intersectionality & respect for cultures

1. intersectionality & respect for cultures Feminism, Lecture 9, 14/3/14

2. introduction • What does Feminism say about women facing severe disadvantages in other cultures due to their cultures? • Arguments against speaking up or doing anything about such disadvantages/Better ways of speaking up • Intersectional Feminism • Practical and Theoretical Implications • Must all feminism be intersectional?

3. feminism and respect for cultures

4. the problem • The practices of many non-traditionally Western cultures seriously harm women • For any such practice we can • Speak out and try to end this practice (DO SOMETHING) • Withhold judgment, not speak out, not act (DO NOTHING)

5. arguments for doing nothing • Cultural Relativism is true and cultural relativism entails that we should do nothing • The problems with doing something are so serious that we should do nothing

6. cultural relativism • Cultural Relativism: The wrongness of an action or practice is determined by (is relative to) the standards of the culture in which it is a practice or is performed. • Problem: if this is the case, then it is not wrong for us to impose the ideas that our culture says that it is not wrong to live up to • Response: Liberal cultures tolerate other cultures

7. problems for cultural relativism • Internal Diversity • Change Over Time • So it does not make sense to hold that a particular policy is the one that respect for a culture calls for • But: The policy that there is most support for within a culture and/or has been prevalent • Response: This would entail that we should support the death penalty and letting many rapists go free in our culture

8. problems for cultural relativism • An individual speaker- or judger-relative relativism is implausible & has implausible (& anti-feminist) conclusions. • The most plausible form of cultural relativism doesn’t tell us to do nothing • Response: Eradicating inegalitarian treatment of women will eradicate cultures Intuitive Arguments Against Relativism • Hunger Games culture

9. problems with doing something • Errors in analysis of customs

10. mistaken understandings of practices: the veil

11. problems with doing something • Errors in analysis of customs • History of Imperialism and Colonialism • Negative Effects of Western judgments • Made women’s treatment seen to be emblematic of the colonized cultures, for those of the colonized cultures • Some seeking independence and respect from the West made sudden changes to the lives of women

12. problems with doing something • We ought to only criticize the practices of another culture if we are either (a) to be similarly critical of our own culture or (b) have already eliminated similar evils from our own culture • But feminists do (a) and (b) is false (Genocide, apartheid)

13. problems with doing nothing • Impossible: Cultures within one country/our country • Impossible: We have relationships with other countries • Intuitively implausible

14. better ways of doing something

15. better ways of doing something • Recognise the distinctions, diversity, and changing nature of cultures • This means not speaking out against things that don’t need to be spoken out against • Recognise that speaking out & intervening can be counter-productive • Listen!

16. dialogue as a solution • One member of a country does not adequately represent that country - due to the cultural complexity of a country • Amplification not representation. • Dialogue should be a two-way somewhat reciprocal process • We should not be non-critical of non-westerners • Caution and Humility

17. what should we speak out against? • Cultures that don’t give women a choice vs those that do give women choices? • But even where there is choice there are norms and biases and effects on the basis of these norms and biases • Only practices that women in that culture speak out against • But Adaptive Preferences: preferences that people have because of their dire circumstances • Nussbaum: women must have a set of basic capabilities to function

18. fgm • Objections to Feminist opposition to FGM: • FGM is on a par with practices of dieting and body shaping in Western culture • FGM involves the loss of a capacity that may not be especially central to the lives in question and to which Westerners give disproproportionate significance

19. intersectional feminism

20. intersectional feminism • What is Intersectional Feminism? • Different experiences at different intersections • These different experiences are not just the combination of these experiences • Feminism involves responding to the concerns of all women and fighting for the needs of all women • Implications • Practical • Theoretical • Gender • Race • Class • Disability

21. practical intersectional feminism • Acknowledges that Women are not the most or most fundamentally oppressed group • Does not erase or marginalise the voices of oppressed groups of women • Addresses the concerns of all women not just white middle class women • Listening to other cultures

22. practical feminism that is not intersectional • Rape crisis centres and refuges that refuse to work with sex workers and trans women • Banknote Feminism/CEO Feminism/Trickle Down Feminism • Movements and campaigns that do not respond to the pressing needs of women • Movements that do not react attentively to critiques of them by disadvantaged groups

23. arguments against intersectional feminism • Entails that no one should say anything • Response: Just entails that white middle class feminists should take objections from disadvantaged/oppressed groups on board • Better to do something than nothing: non-intersectional feminists still do things that benefit women • Response: Do not benefit women!/Tokenistic/Perpetuate Discrimination • Self-defeating: Don’t intersectional feminists speak on behalf of disadvantaged groups? • Normally no • ‘All feminism must be intersectional or bullshit’ entails that suffragism was bullshit feminism

24. theoretical intersectional feminism • Practical concerns entail that there is a category of being a woman • Not oversimplifying and overgeneralising the phenomena of being a woman based on white able-bodied middle class experience • The category of being a women must apply to all possible and imaginable women • Women must be able to recognise themselves in the analysis of womenness • The analysis of womanness must link to the real world and problems for real women? • Explains why womanness intersects with what it intersects with

25. theoretical implications of intersectionality • Haslanger’s Account: S is a woman iff S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.) and S is “marked” as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction • Race is understood as privelege or disadvantage in virtue of observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of ancestral links to a certain geographical region • Intersectional Advantage: Explains how and why gender and race intersect in the way they do [or does it?] • Intersectional Advantage: Oriented towards practical purposes • Can women recognise themselves in it? • Can it make sense of all intersections? (indigenous Australian male for instance) • Cannot account for all possible and imaginable women

26. theoretical intersectional feminism • Zack’s Account: • Women are people who have a relation to category FMP • FMP (Females, Mothers, Primary sexual choices) is the category of being designated female from birth, biological mothers, or primary sexual choices of heterosexual men • Women are related to FMP either by self-identifying with it or by assignment to it • What is it to be designated female? Is the account unilluminating? • Do trans-women identify as primary sexual choices of heterosexual men? • Does being designated a woman make one more of a woman than those who are not designated a woman? • Does this account illuminate intersectionality? Is this account practically advantageous?

27. summary • Respect for others cultures and intersectionality • We should speak out with disadvantaged women in all places but not impose on them, marginalise them, or erase their voices • Defended the view that we should speak out against awful treatment of women in other cultures - but carefully • Defended the view that feminism should be intersectional