Conference turris::womannotes-v1

511.0. "Feminist Consciousness" by DIEHRD::SHARP (Yow! I am having fun!) Tue Oct 13 1987 16:15

The following came from the USENET group soc.women (one of the rare pearls in
that tide of muck) and I thought it would be of interest to some WOMANNOTES
readers.

Don.

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Sandra Lee Bartky, "Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness"
from _Feminism and Philosophy_, ed. Mary Vetterling-Braggin, Frederick A. 
Elliston, and Jane English.  New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977.
 
(reprinted without permission)
 
[...] To be a feminist, one has first to become one.  For many feminists
this takes the form of a profound personal transformation, an experience 
which goes far beyond that sphere of human activity ordinarily regarded as 
"political."  This transforming experience, which cuts across the ideological 
divisions within the women's movement, is complex and multi-faceted.  In 
the course of undergoing the transformation to which I refer, the feminist 
changes her behavior: she makes new friends; she responds differently to 
people and events; her habits of consumption change; sometimes she alters 
her living arrangements or, more dramatically, her whole style of life.  
These changes in behavior go hand in hand with changes in consciousness:  
to become a feminist is to develop a radically altered consciousness of 
oneself, of others, and of what for a lack of a better term I shall call 
"social reality." 
 
[...]  Feminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization.  To 
apprehend oneself as victim is to be aware of an alien and hostile force 
a stifling and oppressive system of sex-roles; it is to be aware, too, 
that this victimization, in no way earned or deserved, is an offense.  For 
some feminists, this hostile power is "society" or "the system"; for others, 
it is, simply, men.  Victimization is impartial, even though its damage 
is done to each of us personally.  One is victimized as a woman, as one 
among many, and in the realization that others are made to suffer in the 
same way that I am made to suffer lies the beginning of a sense of 
solidarity with other victims.  [...]
 
The consciousness of victimization is a divided consciousness.  To see 
myself as victim is to know that I have already sustained injury, that I 
live exposed to injury, that I have been at worst mutilated, at best 
diminished, in my being.  But at the same time, feminist consciousness is 
a joyous consciousness of one's own power, of the possibility of 
unprecedented personal growth and of the release of energy long suppressed.  
Thus, feminist consciousness is consciousness both of weakness and of 
strength.  But this division in the way we apprehend ourselves has a 
positive effect, for it leads to the search both for ways of overcoming 
those weaknesses in ourselves which support the system and for direct forms 
of struggle against the system itself.
 
But consciousness of victimization is a consciousness divided in still 
another way.  This second division does not have the positive effect of 
the first, for its tendency is to produce confusion, guilt, and paralysis 
in the political sphere.  The awareness I have of myself as victim rests 
uneasily alongside the awareness that I am at the same time more privileged 
than the overwhelming majority of the world's population.  I enjoy both 
white-skin privilege and the advantage of comparative wealth.  I have some 
measure of control, however small, over my own productive and reproductive 
life.  The implications of this split in consciousness for feminist 
political theory and the obstacles it presents to the formation of a 
coherent feminist strategy are frequently mentioned in the literature of 
the women's movement.
 
[...] To apprehend myself as victim in a sexist society is to know that 
there are few places where I can hide, that I can be attacked anywhere, 
at any time, by virtually anyone.  Innocent chatter -- the currency of 
ordinary social life -- or a compliment ("You don't think like a woman"), 
the well-intentioned advice of psychologists, the news item, the joke, 
the cosmetics advertisement -- none of these is what it is or what it was.  
Each is revealed (depending on the circumstances in which it appears) as a 
threat, an insult, an affront -- as a reminder, however subtle, that I 
belong to an inferior caste -- in short, as an instrument of oppression 
or as the articulation of a sexist institution.  Since many things are 
not what they seem to be, and since many apparently harmless things can 
suddenly exhibit a sinister dimension, social reality is revealed as 
deceptive.  [...] this aspect of social reality makes the feminist's 
experience of life, her anger and sense of outrage, difficult to 
communicate to the insensitive or uninitiated: it increases her 
frustration and reinforces her isolation.  There is nothing ambiguous 
about racial segregation or economic discrimination: it is far less 
difficult to point to these abuses than it is to show how, for example, 
the "tone" of a news story can transform it from a piece of reportage 
into a refusal to take women's political struggles seriously or even 
into a species of punishment.
 
[...]  Many people know that things are not what they seem to be.  The 
feminist knows that the thing revealed in its truth at last will, likely 
as not, turn out to be a thing that threatens or demeans.  But however 
unsettling it is to have to find one's way about in a world that 
dissimulates, it is worse to be unable to determine the nature of what 
is happening at all.  Feminist consciousness is often afflicted with 
category confusion -- an inability to know how to classify things.  The 
timidity I display at departmental meetings, for instance -- is it 
nothing more than a personal shortcoming, or is it a typically female 
trait, a shared inability to display aggression, even verbal aggression?  
And why is the suggestion I make ignored?  Is it intrinsically 
unintelligent or is it because I am a woman and therefore not to be 
taken seriously?  The persistent need I have to make myself "attractive," 
to fix my hair and put on lipstick -- is it the false need of a 
chauvinized woman, encouraged since infancy to identify her value as a 
person with her attractiveness in the eyes of men?  Or does it express 
a wholesome need to express love for one's own body by adorning it, 
a behavior common in primitive societies, allowed us but denied to men 
in our own still-puritan culture?  Uncertainties such as these make 
it difficult to decide how to struggle and whom to struggle against, but 
the very possibility of understanding one's own motivations, character 
traits and impulses is also at stake.  In sum, feminists suffer what 
might be called a "double ontological shock":  first, the realization 
that what is really happening is quite different from what appears to 
be happening; and second, the frequent inability to tell what is really 
happening at all. [...] Feminist consciousness is something like 
paranoia, especially when the feminist first begins to apprehend the 
full extent of sex discrimination and the subtle and various ways in 
which it is enforced.  The System and its agents are everywhere, even 
inside her own mind, since she can fall prey to self-doubt or to a 
temptation to compliance.  In response to this, the feminist becomes 
vigilant and suspicious: her apprehension of things, especially of direct 
or indirect communication with other people, is characterized by what 
I shall call "wariness."  Wariness is anticipation of the possibility 
of attack, of affront or insult, or disparagement, ridicule, or the 
hurting blindness of others; it is a mode of experience which anticipates 
experience in a certain way.  While it is primarily the established order 
of things of which the feminist is wary, she is wary of herself, too.
 
[...]  Just as so many apparently innocent things are really devices to 
enforce compliance, so are many "ordinary" sorts of situations 
transformed into opportunities or occasions for struggle against the 
system.  In a light-hearted mood, I embark upon a Christmas-shopping 
expedition, only to have it turn, as if independent of my will, into an 
occasion for striking a blow against sexism. [...] what if, just this 
once, I send a doll to my nephew and an erector set to my niece?  Will 
this confirm the growing suspicion in my family that I am a crank?  
What if the children themselves misunderstand my gesture and covet one 
another's gifts?  Worse, what if the boy believes that I have somehow 
insulted him?  The shopping trip turned occasion for resistance now 
becomes a test.  I will have to answer for this, once it becomes clear 
that Marshall Field's has not unwittingly switched the labels.  [...] 
Ordinary social life presents to the feminist an unending sequence of 
such occasions, and each occasion is a test.  It is not easy to live 
under the strain of such constant testing.  Some tests we pass with 
honor, but often as not we fail, and the price of failure is self-reproach 
and the shame of having copped out.  To complicate things further, 
much of the time it is not clear what criteria would allow us to 
distinguish the honorable outcome of an occasion from a dishonorable 
one.  Must I seize every opportunity?  May I never take the easy way 
out?  Is what I call prudence and good sense merely cowardice?  On 
the occasion in question, I compromised and sent both children musical 
instruments.
 
[...] In sum, feminist consciousness is the consciousness of a being 
radically alienated from her world and often divided against herself, 
a being who sees herself as victim and whose victimization determines 
her being-in-the-world as resistance, wariness, and suspicion.  Raw and 
exposed much of the time, she suffers from both ethical and ontological 
shock.  Lacking a moral paradigm, sometimes unable to make sense of her 
own reactions and emotions, she is immersed in a social reality that 
exhibits to her an aspect of malevolent ambiguity.  Many "ordinary" 
social situations and many human encounters organized for quite a 
different end she apprehends as occasions for struggle, as frequently 
exhausting tests of her will and resolve.  She is an outsider to her 
society, to many of the people she loves, and to the still-unemancipated 
elements in her own personality.
 
But this picture is not as bleak as it appears; indeed, its "bleakness" 
would be seen in proper perspective had I described what things were like 
before.  Coming to have a feminist consciousness is the experience of 
coming to know the truth about oneself and one's society.  This experience, 
the acquiring of a "raised" consciousness, is an immeasurable advance 
over that false consciousness which it replaces.  The scales fall from 
our eyes.  We are no longer required to struggle against unreal enemies, 
to put others' interests ahead of our own, or to hate ourselves.  We 
begin to see why it is that our images of ourselves are so depreciated 
and why so many of us are lacking any genuine conviction of personal 
worth.  Understanding things makes it possible to change them.  Coming 
to see things differently, we are able to make out possibilities for 
liberating collective action as well as unprecedented personal growth -- 
possibilities that a deceptive sexist social reality has heretofore 
concealed.  No longer do we have to practice upon ourselves that 
mutilation of intellect and personality required of individuals, caught 
up in an irrational and destructive system, who are nevertheless not 
permitted to regard it as anything but sane, progressive, and normal.  
Moreover, that feeling of alienation from established society which is 
so prominent a feature of feminist experience is counterbalanced by a 
new identification with women of all conditions and a growing sense of 
solidarity with other feminists.  It is a fitting commentary on our 
society that the growth of feminist consciousness, in spite of its 
ambiguities, confusion, and trials, is apprehended by those in whom 
it develops as an experience of liberation.

    re: .0
    
    The article (the first 100 lines or so) seems to be predicated on
    the supposition that women will become feminists, with a feminist
    consciousness.
    
    It seems to preclude the possbility of men becoming feminists, or
    of having feminist traits.
    
    The use of the word "victimization" seems to be used in much the
    same way as the word "holocaust" was used. To define one segment,
    albeit a large segment, of the total number who were victimized
    (or are being victimized).
    
    I agree it is a well written article, and hopefully those who read
    it will appreciate and learn its message. My hope is that the learnt
    message is that most women are not the only people who were victimized,
    just as of all the people who suffered in the holocaust were not
    just jews.
    
    And just as true, the more people who allow their awareness to
    increase, and gain a greater degree of sensitivity to this problem,
    the more likely the problem itself may eventually become diminished,
    just as there is a widespread hope to diminish the possibility of
    another holocaust; another "Hirishoma"; or another "Stalin".
    
    Bob

    [Wait a minute: an posting and 2 replies--all by men?  What is this?
    Well, I've a big mouth, *I*'ll say something.]
    
    I can dismiss the article's seeming orientation to women feminists:
    after all, it begins with "For many feminists this take the form
    of a profound personal transformation,...".  Hey, maybe for other
    feminists, it doesn't.  (Mere semantic quibbling; onward.) 
    
    I liked the article very much.  It had sensitivity and even humor
    in relating this very human transformation.
    
    What I would like, to modify is the first sentence: 
    
	    	To be a feminist, one has first to become one.
    
    I like to think that even during the process of becoming one, one
    can suddenly be a feminist, perhaps only a fledgling one, but still
    a feminist.
    
    This distinction isn't quite so trivial.  It's an awknowledgement
    of a path initiated.  It encompasses those women who've learned
    to see the binds but still distrust so much to also be feminists.
    It allows children who haven't yet had their competence denied on
    the basis of gender to be feminists too.  It isn't a trial of adulthood
    it's an expression of a desire to learn, an openness.
    
    But then, isn't knowledge, any knowledge worth having, really a
    process and not merely an attainment.

    Hi Lisa,
    
    Nice answer...and I have been enjoying watching you work your
    way forward through all the notes you haven't read :-)
    
    Bonnie