Feminist Interpretations of Femininity
Now, I will address different ways in which contemporary feminists have reacted to the sexist devaluing of femininity in society. For the purposes of this discussion, I will focus on two broad trends in feminism, which I call unilateral feminism and deconstructive feminism. By focusing on only these two general trends, it is not my intention to erase the significant differences that distinguished the individual branches of feminism that together gave rise to these trends, nor is it to ignore other branches of feminism that fall outside of these trends. Rather, my main purpose for this categorization scheme is to illustrate two major tendencies in feminist perspectives on femininity.
Several of the most influential branches of feminism that arose during the 1960s and 1970s may be described as falling under the umbrella of unilateral feminism, in that they viewed sexism as a straightforward matter of women being oppressed at the hands of men. One of the canonical writings of unilateral feminism is Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which focuses on the malaise that affected many middle-class women during the 1950s and 1960s as they gave up careers to become housewives and to raise families.3 Friedan co-opts Sigmund Freud’s phrase “feminine mystique” to describe the popular belief at the time that women could only be happy if they fully immersed themselves in femininity. Friedan discusses femininity in relation to what she calls the “housewife trap”—the expectation that middle-class women should become full-time homemakers, a role she believed stifled women’s emotional and intellectual growth. To make her case that femininity is a trap (rather than something many women naturally gravitate toward), Friedan spends much of the book discussing the ways in which companies, advertisers, the media, psychiatry, and others actively manipulate women into buying into feminine trappings. The Feminine Mystique was a rather narrowly focused book, in that it only dealt with issues that affected middle-class American women, and with those aspects of femininity that are associated with the “housewife trap.” But it helped reinforce a notion that would appear repeatedly throughout unilateral feminism—that femininity (or at least certain aspects of it) is an artificial, man-made ploy designed to hold women back from reaching their full potential.
Looking back at unilateral feminist writings, one finds that sexism is often described as arising from a patriarchal system that kept women oppressed via two interrelated tactics: (1) placing belittling meanings and assumptions onto women’s bodies, and (2) coercing women into femininity, a program that was seen as inherently stifling and which fostered (or was the product of) women’s subservience and subjugation to men. Thus, unilateral feminists viewed the oppositional sexism faced by women as part of traditional sexism. Because masculinity was viewed primarily as a position of privilege, oppositional sexism against male-bodied people remained obscured. Indeed, the very idea that a man might find masculine expectations restrictive seemed as nonsensical to many unilateral feminists as a rich person complaining about being oppressed by their own wealth.
The unilateral feminist notion that women were coerced into femininity was further facilitated by the growing use of the sex/ gender distinction, which differentiated between one’s sex (which arose from biology) and gender (which arose from one’s environment, socialization, and psychology).4 This gave unilateral feminists the theoretical means to challenge the traditionally sexist messages projected onto women’s biology and bodies while ignoring or disavowing the negative messages associated with femininity. In fact, it’s clear that many influential unilateral feminists believed that qualities such as helplessness, deference, and passivity were essentially “built into” feminine expressions and practices.5 In other words, these feminists not only failed to challenge sexist interpretations of femininity, but often accepted those interpretations at face value.
While unilateral feminists almost universally agreed that some or all aspects of femininity enabled sexism, they differed in the proposed solutions for countering it. For example, liberal feminists (such as Friedan) worked within the existing system to try to gain equal access to previously male-dominated areas (particularly professional and leadership positions), often promoting a “women can do anything men can do” philosophy. Implicit in this strategy is the assumption that certain masculine-associated qualities and interests were natural and desirable for women to strive for, whereas the reciprocal feminine qualities were not. Radical feminists argued that women’s oppression would only end by entirely rejecting both masculine and feminine gender roles—which were seen as being inexorably tied to men’s “oppressor” and women’s “oppressed” statuses—and instead adopting a more “natural” androgynous disposition. Cultural feminists took a more essentialist position, arguing that men and women were inherently different, and had distinctive innate traits; for example, men were inherently destructive and oppressive, while women were creative and nurturing. While cultural feminists certainly embraced some feminine traits—even characterizing them as superior to their masculine counterparts’ traits—they were careful to portray such traits as arising from a woman’s “natural” womanliness rather than from “artifactual, man-made femininity.”6
The notion that sexism can only be overcome if women work to become more masculine, more androgynous, or more “naturally womanly” all artificialize femininity by assuming that one’s gender expression is easily malleable, and can be reshaped according to one’s politics. Such one-size-fits-all approaches falsely presume that femininity is monolithic, ignoring how significant differences in class, culture, and biological predisposition give rise to a vast diversity of feminine expressions and perspectives.7 Because many unilateral feminists refused to accept this diversity in female gender expression, they often developed rather belittling views of women who were unabashedly feminine, characterizing them as having their minds colonized, being “ego repressed,” and not being a “whole person.”8 Some unilateral feminists called femininity a “slave status,” equating it with masochism, comparing it with Stockholm syndrome, and believing that it existed only to “communicate a woman’s acceptance of her subordinate status.”9 Women who engaged in feminine beauty practices were perhaps the biggest target of such criticism, as they were accused of donning “symbols of oppression,” being manipulated by “thought control,” alienating themselves from their own bodies, and taking part in “self-imposed passivity.”10
Of course, one of the biggest caveats in the unilateral feminist argument that femininity is artificial and only exists to oppress women is the fact that some people who are assigned and socialized male also express femininity. Perhaps sensing that feminine gay men and MTF spectrum trans people brought unilateral feminists’ antifemininity theses into question, many unilateral feminists developed vehemently disdainful attitudes toward these groups. Interestingly (and not coincidentally), the unilateral feminists who have been most outspoken in deriding feminine gay men and trans women also tend to have the most openly hostile attitudes toward femininity in general. For example, Mary Daly, who referred to feminine women as “painted birds” and portrayed feminist women such as herself as being “attacked by the mutants of her own kind, the man-made women,” was similarly resentful of transsexual women (whom she called “Frankenstein’s Monsters”) and drag queens (whom she compared to whites playing “blackface”).11 Germaine Greer, who has referred to conventionally feminine women as “feminine parasites,” has written multiple trans-misogynistic screeds, one of which assails trans woman Jan Morris for her “obsession with femininity.”12 And Sheila Jeffreys, who believes that femininity “is the behavior required of the subordinate class of women in order to show their deference to the ruling class of men,” has argued that MTF transsexuality and gay male femininity arise exclusively from sexual masochism.13 Thus, the anti-gay-male, anti-trans-woman sentiment that persists today among many unilateral feminists has its roots in their traditionally sexist views of femininity.
Many of the unilateral feminist positions that I’ve discussed so far have been challenged with the rise of deconstructive feminism in the 1980s and 1990s. Deconstructive feminists, while varied in their backgrounds and approaches, share the belief that the category “woman” is socially constructed and therefore doesn’t exist independent of the societal norms and discourses that bring it into being. Therefore, instead of working to end sexism by highlighting the ways that women are “oppressed” by men (as unilateral feminists had), deconstructive feminists set out to deconstruct our very notions of “woman” and “man,” exposing the assumptions and expectations that enable sexism. They describe “man” and “woman” as being situated within a binary gender system that permeates every nook and cranny of our society, infusing itself into our language, traditions, behaviors, and the very way we think about ourselves and others. This binary gender system assumes that men are masculine and aggressive and attracted to women, who are feminine and passive. If one fails to adhere to these assumptions in any way—for instance, if you are an aggressive woman or a feminine man—then you automatically become unintelligible within this system and are therefore marginalized.
Deconstructive feminism differs from unilateral feminism in a number of important ways. First, unlike unilateral feminism, which focuses almost exclusively on traditional sexism, deconstructive feminism focuses primarily on oppositional sexism. In a sense, deconstructive feminism subsumes traditional sexism into oppositional sexism, as it typically depicts the “othering” of “woman” as an inevitable by-product of that identity being binary-paired to “man.” Because this relationship privileges oppositional sexism over traditional sexism, deconstructive feminists have been influential in both feminist and queer theory. Deconstructive feminists also differ from unilateral feminists in that they do not subscribe to the sex/gender distinction, but instead argue that our notions about “sex” are just as socially constructed as our notions of “gender.”
While deconstructive feminism differs from unilateral feminism in many ways, it shares its predecessor’s tendency to artificialize gender expression. This is often accomplished via gender performativity, a concept developed by Judith Butler to describe the way in which built-in expectations about maleness and femaleness, straightness and queerness, are constantly imposed on all of us. Butler uses the term “performativity” to highlight how feminine and masculine norms must constantly be cited. She uses the example of the child who becomes “girled” by others at birth: She is given a female name, referred to with female pronouns, given girl toys, and will, throughout her life, have her “girlness” cited by others in society.14 Butler argues that this sort of reiteration “produces” gender, making it appear “natural.” However, many other deconstructive feminists have interpreted Butler’s writings to mean that one’s gender is merely a “performance.” According to this latter view, if gender itself is merely a “performance,” then one can challenge sexism by simply “performing” one’s gender in ways that call the binary gender system into question; the most often cited example of this is a drag queen whose “performance” supposedly reveals the way in which femaleness and femininity are merely a “performance.”15
While unilateral feminists typically view femininity in exclusively negative terms, deconstructive feminists believe that femininity is context-dependent: It can be “good” (when it is used to subvert the binary gender system) or “bad” (when used to naturalize that system).16 In other words, deconstructive feminism only empowers and embraces queer expressions of femininity, while straight expressions of femininity are typically portrayed as reinforcing a sexist binary gender system. Thus, both deconstructive and unilateral feminism share the belief that (1) femininity is not a natural form of expression, but rather one that is socially imposed; (2) most women are “duped” into believing that their femininity arises intrinsically rather than due to extrinsic forces such as socialization or social constructs; (3) people who are “in the know” recognize that gender expression is artificial and easily malleable, and thus they can purposefully adopt a more radical, antisexist gender expression (e.g., androgyny, drag, etc.); and (4) because feminine women choose not to adopt these supposedly radical, antisexist gender expressions, they may be seen as enabling sexism and thus collaborating in their own oppression.