What is Feminism?
“What is Feminism and Why Should We Do it?”
By Rosemary Radford Ruether, Ph.D. Professor of Feminist Theology at Claremont Graduate University and Claremont School of Theology.
What is Feminism and why should we do it? Is it still relevant? Is it relevant cross culturally? Feminism basically means the affirmation of the full humanity of women. This means that all the ways women have been defined as inferior, secondary and dependent on men since the rise of Patriarchy roughly six-to ten thousand years ago are rejected. It means that women are affirmed as fully human, not partly human or complementary to the male, but with all human attributes and capacities, in relationships of both autonomy and mutually with other humans, male and female, as well as the ecosystem.
Feminism is relevant cross culturally because all known cultures presently existing have been shaped in one way or another by patriarchy, although in different ways. Thus feminism must take a vast plurality of cultural contexts and forms. What it means will be different for working class African-American women than for middle class white women; different for Jewish or for Muslim women than for Christian women. These differences do not negate one another, unless some feminists make the mistake of thinking that their feminist context is normative. Rather this diversity is precisely the wonderful richness of feminism, its capacity and necessity of being articulated in many contexts and cultural locations.
Feminism has accomplished a lot in the last hundred years since it began to reform law, culture and social relations in the late nineteenth century, but it has still only barely begun. Patriarchy is very deeply entrenched and has endless ways of reasserting its patterns of male domination, covertly and overtly. In some areas it asserts itself aggressively and violently, as in Afghanistan when women are forced to wear all-encompassing burkas, acid thrown in their face when they have uncovered heads and schools for girls are burned. In other areas such as the West women are seduced by dress and appearance to play the roles of bodily mirroring of male power. Religious is evoked to shame and enforce patriarchy; but psychiatry and biological science can also been used to claim unquestionable authorization for women’s dependency.
The accomplishments of feminism are made ephemeral. Their historical developments are eroded. Its history is not included in the collective memory of the society taught in school. Feminism has to be rediscovered and remade again and again. And yet patriarchy never fully wins because each generation of girl children is born with basic intuitions of their full humanity, their equal creative capacity, and rediscovers this in new ways. Their mothers and fathers remember some of what was accomplished by feminism as valuable human flourishing and pass it in to daughters and sons.
Feminism is about both women and men. It affirms women’s full humanity, but it is not a putdown of men’s humanity. Rather it is a critique of patriarchy as a system that distorts the humanity of both women and men. Men are distorted by patriarchy both in being socialized into aggression, but also shamed when they seek their other creativities. Feminism critiques both distortions, and liberates men as well as women.
To ask if it is still relevant in 2011 is to have a very dim and inadequate grasp of the vastness of the feminist task, and the extent of the human history in so many different cultures around the world have been deformed and are still being deformed by patriarchy. Yet the capacity of patriarchal culture to repress the feminist questions, to shame those who ask them, to make it appear that the success of a few exceptional ruling class women have finished to work of feminism, means that it takes courage to speak up, to oppress ridicule and negation and to rethink in each different situation what needs to be done to affirm women’s full humanness in community with other women and men, here, now and in this context.
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This explanation needs to acknowledge wrongs committed by certain groups of women against other groups of women in the name of feminism. For example, US feminists’ support of imperialist US intervention in Afghanistan to “free” Afghan women, a position Afghan feminists strongly opposed.
Awesome
I am a male. I found this on google and advocate anyone that circulates good original material that promotes some kind of psychological evolution.
I enjoyed reading what you had to say Rosemary and your right it does take courage to stand up and speak out and to speak on issues a person strongly believes in. As women we need to keep sharing, speaking out and helping our sisters who still suffer in different ways under the patriarchal thumb whether it be from a husband, priest or a young girls father. As you know patriarchy begins in the home and for those young women who have no male figure at home, they will turn to a man in society that will convince them his words and wisdom are correct because she knows nothing different. The more we as women who create bonds with each other, growing and educating will find them self turning less to a man to be aided or in need of and believe more in themselves to create greater change over time. I don’t know if we as a society will ever get away or completely destroy this patriarchal rule we as women have lived under for centuries, but I do hope to see a more matriarchal communities develop strong that us women can choose to live in without man. Religion being so deeply instilled that man uses it to rule over women has brought much violence against many women in other countries and here as well in our Western Culture.
You mentioned the Afghanistan women and the burka they are told to wear. The burka originally was only an option from what I understood many, many years ago, however there was a group of people who were strongly against this as their religion is superior to the culture of the Muslim people. For those who ruled at the time who told the people that women don’t have to wear this burka and up roar took place against them. This country has endure some radical changes over the many years because of the fundamentalist and the U.S has continued to interfere with Afghanistan is one of the reasons why the Muslim men are so violent towards their women in addition to their radical way of twisting the Holy Koran and using their religion to kill and torcher their women. The greatest fear they have is that their society will think and be influenced by the Western Culture, that the women of the Muslim religion will change like the women in the West.
They will not allow this to happen. I have been working academically to wanting to understand these people because, its so easy to judge them and see only the violence and I ask why? I to strongly feel the “burka” has oppressed the women of Muslim belief. My thoughts are that people can still hold on and practice a religion, how they dress and behave shouldn’t reflect in the belief system. Unfortunately its not the case here because these men use their religion to cover their crimes and abuse on their people, all because of fear and lack of understanding, they are so consumed with fighting they can’t see the big picture. Not everyone feels the same way who is a Muslim. Its seems as if they are savages because of the violence they have on the women, but doesn’t the Western Culture place violence on the women here? Of course it does, we just don’t see it in the same way. Maybe we should look closer, we can start with the prison system and why law enforcement is raping and killing women right here in California , the same goes for the men central jail. It brings a question to mind, a man being a police office beating and raping another man in prison, because he is a rookie and is instructed to by his superiors, what does that say about the law here and our Judaical system?
I came back the read this very carefully, Thank you so much, Rosemary Radford Ruether
I get it…… I am a Feminist…. Fantastic, now what do I do….? Next!
I am a now very new feminist after reading and knowing the truth about the world we live in and the masculine power and authority that rules it, unfairly so with the non allowance of women even entertained to to do the job that man in all of history has done quite well. I am not all the way a liberated woman yet but I am learning and growing, shifting and being molded by God himself into one. Thanks for all the information and knowledge this article gave to me. Michelle Baum Atlanta, GA 44 years old but never too old to change, be all new, and have myself as a person different from who I was in the past here in the present and future!
“Feminism has to be rediscovered and remade again and again.” I could not agree with this wonderful statement more. One of my daughters wrote a beautiful piece for school on “modern feminism” yesterday in which, among other things, she explained how boys could also be feminists because my (very traditional) son is one, and my other daughter got into a big debate on Twitter over feminism in the context of the American election.
Lovely post and lets all keep developing feminism as it still has a long way to go in this world.