The Many Faces of Feminism Introduction: Who's a Fan of Virginia Woolf?

Timothy J. Madigan

Women have as yet made little contribu-tions to philosophy. But when women who are not mere students of other persons' philosophy set out to write it, we cannot conceive that it will be the same in view-point or tenor as that composed from the standpoint of the different masculine experience of things.

—John Dewey, "Philosophy and Democracy," 1919

Dewey's prescient words (given one year before women received the right

to vote in the United States) are a fitting beginning to the feature of this issue—"The Many Faces of Feminism." What is the current situation regarding the femi-nism movement?

One of the questions I raise when teaching Introduction to Philosophy courses is why there have been so few female philosophers until recent times. I have my students read selections from Plato's Republic, where it is argued that there cannot be a truly just society until all citizens, male and female, are given equal opportunities to excel. We then study Aristotle's rejoinder that such a policy would be perverse, since women are by nature inferior to men, intellectually, emotionally, and physically. This point is later reiterated by selections from the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, a vocif-erous misogynist, who argued that women were really just big children, unable to understand abstract thought. (Ironically, his mother was one of the first female novelists to publish in her own name—she understandably did not get along very well with her son.)

Timothy J. Madigan is executive editor of FREE INQUIRY.

To balance these natural law arguments for women's inherent inferiority, I then have the class read several poems by one of my favorite authors, Emily Brontë. The child of an obscure cleric, living in isola-tion in the moors of Yorkshire, England, Emily—along with her sisters Charlotte and Anne—created a body of work rich in observations. She was a rebel against con-ventionality, as is witnessed in her poem "The Old Stoic":

Riches I hold in light esteem; And Love I laugh to scorn, And lust of fame was but a dream That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!"

Yes, as my swift days near their goal, `Tis all that I implore; In life and death, a chainless soul, With courage to endure.

Yet the Brontë sisters initially pub-lished their works under male pseudo-nyms, for they realized that otherwise no attention would be paid to them.

Next, I have my students read a selec-tion from Virginia Woolf's seminal essay, "A Room of One's Own," in which she argues that women have been systemati-cally banned from all academic fields and denied proper educations. Woolf (herself the daughter of a philosopher, the noted agnostic Leslie Stephen) uses the Brontë sisters as a poignant example of naturally talented women whose only options were to become governesses—a particularly horrid task for three women with no fond-ness for children! Consider if Shakespeare had had a sister, Woolf proposes, who possessed the same creative powers as her

brother. What would her lot in life have been, at a time when all actors were male, social mobility for females was strictly limited, and the field of literature was thought to be improper for them? Women, if they are to reach the heights of their capabilities, must have an independent income, the time to reflect, and a space in which to do their work—conditions that until quite recently were generally denied to female members of society.

The articles published below offer a kaleidoscopic look at the varieties of

feminist thought available today—a wide range of opinion, from the individualistic approach of Camille Paglia to the empha-sis on organization of Eleanor Smeal. Rosi Braidotti's article deserves special mention. A professor of Women's Studies at the University of Utrecht, she recently gave an address to the University of Humanistic Studies entitled "Feminism and Modernity." (See page 23.) It was enthusiastically received by many human-ists present, even though its postmodern slant called into question the rationalistic basis of humanism. In some ways contin-uing Woolf's theme, she argues for a "nomadic" feminism, which she feels is opposed to "the dogmatic self-seriousness of patriarchal thought." However, philoso-phers Barry Smith and Ellen R. Klein, in their responses, object to the corrolation of scientific reasoning with male domina-tion. Is it not scientific reasoning and technological advances that have done more than anything else to liberate women, offering more career opportuni-ties than ever before? Is rationality really gender based?

Not only the profession of philosophy, but all professions are now being changed as more and more women enter the work-

4 FREE INQUIRY

force. Questions both ancient and new are being raised—do women think differently than men? How relevant are biological and social determinants? Is equality among the sexes possible, and, if so, what does this really mean? The following arti-cles detail the current debates being raised about these issues in feminist circles. In addition, they show the important role that

freethought, particularly the criticism of religious dogmas, has played in bringing about increasing equality for women.

As Dewey pointed out, in a paper writ-ten in 1931,

The growing freedom of women can hardly have any other outcome than the production of more realistic and more human morals. It will be marked by a

new freedom, but also by a new severi-ty. For it will be enforced by the realities of associated life as they are disclosed to careful and systematic inquiry, and not by a combination of convention and an exhausted legal system with senti-mentality.

The significance of this new freedom is explored in the following pages. •

FI Interview Camille Paglia on

Freethought, Feminism, and Iconoclasm conducted by Timothy J. Madigan

One does not really interview Camille Paglia—author of the best-selling works Sexual Personae; Sex, Art, and American Culture; and Vamps and Tramps—one gives her a forum to express her free-wheeling opinions in machine-gun delivery style on whatever issues she wants to address. What follows is a prime example of what might be called her "in-your-face feminism."—Ens.

FREE INQUIRY: You're one of the few public intellectuals whose work is

discussed both on college campuses and in working-class bars. Why do you think you've touched such a nerve?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: It's pretty amazing. Don't forget by the time I burst on the scene five years ago, I was in my forties, and I'd gotten absolutely no attention whatsoever. I couldn't get published. Not only was Sexual Personae rejected by seven major publishing houses, but parts of it had been rejected for years by maga-zines.

But by the beginning of the 1990s, the culture seemed to change, and suddenly people were listening to me. There was a big shift. I represent the best of the 1960s, which was all about freethought and free speech. I hate dogma in any form. I hate it in the Roman Catholic church, which is why I left it twenty-five years ago. I hate it in gay activism and feminism now. Dogma has also taken over the humanities departments in elite schools—poststruc-turalism and so forth. I think people are sick of the ideological and clichéd ways in which cultural issues were approached in the 1980s. So I came like a breath of fresh

air. People who are interested in ideas wel-

comed me, and people who cling to a fixed belief system find me threatening. There's nothing more dangerous to a lib-eral democracy than fixed dogma. I don't like coteries. I have struggled to maintain my outside position, which is very rare in

America. FI: In Vamps and Tramps, you state

that "the silencing of authentic debate among feminists helps the rise of the far right."

PAGLIA: That's right, and the fruits of this are now being seen. I've warned about this for years—the suppression of debate by the liberal wing has moved the entire nation to the right. People who were sur-prised by the Republican sweep have sim-ply not been listening to me. It happened not because of any right-wing conspiracy; it happened because of a spiritual vacuum on the left. The left became too removed from the people. Leftism began 150 years ago supposedly to speak for the silent majority, for the people. True sixties radi-calism really was populist. I'm a Clinton supporter and I'll vote for him again (God help me), but he has surrounded himself with these white, upper middle class elite professionals who speak about "the peo-ple" from a very great distance and, in a very paternalistic, condescending way, as "victims." It is insulting—I'm remember-ing my background in an immigrant fam-ily when I say this—they are totally removed from the people they pretend to

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