Within contemporary feminist theory, five main approaches exist in ending sex oppression: sameness, difference, dominance, postmodernism, and politics of identity. In this essay, I seek to define these approaches, provide variations within them, and the strengths and weakness present. To conclude, I will provide my own insight to what I consider the most compelling approach.
Sameness
A sameness feminist argument can be distilled to a formula where X and Y are two groups that are the same in all relevant ways in that they share the same characteristic C. Y gets some treatment T in virtue of C; therefore, X should get T, too (Hackett). Within this approach, feminists utilize different shared characteristics and/or different, but equal, treatments in virtue of C.
For example, Sojourner Truth utilizes a sameness argument where men are X and women are Y. She claims their shared characteristic, C, is that men and women are equal in strength since she is as “strong as any man” (113). Men, in virtue of C, are able to vote. Truth argues, as a result, that since men and women are equally strong, women should be able to vote as men are. On the other hand, Susan Schechter uses a sameness argument based on the shared characteristic, C, being victims of violence. X, in this case, is victims of domestic violence and Y is victims of other crimes. Y’s perpetrators receive punishment while X’s do not. Schechter utilizes this argument to promote equal punishment for perpetrators of domestic violence against women. Additionally, Kimberlé Crenshaw uses a sameness argument where X is white women who are victims of violence and Y is women of color who are victims of domestic violence. As both are victims of violence, Crenshaw argues that victims of color should also receive access to resources, including multiple language options and shelters near them, that help them just as white victims. However, Crenshaw differs from previous utilizations of sameness as she advocates that the treatment victims of color receive should not be identical to the treatment white victims receive. She argues that the treatment they receive should be specific to their needs as people of color, just as the treatment white victims receive is specific to their needs.
While sameness arguments fit into a formula, the shared characteristic C can be anything as long as one group is receiving treatment T because of that characteristic and the other group is not; Truth uses strength as the shared characteristic, while Crenshaw uses being victims of crime. Furthermore, sameness arguments do not always argue for identical treatment such as Schecter does, but can advocate for different but equal treatment that is attentive to specific needs of a community as presented by Crenshaw. This acknowledges the need for equal treatment of groups X and Y, yet it also acknowledges that equal treatment for X and Y may be administered differently to address the different social locations of those groups. A strength of this approach is it both addresses individuals and systems in that groups, and X and Y can be two people or dominant and subordinate groups. However, a weakness lies in valuing the dominant group’s associated qualities, such as women being measured according to their “correspondence with man” and their “equality judged by our (women’s) proximity to his measure” (Mackinnon qtd. in Hackett, 245).
Difference
Feminist difference arguments address valuing women’s proximity to men, and argue that the “solution to ending sex oppression is to revalue the feminine” (Hackett, 95). Difference feminists believe that sex oppression is a result of society failing to value femininity (Hackett, 95). Within this approach, authors such as Vandana Shiva utilize a difference argument. Shiva stresses that women are different from men as women are conservationists of biodiversity. Men, on the other hand, promote “monocultures, uniformity and homogeneity” through capitalism. Since women’s work typically falls “invisible” in a world defined by men’s ideas of production and consumption, Shiva revalues how women’s work is centralized in the completion of multiple tasks, their contributions to conserving biodiversity, and subsequently, “balance and harmony” (238). Despite this difference between men and women’s views of agriculture, Shiva clarifies that this difference is not due to sex. Shiva steers away from essentialism, or the assignment of a trait to one’s sex for the sole fact that one is that sex. She acknowledges that this difference is a result of how “labour and expertise has been defined in nature” despite this difference being grounded in influences of “culture and scientific practises” (240).
However, other types of different arguments equate difference not to social construction but essentialism. This gynocentric argument “argues for the superiority of the values embodied in traditionally female experience and rejects the values it finds in traditionally male dominated institutions” (Young qtd. in Hackett 174). Chittister presents this kind of difference argument in “Calling the Power of Women.” In light of the war in Iraq, Chittister argues that women are invisible victims of war where they must take their place at the negotiating table and assume roles that allow them to forge peace due to their inherent spiritual responsibilities of life-giving (36-37, 75). She makes this claim based on the belief that womanhood inherently entails having a connection to faith which allows women to best promote and maintaining peace (37). As a result, she is revaluing peace and its connection to divinity for women, which is associated as lesser than, to be a source of power for women in anti-war activism.
These types of arguments tend to promote collectivity and pride, but when people expect a sameness argument, people can be put off when they expect an argument based on a shared quality as opposed to acknowledging differences. Additionally, difference arguments such as Shiva’s are critiqued for accepting differences constructed by patriarchy to be revalued which do not address the subordination of women. The argument simply values what “women are or have been allowed to become” (MacKinnon qtd. in Hackett 245).
Dominance
In response to sameness and difference arguments, dominance feminist arguments believe that how men and women are the same or different is irrelevant (Hackett, 96). Rather, they diagnose and critique the systemic relations of dominance and subordination. It does not ask how differences arise, but identifies the solution to sex oppression as the eradication of subordination. Dominance arguments address the root of the issue and what is enabling and upholding subordination. Sandra Lee Bartkey diagnoses the root of sex oppression residing within the construction of femininity. For Bartkey, disciplinary practices, or the ways we police ourselves and others to conform to certain practices, through which the “feminine body-subject” is constructed are a result of femininity (Bartky qtd. in Hackett 283). Due to femininity, women’s physical bodies are shaped by ideas of size, posture, movement, and gestures which labels them as women and therefore subordinate. bell hooks, on the other hand, sees sexuality as the root of sex oppression. Since heterosexual women have not unlearned the eroticism “that constructs desire in such a way that many of us can only respond erotically to male behavior that has already been coded as masculine within the sexist framework” they are upholding sexism (hooks qtd. in Hackett 335). hooks sees sexuality and desire as a key component to upholding sex oppression.
These two authors demonstrate a key variation in a dominance approach, what is viewed as the key component to sex oppression that needs to end. A strength in this approach is that it focuses on the material impacts on people’s lives as it seeks to diagnose the very root of an issue. However, in comparison to sameness, which offers a very specific solution of changing language or equal rights, dominance does not tend to offer a solution. It simply states to stop doing the very thing that is upholding sex oppression.
Postmodernism
Contrary to the previous argumentative styles, postmodernists do not believe there is a “single, universal analysis of what sex oppression consists of” and that sex oppression must be examined in context historically, socially, and culturally (Hackett 338). In practice, this means that “unitary notions of woman” are replaced with “plural and complexly constructed conceptions of social identity ” (Fraser qtd. in Hackett 351). To do this, postmodernists analyze discourse, or the “ideas, images and practices” that are associated with a “particular topic, social activity, or institutional site in society,” to discern how “power operates through ideas and representations” (Stuart Hall qtd. in Hesse-Biber 265).
This deconstruction of language complicates the notion of woman and its usefulness while acknowledging how power resides within that category. Judith Butler applies postmodernism to sex/gender in her essay “Gender Trouble.” Butler begins with exploring the category “women” as the subject of feminism, questioning “what it is that constitutes, or ought to constitute, the category of women” (353). The categorization of “women,” for Butler, raises political concerns of who is included in the category if the goal is liberatory. This seems contradictory to Butler, as inclusion and exclusion are imperialist and anti-liberatory practices. Consequently, this argument centers discourse as it explores the link between language and power.
Other authors see postmodernism beyond a philosophical standpoint and view it as a way to engage in political change. Stuart Hall uses parody to exaggerate racist stereotypes to note how these stereotypes are made up. This can be tricky, however, if people fail to understand the satire because it can end up reinforcing the stereotypes. Sharon Marcus, on the other hand, uses postmodernism to intervene in the language of rape. She analyzes the discourse of rape laws to point out the language used itself frames women as inherently rapable (Marcus qtd. in Hackett 371). She seeks to flip the script of rape by rewriting rape through “displacing the emphasis on what the script promotes-male violence against women- and putting into place what the rape script stultifies and excludes-women’s will, agency, and capacity for violence” (Marcus qtd. in Hackett 375). Here, Marcus provides a way to deconstruct language that oppresses women.
Overall, a strength of postmodernism is the goal of their movement. They seek to shift their “foundations from identity to one of functions of oppression” that allows coalitions to form and dissolve around issues. This allows identity to be a result of “contesting those oppressions, rather than a precondition for involvement”. In other words, identity becomes an effect of political activism instead of a cause that is “fluid, rather than fixed” able to change with time (Wilchens 86).
As a result, postmodernists are critical of gatekeeping, or defining who is part of an identity group and who is not, which has undermined activism in the past. However, postmodernism is critiqued by politics of identity for undermining feminist goals as it tends to remove a sense of community within feminism because it deconstructs identity groups (Frost qtd. in Hesse-Biber 51). Without a sense of what is a collective experience, feminists struggle to grasp how to move toward collective social and cultural change. Women of color are especially critical of this as it is easy to reject identity when one has always had one (Shantelle Donelly). bell hooks explores this in “Postmodern Blackness” where she states that “any critic exploring the radical potential of postmodernism as it relates to racial difference and racial domination would need to consider the implications of a critique of identity for oppressed groups” (365). Yet, hooks sees a powerful connection between others and Black folk who would now share “a sense of deep alienation, despair, uncertainty, loss of a sense of grounding even if it is not informed by shared circumstance” where they is space for “new and varied forms of bonding” (368).
Politics of Identity
Another approach skeptical of a universal understanding of sex oppression is politics of identity. Rooted in activism, politics of identity feminists generate their arguments from shared social identities opposed to shared values or party affiliations. They argue that “members of subordinated groups have a distinctive experience of injustice that is a valuable resource for challenging their marginalization and for establishing greater self-determination” (Hackett, 339). The Combahee River Collective sees identity politics as a site of “potentially the most radical politics” formed from “a healthy love” for themselves. This is a direct result of the collective seeing politics formed from one’s own identity opposed to “working to end somebody else’s oppression” as the best approach to tackling specific issues of their community as no other movement has considered their “specific oppression as a priority” (Combahee River Collective Hackett 414). Additionally, Chandra Mohanty can be read as defending identity politics for claiming that the most “disenfranchised communities of women” are more likely to envision justice as they have the “most inclusive viewing of systemic power” (Mohanty 232). It is in this identity that Mohanty sees a potential in “demystifying capitalism and for envisioning transborder” justice (Mohanty 250).
Mohanty’s understanding of identity politics is similar to the Combahee River Collective’s as both see value in the perspective that results from a particular social location. While Mohanty describes this as the standpoint of “poor indigenous and Third World/South women,” the Collective sees this position as Black, lesbian women (Mohanty 232, Combahee 414). Mohanty argues the epistemic privilege of Third World women serves as a framework for coalitional work that reads “up the ladder of privilege,” while the Collective argues that if Black women were free then everyone would be free (Mohanty 231, Combahee 415). In other words, the Collective believes that not everyone should utilize identity politics whereas Mohanty believes that thinking from the space of marginalized groups provides us with an understanding of how to advocate for a more just and fair world (Mohanty 231).
A strength in this approach is the solidarity that can emerge from identity politics of shared experiences, but when identity politics are implemented, the boundaries of the identity being mobilized are inevitably policed. Postmodernists push back on the gatekeeping that occurs in politics of identity. Furthermore, who is allowed to be a part of an identity can be limiting such as who is “Black enough”, or “woman enough”, or “lesbian enough” to join the Combahee River Collective.
Moving Forward: The Most Compelling Approach
In looking at all five of these approaches, to pick one as the best approach would fail to capture the potential of the rest of the approaches for being the most compelling in a particular social, cultural, and historical context. To analyze how these arguments hold potential in different contexts, I will examine two examples where they could be implemented.
First, in the case of a woman being fired for taking too much time off work after the birth of her child and suing her company, the most compelling argumentative approach would be sameness and difference. In a court of law, equality is a “matter of treating likes alike and unlikes unlike” (MacKinnon qtd. in Hackett 244). Thus, a sameness approach is needed to gain legal protection. In this case, X are men and Y are women, where they share the same characteristic of humanity, C. Men in virtue of C get subtreament, T, of being able to take off work when a medical procedure or event occurs and women do not. Since women and men both share humanity, women should be able to take off work for a medical procedure or event, in this case birthing a child. However, sameness, in this case, is not enough. A difference argument could provide a revaluing of women’s reproductive capability, which has been considered subordinate, to promote pride in motherhood and a culture that allows women to take off work for delivery. The other approaches, in this case, are not as compelling. Dominance, in this case, does not help this woman in a legal context as she is not trying to end sex oppression overall. A postmodern approach would not be as compelling because she is not seeking to change the script around pregnancy or the stereotypes. Finally, politics of identity is not particularly compelling because she is seeking individual repercussions; however, if this was a class action lawsuit mobilizing from motherhood would be a strong approach.
For my next example of when Donald Trump banned the word “transgender” from CDC’s communications, a postmodernist and dominance approach would prove most compelling. In this case, instead of trying to be successfully persuasive in an argument, an analysis of the discourse would be most useful. Analyzing the images, ideas, and practices around trans people in the specific institution of the CDC is a particularly postmodern task where rewriting how we discuss trans patients is crucial in providing adequate and quality care. This approach would lend itself well with a dominance approach as well as it looks at how power operates through the representations of trans people. Diagnosing transphobia in the federal government would serve as a foundation for future activism work in mobilizing trans rights and justice. The other approaches, in this case, are not as compelling due to the context of this issue. Sameness would prove useful in a court case or legal argument if one was trying to show the shared humanity of trans folk with cisgender folk. A difference approach would be useful in trying to curate pride of trans folk who had been psychologically disenfranchised by the Trump administration’s decision. Finally, an identity politics approach could be implemented if trans folk wanted to act collectively in response, but they would have to define if this included not only trans men and women but also non-binary, gender non-conforming, agender, and genderqueer folk. This could become troublesome as trans folk would have to define who is “trans enough.”
In conclusion, the approaches taken need be attentive to their audience if they are trying to have a convincing argument or analysis. The audience will shape the method of approach alongside the end goal. Advocacy work entails different goals than analysis. Providing support for victims of trauma and uplifting them would not be achieved by analyzing the language in legislation. In all, every approach proves compelling depending on the historical, social, and cultural context.
Works Cited
Hackett, Elizabeth, and Sally Haslanger. Theorizing Feminisms. Oxford University Press, 2006.
(May 2018)
