2024-2 Feminist Ethics
Bartky, Sandra Lee (1975). Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness. Social Theory and Practice 3 (4):425-439.
1
Contemporary feminism has many faces. The best attempts so far to deal with the scope and complexity of the movement have divided feminists along ideological lines. Thus, liberal, Marxist, neo-Marxist and what are called "radical" feminists differ from one another in that they have differing sets of beliefs about the origin and nature of sexism and thus quite different prescriptions for the proper way of eliminating it.
But this way of understanding the nature of the women's movement, however indispensable, is not the only way.
I would not hesitate to call someone a feminist who supported a program for the liberation of women and who held beliefs about the nature of contemporary society appropriate to such a political program, something crucial to an understanding of feminism is overlooked if its definition is so restricted.
To be a feminist, one has first to become one. For many feminists, this involves the experience of a profound personal transformation, an experience which goes far beyond that sphere of human activity we regard ordinarily as "political." This transforming experience, which cuts across the ideological divisions within the women's movement, is complex and multi-faceted. In the course of undergoing the transformation to which I refer, the feminist changes her behavior, she makes new friends; she responds differently to people and events; her habits of consumption change; sometimes she alters her living arrangements or, more dramatically, her whole style of life. She may decide to pursue a career, to develop potentialities within herself which had long lain dormant1 or she may commit herself to political struggle. In a biting and deliberately flat tone, one feminist enumerates some of the changes in her own life: [425]
These changes in behavior go hand in hand2 with changes in consciousness: to become a feminist is to develop a radically altered consciousness of oneself, of others and of what for lack of a better term, I shall call "social reality." Feminists themselves have a name for the struggle to clarify and to hold fast to this way of apprehending things: they call it "consciousness-raising." A "raised" consciousness on the part of women is not only a causal factor in the emergence of the feminist movement itself but also an important part of its political program. Many small discussion groups exist solely for the purpose of consciousness-raising. But what happens when one's consciousness is raised? What is a fully developed feminist consciousness like?
It is not clear how to distinguish between the ordinary definition of a feminist (someone who supports a program for the liberation of women and holds beliefs about the nature of contemporary society appropriate to such a political program) and the definition provided by the author. According to the author, a feminist can be defined as someone who experiences a profound personal transformation with consciousness-raising. Thus, the author's definition encompasses not only a change in one's whole style of life but also a transformation in the consciousness of oneself, others, and social reality. But why don't we simply say that someone who supports a program for the liberation of women would definitely change (or has already changed) her entire way of life and raise her consciousness? In other words, what is being overlooked in the ordinary definition?
In this paper, I would like to examine not the full global experience of liberation, involving as it does new ways of being as well as new ways of perceiving but, more narrowly, those distinctive ways of perceiving which characterize feminist consciousness. What follows will be a highly tentative attempt at a morphology3 of feminist consciousness. Without claiming to have discovered them all, I shall try to identify some structural features of that altered way of apprehending oneself and the world which is both product and content of a raised consciousness. But before I begin, I would like to make some very general remarks about the nature of this consciousness and about the conditions under which it emerges.
Although the oppression of women is universal, feminist consciousness is not. While I am not sure that I could demon strate the necessity of its appearance in this time and place and not in another, I believe it is possible to identify two features of current social reality which, if not sufficient, are at least necessary conditions for the emergence of feminist consciousness. These features constitute, in addition, much of the content of this consciousness. I refer first to the existence of what Marxists call "contradictions" in our society and second, to the presence, due to these same contradictions, of concrete circumstances which would permit a significant alteration in the status of women. [426]
necessary conditions for the emergence of feminist consciousness
① the existence of contradictions
② the presence of concrete circumstances which would permit a significant alteration in the status of women
In Marxist theory, the stage is set for social change when existing forms of social interaction—property relations as well as values, attitudes and beliefs—come into conflict with new social relations which are generated by changes in the mode of production.
At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution.
Social conflict regularly takes an ideological form, so much so that conflicts which are fundamentally economic in origin may appear to be struggles between ideas, as, for instance, between competing conceptions of the nature of legitimate political authority or of woman's proper sphere. To date, no one has offered a comprehensive analysis of those changes in the socio-economic structure of contemporary American society which have made possible the emergence of feminist consciousness.
This task is made doubly difficult by the fact that these changes constitute no completed process, no convenient object for dispassionate historical investigation but are part of the fluid set of circumstances in which each of us must find our way from one day to another and whose ultimate direction is as yet unclear. In spite of this, several features of current social reality cannot escape notice.
(2) Does the author grasp the whole Marxist theory, or merely use his notion of contradiction? Marxists believe that all conflicts are fundamentally economic in origin and thereby neglect other factors (perhaps feminist consciousness would be one of them).
First, if we widen the notion of "modes of production" to include "modes of reproduction," then it is evident that the development of cheap and efficient types of contraception has been instrumental in changing both the concrete choices women are able to make and the prevailing conceptions about woman's function and destiny. Second, the rapid growth of "service" industries has had much to do with the steady rise in the percentage of women in the work force, since the post World War II low in the early fifties. The older restriction of woman's role to wife, mother, and homemaker, together with the rationale which justifies such restriction is clearly out of phase with the entry of millions of women into the market economy [427-428]. The growth and spread of a technology to ease the burden of housekeeping, a technology which is itself the result of a need on the part of late capitalism for "innovations" in production, serves further to undermine traditional concep tions about woman's place. During part of the period of the most rapid rise in the percentage of women in the work force, to cite still another "contradiction," there appeared an anoma lous and particularly virulent form of the "feminine mystique," which, together with its companion, the ideal of "togetherness," had the effect, among other things, of insuring that the family would remain an efficient vehicle of consumption. No doubt what triggered feminist consciousness most immediately were the social upheavals and student movements of the Sixties, themselves expressions of protest against the growing bureau cratization, depersonalization, and inhumanity of late capitalist society. Women who struggle against other people's oppression must sooner or later confront their own; and the denial of full participation in such struggles by one's male "comrades" can only hasten the process.
Clearly, any adequate account of the "contradictions" of late capitalism, that is, of the conflicts, the instabilities, the ways in which some parts of the social whole are put of phase with others, would be a complex and elaborate task. But what ever a complete account of these contradictions would look like, it is essential to understand as concretely as possible how the contradictory factors we are able to identify are lived and suffered by particular people. The facts of economic develop ment are crucial to an understanding of any phenomenon of social change, but they are not the phenomenon in its entirety. Dogmatic Marxists have regarded consciousness as a mere reflection of material conditions and therefore uninteresting as an object for study in and of itself. Even Marxist scholars of a more humane cast of mind have not paid sufficient attention to the ways in which the social and economic tensions they study are played out in the lives of concrete individuals. There is an anguished consciousness, an inner uncertainty and confusion which characterizes human subjectivity in periods of social change—and I shall contend that feminist consciousness, in large measure, is an anguished consciousness—of whose existence Marxist scholars seem largely unaware. Indeed, the only sort of consciousness which is discussed with any frequency in the literature is "class consciousness," a somewhat unclear idea whose meaning Marxists themselves dispute [428-429]. The incorporation of phenomenological methods into Marxist analysis is necessary, if the proper dialectical relations between human consciousness and the material modes of production are ever to be grasped in their full concreteness.
Marxists have not paid sufficient attention to human consciousness during periods of social change because they believed that consciousness is nothing more than a mere reflection of material conditions. The author, on the contrary, argues that an anguished consciousness must be incorporated into Marxist analysis. But is there such a dialectical relationship between human consciousness and the material modes of production?
Women have long lamented their condition, but a lament, pure and simple, need not be an expression of feminist consciousness. As long as their situation is apprehended as natural, inevitable and inescapable, women's consciousness of themselves, no matter how alive to insult and inferiority, is not yet feminist consciousness. This consciousness, as I contended earlier, emerges only when there exists a genuine possibility for the partial or total liberation of women. This possibility is more than a mere accidental accompaniment of feminist consciousness. Feminist consciousness is the apprehension of that possibility. The very meaning of what the feminist apprehends is illuminated by the light of what ought to be. The given situation is first understood in terms of a state of affairs not yet actual and in this sense a possibility, a state of affairs in which what is not given would be negated and radically transformed. To say that feminist consciousness is the experience in a certain way of certain specific contradictions in the social order is to say that the feminist apprehends certain features of social reality as intolerable, as to be rejected in behalf of a transforming project for the future. "It is on the day that we can conceive of a different state of affairs that a new light falls on our troubles and we decide that these are unbearable." What Sartre would call her "transcendence," her project of negation and transformation, makes possible what are specifically feminist ways of apprehending contradictions in the social order. Women workers who are not feminists know that they receive unequal pay for equal work, but they may think that the arrangement is just; the feminist sees this situation as an instance of exploitation and an occasion for struggle. Feminists are not aware of different things than other people; they are aware of the same things differently. Feminist consciousness, it might be ventured, turns a "fact" into a "contradiction"; often, features of social reality are first apprehended as contra dictory, as in conflict with one another, or as disturbingly out of phase with one another, from the vantage point of a radical project of transformation [429].
What are the meanings of "transcendence" and "dialectical"?
Does the author presuppose that contradictions are mind-dependent? Since contradictions need to be recognized by feminists, the author seems to claim that a contradiction is created by feminist consciousness. Without it, it is just a fact.
Thus, we understand what we are and where we are in the light of what we are not yet. But the perspective from which I understand the world must be rooted in the world too. My comprehension of what I and my world can become must take account of what they are. The possibility of a transformed society which allows the feminist to grasp the significance of her current situation must somehow be contained in her apprehension of her current situation: the contradictory situation in which she finds herself she perceives as unstable, as carrying within itself the seeds of its own dissolution. There is no way of telling, by a mere examination of some form of consciousness, whether the possibilities it incorporates are realizable or not; this depends on whether the situation is such as to contain within itself the sorts of material conditions which will bring to fruition a human expectation. If no such circumstances are present, then the consciousness in question is not the kind of consciousness which accompanies a genuine political project at all, but merely fantasy. I think that an examination of the circumstances of our lives will show that feminist consciousness and the radical project of transformation which animates it is, if less than an absolutely certain anticipation of what must be, more than mere fantasy.
The relationship between consciousness and concrete circumstances can best be described as "dialectical". Feminist consciousness is more than a mere reflection of external material conditions, for the transforming and negating perspective which it incorporates first allows these conditions to be revealed as the conditions they are, as contradictions. But on the other hand, the apprehension of some state of affairs as intolerable, as to-be-transformed, does not, in and of itself, transform it. For this, what is needed is power. [430]
2
Feminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization. To apprehend oneself as victim is to be aware of an alien and hostile force outside of oneself which is responsible for the blatantly unjust treatment of women and which enforces a stifling and oppressive system of sex-role differentiation. For some feminists, this hostile power is "society" or "the system"; for others, it is simply, men. Victimization is impartial, even though its damage is done to each one of us personally. One is victimized as a woman, as one among many [430-431]. In the realization that others are made to suffer in the same way I am made to suffer lies the beginning of a sense of solidarity with other victims. To come to see oneself as victim, to have such an altered perception of oneself and of one's society is not to see things in the same old way while merely judging them differently or to superimpose new attitudes on things like frosting on a cake. The consciousness of victimization is immediate and revelatory; it allows us to discover what social reality really is.
The consciousness of victimization is a divided consciousness. To see myself as victim is to know that I have already sustained injury, that I live exposed to injury, that I have been at worst mutilated, at best diminished in my being. But at the same time, feminist consciousness is a joyous consciousness of one's own power, of the possibility of unprecedented per sonal growth and the release of energy long suppressed. Thus, feminist consciousness is both consciousness of weakness and consciousness of strength. But this division in the way we ap prehend ourselves has a positive effect for it leads to the search both for ways of overcoming those weaknesses in our selves which support the system and for direct forms of struggle against the system itself.
But consciousness of victimization is a consciousness divided in still another way. This second division does not have the positive effect of the first, for its tendency is to produce con fusion, guilt and paralysis in the political sphere. The aware ness I have of myself as victim rests uneasily alongside the awareness that I am also and at the same time enormously privileged, more privileged than the overwhelming majority of the world's population. I enjoy both white-skin privilege and the privileges of comparative wealth. I have some measure of control, however small, over my own economic life. More over, since I am lucky enough to live in the neo-colonial nation and not in the former colony, I need have no fear of napalm, "pacification" or the anti-personnel bomb.9 The im plications of this split in consciousness for feminist political theory and the obstacles it presents to the formulation of a coherent feminist strategy are frequently mentioned in the literature of the women's movement. It is not my task in this paper to develop a conception of political praxis appropriate to a consciousness of oppression so divided, only to identify this division [431-432]. But two things follow upon consideration of the phenomenon of the "guilty victim." First, an analysis of the concept of oppression and an identification of the variety of ways in which human beings can be oppressed is essential to the development not only of feminist political theory but of any political theory. Second, any feminist analysis which ignores this phenomenon or else sees in it the expression of a low level of political awareness will fail to do justice to the often disturbing complexity of feminist experience.
To apprehend myself as victim in a sexist society is to know that there are few places where I can hide, that I can be at tacked almost anywhere, at any time, by virtually anyone. Innocent chatter, the currency of ordinary social life, or a compliment ("You don't think like a woman"), the well-inten tioned advice of psychologists, the news item, the joke, the cosmetics advertisement—none of these is what it is or what it was. Each reveals itself, depending on the circumstances in which it appears, as a threat, an insult, an affront, as a reminder, however subtle, that I belong to an inferior caste. In short, these are revealed as instruments of oppression or as articulations of a sexist institution. Since many things are not what they seem to be and since many apparently harmless sorts of things can suddenly exhibit a sinister dimension, social reality is revealed as deceptive.
Contemporary thinkers as diverse as Heidegger and Marcuse have written about the ambiguity and mystification which are so prominent a feature of contemporary social life. Feminists are alive to one certain dimension of a society which seems to specialize in duplicity—the sexist dimension. But the decep tive nature of this aspect of social reality itself makes the feminist's experience of life, her anger and sense of outrage difficult to communicate to the insensitive or uninitiated. It increases her frustration and reinforces her isolation. There is nothing ambiguous about racial segregation or economic discrimination. It is far less difficult to point to such abuses than it is to show how, for example, the "tone" of a news story can transform a piece of reportage into a refusal to take women's political struggles seriously. The male reporter for a large local daily paper who described the encounter of Betty Friedan and the Republican Women's Caucus at Miami never actually used the word "fishwife," nor did he say outright that the political struggles of women are worthy of ridicule; he merely chose to describe the actions of the individuals in volved in such a way as to make them appear ridiculous [432-433]. (Nor, it should be added, did he fail to describe Ms. Friedan as "petite.") It is difficult to characterize the tone of an article, the patronizing implications of a remark, the ramifications of some accepted practice, and it is even more difficult to de scribe what it is like to be bombarded ten or a hundred times daily with these only half-submerged weapons of a sexist sys tem. This, no doubt, is one reason why, when trying to make a case for feminism, we find ourselves referring almost ex clusively to the "hard data" of discrimination, like unequal pay, rather than to those pervasive intimations of inferiority which rankle at least as much.
Many people know that things are not what they seem to be. The feminist knows that the thing revealed in its truth at last will, likely as not, turn out to be a thing which threatens or demeans. But however unsettling it is to have to find one's way about in a world which dissimulates, it is worse to be unable to determine the nature of what is happening at all. Feminist consciousness is often afflicted with category confusion, an inability to know how to classify things. For instance, is the timidity I display at departmental meetings merely my own idiosyncrasy and personal shortcoming, an effect of factors which went into the development of my personality uniquely, or is it a typically female trait, a shared inability to display aggression, even verbal agression? And why is the suggestion I make ignored? It is intrinsically unintelligent or is it because I am a woman and therefore not to be taken seriously? The persistent need I have to make myself "attractive," to fix my hair and put on lipstick, is it the false need of a "chauvinized" woman, encouraged since infancy to identify her human value with her attractiveness in the eyes of men or does it express a basic need to affirm a wholesome love for one's own body by adorning it, a behavior common in primitive societies, allowed us but denied to men in our own still Puritan culture? Uncertainties such as these make it difficult to decide how to struggle and whom to struggle against, but the very possibility of understanding one's own motivations, character traits and impulses is also at stake. In sum, feminists suffer what might be called a "double ontological shock": first, the realization that what is really happening is quite different from what appears to be happening and second, the frequent inability to tell what is really happening at all [433-434].
Since discriminatory sex-role differentiation is a major or ganizing principle of our society, the list of its carriers and modes of communication would be unending. The sorts of things already mentioned were chosen at random. Little poli tical, professional, educational, or leisure time activity is free of the blight of sexism. Startlingly few personal relationships exist without it. Feminist consciousness is a little like paranoia, especially when the feminist first begins to apprehend the full extent of sex discrimination and the subtlety and variety of the ways in which it is enforced. Its agents are everywhere, even inside her own mind, since she can fall prey to self doubt or to a temptation to compliance. In response to this, the feminist becomes vigilant4 and suspicious. Her apprehension of things, especially of direct or indirect communication with other people is characterized by what I shall call "wariness." Wariness is anticipation of the possibility of attack, of affront or insult, of disparagement, ridicule or the hurting blindness of others. It is a mode of experience which anticipates experience in a certain way, apprehensive of the inherently threatening character of established society. While it is primarily the established order of things of which the feminist is wary, she is wary of herself, too. She must be always on the alert lest her pervasive sense of injury provoke in her without warning some public display of emotion, such as violent weeping, which she would rather suppress entirely or else endure in private. Many feminists are perpetually wary lest their own anger be transformed explosively into aggressive or hostile behavior of the sort which would be imprudent or even dangerous to display.
Some measure of wariness is a constant in feminist experience, but the degree to which it is present will be a function of other factors in a feminist's life—her level of political in volvement, perhaps, the extent of her exploration of the social milieu or the extent to which she allows resignation or humor to take away the sting. Characteristic of this kind of conscious ness too is the alternation of a heightened awareness of the limitations placed on one's free development with a duller self-protecting sensibility without which it would be difficult to function in a society like ours [434-435].
The revelation of the deceptive character of social reality brings with it another transformation in the way the social milieu is present in feminist experience. Just as so many ap parently innocent things are really devices to enforce com pliance, so are many "ordinary" sorts of situations transformed into opportunities or occasions for struggle against the system. In a light-hearted mood, I embark upon a Christmas shopping expedition, only to have it turn, as if independent of my will, into an occasion for striking a blow against sexism. On holiday from political struggle and even political principle, for ordi narily I condemn the place on general political grounds, I have abandoned myself to the richly sensuous atmosphere of Mar shall Field's. I wander about the toy department, looking at chemistry sets and miniature ironing boards. Then, unbidden, the following thought flashes into my head: what if. just this once, I send a doll to my nephew and an erector set to my niece? Will this confirm the growing suspicion in my family that I am a crank? What if the children themselves misunder stand my gesture and covet one another's gifts? Worse, what if the boy believes that I have somehow insulted him? The shop ping trip turned occasion for resistance now becomes a test. I will have to answer for this, once it becomes clear that Mar shall Field's has not unwittingly switched the labels. My hus band will be embarrassed. A didactic role will be thrust upon me, even though I had determined earlier that the situation was not ripe for consciousness-raising. The special ridicule which is now reserved for movement women will be heaped upon me at the next family party, all in good fun, of course.
Whether she lives in the "straight" culture or the counter culture, ordinary social life presents to the feminist an unend ing sequence of such occasions and each occasion is a test. It is not easy to live under the strain of constant testing. Some tests we pass with honor but often as not, we fail and the price of failure is self-reproach and the shame of having copped out. To further complicate things, much of the time it is not clear what criteria would allow us to distinguish the honorable out come of an occasion from a dishonorable one. Must I seize every opportunity? May I never take the easy way out? Is what I call prudence and good sense merely cowardice? On the occasion in question, I compromised and sent both children musical instruments [435-436].
The transformation of day-to-day living into a series of invitations to struggle has the important consequence for the feminist that she finds herself, for a while at least, in an ethical and existential impasse. She no longer knows what sort of person she ought to be and, therefore, she does not know what she ought to do. One moral paradigm is called into question by the laborious and often obscure emergence of another. The ethical issues involved in the occasion of my shopping trip were relatively trivial, but this is not true of all occasions. One thinks of Nora's decision in A Doll's House to leave her husband and children and seek independence and self-fulfill ment on her own. The case is an extreme one but it illustrates what I have in mind. Here, the conflict is between one Le bensideal and another, between, on the one hand, a Nietzschean transvaluation of received values for the sake of an heroic and creative self-surpassing and a Christian ideal of devotion to others, self-abnegation and self-sacrifice on the other. But Nora makes the decision too easily. Ibsen, her creator, betrays a certain lack of sensitivity to feminist experience: a real-life Nora would have suffered more.
Why is it an existential impasse?
To whom will a woman in such a predicament turn for guidance? To choose a moral authority, as Sartre tells us, is already to anticipate what kind of advice we are prepared to take seriously. Having become aware of the self-serving way in which a male-dominated culture has defined goodness for the female, she may decide on principle that the person she wants to be will have little in her character of patience, meek ness, complaisance, self-sacrifice, or any of the other "feminine" virtues. But will such a solution satisfy a reflective person? Must the duty I have to myself (if we have duties to ourselves) always win out over the duty I have to others? And even an unreflective person, who might not ask such questions, cannot fail to see that the way out of her dilemma may cause great suffering to the people closest to her. To develop feminist consciousness is to live a part of one's life in the sort of ambiguous ethical situation which existentialist writers have been most adept at describing. Here it might be objected that the feature of feminist experience I have been describing is characteristic not of a fully emergent feminist consciouness but of periods of transition to such consciousness, that the feminist is a person who has chosen her moral paradigm and who no longer suffers the inner conflicts of those in ambiguous moral predicaments [436-437]. I would deny this. Even the women who has decided to be this new person and not that old one, can be tormented by recurring doubts. Moreover, the pain inflicted in the course of finding one's way out of an existential impasse, one continues to inflict. One thing, however, is clear: the feminist is someone who, at the very least, has been marked by the experience of ethical ambiguity; she is a moral agent with a distinctive history.
Feminist consciousness, it was suggested earlier, can be understood as the negating and transcending awareness of one's own relationship to a society heavy with the weight of its own contradictions. The inner conflicts and divisions which make up so much of this experience are just the ways in which each of us, in the uniqueness of her own situation and personality, lives these contradictions. In sum, feminist consciousness is the consciousness of a being radically alienated from her world and often divided against herself, a being who sees herself as victim and whose victimization determines her being in-the-world as resistance, wariness and suspicion. Raw and exposed much of the time, she suffers from both ethical and ontological shock. Lacking a moral paradigm, sometimes unable to make sense of her own reactions and emotions, she is immersed in a social reality which exhibits to her an aspect of malevolent ambiguity. Many "ordinary" social situations and many human encounters organized for quite a different end she apprehends as occasions for struggle, as frequently exhausting tests of her will and resolve. She is an outsider to her society, to many of the people she loves and to the still unemancipated elements in her own personality.
This picture is not as bleak as it appears; indeed, its "bleak ness" would be seen in proper perspective had I described what things were like before. Coming to have a feminist conscious ness is the experience of coming to know the truth about oneself and one's society. This experience, the acquiring of a "raised" consciousness, in spite of its disturbing aspects, is an immeasurable advance over that false consciousness which it replaces. The scales fall from our eyes. We are no longer required to struggle against unreal enemies, to put others' interests ahead of our own or to hate ourselves [437-438]. We begin to understand why it is that our images of ourselves are so depre ciated and why so many of us are lacking any genuine convic tion of personal worth. Understanding, even beginning to understand this, makes it possible to change. Coming to see things differently, we are able to make out positive possibilities, possibilities for liberating collective action as well as unprece dented personal growth, which a deceptive sexist social reality had heretofore concealed. No longer do we have to practice upon ourselves that mutilation of intellect and personality required of individuals who, caught up in an irrational and destructive system, are nevertheless not allowed to regard it as anything but sane, progressive and normal. Moreover, that feeling of alienation from established society which is so prom inent a feature of feminist experience is counterbalanced by a new identification with women of all conditions and a growing sense of solidarity with other feminists. It is a fitting commen tary on our society that the growth of feminist consciousness, in spite of its ambiguities, confusion and trials, is apprehended by those in whom it develops as an experience of liberation.