Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice (7 page)

1. By ‘‘coercion in a Hayekian sense’’ I mean intentional interference exercised by one human being over another. See F. A. von Hayek,
   The Constitution of Liberty.
   

tinely circumcised may not have considered why, and an active femi- nist may still wear high heels.

Second, the liberal focus on choice is a focus on the individual at the expense of the social. While the relevant normative question for the liberal is ‘‘does this particular individual want to follow this practice, and what does it mean for her?’’ a Foucauldian approach alerts us to the inherently social nature of practices. As a result, it demonstrates that individuals’ choices can never be assessed in isolation from the cultural context in which they take place, and a particular practice can- not be considered in isolation from the meaning it has for the commu- nity as a whole. More specifically, the justice of a practice or a choice is not usually determined by the individual who initiates it, but relies in large part on the role it plays in the overall system of (in)equality. Lib- eral focus on the individual fails to notice how individual actions fit into social structures of (in)justice.

Third, liberalism tends to conceptualize power as a negative, repres- sive force, one that constrains individuals by ruling out alternatives. Hence the liberal focus on state nonintervention as the guarantor of liberty. If power is repressive, then state power simply stops individuals from pursuing their goals. If we remove state obstacles to individual choice, then we remove power and increase freedom. A Foucauldian analysis alerts us, however, to the significance of power as a creative force, one that suggests ideas and forms subjects. Even if we were to eradicate all repressive power, we would leave creative power un- touched. Individuals would still act in response to social norms and constraints, but since people are shaped by creative power, those con- straints would be internal to them. Even when there is no guard in the panopticon’s watchtower, the prisoners still conform to the prison rules. So too with the state: even if it conformed to liberal neutrality, individuals would still conform to the rules of their community. The third problem with liberalism, then, is that it disregards the creativity of power. As a result, the injustice transmitted through such power is ignored.

2

masculine domination
,
radical feminism
,
and change

Pierre Bourdieu and Catharine MacKinnon are two major theorists of social construction whose analyses of gender appear at first glance to be diametrically opposed. Consider the following excerpt from Bour- dieu:

I have always been astonished . . . that the established order, with its relations of domination, its rights and prerogatives, privileges and injustices, ultimately perpetuates itself so easily, apart from a few historical accidents, and that the most intoler- able conditions of existence can so often be perceived as accept- able and even natural. And I have also seen masculine domina- tion, and the way it is imposed and suffered, as the prime example of this paradoxical submission.
1

For Bourdieu, then, gender appears to be if not immutable then at least extraordinarily resistant. For MacKinnon, in contrast, gender seems to be a much more fluid, transcendable discourse:

When one gets to know women close up and without men present, it is remarkable the extent to which their so-called biology, not to mention their socialization, has failed. The dis- covery that these apparently unmanageable dictates of the nat- ural order are powerful social conventions often makes women feel unburdened, since individual failures no longer appear so individualized. Women become angry as they see women’s lives as one avenue after another foreclosed by gender.
2

1. Pierre Bourdieu,
   Masculine Domination,
   1–2.
   

2. Catharine MacKinnon,
   Toward a Feminist Theory of the State,
   91.
   

   This apparent difference may go some way toward explaining why Bourdieu and MacKinnon are seldom read together. In fact, however, the two approaches have much in common. Both portray gender and gender inequality as overwhelmingly socially constructed, and they share some of the most useful features of Foucault’s approach but have fewer problems: unlike Michel Foucault, Bourdieu and MacKinnon ex- plicitly theorize both gender and change.
   3
   Their theories are by no means identical. But both approaches are instructive for our purposes since they provide a framework for analyzing gender in terms of both social construction and normative critique.
   

   Both Bourdieu and MacKinnon claim to have negotiated a path be- tween the extremes of determinism and voluntarism. It is partly this claim that has led some feminists to consider Bourdieu’s work on gen- der, and to question whether it might offer a corrective to the more deterministic moments of the more popular Foucault.
   4
   However, de- spite his claims to the contrary, Bourdieu seems to deny the possibility of women’s agency—a key problem for feminists. I argue that while Bourdieu’s work is useful for understanding the entrenchment of gen- der, the strategies he proposes for change are not well suited to changes in gender systems even on his own terms. I suggest that Bour- dieu’s account is more conducive to change if we supplement it with a strategy for change endorsed by MacKinnon: consciousness-raising. Combining features of both approaches helps us to theorize both the entrenchment and the rejection of gender hierarchy.
   

   Constructing Gender Inequality
   

   In
   Masculine Domination,
   Bourdieu asks why gender inequality has persisted throughout history despite significant social change. In gen- eral, Bourdieu is concerned with the question of why it is that many forms of domination persist with relatively few challenges: left to them- selves and in the normal course of things, individuals will not disrupt
   

3. For a comparison between Foucault and MacKinnon, see Vanessa E. Munro, ‘‘On Power and Domination’’; and for a comparison between MacKinnon and liberalism, see Denise Schaeffer, ‘‘Feminism and Liberalism Reconsidered.’’
   

4. See, for example, Lisa Adkins, ‘‘Reflexivity’’; Terry Lovell, ‘‘Thinking Feminism with and Against Bourdieu’’; Lois McNay,
   Gender and Agency
   and ‘‘Gender, Habitus and the Field’’; and Veronique Mottier, ‘‘Masculine Domination.’’
   

   structures of domination, such as patriarchy, from which they suffer (or benefit). Even if they have read and agreed with key feminist texts, most women do not stop wearing makeup, taking on the lion’s share of the housework and childcare, wearing restrictive and uncomfortable clothes and shoes that emphasize sexual availability, or being attracted to men with characteristics of dominance such as a powerful physique or job. Even if we believe that our desires are indeed the product of the norms and expectations of a patriarchal society, still we do actually
   like
   makeup, high heels, and men who are tall, buffed, and wealthy.
   5
   

   A central reason for the success of patriarchy, Bourdieu argues, is its ability to naturalize its distinctions. At the heart of any system of hierarchy is the distinction made between those who occupy different hierarchical positions. The system of masculine domination owes its success at least in part to its provision of ‘‘natural,’’ biological explana- tions for hierarchy. This point was also made within the liberal tradi- tion by John Stuart Mill in
   The Subjection of Women.
   In response to the claim that sexual inequality is natural, Mill asks, ‘‘Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?
   

   . . . So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.’’
   6
   

   The naturalization of gender hierarchy is reinforced in several ways. Women
   are,
   according to the patriarchal story, different from men in that they have different bodies and different biological functions. They
   must be
   different from each other so as to reproduce; the differences could not be wished away, for without sex differences we would have no means of perpetuating the species. Moreover, these differences
   jus- tify
   different positions on a hierarchy in that they dictate different be- haviors for men and women regarding matters such as childcare, breadwinning, and courtship, which affect the wider social positions of the sexes.
   

1. Instead, Bourdieu argues that the categories of gender are con- structed and not necessary.
   7
   Gender differences start with the socially constructed and thus contingent division of people into two kinds ac- cording to their bodies, and specifically their genitals. To say that this
   

2. For examples of this process, see Simone de Beauvoir,
   The Second Sex
   , 694–95; Laura Sanchez and Elizabeth Thomson, ‘‘Becoming Mothers and Fathers,’’ 766; and Pepper Schwartz,
   Love Between Equals.
   

3. John Stuart Mill,
   The Subjection of Women,
   127–28.
   

4. Bourdieu,
   Masculine Domination,
   11–12, 15.
   

   is a contingent division is not to say that everyone could in theory have the same genitals, or that there is no biological difference between men and women, but it is to say that differences between genitals need not be socially significant. Christine Helliwell describes a tribe in Indone- sian Borneo, the Gerai, for whom differences in work, not differences in genitals, are the determinants of a system of classification compara- ble to gender.
   8
   Although there are people with different genitals in the Gerai tribe, this fact is not seen as particularly significant, and certainly not as the determinant of gender. While there is a correlation between different genitals and different genders for the Gerai, this correlation is contingent and not necessary. In Western societies, for example, it is overwhelmingly women and not men who provide the primary care for babies in their first weeks of life. However, genitals and not child- care are the determinant of gender: a person with a penis who is the prime caregiver for a newborn baby is still a man. For the Gerai, in contrast, it is the work that is determining—a person who performs certain tasks in rice cultivation is a man, even if that person has a vulva. Helliwell herself was categorized as a man for some time after her arrival in the tribe as a result of the work she was able to do, despite the fact that everyone in the tribe frequently observed her genitals when she urinated in the stream used for that purpose. Thus, ‘‘As someone said to me at a later point, ‘Yes, I saw that you had a vulva, but I thought that Western men might be different.’’’
   9
   

   Genital difference, then, does not necessarily signify different roles or identities. But once the difference between genitals has been insti- tuted as socially significant, it is justified by reference to the natural- ness of the distinction. In other words, in answer to the question ‘‘Why are genital differences socially significant?’’ the answer given would be something like ‘‘because there are differences in genitals.’’ Moreover, this difference is further idolized by its naturalness. If we ask, ‘‘Why are there differences in genitals?’’ we will receive the answer ‘‘because that is how nature is,’’ which is something like saying ‘‘because it couldn’t be any other way.’’ This circular reasoning leads, Bourdieu argues, to symmetry between the subjective and objective elements of domination. Subjectively, people believe that there are significant dif- ferences based on genital differences. Objectively, there are genital dif-
   

5. Christine Helliwell, ‘‘It’s Only a Penis,’’ 805–6. 9. Ibid., 806.
   

ferences. The circularity comes in as follows: people believe that there are significant differences based on genitals because they are inclined to notice and reify differences based on genitals, and people are in- clined to notice and reify such differences because they believe that they exist. In sum, one of the key reasons for success of the system of male domination is its ability to make itself appear as natural—not only in the sense that differences between genitals are natural, but also in the sense that social differences based on differences between genitals appear natural.

This analysis is strongly redolent of MacKinnon. Contrary to Vanessa Munro’s analysis of MacKinnon as committed to ‘‘essential- ism’’ and to the assumption of sex difference as the ‘‘point of depar- ture,’’
10
MacKinnon fundamentally rejects the idea that categories of gender are primarily biological, or that gender equality is precluded by biological differences. For MacKinnon, sexuality is the prime site of gender inequality, but this is not the result of any biological impera- tive.
11
Rather than being a matter of biology—or indeed a matter of morality or psychology—gender is, she argues, a matter of
politics
and a matter of
power.
This analysis of gender in terms of power is, of course, at the heart of feminism. As MacKinnon puts it, ‘‘Distinctions of body or mind or behavior are pointed to as cause rather than effect, with no realization that they are so deeply effect rather than cause that pointing to them at all is an effect. Inequality comes first, difference comes after.’’
12
A side effect of MacKinnon’s analysis is that the terms ‘‘sex’’ and ‘‘gender’’ lose their distinctiveness. ‘‘Sex’’ is often taken to refer to the natural, biological differences between men and women, with ‘‘gender’’ reserved for the social differences. However, the forego- ing implies that the division is not so clear-cut: any difference is social in the sense that it is a social contingency that the difference is consid- ered significant. As a result, MacKinnon uses the terms ‘‘sex’’ and ‘‘gender’’ interchangeably, as I do in this book.
13

1. Munro, ‘‘On Power and Domination,’’ 83, 86, 95.
   

2. MacKinnon,
   Toward a Feminist Theory of the State,
   109.
   

3. Ibid., 219. Andrea Dworkin similarly argues that the now-abandoned Chinese practice of footbinding served to create gender difference. As she puts it: ‘‘
   Footbinding did not empha- size the differences between men and women—it created them,
   and they were then perpetuated in the name of morality’’ (
   Woman Hating,
   103; emphasis in the original).
   

4. MacKinnon,
   Toward a Feminist Theory of the State,
   xiii. The distinction between sex and gender, with its implication that ‘‘sex’’ differences are natural and objective, is also criti- cized by Judith Butler in
   Gender Trouble
   and Moira Gatens in ‘‘Power, Bodies and Differ- ence.’’
   

   Bourdieu shares this aspect of MacKinnon’s approach, but his fail- ure to distinguish ‘‘sex’’ and ‘‘gender’’ is criticized by Veronique Mot- tier as ‘‘the most problematic aspect of his gender analysis.’’
   14
   Mottier argues that a failure to distinguish the two concepts equates to an anal- ysis of gender solely in terms of sexual difference, without any refer- ence to the role of gender power. However, as the foregoing analysis shows, this criticism is incorrect. The denial of a difference between sex and gender can take either a patriarchal or a feminist form. The patriarchal form is the focus of Bourdieu’s criticism: the idea that ine- qualities of status or power are the natural result of, and therefore justified by, differences in sexual organs. In countering this patriarchal form, feminists can either introduce a sex/gender distinction, as Mot- tier advocates, or they can argue that sexual differences are themselves imbued with, are in some sense the result of, gender power. As Mac- Kinnon points out, a sex/gender distinction rests on the assumption that there is such a thing as sexual difference that is not imbued with power, and it is precisely this assumption that her radical feminist theory challenges. As she puts it, pointing to sexual difference
   at all,
   even from a feminist perspective, is an effect of gender power. Bour- dieu, far from returning to the patriarchal rejection of the sex/gender distinction, joins MacKinnon in rejecting the distinction from the radi- cal feminist perspective.
   

   Symbolic Violence and Sexuality
   

   If gender is socially constructed, it remains to be seen what form that social construction takes and what its organizing principle is. Bourdieu conceptualizes gender in terms of symbolic violence; for MacKinnon, sexuality is the organizing principle. The two ideas are similar because, for MacKinnon, sexuality is characterized by the eroticization of gender hierarchy, an idea that resonates with symbolic violence and which Bourdieu explicitly endorses.
   

   MacKinnon analyzes gender in terms of the eroticization of male dominance and female submission. This patriarchal form of sexuality imprints itself deep into the bodies, thoughts, and identities of individ- uals. Moreover, for MacKinnon as well as for Bourdieu, sexuality is deeply hierarchical. For MacKinnon, the eroticization of hierarchy per-
   

5. Mottier, ‘‘Masculine Domination,’’ 350.
   

   vades sexuality within patriarchy and, moreover, defines patriarchy po- litically.
   15
   Men’s power over women writ large is structured around male sexual power. Power and sexuality are intimately intertwined for MacKinnon, with power structuring sexuality and sexuality reinforcing power.
   16
   As is the case in Foucauldian analysis, pleasure plays a central role in this process. Sex, and eroticized inequality, are deeply pleasur- able for both women and men. Ranging from Pat Califia’s fervent de- fense of sadomasochism, through the rape fantasies of the many women interviewed by Nancy Friday, to the cliche´s of men sweeping women off their feet in bodice rippers from Mills and Boon to Barbara Cartland,
   17
   hierarchical sex becomes the source of pleasure and fantasy as well as the source of rape, abuse, and distress. Thus MacKinnon observes that sexuality’s ‘‘pleasure [is] the experience of power in its gendered form.’’
   18
   

   Bourdieu agrees with MacKinnon’s analysis, stating that sexual rela- tions are ‘‘constructed though the fundamental principle of division between the active male and the passive female,’’ a division that ‘‘cre- ates, organizes, expresses and directs desire—male desire as the desire for possession, eroticized domination, and female desire as the desire for masculine domination, as eroticized subordination or even, in the limiting case, as the eroticized recognition of domination.’’
   19
   For Bour- dieu, this phenomenon is understood in terms of symbolic violence, defined as ‘‘the
   violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity
   .’’
   20
   Symbolic violence is expressed not physically on the bodies of those it violates, but mentally on thoughts. It causes those who are subject to it to assent to, and thus be complicit with, its dic- tates. Gender inequality is
   symbolic
   violence because women (and men) comply willingly, with no need for intentional or forcible coercion, and
   

6. MacKinnon,
   Toward a Feminist Theory of the State,
   241, 137. 16. Ibid., 151.