Defining Terms
To better understand what modern, or gender feminism means, we must understand what liberal feminism represents. The liberal feminist is not out to second guess what women want; if most women enjoy families, if they enjoy “la difference,” this is of no concern for them. On the other hand, the gender feminist “believes that women constitute an oppressed class within an oppressive system: what ails women cannot be cured by merely achieving equal opportunity. As a class women are seen to be politically at odds with the patriarchy that oppresses them.”[1] Consequently, the gender feminist will never accept the testimonies of ordinary women, since the gender feminist believes that ordinary women have unconsciously bought into a system that oppresses them.[2] Thus, the gender – modern – feminist simply presupposes her worldview[3] and reinterprets all contrary facts as examples of false consciousness. This worldview[4] permeates all that the modern feminist comes into contact with, including such things as history and religion. The gender feminist, then, has a radical perspective. She views social reality in terms of patriarchal “sex/gender system” that, in the words of Sandra Harding, “organizes social life throughout most of recorded history and in every culture today.”[5]
The liberal feminist, on the other hand, merely seeks legal equality for women and equality of opportunity in education and in the work place. It is this type of woman who wants what any classical liberal wants for anyone who suffers bias: fair treatment. The more extreme modern view of feminism is what has been institutionalized, unfortunately, in most of the Women’s Studies programs at the university level.
What’s Going On?
While Concerned Women for
How, though, can a civil rights movement be interested in capitalism? According to Tammy Bruce, who was the former president of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW as well as being a former member of NOW’s national board of directors puts it: “What Gloria Steinem, Molly Yard, Patricia Ireland and all the rest have presented to you over the last 15 years (at least) has not been feminist theory.”[7]
Ms. Bruce goes on to show that Betty Friedan and Patricia Ireland, ex-president of NOW, (and others) are members of the Communist Party. In fact, Gloria Steinem is honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, which boasts of being the largest socialist organization in the
Now compare this to a statement made by feminist Mary Jo Bane (assistant professor of education at
- “Dramatic changes in the way we will raise our children in the year 2000 are indicated, particularly in terms of schooling...We will need to recognize that the so-called basic skills, which currently represent nearly the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one-quarter of the present school day...When this happens- and it's near- the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values...We will be agents of change.”
[1] Christina Hoff Sommers, “Feminism and Philosophy,” APA (American Philosophical Association) Newsletter, 91, no. 1 (Spring 1992), p. 85.
[2] Francis J. Beckwith, Ed., Do the Right Thing: A Philosophical Dialogue on the Moral and Social Issues of Our Time, Jones & Bartlett Publishers,
[3] worldview: People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By “presuppositions” we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People’s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions. “As a man thinketh, so he is,” is really profound. An individual is not just the product of the forces around him. He has a mind, an inner world. Then, having thought, a person can bring forth actions into the external world and thus influence it. People are apt to look at the outer theater of action, forgetting the actor who “lives in the mind” and who therefore is the true actor in the external world. The inner thought world determines the outward action. Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles. But people with more understanding realize that their presuppositions should be chosen after a careful consideration of what worldview is true. When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, “not many men are in the room” – that is, although worldviews have many variations, there are not many basic worldviews or presuppositions – Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, Crossway Books,
[4] Ronald H. Nash, Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas, Zondervan,
[5] Sandra Harding & Merrill Hintikka, Ed., Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Science, p. 312 – excerpted from Do the Right Thing, see footnote #55.
