Patriarchal feminism and the law of the father

Feminist Legal Studies Vol.I no.2 [1993]

PATRIARCHAL FEMINISM AND THE LAW OF THE FATHER

by

SHELLEY WRIGHT*

Living in the House of the Father

".... If there is to be feminism at all, we must rely on a feminine 'voice' and a feminine 'reality' that can be identified as such and correlated with the lives of actual women; and yet at the same time all accounts of the feminine seem to reset the trap of rigid gender identities, deny the real differences between women ... and reflect the history of oppression and discrimination rather than an ideal or an ethical positioning to the Other to which we can aspire. "1

One consequence of the d i lemma which Drusilla Cornell identifies is a split be tween feminists themselves that has at t imes been characterised by anger, a sense of betrayal and destructiveness. The work of Luce lrigaray, for example , has formed a focus for a deba te that she m a y or m a y not have i n t e n d e d - which insists that we mus t choose be tween "essentialism" and "anti-essentialism", or be tween theory and practice. 2 This debate contrasts those who would ident i fy some form of feminini ty "to which we can aspire", i.e. which does not re- peat the devalua t ion and determinism of the feminine as Other to the mascul ine within the prevail ing patriarchal discourse, with those who insist on the social and material construction of gender as false, in the sense of ideology, which must be overcome if real w o m en are to make lasting gains. 3 Cornell and others have, rightly, identified this debate

* Lecturer in Law, University of Sydney. 1 Drusilla Cornell, Beyond Feminism: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction, and

the Law (New York: Routledge, 1991), 3. 2 See Margaret Whitford, Luce Irigary: Philosophy in the Feminine (London:

Routledge, 1991), Chapter I, "Feminism and Utopia". 3 See the description of the battle between "6criture feminine" and the ma-

terialist feminists in France speaking through the journal Questions Feministes in Rosi Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in

116 SHELLEY WRIGHT

as crude repetition of the prevailing ei ther/or dualism that charac- terises patriarchal culture and is a major source of our oppression. 4 This dualism, between Man/Woman, masculine/feminine which is repeated in such other dualisms as m i n d / b o d y , public/private, culture/nature, white/black, Master/slave is the founding ideology of patriarchal culture. 5 The debate amongst feminists is often extremely creative, indicating a lively engagement with difference and differences, but the acrimony cannot be ignored. 6 Although this debate has sometimes presented itself in terms of i d e n t i t y - w h a t is a "feminist", or is there such a thing as " W o m a n " - the conflict itself may be more a difference and conflict over voice- who can speak as a feminist, or is there a voice which can be heard correctly as feminine?

This apparent dilemma or conflict has had consequences for both feminist theorizing and feminist activism. If women try to identify a

Contemporary Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1991), 244-247. French feminism has been described as "the most divided women's movement in Europe", see Doris Anderson, The Unfinished Revolution: The Status of Women in Twelve Countries (Toronto: Doubleday, 1991 ), 108-126.

4 See supra n.3. 5 See, inter alia: Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and

Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992)~ Lorenne M.G. Clark and Lynda Lange, eds., The Sexism of Social and Political Theory: Women and Reproduction From Plato to Nietzsche (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979)~ Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall, eds., Women, Knowledge and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989); Jean Grimshaw, Feminist Philosophers: Women's Perspectives on Philosophical Traditions (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1986), Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Ellen Kennedy and Susan Mendus, eds., Women in Western Political Philosophy: Kant to Nietzsche (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books, 1987): Joan B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: CorneU University Press, 1988): Michele Le Doeuff, I lipparchia's Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, Etc., trld. Trista Selous (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991)~ Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986): Carole Pateman, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), Carole Pateman and Elizabeth Gross, eds., Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986).

6 For an example of both the acrimony and a constructive attempt to en- gage difference on many levels, including the possibility of creating an "ethics of criticism", see Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller, eds., Conflicts in Feminism (New York: Routledge, 1990).

PATRIARCHAL FEMINISM AND THE LAW OFTHE FATHER 117

voice with which we can speak about our oppression, will anyone hear us? It sometimes seems that very few people are listening and what they hear, or what they make of what they hear, is often very different from what we think we are saying. Rosi Braidotti, after a comprehensive and exhilarating examination of the contributions feminist scholars have made within philosophy, writes "[t]he theoretical input of the feminist philosophers I have been defending as critical theorists of sexual difference has obviously not been heard". 7 Within legal structures, besieged by feminist critiques of the utter in- adequacy of law in relation to women for at least the last twenty years, male lawyers and legal academics for the most part also remain quite impervious. 8 This is despite real gains for women in law reform throughout most of the liberal democratic West. The real value of such reforms for women has been questioned and the lack of progress for women who do not fit the prevailing white, middle-class stereo- type has been highlighted. 9 But the major problem is that neither "philosophy" nor "Law" appear to be listening.

The search for a feminist, or a feminine, voice has often also led to the apparent and paradoxical state that women themselves have stopped listening. This cannot be entirely due to a "backlash" or apa- thy, 1~ it must also have a great deal to do with widespread incomprehension in the face of texts of such opacity that a special retraining in the language of current feminist discourse seems necessary in order to

7 Braidotti, supra n.3, at 274. 8 For a selection of feminist writings on legal theory see Katharine T.

Bartlett and Rosanne Kennedy, eds., Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), and Regina Graycar and Jenny Morgan, The ttidden Gender of Law (Sydney: Federation Press, 1990).

9 See Carol Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law (London: Routledge, 1989), and Kimberle Crenshawe, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics", in "Feminism in the Law: The- ory, Practice, and Criticism", Special issue of University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989), reprinted in Bartlett and Kennedy, supra n.8, at 57-80.

10 For a discussion of the reception of feminism in mainstream Anglo- American culture see Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992). Whatever one may think of the merits of this book, it is interesting to see a revival in popular discus- sions of feminism accessible to a larger audience. The recent revival of Ms. Magazine under the editorship of Robin Morgan also seems to indicate a return of feminist issues to the mainstream agenda.

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gain any insights into what has become a large and impressive body of knowledge. Because feminism has sheltered mainly in academic circles since the early part of the last decade, feminist work seems to have concentrated on theoretical perspectives and debates. A real problem, and perhaps ultimately a strength, of "postmodernist", "poststructuralist" feminisms, "ecriture feminine" or even "ecriture feministe" is precisely its "difference" from existing styles of literary, philosophical or legal discourses. The incomprehension and fear of those who approach this literature is endemic even amongst feminist members of the e l i t e - those who read and write in the areas of philosophy or l a w - w h o are eager to learn what the new "disciplines" can tell us. 11 To the "average" woman (if I may use this term) this "textualisation" of her (and our?) problems may not only be incom- prehensible but also offensive and elitist. Resources are spent dis- cussing "Writing the Mamafesta" based on an obscure reference to a male text (in Cornell's case, James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake) instead of speaking about, on behalf of or, most significantly, with those women on the front lines of, for example, the "feminisation" of poverty. 12 The dilemma then is not only between "essentialists" and "anti-essentialists" but, perhaps more seriously, between those who claim to understand the debate and those who neither understand nor care. 13

11 Irigaray is often mentioned as especially difficult, see Braidotti, supra n.3, at 248. For a collection of lrigaray's work, see Margaret Whitford, ed., The Irigaray Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991) and for an analysis of irigaray's contribution as a feminist philosopher see Margaret Whitford, Luce lrigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine, supra n.2. A recent work which relies heavily on the psychology of Lacan, making it extremely dense going at times, is Juliet Flower MacCannell, The Regime of the Brother: After the Patriarchy (London: Routledge. 1991), which is nevertheless richly rewarding in an attempt to investigate the meaning of patriarchy and 'Lfraternit6", see below.

12 Supra n.1, at 1-2. For a discussion of the "feminisation of poverty" and the language of needs in the context of critical and poststructuralist theories see Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

13 See de Teresa Lauretis, "Upping the 'Anti' (sic) in Feminist Theory", in Hirsch & Keller, supra n.6. Since writing this paragraph l heard bell hooks' "Feminist Theory as Liberatory Practice", a public lecture given at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, February 7, 1992 in which she emphasized the need to combine theorising with practice. See also


Within feminist legal theory one of the most interesting conflicts has been between what has been described as two schools of "essentialism", Catharine MacKinnon's "unmodified feminism" versus legal scholars of "difference" who draw on object relations psychological theories and, especially, Carol Gilligan's work on moral development, to find a different feminine voice that speaks an "ethic of care" rather than an "ethic of rights". 14 It would appear to be difficult to maintain the position that there can be a feminism which could ever be "unmodified". Black feminists, women of colour, women of the "Third World" and lesbian feminists have attempted to remind us that we cannot rely on a single feminist voice or vision. 15 On the other hand, a reliance on women's moral development through an "ethic of care" as the foundation for a different feminine ethics, or feminist legal ethics, needs to be carefully examined. 16 Such ideas are based on evidence of individuation and women's psychological development that are culturally, racially and historically bounded. Even within their own terms, theories of difference based on Gilligan's work do not explain women's competitiveness, rivalry or aggressive- n e s s - including the now institutionalised competition among feminists themselves.

To me, in order to find a range of "female feminist voices ''~7 that

bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender. and Cultural Politics (Boston: Southend Press, 1990).

14 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (London: Harvard University Press, 1982); Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discour~s on Life and Law (London: Harvard University Press, 1987). See the critique of both in Smart, supra n.9, at 72-82.

15 See Bartlett & Kennedy, supra n.8: Hirsch & Keller, supra n.6~ Sneja Gunow, ed., A Reader in Feminist Knowledge (London: Routtedge, 1991)~ Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, eds., Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, eds., This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1981).

16 See Robin West, "Jurisprudence and Gender". University of Chicago Law Review 55 (1988), 1. reprinted in Bartlett and Kennedy, supra n.8, at 201- 234.

17 I owe this phrase indirectly to Braidotti who discusses the "female feminine" of "~criture feminine", following Helene Cixoux~ I use it in a wider sense, that of a discussion of the feminine which neither over-privileges

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can all be heard, it is first of all necessary to escape the roles of "dutiful", or even "undutiful" daughters, that we women ultimately are. We are all "daughters of the Father", either through seeking his approval at least indirectly by demanding entry into the corridors of institutionalised patriarchal power (such as Law or the Academy), or through rebellion against his demands by attempting to separate ourselves from prevailing structures, or denying their power. Ironically, there is no more masculinist writer and speaker than Catharine MacKinnon, both in her attempts to use legal structures to further a radical agenda (as in her work with Andrea Dworkin against pornography) or in her impressive attacks on the structures of institutionalised power. It is arguable that part of the compelling force of her work as a feminist is attributable to her mastery of legal and political rhetoric. Even those who define themselves (or are defined) as "postmodern feminists" and who speak so eloquently about multi- plicity and the deconstruction of the single, knowing, controlling male subject, never seem to escape the need to return again and again to the texts of what we might call " the M a s t e r - n a r r a t i v e " - t h e philosophers of modernity reaching back especially to Rene Descartes and even to the classical writers of ancient Athens. In many ways both the poststructuralist debate within French philosophy over the last twenty years, and the divergent voices of French feminist writers in and outside that debate, have been one long rebellion against, or argument with, the monolithic figure of Descartes and his radical "cogito, ergo sum". How does one address such solitude? The site of our more hopeful battles seems to involve pitting one Master-narrative against another. For example, Freud and Lacan are seen as radi- cally undermining the unity of the knowing, self-conscience "I" of Descarte's "cogito" and their texts are used to reveal the illusive unity and fragmentation of patriarchy. The shadow of the unconscious, or the Other, is revealed as a hidden and potentially subversive sub-text by which the Master-narrative of modem rationalism can be decon- structed. ~8 But the requirements of familiarity with these earlier texts, and the use of an adequately ~phisticated discourse in which to ma-

18

gender to the exclusion of "feminism" nor under-privileges it in the creation of '~patriarchal feminism". See, MacCannell, supra n.11; Irigaray, supra n.ll; Teresa Brennan, ed., Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis (London: Roufledge, 1989).


nipulate them, seem to make the use of such narrat ives s ingularly re- mote from the practical realities of most w o m e n ' s (and men's) lives.

It has been a rgued that late mode rn i ty is itself a massive Oedipal struggle. ~9 For women , for the daughte rs of the Father, this s truggle may be even more crucial for our deve lopmen t than it is for his sons. For both women and men, the s truggle with patr iarchal p o w e r m ay mean re turning to some renewed vision of the maternal, the Mother. 2~ I would suggest, however , that a t tempt ing to replace the Father with a renewed Mothe r / ch i ld bond may be based on a romant ic ised and ul t imately demean ing pic ture of the maternal , both in roles and in functions. 21 If feminism is part of some sort of ex tended struggle to transform, or t ranscend, the " family romance" discussed in psychoanalytic theory, then our quest should be towards a redef ini t ion of what it means to be an individual adult , not a quest for our " i n n e r child".

In law, the "different voice" theorists, in a t tempt ing to app ly the work of Carol Giiligan, have pointed to al ternat ive forms of d ispute resolution as the possible means of replacing masculinist , patriarchal

19 See particular MacCannell, supra n.11, and J.C. Smith, Psychoanalytic Roots of Patriarchy: The Neurotic Foundations of Social Order (New York: New York University Press, 1990).

20 See Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989). The return to the maternal is the basis for much valuable work by feminists involved in peace, the environmental movement and the return to the Goddess. See Judith Plant, ed., llealing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1989), and Charlene Spretnak, ed., The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement (New York: Doubleday, 1982).

21 Although I agree with Luce lrigaray when she reminds us of the debt we owe to the Mother. Modern patriarchal culture is indeed built on the "Death of the Mother": see "The Bodily Encounter with the Mother", (May, 1981) in Margaret Whitford, ed., The lrigaray Reader, supra n.11, at 34-46. But recognising what we owe to the Mother~ or our mothers, cannot mean a yearning for, or return to, a presymbolic utopia of all embrac- ing motherhood; Mother Goddess worship. This is simply another form of nostalgia for a lost childhood and is ultimately regressive. See Julia Kristeva, "Women's Time", in Toril Moi, ed., The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 205, as quoted in Whitford, Luce lrigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine, supra n.11, at 19. See also Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (London: Virago, 1976).

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mechanisms of competitiveness, adversarial advocacy and winning. It has been suggested that it may be possible to replace or augment lit- igation with mediation or conciliation, to apply a feminine "ethic of care" to legal disputes rather than an "ethic of rights". 22 This use of a more "maternal" image of resolving disputes has been criticised as denying the power imbalances between men and women actually en- gaged in disputes, particularly in domestic violence or child custody cases. 23 Rather than looking to parental models, either maternal or patriarchal, 1 would suggest that the parricide Western culture has been debating for more than 200 years must finally be accomplished. We must exchange our voices of dutiful or undutiful daughters for something else. The "something else" that I would suggest is based on a new ideal of sisterhood, or (more broadly) solidarity with women and men across gender, class and racial lines.

Until we can redefine what it means to be "feminine" or "feminist" within a wider ethic of solidarity; law, philosophy, political and economic systems and other forms of patriarchal power will remain tied to the Law of the Father and women will remain oppressed. Feminists thelnselves will continue as daughters in conflict with each other and with men. We will remain what we are now-"pa t r i a rcha l feminists". 1 would suggest that in order to finally confront the Law of the Father and destroy it, we must understand patriarchy, not as some monolithic Master-narrative, but as a body of knowledge manufactured and confined by context and history.

The Discipline of the Body

In modern, industrial, capitalist societies, the image which women (including many feminists) would like to maintain is that of slender fragility, self-control and sexual desirability. The maintenance of this image is time-consuming and expensive. It cuts across racial and social class boundaries. Perfection of the image is impossible and in- evitably leads to loss of self-esteem, physical and mental incapacity, and shame; making women easier to control and subjugate. It is

22 See Carrie Menckel-Meadow, "Towards Another View of Legal Negotia- tion: The Structure of Problem Solving", UCLA Law Review 31 (t984), 754.

23 See Hilary Astor and Christine Chinkin, Dispute Resolution in Australia (Sydney: Butterworths, 1991).

PATRIARCHAL FEMINISM ANDTHE LAW OFTHE FATHER 123

physically debilitating in both a pervasive and an extreme sense. 24 Although the connection between this type of "discipline" and the

disciplinary cultures described by Michel Foucault 25 is perhaps more problematic than has been suggested 26, it is nevertheless true that "femininity" as it is presently understood and practiced in Euro-centric and other cultures is damaging to women and is part of social ex- pectations leading to subservience, triviality and inequality.

Western feminism recognised the connection between personal appearance and patriarchal politics and a strategy employed by many feminists was to refuse to conform to the "feminine" stereotypes. This led to the charge that feminists made themselves del iberately unattractive (short or unkempt hair, no make-up, scruffy clothes such as over-ails, etc.) thus leading to the conclusions both that they were not fully feminine and that they were therefore incapacitated from speaking on behalf of other women. Although basing the dismissal of an important social movement on the personal appearance of its protagonists seemed (and still seems) trivial and degrading, the importance of the charge and the intense ridicule that resulted should not be ignored. One of the stereotypes of the revived feminist, or "women's liberation", movement of the early 1970's in America was bra-burning (which never actually happened on any large scale). One of the oldest criticisms levelled at feminism, and one that endures particularly with women, is that feminists make themselves ugly and want other women to be ugly too. This is said to "turn off" sympa- thetic men and prevents feminists from being taken seriously. 27 This is undoubtedly the reason why:

"... [mlany 'reform', or liberal, feminists (indeed, many orthodox Marxists) are committed to the idea that the preservation of a woman's femininity is quite compatible with her struggle for liberation. These thinkers have rejected a normative femininity based upon the notion of

24 See Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: flow Images of Beauty are Used Against Women (London: Vintage/Chatto & Windus, 1990).

25 See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trld. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage/Random House, 1979).

26 See Sandra Lee Bartky, "Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power", in Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, eds., Feminism & Foucault: Reflections on Resistance (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988), 61-86. See Janet Radcliffe Richards, The Sceptical Feminist (Boston: Routledge and Kegan, 198(1).

27

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'separate spheres' and the traditional sexual division of labour, while ac- cepting at the same time conventional standards of feminine body display. If my analysis is correct, such a feminism is incoherent. ''28

The discipline of the body is however evidence of a much deeper problem. The female body is the object of discipline in order to create properly socialised subjects of patriarchy. This creation is not only political, it is also ontological. The socialised, disciplined body that we live in denies women the possibility of being, of containing our own subjectivity, of acting as agents in our own creation as ourselves. We are as patriarchy has made us. We have taken over this task ourselves, we discipline ourselves. The discipline of the body has become more acute as other disciplines, particularly the ability to control reproduction, have been handed to women. Our control over reproduction has had a direct effect on our control over ourselves as sexual beings. Once control over reproduction shifted, we found ourselves caught in new, or newly extreme, disciplinary practices. Food, dieting, thinness and the weight-loss i n d u s t r y - like sex, birth control, abortion and reproductive technology (and probably directly as a result of these) - are political phenomena. 2~

One aspect of modern feminism, at least until recently, has been the inability to recognise this shift of disciplines. The issue of reproductive control, which has been rightly at the forefront of debate within feminist legal discourse, is not simply a matter of freedom to choose versus the right to life (a dichotomy which is already seriously under question), nor is it about where such debates should take place, as between the private or the public realms. Because abortion in particular has been defined by the language of rights and privacy, it has been impossible to relate the issues of reproductive control generally to the wider implications of body discipline, particularly in relation to body size. In this latter discipline law is rarely seen as applicable. 3~

28 Bartky, supra n.26, at 78. 29 See Susan Bordo, "Anorexia Nervosa: Psychopathology as the Crystalli-

zation of Culture", in Diamond & Quinby, supra n.26, at 87-117. See Susie Orbach, Fat is a Feminist Issue: The Anti-Diet Guide to Permanent Weight Loss (New York: Berkley Books, 1979), for an early identification of the problem of appearance from a feminist perspective, but one in which the focus was still on "slimness" as a positive goal.

30 See Christine Chinkin and Shelley Wright, "The Hunger Trap: Women, Food and Self-Determination". Michigan Journal of International Law 14 (1993), 262, for an attempt to draw links between body discipline, food,


The Gender of Discourses

One aspect of postmodern feminism which is extremely promis- ing is an attempt to reclaim the female body for ourselves, to remove it from its imprisonment within the dominant discourse of patriarchy, and to devise kinds of femininity which will no longer be manufactured Objects of male desire, but which will allow women to live in- side our own bodies as ourselves.

The challenge which has resulted from this lies in the insistence by some feminists that both femininity and masculinity must be re- engendered as fully mature sites of subjectivity, particularly with re- gard to the specification of sex and sexuality. This is perceived as a challenge to which both men and women must respond. Men must find their own voices which will not universalize their own male ex- periences as "human", for which we women are merely objects of desire. If women are to become fully human, it must be as inhabitants of our own bodies which are, amongst other differences, female. Men in turn will not be able to attain full humanity until they too inhabit their own bodies as, again amongst other differences, male. This challenge to particularise the masculine has not as yet been accepted by men. Maleness is still perceived as "universal" or "normal", against which women cannot yet achieve full recognition as human beings, because we are still "not-male". Until a radical redefinition of masculinity is attempted, difference based on gender (or on race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, etc.) will remain difference characterised by negativity, "otherness", marginality and subservience to maleness (or whiteness, or heterosexuality, etc.) as the normative standard. Masculinity, and men who carry this particular aspect of the burden of gender, will continue to be caught up in structures of power and authority associated with patriarchy, i.e. the uni- versalisation of certain kinds of masculinity. 31 As Braidotti has said, "[w]omen have reiterated that the right to difference is mutual and consequently they asked male thinkers to enunciate their difference." It is no surprise that she finds the "lack of response .... alarming". 32

hunger and international law. 31. See R.W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics

(Sydney: Allen & Unwin, ]987). 32 Braidotti, supra n.3, p.143.

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The lack of response is directly related to the nature of patriarchy-- the masculinisation of power and the consequent empowerment of a certain kind of white heterosexual masculinity as the universally "human". This is, at least partially, achieved through the creation and disempowerment of particular definitions of what is meant by black/ feminine/homosexual/other. Until masculinity and power have been disconnected and replaced by a solidarity based on real diversity, men and women will be trapped in what MacKinnon, in a different context, characterizes as the ruthless politics of difference and dominance. �9 3

MacCannell arguesthat patriarchy is actually dead and that men have already invented a brotherhood which evades their own speci- ficity as males and which also refuses to acknowledge the sexuality of women. This is the "regime of the brother", a regime of narcissism and denial, masquerading as a false or "pseudo-patriarchy". 34 In this regime, power and masculinity are still linked but within a fraternal rather than a patriarchal arrangement. This particular analysis is extremely interesting in that it helps to illuminate the commodification and alienation of modern late capitalist culture as it is associated with a post-Oedipal psychology, not of liberation, but of destructiveness and despair in which the sister is denied even in her former subordi- nate role of mother.

I would suggest, however, that the Father's epitaph has been written too soon. Late capitalism seems to me to be patriarchy masquerading as a fraternal contract. 35 Although the modern era is said to have been founded on acts of parricide (in the form of the de- thronement of patriarchal monarchies), this parricide does not appear to have been entirely successful. I would suggest that patriarchy is not dead, but that the fraternal contract simply succeeded in replacing the "ancien regime" of Father/King/God, with a regime of brotherhood in which patriarchy became possible for all (white male) citizens of the new democratic, liberal state. As citizenship expanded to include most men, this promise of a democratic patriarchy could be met

33 Catharine MacKinnon, "Difference and Dominance: On Sex Discrimina- tion", from Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law, supra n.14, as reprinted in Bartlett and Kennedy, supra n.8, at 81-94.

34 MacCannell, The Regime of the Brother, supra n.ll. 35 See Carole Pateman, "The Fraternal Social Contract", in The Disorder of

Women, supra n.5, at 33-57.


partly by establishing the patriarchal family within the private realm with extreme rigidity. This rigidity broke d o w n as cit izenship was gradual ly extended to w o m e n - only to reappear in ever more lethal and invisible forms within Fascism, communism and late corporate capitalism. 36

Legal mechanisms have been crucial in fashioning this new form of patr iarchy. So have the discipl ines of corporate capital ism, medicine, rationalist science, the social sciences and welfare bureau- cratic government . The formal structures of patriarchal control have loosened and shifted, but they have not disappeared. Instead they have been replaced by a new kind of discipline of the female which incorporates patr iarchy into our bodies and minds, just as we were beginning to find ourselves as women who were citizens. It is not especially surpr is ing that black women, ind igenous w o m e n and women of coiour m a y find it easier to act in sol idari ty with their brothers rather than with white "patriarchal" feminism. It is not just a question of racism. It also may be related to the fact that both women and men of colour were denied citizenship even after white w o m e n had gained theirs, par t ly as a result of the construct ion of whi te women as better bearers of cit izenship than blacks or indigenous people by the ear ly white, middle-class suffragists themselves. 37 Patriarchy within the Western liberal model that we now have, has never been as fully incorporated into the minds and bodies of women and men of colour as it is in white middle-class heterosexual women as well as, of course, white middle-class heterosexual men.

36

37

MacCannell would identify at least Fascism as one of the most extreme forms of the regime of the brother. I would agree that "brotherhood" is involved here, but it is a fraternity designed to impose the genetic and reproductive control of patriarchy in its most extreme, and possibly, most ancient, form. In an otherwise superb history of women in Europe, this underlying racism within European feminism and the struggle for political rights, including the vote, is not so much as mentioned in Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser, A History of their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); see esp. Volume II, Part 9 "Traditions Rejected: A History of Feminism in Europe". See Rosalind Rosenberg, Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century (London: Penguin Books, 1993), in which the racism of some early suffragists is discussed.

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The Genealogy of Patriarchy ~

If words themselves are impor tan t then the word "patr iarchy" must be of central significance to Western feminists. We might con- t inue our work towards a redefini t ion of feminini ty and feminism with an e tymology or genealogy of this part icular word, in o rde r to discover its role in the subjugation of women and the discipline of the body, as well as the possibilities for resistance, and the creat ion of new alliances. If "patr iarchy" is a Master-narrat ive devised by men masquerad ing as human beings, then it mus t have a history, a context, a car tography of knowledge which can be traced. It is not monolithic and can be changed, escaped from or destroyed.

The derivat ions of this word , and its structures through centuries of Western European culture, carry within them its roots in Judeo- Christian thought. The "Word", either spoken or written, was the ve- hicle by which both Judaism and Chr is t ian i ty were p r o p a g a t e d th roughou t the Medi te r ranean and Europe. Judaism, Christ ianity, and later Islam, are religions of "The Book" and the social s t ructures with which they are associated are cultures that have always placed a high value on language, especially l i terary language. The "text" has a lways been of e n o r m o u s signif icance in European and m i d d l e

Eastern cultures.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth. 39

Within the terms of the Biblical text, particularly after the translation of the Jewish canon into Greek 250 years before Christ 4~ we can

38 There are various attempts at tracing the history of patriarchy; see particularly Lerner, supra n.5. This is not primarily my concern here. I am more interested in the development of the concept as a product of incre- mental accretion of various disparate linguistic and cultural elements over a long period of time.

39 The Gospel According to St. John, !, 1-14, King James Version, first published in England in 1611.

40 The "Septuagint" translated in Alexandria around 250 BC was the basis for what Christians now call the "Old Testament"; see John Romer, Testament: The Bible and History (Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1989), and Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, eds., The Literary Guide to the Bible (London: Collins, 1987).


see the development of some interesting themes. "Patriarchy" refers to a rulership which is emphatically tied to procreat ion- the male reproductive role. It is rule by a man in a very specific, misconstrued and exaggerated gender r o l e - the role of the Father. It is a rulership which openly relegates the female reproductive role to the inconse- quential and which allows women little other than a reproductive role to play, as freedom to do anything else might diminish male control over security of descent. The only significant role that women play is to safeguard the purity and potency of this line where male guardian- ship breaks down or is ineffective. Blood, semen, genealogy and power, are inextricably tied together in a narrative of ideological dis- tortion of enormous influence. 41

Taking the story further into the New Testament, while continuing to look back for a larger picture of Judeo-Christian sources, patriarchy can be seen as not only a description of tribal structures or religious ideology, nor only as a means of describing an institutionalised governmental system. It is also the primal myth of creation, death, redemption and resurrection which has remained with us in every- thing we have done, said or thought for thousands of years. We live in a secular society, but this Judeo-Christian founding myth of per- ception, of knowledge and power, is the pattern on which much of our own "truth" is based.

The genealogy of patriarchy continues within the structures of Western history, first by the Roman and Orthodox Churches, and then in the burgeoning of the nation-state in which "patriarchy" becomes associated with the Father/King, the paternal head of "le pa- trie", the nation-state. Patriarchal religious structures were chal- lenged during the Reformation, and patriarchal political structures during the European revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries. A detailed history of the increasing subordination of women during and after these revolutionary challenges to patriarchy is described in de- tail elsewhere. 42 What is important is, that at a time when men were demanding political and economic freedom from the patriarchal rule of the Father/King, or the monarchy itself was being "domesticated", as in England under Queen Victoria (1837-1901), women were being

41 See Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (London: Penguin Books, 1990).

42 See Anderson and Zinsser, A flistory of their Own, Pt.ll; supran.37, and references cited therein.

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ever more sharply subjected to the patriarch's rule within the private sphere of the home. This "privatisation" of patriarchy had been evi- dent since at least the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and ran parallel with the growth of bourgeois capitalism and the idea of liberalism in political structures. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith, Martin Luther and Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke and Robespierre could all agree on one t h i n g - t h e inferiority and subservience of women. 43 The old patriarchy was killed, only to be replaced by a new patriarchy masquerading as the liberal democratic "fraternity" of men so aptly described by Carole Pateman as the "fraternal contract". 44

Crucial to the perpetuation of this structure since the 19th century has been the discipline of the body, particularly the female body. The discipline of the female body in order to control and finally eradicate women as subjects-for-themselves (or as sisters) is a fundamental component of patriarchy. In the Judeo-Christian model, in which we find the genealogy of women's oppression in Western cultures, control and discipline of the body and the consequent continuing visibil- ity of "Woman" as a mirror for the male ego has been endemic. As Irigaray, among others, has written, women are physical containers which have their value as exchange within patriarchal economic and symbolic structures. 45 Within unmitigated patriarchy, i.e. that which existed prior to the fraternal contract of the late 18th century, women were literally exchanged as property or symbols of property. Since that time, women have continued to be characterised not as subjects or authors of our own lives, but as objects, containers of the male desire to retain patriarchal power within the fraternal contract. As the physical exchange of women declined in the West (at least for white middle-class women) the incorporation of femininity within women's minds and bodies as the objects of male desire increased. One means of constructing this has been, and still is, romantic love as the basis of heterosexual relations, rather than simple exchange. Because men are never simply the inhabitants of particular masculine bodies, but are always Man moving towards Mastery, Woman has remained the measure of exchange by which this universalizing Mankind, this pa-

43 See Kennedy and Mendus, supra n.5. 44 Pateman, supra n.5. 45 Luce Irigaray, "The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the

Feminine", in Whitford, The lrigaray Reader, supra n.11, at 118-132.


triarchal linkage of power and masculinity, is given value. This is the Law of the Father which we have internalised as his daughters, which our brothers have internalised as his s o n s - and heirs. 46

Patriarchal Feminism

It is almost impossible to envision a non-patriarchal social struc- t u r e - the one we have has been with us for so long and is so pervasive. Feminism, as it developed out of the revolutionary changes in Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries, is based on an assumption that is rarely questioned. The assumption is that freedom or personal autonomy is an intrinsic need for human beings, including women, which has been forcibly denied us. The autonomous development of the individual is described, at least rhetorically, as an inherent right of everyone. Early feminists demanded that this rhetoric could not logi- cally be denied to women, at least not to white middle-class women of Western Europe. The Law of the Father became expressed as the "rule of law", inscribed within legal structures as available to ensure freedom and equality for everyone. Women, and others, captured for themselves the power of this rhetoric to demand that the freedom which was denied to so many, not just women, be made a reality.

The fraternal contract and the rule of law, the modern masks be- hind which patriarchy and the Law of the Father maintain their power, are the tools by which iiberatory claims have been made and to some extent have been won. It is not illogical that women and others have made gains even within patriarchy, including both political suffrage and partial control over reproduction. One of the earliest ex- amples of an undutiful daughter, that is one who demanded the ful- filment of the promise of the fraternal contract on behalf of herself and other women, is Mary Wollstonecraft. 47 She was speaking out of the experience of that first major revolution against the Father/King, the French Revolution, which succeeded only in replacing him with modern democratic patriarchy, the fraternal contract.

What is this "autonomy", this "freedom", this "equality" for which

46 Which is why I cannot agree with MacCannell's thesis that patriarchy has already been destroyed and replaced with a regime of the brother.

47 Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, reprinted by (London: Penguin Books, 1985).

132 SHELLEY WRIGHT

we make our rebellious demands? What is the "slavery" to which so many have been subjugated and from which the fraternal contract and the rule of law are meant to deliver us? Both slavery and freedom, as we understand them, are defined within patriarchy itself. Slavery cannot exist unless the alternative of freedom exists to define it's limits. The lack of personal autonomy presupposes the existence of that which is lacking. The Core of patriarchal feminism is that women cannot be slaves within patriarchal structures unless it is possible for us to be free as defined by patriarchy itself. It cannot be said that women have been denied something unless there is something there to be denied. If the need or desire or capacity for personal freedom is not an intrinsic human quality, then it can only exist as a social construct. In our case, this means that our demands for liberation and equality have been determined by the constraints of patriarchy as it now exists, i.e. the liberal, democratic, fraternal contract. The particular type of slavery which women suffer under this particular form of "patriarchy" is not necessarily the same as that which women, or others, suffer under different social constructions, patriarchal or otherwise. Freedom is equally culturally defined.

Western patriarchal institutions rest on an either/or dichotomy of gender. This dichotomy, would appear to form the basis for a gen- eralised concept of difference which places one side of the divide in a position of dominance over the other. The reliance on difference and hierarchy informs attempts at change or restructuring. Freedom and slavery are also perceived in terms of difference and hierarchy. Feminists have demanded that freedom, within patriarchal terms, be extended to themselves and to others. Most feminisms that we are familiar with in the West are therefore what I would term "patriarchal feminisms". This is not to deny the importance or empowerment which such feminist efforts have gained for some women. But recognising feminism's deep connection to the ideology it is attempting to subvert, might help us to recognise some of the inconsistencies and blindnesses for which we are often accused.

A basic reading of what is meant by "patriarchy" in the Western Judeo/Christian tradition that we live in, has been traced back no further than the written evidence of the Old Testament. The word itself is a Graeco/Christian translation of a Hebrew word. "Patriarchy" as icon is based on sacred scripture. An examination of this scripture seems to indicate that there is a basic ei ther/or distinction being


made, and that the core distinction is male/female. More importantly this core concept seems to be intimately connected with procreation, reproduction, birth, life, genealogy, inheritance, racial purity and religious or political hegemony. The ethic which emerges is one based on aggressive masculinity, concentrating on the male gender role in conception and birth. The power structure is not just male-oriented, but Father-oriented. This power structure legitimates a whole host of what have been identified as "p rob lems" - the subjugation of women being a major, but not the only, one. The structure does not appear to adequately coincide with material economic bases of either an agricultural or an urban society, hence the failure of Marxist feminist analyses to adequately explain the persistence of patriarchy and its collaboration with capitalism. Patriarchy as a means of social or- dering has survived and adapted itself up to the present time. It is a paradigm so immune to overthrow that it has resisted even the most obvious evidence that its basic assumptions about sex and procreation are biological nonsense and that its effects are manifestly unjust.

Undutiful Daughters

The latest revival of feminism is at last having a noticeable effect on previously impervious patriarchal structures. Women are gaining access to education, jobs, financial independence and life options that we have never had before. But even the optimism engendered by real gains has to be tempered by one major drawback. The feminism which has gained the most attention, and which is what most people mean by "feminism", is Euro-centric patriarchal feminism. It is feminism which draws it's own ideology out of libertarian, or Marxist, or other visions of liberation, which are themselves permeated with Judeo/Christian ideology or its secular descendants' structures. Why else do we talk about "liberal" feminism, or "Marxist" feminism or even "poststructuralist" or "deconstructionist" feminism? Our discourse is taken from the predominant patriarchal ideology, the Master-narrative, or its masculinist alternatives. This is not surprising. Our subjugation is determined by patriarchy and it's alternatives are also found within this ideology. Where else can we hope to find it? We ourselves are shaped by the structures within which we have been brought up, within which we live. Our very selves are culturally bound. If, within patriarchy, we perceive ourselves as enslaved, then

134 SHELLEY WRIGHT

it is to patriarchal definitions of freedom, such as they are, that we turn for sources of resistance. It is not surprising that modern secular feminism should have followed the paths that modern secular masculine revolutions have taken. We have no other models. We are our fathers' daughters, undutiful or otherwise.

Parricide

The political and economic revolutions of the last 200 years put on the agenda, for the first time in European and Judeo/Christian history, the massive project of destroying the patriarchal King/Father. The revolutions only partially succeeded, driving the patriarch under- ground into the home where he has exercised far greater tyranny over women and children; or upstairs into the civil service and the State where he has been idealised and ideologised into a kind of "folk king" or an abstracted patriarch called "the people"; or exported to the Third World in the guise of "development". The imagery of the warrior, the irresponsible male maturing into the despotic father, with women as nurturing chattels, remains virtually unchanged.

What may be of some hope is that the destruction of the patriarchal King/God, although incomplete, may still be in progress. Once men put this on the agenda they could, and can, no longer prevent women from demanding that the project be completed. It is all women, not younger or subservient men, who have borne the greatest burden within this structure and it is we who have the most to gain from its destruction (not just "deconstruction"). Once men had pro- vided the revolutionary models for destroying the father, feminism, as part of patriarchal ideology in its new secularised still-masculine form, could no longer be contained. Every masculine form of revolution or resistance, none of which have succeeded in finally escaping patriarchy, has given birth to a feminist vision which has been more radical, and therefore more threatening. Masculinist revolutions have always drawn back from incorporating the feminist vision of real destruction of the patriarch, partly out of fear, but also partly out of a deep nostalgia for the in i t ia t ion- the rebirth into Fatherhood and power. But it is important to remember that patriarchy, although still alive and strong, has been under siege by all revolutions and resistances, both masculine and feminine, for the last 200 years.

Liberalism merely domesticated the tyrant, took it upon itself to

PATRIARCHAL FEMINISM AND THE LAW OF THE FATHER 135

civilise and privatise the patriarch and bring him under control. The fraternal contract was an at tempt to liberate sons so that all men might have the opportunity of becoming the Father. There was never any real commitment to destroying patriarchy. Socialism never achieved more than to create another patriarch in working class clothes, or to dress the working man in business suits and domesticate him as the liberal masters had done. The old man dies hard. Feminists who insisted, and continue to insist, that only parricide will do, simply frighten and infuriate men who can see themselves in far greater solidarity with their fathers and grandfathers than with their mothers and sisters, who have always terrified or mystified them. Sex, the old fractured knowledge of good and evil, keeps coming back to haunt us. Subjectivities of male/female, dominance and submission are not good places to find visions of egalitarianism or liberation. However, patriarchal feminism incorporates the radical challenges to patriarchy partially commenced in the 18th century. The great hope is that men, as well as women, have begun to see that the patriarch has to die.

This cannot be seen as an unmitigated source of optimism. If feminism itself is shaped by the masculinist agenda for change, then the alternative to patriarchy (whatever that might be) which is likely to succeed is unlikely to meet feminist demands for women. 4~ "Equality" is not in fact what we want, even on a deep level, when the substance of "equality" is masculinist, not feminist. Nor would we want a "liberty" that is defined in terms solely of the antithesis to patriarchal slavery. In this sense radical feminists are perfectly correct in viewing liberal or even Marxist feminisms with extreme suspicion. It may be that one day we will have a world in which women and men share equally in the balance of p o w e r - but if it is a corporatist materialist world of environmental and human extinction, not in the sense of nuclear holocaust, but through the instrumentality of McDonald's and General Motors, where nothing is free because what 's left of anything spontaneous or beautiful is in a museum, what have we really gained?

48 MacCannell's description of what the regime of the brother could be like, or is like, is thereh)re pertinent and deeply disturbing.

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Listening to Different Voices

Let them come and see men and women and children who know how to live, whose joy of life has not yet been killed by those who claimed to teach other nations how to live. 49

It becomes crucial to listen to o the r visions, o the r voices. Patriarchal feminism is not the only possibility. We are beginning to unders tand that ou r sisters, and possibly also their brothers, in non- patriarchal cultures may have something to teach us. Non-patr iarchal cultures are not necessarily non-masculinist . Masculine domina t ion does not have to take form within a patriarchal model . Indigenous cultures, for example, though often masculinist in the sense that men make most of the impor tant decisions, are not necessarily patriarchal in structure; where they are it is often bo r rowed from Euro-centr ic notions of patriarchy, s~ There may even be cultures which are not patriarchal or masculinist at a l l - they only look as if they are because our male sociologists and anthropologists and historians keep seeing them within their o w n terms of r e f e r e n c e - p a t r i a r c h y . Similarly there are o ther forms of pat r iarchy itself, such as in Confucian East Asia, which are not the same as our own Judeo /Chr i s t i an variety. Islamic pa t r ia rchy has fol lowed it 's own genea logy for m a n y centuries. 51 Women and men of other traditions, not only feminists, m ay be able to offer al ternative visions outs ide of Euro-centric pat r iarchy that can help us redraft our own agendas, so long as we recognise that these are their visions and not ours. 52

49 Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease, quoted in Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London: Zed Books, 1989), xiv.

50 See, for example, the description of Central Australian Aboriginal culture through the eyes of a white feminist anthropologist in Diane Bell, Daughters of the Dreaming (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1983).

51 See Haleh Afshar,"Women, Marriage and the State in lran", in Haleh Afshar, Women, State and Ideology: Studies from Africa and Asia (London: MacMillan Press, 1987); Margot Badrian and Miriam Cooke, eds., Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), and Deniz Kandiyoti, ed., Women, Islam and the State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991).

52 There is a growing literature of crucial importance within so-called "Third World feminism" that is slowly reaching a wider audience in the West. See the most recent collection of essays in Mohanty, Russo and Torres, supra n.15. Note the variety of meanings which Law can have; it does not need to be attached to a patriarchal concept of sovereignty. See


We also need to listen to the voices of those women and men who are refashioning the "discipline of the body", either through the ex- ploration of sexuality, particularly homosexuality, or through practic- ing new ethics of eating, dressing or inhabiting space. The physically or mentally disabled may be able to teach us something about the limitations of bodily space and the capacity for change within our own limits. We must see eating disorders for what the name itself implies. They are patterns of eating in rebellion against order, against the discipline of the body. But the disorder is self-destructive rather than liberatory. It is a narcissistic disorder which prevents the creation of solidarity outside the object self. It is damaging not only for the women suffering these "illnesses", but these disorders also have a political context. They are evidence of the failure of patriarchal feminism itself, and the failure of Western patriarchal women, to reach beyond the fraternal contract to others for whom hunger is not a representation of narcissism, but the worst of all oppressions.

Refashioning our understanding of the discipline of the body also means reshaping the debates over abortion, reproductive technology, pornography, prostitution and sexual violence. The "sexual revolution" of the 1960's gave birth to "second wave" feminism at the same time, and partly as a result of, reproductive freedom for women. But the law of reproductive control did not disappear, it shifted into our bodies and minds, and the bodies and minds of men. Violence against women (and men and children), whether it be physical aggression through war, killing, battery, incest and rape; or whether it be representational aggression through pornography and the display of extreme violence; or whether it be economic aggression through labour exploitation, prostitution and entrenched poverty, is only the most obvious and outward manifestation of this control-- all of it mediated through legal structures. The shift in control of reproduction from the overtly male to the apparently female seems only to have exacerbated the outward manifestation of violence. Just as the fraternal contract failed to complete the project of parricide, so the partial surrender of control over reproduction to women (a kind of enfranchisement of the female body) has failed to destroy the Law of the Father. The continuing presence of patriarchy is seen in the in-

for example the idea of Law in Australian Aboriginal women's culture as described by Bell, supra n.50.

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creasing discipline of the body reflecting the still pervasive male fear of female des i re / re jec t ion- so it is still women who must be made afraid of male desire and male rejection. The controversies which birth control, abortion and reproductive technologies continue to generate is evidence of how important this aspect of patriarchy is. The development of legal control over women as containers of life is not new, it is merely being spoken of in a refashioned language, the language not of a patriarchal God and the Law of the Father, but of technology and the rule of law. 53

Beyond Good and Evil

Is it the case that all resistances, all alternatives, all feminisms, must be determined by patriarchy and the Law of the Father? Perhaps what we are trying to end is not just patriarchy, not just mas- culinism, not just male/female or even female/male, but ei ther/or itself. Not by synthesizing the old dichotomies; not by androgyny; not through anger and denial; not through separation; but through love.

Love as the basis of an ethic beyond patriarchy seems both naive and overly optimistic. I would suggest that it is neither. The meaning of love itself needs to be redefined. It is not contained in the words "care" or "responsibility", although it must include those things. It is not taken from current visions of patriarchal relat ionships- although it may be possible that once the Father is dead, loving fatherhood by men in parental roles may be easier. We cannot rely on mothe r / daughter relationships e i t h e r - although again maternal love has something of symbiosis and unlimited giving about it that we find nowhere else. But these are relationships that do not allow us to go beyond dependency. Nor can it be a love taken from models of sexuality, romance or "being in love" because all these are permeated with inequalities largely derived from patriarchal ideologies of het- e rosexual i ty-a l though again, this kind of love has something of "letting go", of surrender about it which we may also need to learn, without the consequence of dominance/submission.

Sisterhood could be one form that allows women to be indepen- dent and together at the same time and that might take us beyond

53 See "Having Children: Women's Reproductive Choices", in Graycar and Morgan, supra n.8, at 198-242.


good and evil, beyond patriarchal feminism and its associated rival- ries, betrayals and acrimonious debates. "Sisterhood" was raised as a banner of identification and change in the late 1960's when feminism began its latest siege of patriarchal structures and has since become a cliche and an object of ridicule, s4 It seems to have been abandoned, partly because of the failure of "undutiful" daughters to recognise our own allegiance with the F a t h e r - to get past our own identity as white, heterosexual, middle-class, liberal or Marxist feminists. Because we remain daughters, however rebellious, we have trouble identifying as sisters women who are not of our " f a m i l y " - o u r cultural or psychological or ideological heritage. Black women, indigenous women, women of colour, lesbians, women of the Third World, even conservative women rightly condemn feminists for our racism, competitive narrowness, our rigidity, our apparent dogmatism.

If sisterhood is to become a reality, it must be a sisterhood which has escaped from the F a t h e r - a sisterhood based on the absolute destruction of the Father. But this idea of sisterhood must not revert to nostalgia and sentimentality in the return to the Mother. Our mothers are also our sisters; we are grown women not children. By using "sisterhood" as a feminist strategy, we might be able to escape our own identification with the voice of the Father and the inheritance of patriarchy. By eliminating the quest for Father's approval we may get rid of much of our competitiveness, our anger and betrayal. What anger we feel towards each other might be anger that is real, and not disguised jealousy or hidden denial. Our differences would not tear us apart, but might form the means to teach us how to be loyal to each other. Although the words of the first patricidal revolution were masculinist, they contain a real truth that we in the West have largely forgotten. Liberty and equality cannot be seen outside of solidarity.

This call for parricide and for sisterhood is not a call for violence against individual men, nor is it merely Utopian. It is a practical agenda, a matter of day to day choices. Within my own work it means listening to the voices of black or lesbian women which I have hitherto ignored, rather than looking to the Master-narratives of history, philosophy and law, whether written by men or by their female brothers. It means making daily choices. Will this action help or hurt

54 See bell hooks, "Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women", in Gunew, ed., A Reader in Feminist Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1991), 27-41.

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a sister? Will speaking in this forum further the feeling of solidarity between women and women or, sometimes, between women and men, within this context at this time? Do I know what messages I am receiving, or giving? Am I acknowledging what I have, or for which I am responsible? Who are my allies? And what is my own allegiance worth? What of myself am I prepared to share with others? These are hard questions, hard choices that | am only just beginning to learn.

Nor does the call for parricide and sisterhood prevent, or resolve, the divisions that exist among us. The need to search for feminist, or feminine, voices will remain. Sisterhood should not presuppose sameness, merger, the disappearance of the individual in all her uniqueness. It should not, cannot, silence anger. Our anger and the anger of our sisters, and brothers, is real and justified. We need to hear and acknowledge it, not withdraw into defensiveness, denial and blame. 1 have s e e n - and experienced - - too much scapegoating. Diversity within solidarity does not eliminate conflict, it contains it within the wider alterity of love. Sustained commitment to the pro- cess of liberation is essential. 5~

This brings us to the possibility of alliances with men. In order for this to happen, men must learn something about brotherhood that is not tribal, not simply a preparation for the initiation into the Father. Men must learn the lessons they failed to grasp 200 years ago. In order to destroy the Father it is not enough to behead a king or declare independence from an Old World monarchy. Patriarchy, in its West- ern Judeo-Christian formulation, as it has been exported and as it is continuing to be exported, will not die until men kill the Father in themselves. The Warrior, the Hero, the Pastoral Shepherd, the Leader, the Boss, the Professor, the Master, the Corporate Director, the Great Artist or A u t h o r - all have to die to be replaced by a brother, a part- ner in solidarity, who is made of a masculinity that is not in training for hegemony.

55 1 owe a particular debt to bell hooks and her vision of sisterhood which I found particularly compelling in formulating this paragraph.

Documents

Patriarchal feminism and the law of the father