Feminist Ethics Midterm Practice (2)

2024-2 Feminist Ethics

 

Segment 2

 

6. Double ontological shock 

Many people know that things are not what they seem to be. The feminist knows that the thing revealed in its truth often turns out to be a thing which threatens. Feminist consciousness is often confused by category confusion, an inability to know how to classify things. For instance, one might ask whether her behavior is derived from her unique personality, or a typically female trait, a shared inability to display aggression. 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.

 

7. The basement metaphor

The dominant antidiscrimination law appeals to the top-down strategy of using a singular "but for" analysis. Because the scope of antidiscrimination law is so limited, sex and race discrimination have come to be defined in terms of the experiences of those who are privileged but for their racial or sexual characteristics.

Now, imagine a basement which contains all people who are disadvantaged on the basis of race, sex, class, sexual preference, etc. In efforts to correct some aspects of domination, those above the ceiling admit from the basement only those who can say that "but for" the ceiling, they too would be in the upper room. On the contrary, those who are multiply-burdened are generally left below.

If Black women cannot conclusively say that "but for" their race or "but for" their gender they would be treated differently, they are not invited to climb through the hatch but told to wait in the unprotected margin until they can be absorbed into the broader, protected categories of race and sex.

As a result, both feminist theory and antiracist politics have been organized, in part, around the equation of racism with what happens to the Black middle-class or to Black men, and the equation of sexism with what happens to white women.

 

8. Four varieties of discrimination experienced by Black women

(1) Similar to that experienced by white women

(2) Similar to that experienced by Black men

(3) Double Discrimination - that combined effects of 1 and 2

(4) Discrimination as black women

Black women sometimes experience discrimination in ways similar to white women's experiences; sometimes they share very similar experiences with Black men. Yet often they experience double-discrimination-the combined effects of practices which discriminate on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex. And sometimes, they experience discrimination as Black women-not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women.

Black women can experience discrimination in any number of ways and that the contradiction arises from our assumptions that their claims of exclusion must be unidirectional. Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination.

 

9. What is the function of public gender presentation, according to Bettcher?

In cases when public gender presentation and private genitalia are construed as mismatched, this yields the reality enforcement—the basic type of transphobia grounding the deceiver representation. Reality enforcement might seem to affect only trans people who have not had genital reconstruction surgery, it can also affect those who have as well. This is because the common-sense folk view about sex is moral in nature. Genitalia are viewed as legitimate possessions, making it possible to speak of absent genitalia to which one is entitled. For example, a man who loses his genitals in an accident may speak of the penis that he was meant to have. Similarly, the surgically constructed genitalia of trans people can be transphobically viewed as at odds with the genitalia that nature intended. In this regard, public gender presentation euphemistically communicates moral genitalia. Typically, moral genitalia are actual genitalia, but they can also be the absent genitalia that nature intended. In this way, genitally postoperative trans people can also be subject to reality enforcement.

The function of public gender presentation in communicating private genitalia is part of a larger system of nonverbal, nonconsensual communication that facilitates (hetero)sexual manipulation. Female gender behavior presentation sometimes has the function of communicating sexual interest. This can yield a multiple-bind scenario for trans women: On the one hand, opting for invisibility and passing as non-trans may require that an MTF take up gender presentation that is generally ‘yes’-encoded with respect to day-to-day negotiations of heterosexual sexuality. Failing to do so may leave MTFs open to ‘exposure as a deceiver’ and transphobic violence. Yet successfully taking up this presentation may also increase the possibility of actual sexual interaction and therefore once again open MTFs to ‘exposure as a deceiver’” In such a scenario, a trans woman will experience both standard sexual manipulation and the potential for transphobia.

 

10. Explain Bettcher’s “reality enforcement”, and the role it plays in the lives of trans women.

In cases when public gender presentation and private genitalia are construed as mismatched, this yields the reality enforcement—the basic type of transphobia grounding the deceiver representation. While there are many features associated with reality enforcement, it has four essential ones: (1) identity invalidation, (2) the appearance-reality contrast, (3) the deceiver-pretender double bind, and (4) genital verification.

(1)    Identity invalidation is the denial of a trans person’s gender identity through an opposing categorization (e.g., a trans person sees herself as a woman, but she is categorized as a man).

(2)    This invalidation is framed in terms of the appearance-reality contrast (e.g., a trans woman may be represented as “really a man disguised as a woman”).

(3)    And this contrast is manifested in one of two ways that constitute a double-bind for trans people—namely, passing as nontrans (and hence running the risk of exposure as a deceiver) or else being openly trans (and consequently being relegated to a mere pretender).

(4)    Genital verification is a condition of identity invalidation in the notion of genitalia as a kind of concealed reality.

 

11. How does bell hooks define feminism? Consider also Bartky’s discussion of a feminist consciousness.

According to bell hooks, feminism is not simply a struggle to end male-oriented patriarchy or a movement to ensure that women will have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels-sex, race, and class and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism. In this regard, hooks echoes the claim of Aristotle and Mill.

Bartky, on the other hands, characterizes feminist consciousness as consciousness of victimization. According to her, 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. The consciousness of victimization allows us to discover what social reality really is. The awareness I have of myself as victim engenders the awareness that I am also and at the same time privileged, for instance, white-skin privilege and the privileges of comparative wealth. From such a phenomenon of “guilty victim,” Bartky articulates two thesis as follows: 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.

 

Reading Lists

Bartky, Sandra Lee (1975). Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness. Social Theory and Practice 3 (4):425-439.

Bettcher, T. M. (2014). Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance. Signs, 39(2), 383–406.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. The University of Chicago Legal Forum 140:139-167.