Feminism

March 12, 2009 Feminism
What are some of the things that have been invented by men? We have Democracy, as made famous by Caesar; Fascism, as made famous by Hitler. There is this popular device called the internet; but like global warming and other Al Gore inventions, it’s probably just a passing fad. Don’t forget about the United States of America, calculus, and nuclear power. And we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we forgot about the Sistine Chapel, Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, the pyramids, and Lord of the Rings. When we think of the wonders of this world, how much of that thinking is occupied by putting it in gendered context? We really don’t think of whether a male or female accomplished it. This could mean lots of different things about who we are, but I am thinking of a couple of things in particular: individuals’ experience far outweighs all other factors, or their gender outweighs all other factors.
Of course, what is experience when taken out of its original context? Is it the same experience? And what is context if it excludes some of the factors that constitute it? When studying our world, are we allowed to be choosy about what factors we deem relevant? Was Joseph Smith simply another product of the Great Awakening? Were the Founding Fathers just a group of rich land-owners who didn’t want to pay taxes to a foreign government? Was Dorothy Smith a flower-child who wanted to jump on the coat tails of the hippie sixties?
As I ask myself these questions, I begin to believe that it really doesn’t matter. We can remove Smith from the early nineteenth century just as easily as we can vote George Washington as President today; or (while we’re daydreaming) remove our current government officials. To think differently would be fruitless. Sorry, Rational Choice Theorists. In a descriptive science like sociology, we cannot answer the question of “What if it were different?” It is not different. Deal with it.
Modern sociology was invented by men. This, apparently, is the basis for Smith’s argument in favor of Feminism. Since men invented sociology, it will naturally have a masculine flavor. However, more, hmmm, “dynamic” feminists might use a word more like “taint” or “stench.” So, to rid the discipline of such a bias, we must re-look at it through another’s eyes. We must break it down, start all over again, and build it up again. Only this time, we look at it from the women’s standpoint. How does a woman see the world? How do they act and think? In what ways are they oppressed? If she is arguing that things made by males need restructuring, then we need to basically reinvent the wheel—the wheel here referring to all of man’s inventions. Although I do not know for sure that it was an individual with non-matching chromosome pairs who invented the wheel, the idea is that elements of our lives upon which we rely so heavily and that have served us quite satisfactorily to this point don’t need reinventing.
But has sociology served us as well as the internet? Are the conflicts we face all the time evidence of a broken sociology? one that needs reinventing, fresh from a masculine standpoint? To Smith: Yes. Smith presents a foundational sociology with elements of the subject, not the object. “We don’t need Sociology,” Smith seems to say. “Sociology needs us!” Sociology doesn’t teach us anything. Sociology doesn’t even have a law upon which to rest its assumptions, like Economics and Physics do. Theory doesn’t teach us anything. Human experience teaches us. And since experience is embodied starting when we grow up, and since we grow up mostly around women, let’s start with them.