Thursday, July 28, 2011

Grown-ups and choices

When I last blogged about women and choices, I encouraged women to think about their own biases and to consider other women's situations before judging other women's choices. This may lead some people to the (erroneous) conclusion that I think all women's choices are equally good and empowering. Or that I think that feminists should never criticize other women's choices. (The latter would actually be a logical impossibility because I would be implicitly criticizing women's choices to criticize other women.)

Women make a lot of bad choices. Just like everybody else. Part of being a grown-up is accepting responsibility for your choices. It's accepting that people will criticize your choices. And when people criticize you, you have the choice to ignore them or to decide that they're full of it (just projecting their own issues onto you), or even to take their critique into consideration. Or some combination of the above.

On the other hand, I don't think it's a feminist argument to claim that another woman's (unempowering) choice isn't really a choice, or that she's somehow not responsible for that choice because of the way the patriarchy messed her up in the head. I think that if an adult woman is of sound mind and body, then she should be assumed to be competent to make her own life choices and she should be held responsible for her choices. Like a grown-up. Even if some women's ideas are negatively influenced by the patriarchy (or by something else), feminists should not argue that women need to be protected from their own choices.

Keep in mind is that being totally self-actualized and well-adjusted isn't the norm. It's not that women are messed-up by the patriarchy unlike ordinary people who aren't messed-up. Pretty much everybody has some kind of baggage. So when you see bad behavior, criticize away, and criticize with an underlying assumption that a grown-up woman can hear and learn from criticism -- she isn't just a puppet with a patriarchy hand pulling the strings.

Now, some of you probably thinking "Chanson, you're arguing with a straw-man! No feminist argues that the patriarchy renders women incompetent to make adult choices!" Not so. I've had this argument with fellow feminists more than once (though, fortunately, pretty rarely). And I was reminded of it just recently because of a discussion on MSP. On that thread -- in an interesting twist -- a gay man was passionately arguing that the hetero-patriarchy renders gay men unable to be held accountable for their own choices and behavior. If he (or someone else) had been arguing the same thing about women, I would have put up more of a fight.

That said, please note that often women's choices really are limited by ignorance, economics, and coercion. So when I talk about choices here, I mean choices among the range of real options and opportunities the woman has to choose from. Increasing women's educational and economic opportunities is the best strategy for encouraging women to make empowering choices on their own.

7 comments:

Holly said...

Even if some women's ideas are negatively influenced by the patriarchy (or by something else), feminists should not argue that women need to be protected from their own choices.

I agree.

I knew as soon as I saw the title where you would go with this, even though I had not quite thought to make the comparison you did. Instead, I kept thinking about how if we took A's argument and applied it to politics, you could have someone argue that because the terrible lie of anti-semitism had been and continues to told to and about Jews, you couldn't hold the state of Israel accountable for many of its actions.

On top of which A kept arguing that to hold gay men (Israel) accountable for their (its) actions' harm to women (Palestine) was divisive and pitted the parties' interest against each other. Whereas his approach of absolving gay men (Israel) entirely from blame was in the best interest of both gay men (Israel) and straight women (Palestine), and anyone who said different just wasn't as intellectually or morally evolved as he.

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Holly!!!

That's another excellent example. It just goes to show how general this principle is.

The first parallel situation that came to my mind (for victims with downstream victims) was Julie Beck's talk Children — not possessions, not position, not prestige — are our greatest status symbols.

I'm just so disgusted with the argument that gay men can't help but hurt women since it's the only way they can get exaltation on equal terms with a straight guy. Guess what? LDS women don't get an opportunity for that level of exaltation at all. Not even if they're willing to use another person to get there.

But that doesn't mean that LDS women can't create downstream victims. LDS women are explicitly offered inferior status and power to men, but they can improve their status (w.r.t. other LDS women) by having lots of kids who have a lot of impressive accomplishments. As I noted in the above link, Pres. Beck explicitly encouraged women to view their children that way. And it makes me angry, as you can see from the above link.

I've seen first-hand the effects of the attitude that you should view children's outward accomplishments as signs of their mother's worth. Naturally, I feel sympathy for the mothers (who are, themselves, victims in this game). It explains the problem, but it doesn't solve it (or absolve it).

C. L. Hanson said...

The other point that jumped out at me about that whole crazy exchange at MSP is the following:

Alan has repeatedly argued that it's insulting to gay people to say that sexual orientation has a biological basis. He finds it more "spiritually fulfilling" to believe that gay people use their free will to choose to be gay -- and can use it to choose not to be gay. (reality be damned.) Yet, it's somehow not insulting for him to claim that gay men can't help but lie to straight women. According to him -- when it comes to the enticing carrot of exaltation -- gay men's "free will" flies right out the window.

Holly said...

Hi CL--

I missed the whole Beck thing from 2007, but it's horrifying. I think Ms. Beck has a lot to answer for.

Alan has repeatedly argued that it's insulting to gay people to say that sexual orientation has a biological basis. He finds it more "spiritually fulfilling" to believe that gay people use their free will to choose to be gay -- and can use it to choose not to be gay. (reality be damned.) Yet, it's somehow not insulting for him to claim that gay men can't help but lie to straight women. According to him -- when it comes to the enticing carrot of exaltation -- gay men's "free will" flies right out the window.

Excellent point!

I rather hope he never brings the matter up again at MSP--and really can't imagine what he hoped to accomplish by bringing it up this time--but if he does write something else about it, I hope you'll make this point.

C. L. Hanson said...

Oh, I will. I'd bring it up this time if it weren't for the fact that I'm not interested in opening that debate back up again now that it's died down.

Black said...

I so totally agree. I had gotten into an argument with a militant, second wave feminist. I was saying that a woman should be allowed and respected for a choice to stay home and raise kids if that was her real desire. Her response was that the patriarchy had brainwashed her to believe this. For her, women should be out working to prove they're making their own decisions.

I thought feminism was about empowering women to make whatever choices they felt were right for them, even if they chose traditional roles. So often women are their on worst enemies...if it's not men putting women in a certain box, then the women jump in and create another box for their fellow women.

I went to a women's leadership conference, and they were talking about the politics of housework for goodness sake! Come on people, would men be talking about who cleans the dishes at a leadership conference? Perhaps women should be learning a) how to identify what are their most basic needs, wants and desires and b) how to assertively get those needs met.

Yes, there are some huge complexities and subtleties that come with women trying to re-define their role in society on their own terms after thousands of years of being lesser than men. I agree with you about education. But it is not US (women) vs. THEM (men) in reality most of the time. It is a constant process of identifying injustice and working together to right those wrongs. Change happens very, very slowly, which is painful.

C. L. Hanson said...

Hey Black!!!

Exactly! We all benefit by increasing women's range of choices, not decreasing it. I agree that women should respect other women's ability to make their own life decisions.