different from themselves but as Inferior on the basis of that difference. For example, since men cannot bear children they have defined childlessness as normal and normative, set up the work structure for this "normal" situation, and made childbearing a medical condition, i.e. an illness, and therefore an obstacle to full employment and advancement. Because men, as a group, have never accepted their equal parental responsibility, they are under the illusion that not caring daily for one's children is normal and have structured the economic situation for "normal" people, that is, for those without child care responsibilities. Only when women contribute equally with men to the definition of humanity will It be realized that what is normal for women is normal for humanity just as what is normal for men is normal for humanity. just and equitable structuring of society requires that the needs, responsibilities, and opportunities of all members of society are equally respected and provided for, not that all members of society be identical or be treated identically. In short, the struggle for equal rights must not be abandoned. But equal rights must be redefined in terms of equity rather than identity. This struggle will probably have to be carried out through the judicial process of interpreting a fundamental Equal Rights Amendment that establishes the basic principle of equality," analogous to the way judicial Interpretation has had to determine progressively, as new situations arise, the meaning of separation of church and state on the basis of the first amendment's fundamental guarantee of religious liberty. At the same time, however, the struggle for women's liberation cannot be reduced to the struggle for equal rights even if the term equal rights is properly understood. The final goal of women's liberation is a human social order In which women are fully self determining, fully participating members. Such a society is not one in which women have whatever men have decided is good for women or even what men have decided is good for men, but in which both women and men enjoy the conditions necessary for the exercise of full human personhood. III. Feminism Against the background of these terminological clarifications we can approach our original question "What is feminism?" with a more grounded hope of reaching some clarity, I will propose a basic definition of feminism and then cry, by explaining its components, to describe the phenomenonmore fully. Feminism, I would propose, is a comprehensive ideology which is rooted in women's experience of sexual oppression, engages in a critique of patriarchy as an essenially dysfunctional system, embraces an alternative vision for humanity and the earth, and actively seeks to bring this vision to realization. A. A Comprehensive Ideology The first component of our definition is the classification of feminism as an ideology. It is not Ideology negatively understood as a mindset and system of values uncritically absorbed from one's cultural context, or as false consciousness In the Freudian or Marxist senses of the term. Rather, it is ideology in two of the senses given in Webster's Third Unabridged Dictionary: "a systematic scheme or coordinated body of ideas or concepts, esp. about human life or culture" and "the integrated assertions, theories, and alms that constitute a sociopolitical program." In other words, feminism is a comprehensive theoretical system for analyzing, criticizing, and evaluating ideas, social structures, procedures and practices, indeed the whole of experienced reality. But it is more than a theoretical system for criticism because it involves the proposal of an alternative vision and a commitment to bringing that vision to socio-political realization. This definition of feminism as an ideology suggests immediately that one cannot be a feminist by default, e.g. by not being overtly and deliberately sexist; or anonymously, without knowing it; or on the side, as an interest which can be displaced in favor of other concerns. B. Rooted in an Experience of Sexual Oppression The second component of the definition is that feminism is rooted in an experience of sexual oppression. Feminism, although it is an ideology, i.e. a theoretical system, does not begin in theory but in experience. Consciousness raising or conseientization is the process by which one becomes aware, first, that one's negative experience is due to oppression rather than to personal failure; second, that the oppression is structural rather than fortuitous or incidental. This raised consciousness becomes feminist consciousness when one recognizes that this structural oppression is based on sex, i.e. that one is being oppressed because one is a woman in a system controlled by men for their own advantage. Finally, one becomes aware that one is not an Isolated victim but that one belongs to an oppressed group which, if it can convert its solidarity in oppression into solidarity in action, can change the oppressive structures. By way of example, a divorced mother whose ex-husband has vanished, defaulting permanently on alimony and child support, and who cannot get a job because she cannot afford day care for her child, blames herself as a failure, a social incompetent who just cannot "make it" in a system that seems to work for everyone else. Through a process of consciousness raising she begins to see that what seemed to be her personal problems are actually systemically generated problems." There. is a close interconnection between legal tolerance of paternal financial abandonment, cultural expectations that the mother will assume total responsibility for child rearing, social refusal to develop an adequate and effective child care system, and economic structuring of gainful employment so that only those without child rearing responsibilities can participate competently. In short, there is no way she can "make it" in the system no matter how hard she tries because the system has been structured to exclude and defeat her. She also becomes aware that all of these structural factors in her apparent inability to function competently in society affect her because she is a woman. And, finally, she comes to realize that she is not alone. The system does not, in fact, work for "everyone else" but only for males and those women whose situation resembles that of males. At this point the woman has developed a feminist consciousness, a process some prominent feminist theorists such as Letty Russell, Beverly Wildung Harrison, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Sheila Collins have not hesitated to call a ".conversion. Consciousness raising, the critical appropriation of personal experience as systemic oppression, has been encapsulated in a phrase that some have called the analytical nerve of feminism, namely "the personal is political." The most basic meaning of this phrase is that what women have been taught to experience as "personal problems" are not personal or private but are generated by the social systems within which women live." Therefore, they cannot be solved by making psychological or spiritual adjustments in one's personal life, however important such personal transformation may be, but only by the transformation of socio-political reality." On the other hand, social transformation demands personal transformation through consciousness raising, bonding with others, and accessing one's personal power. This process of personal transformation has come to be called feminist spirituality, a topic we will take up in Chapter 3. The point here is that there is an intrinsic and reciprocal relationship between personal transformation and societal transformation. Feminist consciousness leads necessarily to socio-political involvement, and socio-political transformation demands and facilitates personal transformation." We find the same intrinsic connection between spirituality and social justice involvement in the feminist movement that we find in other liberation movements such as those in Latin America or among American blacks. C. Critique of Patriarchy The third element in our definition of feminism is its critique of patriarchy. All forms of feminism recognize that patriarchy is a basic cause of women's oppression. However, the approach a feminist takes to patriarchy, how patriarchy is defined, and the role it is believed to play in both social organization as a whole and the oppression of women. In particular, will place a given feminist within one of the main categories of contemporary feminism, namely liberal, cultural, socialist (including Marxist), or radical feminism. Liberal feminism is predominantly concerned with the political and legal situation of women In society, and Its major goal is the achieving of equal rights for women within the prevailing socio-political system. The liberal definition of patriarchy is functionally synonymous with sexism in practice, with the discriminatory attitudes and practices by which men oppress women, especially as these are embodied in social, political, and economic structures. Cultural feminism is sometimes called romantic or social reform feminism. It is concerned with what it regards as the special contributions of women to the construction of a better world. Often cultural feminists, both men and women, regard women as having a certain intrinsic moral superiority to men. Women are peace-makers, egalitarians, less ambitious and driven, more person oriented, more cooperative, less competitive, more nurturing, and so on, than men are. Cultural feminists tend to define patriarchy as the exclusive triumph of male values in culture, and their concern is the equal and mutual influence of men and women In the transformation of culture. Most American feminists, with the exception of the conservative pro-family group that has emerged in the last few years, would certainly support the liberal feminist agenda of equal rights and opportunities for women. Furthermore, the rhetoric and values of cultural feminism often permeate the discourse and the action agenda of other feminist However, both groups. socialist and radical feminists regard the social analysis of liberal and cultural feminists as inadequate. Liberal feminists do not really question the capitalist system; they basically want women to be free to participate in it as equals with men. Cultural feminists do question the system, but their fundamental concern is not to remake the socio-politico-economic order but to humanize the system by infusing into it the heretofore unheard voice and values of the female half of the human race. The feminism with which I am primarily concerned is that which has done a deep analysis of contemporary social reality and which envisions its total transformation, Socialist and radical feminism have this perspective and agenda in common, They differ, however, In their conclusions about the precise nature and role of patriarchy in the current construction of reality and therefore on strategy for dealing with it. The Marxist influence In socialist feminism leads its adherents to see the economic class structure, based on relationship to the means of production, as the fundamental structure of oppression in society. Socialist feminists define patriarchy as a set of social relations among men which is supported and maintained by their control over women, "it recognizes a system of hierarchy among men drawn along race and class lines, but argues that the common goal of the control of women unites all men beyond race and class," In other words, sexual economics rooted in the division of labor by gender that assigns the private sphere of reproduction to women and the public sphere of production to men rather than sexual identity or role in the family unit is the root of the problem, the ultimate explanation of male domination and oppression of women. Maria Riley argues that socialist feminism is the most comprehensive form of feminist analysis since it attempts to explain the interrelations among all forms of oppression, viz. sexual, racial, and economic." Its analysis finally locates the root of all oppressions in the economic sphere, The development of capitalist class society entails the subordination of women and their reproductive capacity to the control of the owners of the means of production, viz. men. Thus males constitute a dominant class within every class, and this Intra-class domination has the same structure as the overall interclass structure of society in that it Is based on the control by some, for their own advantage, of the productive capacity of others. Sexism, then, is a subset of classism which is the more comprehensive category, and economics is more basic than sex as the root of oppression, even the oppression of women by men. Patriarchy is an alliance among oppressors across racial and class lines and will ultimately be undone by the abolition of the oppressive and alienating economic system which grounds the classist social order. Other feminists, however, question the historical validity of the socialist analysis. Black women, for example, often maintain that racial oppression of blacks, both men and women, is more significant and more powerful than any supposed alliance of black men with white men in the oppression of women, even though black feminists are powerful critics of black male oppression of black women. Gerda Lerner argues that it was not the development of class society based on private property that led to male inclusion of women among their capital possessions but rather that male ownership and control of women's reproductive capacity was the original form of private property. In other words, patriarchy led to capitalism, not the other way around. The abolition of capitalism, therefore, will not liberate women, a conclusion that has certainly been borne out in the Marxist regimes in this century. Nancy Chodorow, in her first major feminist work has called the Marxist analysis into question on the basis of cultural and psychological anthropology because she became convinced that the oppression of women well preceded class society. In her most recent book, she questions the Marxist explanation from the standpoint of psychoanalysis which reveals the root of male oppression of women in male fear and hatred of women "because they experience them as powerful mothers," Chodorow wants to move from a single cause explanation for women's oppression to a complex social, cultural, and psychological explanation. Radical feminism, like socialist feminism, mounts a thoroughgoing critique of the social system as a whole but evaluates the role of patriarchy within that system differently. Radical feminism regards patriarchy not merely as a system of male domination of females, and therefore as a subset of the overall problem of class oppression, but as the basic dominative social system which is the ground and paradigm for all forms of social domination. It has the advantage of being based not on an hypothesis about the development of social systems but on verifiable social history. Patriarchy is the social system of father-rule which is the basic form of social organization in every historical society we know anything about, at least in the west. While there seem to have been matrifocal and matrilineal societies, and certainly societies in which the supreme deity was the Great Mother Goddess, there is no hard historical evidence that there has ever been a matriarchal society, Le. a social system based on mother-rule in which women controlled the religious myth and symbol system. In this analysis patriarchy or father-rule consists in the ownership by the male head of the household of all persons, land, and resources attached to the household. Thus, in ancient societies, he owned wives and concubines, children, slaves, animals, land, produce, and money and had not only responsibility for his property but also absolute power over it. It was the right of the head of the household to expose unwanted infants; to sell, barter, or donate wives, children, or slaves; to kill recalcitrant dependents; to acquire and alienate real and personal property, This absolute power, including that of life and death, was rooted in his ownership of the household as economic unit, and this ownership was based on his position as paterfamilias, male head of the family, clan, or tribe. While this power belonged to the male head of the household, its exercise was not restricted to control over females. Minor sons who had not yet become heads of their own households, male in-laws If they resided in the household, and male slaves were as subject to the patria potestas as were women, with the difference that any male could, at least in principle, attain to full majority whereas women, precisely because they could never be fathers of families, were minors by nature. It is not difficult to understand the development of this form of social organization from the need of the social unit to protect itself, and particularly to protect the females whose fertility was the source of the unit's continuance. Nor is It difficult to understand the assumption that this arrangement was natural, Le. ordained by divinity and therefore not subject to human revision. In other words, patriarchy or father-rule was essentially hierarchy (from hieros sacred) or divinely sanctioned, sacralized responsibility, authority and power. What this analysis of patriarchy makes clear is that patriarchy is not simply the domination of individual women by individual men. It is a principle and paradigm of social organization which is based not on maleness as such but on the social role assumed by or assigned to adult male household heads in the structure. Furthermore, the social stratification in the system is not based solely on sex. While one could not be in the dominant position unless one were a male (or acting in the place of or by permission of a male), one could be a male and not be in the dominant position. However, because the role of head of the social unit belonged to the husband-father who was necessarily male, there was an evident and intrinsic connection established between maleness, property, and power on the one hand and femaleness, economic dependence, and powerlessness on the other. Whatever was characterized by dependence and powerlessness came to be associated with the feminine and whatever was characterized by ownership and power came to be associated with the masculine. Herein we see the root of the inveterate tendency of the western mind to divide all reality into gendered dyads, Le, into opposites assimilated to the male or female pole, and to evaluate each member positively or negatively depending on that assimilation. Mind and body, spirit and matter, culture and nature, life and death, light and darkness, intellect and feeling, reason and intuition, and Innumerable other pairs cast all reality into a superior/ inferior, domination/subordination schema. The radical feminist analysis traces all the dominance relations in the social order to the system of universal hierarchical dualism that finds its first and basic instance as well as its paradigm in the dominance/subordination relationship between male household head and wife-mother that is the principle of the patriarchal family unit. In short, patriarchy is not one example of classism but the root of all hierarchical relationships including not only sexism but also classism, clericalism, colonialism, racism, ageism, and heterosexism, While it is not exclusively a male over female structure It is essentially and pervasively sexual, drawing its psychic energy as well as Its basic example from the dominance relation of male to female in the familial unit. The pervasive tendency of dominators to feminize and/or infantilize the oppressed is no coincidence because the title to dominate comes basically from the assumption or the defense of patriarchal privilege. Radical feminist analysis, like the socialist feminist analysis, perceives the interconnectedness of all forms of oppression and draws the necessary conclusion that sexist oppression cannot be overcome unless all forms of domination and oppression are overcome, and this requires the transformation of society literally from the root up. It differs from socialist feminism in identifying patriarchy, rather than economically based classism, as the root that must be healed. The fear of radical feminism that has been expressed with increasing alarm by ecclesiastical officials36 is actually quite well founded because the Roman Catholic Church, as a social institution, is perhaps the most patriarchal structure in the western world and it has even, at times, defined itself as hierarchical by divine institution, Catholic radical feminists have identified patriarchy in general and hierarchy (i.e. sacralized patriarchy) in particular as an irredeemably sinful structure whose transformation is demanded by the gospel and is the sine qua non of the coming of the reign of God which is, by divine institution, not a hierarchy but a discipleship of equals. D. An Alternative Vision All forms of feminism have in common the proposal of an alternative vision of life in this world. Liberal feminists envision a social order In which women will have political status and legal rights equal to those of men. Cultural feminists envision a world humanized and enriched by the mutual and equal contributions of women and men to the ideal of humanity and its realization. Socialist feminists dream .of a classless society based on non-alienated labor in which sex, race, ethnic origin, and all other distinctions will have become economically and socially irrelevant. In my opinion, radical feminism not only offers the most comprehensive and imaginative vision of an alternative future but also embraces the values espoused by other kinds of feminism. Therefore, I will attempt to sketch the feminist ideal in its terms. Because radical feminism identifies patriarchy, especially in its sacralized form of hierarchy, as the root of all forms of oppression, the root of its alternative vision is its resolute anti -hierarchicalism, or, to phrase It positively, its fundamental egalitarianism. This egalitarianism is much more comprehensive than equal individual rights, although equal rights are certainly part of the radical feminist agenda, it has to do with the equality of persons as human beings and even a kind of equality among all the orders of being within creation. Feminist egalitarianism is not a utopian blindness to or denial of real differences but a refusal to dichotomize differences into inferior and superior as bases for domination/ subordination relationships between people or between humans and the rest of creation. Furthermore, egalitarianism Is not anti-organizational nor does it deny the necessity and usefulness of leadership. But it believes that order need not involve the subordination of some to others and that leadership does not consist in the exercise of coercive power over others but in the capacity to empower others in the pursuit of freely chosen common goals. The fundamental repudiation of hierarchy that is at the center of the feminist vision has many corollaries. For example, In the feminist vision competition and its ultimate escalation into war must give way to cooperation and the sharing of resources as the basis of a just and lasting peace; violence and coercion must be replaced by dialogue and consensus building for the resolution of conflicts; the rights of all to participate according to their Interests and capacities in all systems and decisions which affect them must be vindicated; inclusion must replace exclusion as the way to maximize power; and humans must begin to see themselves as participants in rather than lords over the fragile ecosystem that is our earth. How to embody this vision in the concrete structures and relationships of everyday life, especially since none of us has much experience of such a non-oppressive relational universe, is a challenge feminists struggle with virtually every time they come together. But the conviction that hierarchy 1s the root of sinful structures and that It must be eradicated and replaced with an egalitarian vision and praxis if the human family and the earth are to survive and flourish is non-negotiable. In Chapter 3 we will discuss this vision In greater detail, but what should be obvious at this point is that the alternative vision of radical feminism is not simply a world without sexism, a world in which men no longer oppress women. Sexism Is properly seen as the paradigmatic form of oppression. However, it is not the only form. All oppression is based on dichotomous dualisms. Classism, racism, clericalism, colonialism, heterosexism, ageism, as well as all oppressive forms of government from divine right monarchies to police states, are connected, at their root, by the principle of patriarchy, No form of oppression can be finally overcome until that root is cut, until hierarchy as such is delegitimated and replaced by a universal acceptance of the basic equality of all participants in creation. In other words, in the feminist utopian vision the end of any oppression depends on the end of all oppression because the connection among oppressions Is not one of similarity or even of the solidarity in suffering of the victims. It is an ideological connection which involves not only a certain oppressive theory of reality but a praxis which draws its validity from and validates that theory. E Realizing the Feminist. Future We come finally to the fifth component in the definition of feminism, the active commitment of feminists to bringing about the Incarnation of the feminist vision In the social order. Feminism espouses a utopian vision, but it is not content to dream about an alternative future. However, just as all feminists do not analyze patriarchy in exactly the same way, nor do all have exactly the same vision of an alternative future, so not all feminists choose the same means for achieving that future. Maria Riley in her fine volume on feminism and Catholic social thought speaks of the 'carriers' of the vision of various strands of the feminist movement. Who are the people and what are the organizations and organs through which various types of feminism work toward the realization of a feminist future? Liberal feminism is perhaps the most visible form of feminism in the United States precisely because its major carriers are bureaucratic and organizational agencies such as the National Organization for Women, the League of Woman Voters, the women's caucuses in legislative bodies, action organizations among businesswomen, professional women and women workers, and women's group pressing for change in the church such as the Women's Ordination Conference and various groups of lay women and women religious. Organizational feminism is highly effective because it uses the techniques and structures which are already in place in the dominant society and which people in power understand in state and church. The increasing number of women in elective office, the steady battering down of the doors which bar women from the networks of power in business and the professions, the increasing success of women in legally vindicating their rights against male harassment and abuse on the street, in the home, and in the workplace, and the consistent pressure being brought to bear on sexist policies and practices in the churches are gradually dismantling the complex interlocking structures of male power and privilege. Cultural feminism's vision of an alternative future is less focused on women's attaining of equal rights in society than on the transforming moral influence of women in a world suffering from over-masculinization. Cultural feminism is diffused throughout the feminist movement, and it rhetoric and agenda tend to appear wherever feminists are active. A very interesting contemporary expression of cultural feminism is the Mothers Against Drunk Driving campaign with its highly suggestive acronym, MADD. Not unlike the women's Temperance Movement at the beginning of the century, MADD is a grassroots movement of women, self-consciously affirming their life-giving identity and role as mothers, enraged at the predominantly male disregard of life, especially the life of these women's children, and determined to do something about it. They do not see themselves primarily or simply as citizens, voters, adults, or even as women or parents, and their target is not irresponsible public behavior as such. They see themselves specifically as mothers taking up arms against the slaughter of their children, and they have identified the culture's macho attitude toward alcohol and cars as the enemy. However, in general, the values of cultural feminism appear less in particular movements or organizations than as the ethos within which the feminist movement in general operates. Socialist and radical feminism are generally carried by collectivist groups of all sizes and degrees of formal organization rather than by bureaucratic agencies in relation to society's current organizational structure. Social feminists tend to target economic and reproductive issues while radical feminists, without neglecting these issues, are primarily concerned with the empowering of women in their struggle against male oppression and the elaboration of an alternative feminist reality. Radical feminism is the branch of the movement that is most concerned with religion, both religion's role in the subordination of women and religion's potential for liberation. Feminist spirituality, the topic of Chapter 3, is predominantly located within the precincts of radical feminism which is also primarily involved in the construction of alternative places and agencies for women: women's collectives, support networks for rape victims, safe houses for battered women and children, counseling services for women involved in family planning decisions, educational alternatives for women who find themselves suddenly independent through separation, divorce, or widowhood, women's support groups in universities, seminaries, parishes, and other male-dominated Institutions, feminist prayer and liturgy groups, and numerous other projects, large and small, in which feminist vision and values can be incarnated here and now and can demonstrate the viability and desirability of an alternative future. Both the socialist and the radical branches of the feminist movement have been deeply involved In the academic agenda of feminism which calls for a complete revisioning of western social and intellectual history from which women's story and contribution have been largely erased. Thus, women's studies programs in universities, women's caucuses within the major scholarly societies, women's publications and films, and major feminist research projects of all kinds are part of the active agenda of the movement. In summary, the increasing power of feminism as a worldwide movement for revisioning and reforming human reality derives from the fact that it is a comprehensive Ideology in both the theoretical and the practical senses of the word. It draws its initiating energy from the actual experience of oppression which consciousness raising enables women to recognize and appropriate. It engages in a focused social analysis which has revealed the role of patriarchy not only as the root of women's oppression' but also as the source of the interconnectedness of sexism with all other forms of hierarchical domination, thus relating women's liberation to the universal movement toward liberation abroad in the world. It offers a comprehensive vision of an alternative future and has undertaken a multi-pronged program to bring that future into being. Because women are not a particular social class or subgroup but at least half of virtually every natural grouping and social class in the world and because the process of consciousness-raising is universally accessible, at least In principle, there Is good reason to believe, as some have suggested, that the women's movement is the most powerful movement in the history of the world and that history cannot continue unchanged in the face of this rising of half the race. IV. Feminism and the Church Feminism began as a secular movement, but within a few years of the rise of the "second wave" in the 1960s feminists began to see the profound connection between patriarchy and organized religion. Although feminism has brought its critique to bear on virtually all of the world's religions, for the sake of clarity and focus I will restrict my considerations, to Christianity In general, and Catholicism in particular. Most Catholic feminists would probably agree in dating the begin. Ning of the Catholic feminist movement to 1968 when Mary Daly published her manifesto, The Church and the Second Sex. 31 There Is no question that Daly saw, before most Catholic feminists did, that the Catholic Church was a major participant in the oppression of women and that this was not an accidental historical development but a major systemic problem with Catholicism itself. In 1971, in Harvard Memorial Church, Daly called Christian women to realize that there was no place for them. In the church as It understands itself. She ended her proclamation with an Invitation to the women present to walk, as an exodus community, out of the church, the land of our fathers, and Into the future of true sisterhood. Not only did the women present that day follow Daly out of the church building, but many have followed her out of Catholicism and into alternate forms of feminist spirituality, a topic to which we will return. The Catholic feminist analysis began" in ecclesial consciousness-raising, i.e. in the realization by many Catholic women that they were excluded from significant dimensions of the Catholic experience. They were totally excluded from one of the seven sacraments, holy orders, and consequently from all real participation in leadership and decision-making in the church, and were told that this exclusion was based on the divine will regarding the female of the species and was therefore theologically based and irreformable. Furthermore, even in those areas in which they were allowed to participate, for example in the liturgical assembly, they were effectively rendered invisible by being linguistically subsumed into all-male categories as "men," "brothers," and "sons" and denied the right to exercise even non-ordained functions that were open to male children, such as reading as lectors or serving at the altar as acolytes. At the same time, women were rendered totally dependent upon men for access to the sacraments of daily life. Some women even pointed to the close parallel In psychological experience between physical rape and the forced spiritual stripping of women's consciences, particularly in the sexual sphere, before male judges in the confessional. Not only were women excluded, marginalized, and degraded in the church, but they were also directly oppressed by church authorities, and the church legitimated and supported their oppression by men in family and society. Women religious realized that they could not exercise even minimal self-determination within their own congregations while married women had no leverage whatever in the decisions made by male celibates about even the most intimate details of their lives as wives and mothers. The church's pastoral practice discouraged women from seeking divorce from abusive husbands, forbade the divorced to remarry under any circumstances, counseled them to accept spouse abuse as God's will, commanded them to yield to marital rape, and forbade them to use contraceptives to control the results of such abuse or to have recourse to abortion in cases of rape or Incest. In short, the church was a prime legitimator of patriarchal marriage and its attendant abuses. By its romantic reduction of women's identity and role to motherhood and its definition of the family in patriarchal terms of male headship, church authorities constricted women's self-image, loaded women's emergence into the public sphere with guilt, and legitimated patriarchal structures of economic discrimination designed to keep women out of the work force and dependent on the male head of the household. At the same time that the church excluded women from full participation in the sacramental system and from any participation in church leadership, legitimated their oppression in the family, and collaborated in their societal marginalization, the church used women for virtually all ecclesiastical tasks that men did not care to perform while underpaying them, denying them all access to power, and leaving them totally dependent on the good will and tolerance of male power figures. Women ministered by the permission of men, on male terms, only in those spheres permitted to them by men, for whatever pay men decided to give them, and subject to whatever employment conditions and/or dismissal procedures men chose to Impose. As Catholic women's consciousness was raised about their experience in the church they began to realize that their exclusion, marginalization, and oppression were not incidental or accidental but structural and systemic. They identified the church as a deeply patriarchal structure, owned and operated by men for their own benefit, and firmly committed to the continued domination of women Catholics by men in general and male clerics in particular. This social analysis of the church led directly to the basic theological question: Is the church patriarchal by merely human or by divine dispensation? In other words, did God in Christ ordain women's secondary and subordinate position in Christianity, or have male hierarchs distorted the Christian message in their own patriarchal image? If the former hypothesis is the case, then women can only remain Catholics at the price of their self-respect as humans and believers. If, however, the church's patriarchal structure and function is a distortion of the gospel, then Catholic feminists have an enormous and exhausting task on their hands, viz. the radical transformation of the church, but it makes sense for those who can endure the pain to remain and to struggle until the church becomes the "discipleship of equals"" which Jesus initiated. This basic question about the divine or human origin of the church's patriarchal character has been engaged from within every theological discipline. Systematic theologians have undertaken a radical rereading of the dogmatic tradition." Ecclesiologists have raised specific questions about the constitution of the church and its original ministerial structure; moral theologians about women as subjects of conscience and about the definition of female sexuality against a presumed male norm; church historians about the lost and/or distorted story of women in the development of the church; pastoral theologians about the results of the exclusion of women's gifts from the church's ministerial experience. At the basis of these questions, however, are two fundamental issues upon which the continued participation of women in the Christian tradition finally depends. First, Is the God of Judaeo-Christian revelation a male being who sent a divine male to save us, thus revealing the normativity of maleness and establishing the superiority of males in relation to females in the order of salvation? Second, did God create one human nature in which women and men participate fully and equally, or is human nature dual with men called by nature to full participation in the Christian mystery in the image of God and the likeness of Christ and women called to a derivative identity and role in the likeness of men? In short, the ultimate questions are theological and anthropological. What is the true nature of God and what is the true nature of humanity? Do the answers to these questions support male supremacy as divinely ordained or do they allow for the genuine equality of man and woman in the divine plan? The need to answer these questions brings us finally to the issue of the interpretation of scripture. If the Bible is the ultimate norm against which Christian faith and practice must be measured, we cannot escape the question of what the scriptures say about the nature of God and human nature. What started as a substantive question about the docrtrinal content of scripture rapidly progressed toward more subtle questions about the imagery and symbolism for God in the Bible, the gendered quality of language about God and about humans in scripture, the pervasive androcentrism of sacred history, and finally about the very process and meaning of biblical interpretation itself. V. Conclusion In the preceding paragraphs I have attempted to clarify the fundamental terminology of feminism, to supply a relatively complete descriptive definition of the contemporary feminist movement at least as it is developing among white, western, middle-class feminists in the first world," and to sketch the basic contours of the engagement between feminist consciousness and the Catholic experience. If my description and analyses are at all true to the historical phenomenon, the answer to the question posed in the title of this essay should be clear. Feminism is not a fad or the passing obsession of a few disgruntled women. Feminism is a worldwide movement that envisions nothing less than the radical transformation of human history. It maintains that such a transformation is necessary in order for over half of the human race to be able to participate fully in the human enterprise. But it also maintains that until women participate in that enterprise, the human family and the earth as its home remain in mortal danger. Women do not seek to participate as imitation males or on male terms in a male- construction of reality. Rather they have undertaken a deconstruction of male reality and a reconstruction of reality in more human terms. If the feminist enterprise succeeds, the future of humanity will be qualitatively different. I have been trying to suggest that the change will be in the direction of salvation for the race and for the planet.
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