The article, accessed through Magportal is entitled “A feminist defense of men’s rights”, author Wendy McElroy. The author stresses the negative tendencies radical feminism has recently bred, including the discrimination of males, overlook of men suffering from domestic violence and enduring separation from their children as a result of divorce.
The author sees the recent violation of men’s rights in the excessive spread of gender feminism, which appeared in the 1960s and touched primarily the family aspects of woman’s life, in particular, the right to terminate pregnancy, to leave kitchen and begin higher education, to place the part of domestic and parental responsibilities upon a man. Its foundation consisted in a radical antagonism approach, which stated that men and women have been struggling between themselves for the corresponding distribution of rights and duties since the prehistoric times, so the only modus operandi of achieving the recognition of women’s rights is confronting men.
The perspective generally views sexes as classes and focuses on their divergences and disagreements, which the author opposes, offering individualist feminist framework, which proposes that both rights and responsibilities be divided symmetrically or proportionally, i.e. a male and female should establish a dialogue and have a right to express their attitudes towards domestic work, employment, divorce and childcare, as beyond the gender feminist rhetoric, individuals of opposite genders are able to negotiate.
The article has been literally a revelation, given that it structured my own thoughts, critiques and attitudes towards various sociopolitical movements. In fact, I tended to criticize the Marxist-oriented gender perspective on feminism, given that the approach was initially designed for political economy, so its applicability in gender issues and rights seems questionable. Although social classes are really separated from one another and seem to function as autonomous and self-regulating social groups, males and females, given their social roles, need each other much more and appear dependent from one another in certain microsocial aspects.
In the present paper the author perfectly elucidates the connections between the antagonism perspective on gender and the existing problems males are facing when they, for instance, smile to a beautiful woman on the street, compete with females in employment or seek to see their children after splitting up with the spouse.
I always believed there exists certain interrelation between the foundation and the negative outcomes of its implementation, but never considered it carefully. In addition, the article reveals that one of the main factors contributing to the spread of the gender feminism is paternalistic state, and in the context of the article, this relationship has become clear to me without any additional explanations, as I realized that overprotective social policy model makes people increasingly more passive and conservative in their positions.
Finally, I learned more about the construction of a male image in gender feminist consciousness and realized how influential this image is in the formation of generally feminist attitude towards the second half of humanity: “But the anger against men was usually focused on specific issues, like rape, and on specific men, like rapists. The Second Wave was liberal feminism and it wasn’t anti-male — tho’, certainly, those voices were there as well” (McElroy, 2007, par. 26).
Thus, I comprehended the following cause—and-effect chain: gender feminism was to great extent rooted in the police’s cynical manner of investigating intimate abuses, so its representatives basically acted against rapists and domestic tyrants, but given there was a number of women, who once faced such abuse, the sexual abuse suspicion was gradually placed on all males.
However, there are several fallacies in the argument, so I would like to express my disagreement with some assumptions. For instance, in the following statement it seems to me that the author wrongly interprets the biological construction of gender: “gender feminism doesn’t say that men and women share a common humanity and, so, have common political interests, like respect for private property. It says men and women do not share the same basic human needs — politically speaking. This is like a doctor saying the two sexes do not have the same fundamental needs in nutrition and so on” (McElroy, 2007, par. 36).
However, the historical social construction of gender was greatly based upon the biological determinants, and the differing physical needs were also he subject of capitalization (Ashe, 2004, p.176; Kamarck, 1998, p.26). For instance, the special needs and the dependence upon a breadwinner that arise in women’s life after birth of a child were manipulated in order to subjugate women; further, given the earlier extended family patterns with many children, women factually remained dependent and submissive throughout the whole life (Ashe, 2004, p. 178). For a comprehensive discussion, this point should also have been included, as biosocial aspects and needs in of proliferation had remained powerful tools of oppression.
Furthermore, I can not agree with the following statement: “[…] the sexual harassment industry doesn’t solve social problems…it creates them” (McElroy, 2007, par. 54). I deem, the legal prohibition of sexual harassment is an important step which allows females to feel more freely at the workplace and except no brutal jokes or indecent hints.
However, the abovementioned paternalistic government adopted excessively generalized legislation, which fails to clearly distinguish between explicit and implicit harassment and remove all sanctions against the latter (Kamarck, 1998, p.22). In fact, individuals often harass one another indirectly and often involuntarily, this behavior is unrelated to any kind of discrimination, so such cases should be resolved by the parties involved, on their own. Therefore, the effort against harassment is itself positive, yet the underlying legal acts need to be revised, from the individualist feminist perspective.
The article generally successfully elucidates and addresses all main points, but given my own sociological interests, I would like to see a clearer and theorized distinction between gender and individualist feminism. Given that the article employs several sociological frameworks, it would be also useful to compare them as well as the evidence they generated after turning into civil rights movements. In particular, I am interested in learning more about gender hierarchies, interrelations between social class and gender, masculinity and femininity patterns these two perspectives imply.
Furthermore, the author fails to address one important reason why females prefer to not notice the discrimination of men. In fact, the former required several thousand years for reaching equality with men, so it is possible to say the current state-of-art is long-waited, especially when comparing it to the position of woman in traditionalist societies. Therefore, a number of women are unwilling to negotiate and compromise the conditions of their “victory”. Finally, the article uses a limited scope of evidence and includes little aspects of family and social life, which have been the feminists’ claims and points of cross-gender debate. This evidence would allow finding new dimensions in which gender feminism can be criticized and juxtaposed to the individualist direction.
Works cited
McElroy, W. “A feminist defense of men’s rights”. Web.
Kamarck, M. “Review: ‘Feminist Attacks on Feminisms: Patriarchy’s Prodigal Daughters’ “. Feminist Studies 24 (1998): 20- 28.
Ashe, F. The New Politics of Masculinity. London: Routledge, 2004.