Being a Feminist…

If it begins with gender analysis and ends in systems of domination, it’s feminism!

I sat down for dinner tonight with Karen J. Warren, one of the country’s best known feminist philosophers. In our conversations I found myself both challenged and inspired.

You see, on a certain level I have long been a feminist. I grew up in a ‘matriarchal’ household. My dad was the primary bread-winner, but my mom was better educated, more worldly, and most of all – she has always been the one my siblings and I go to with our best of news and our worst. While my father is the rock you want to build your house on – solid and easy to work with – my mother is pillow you go to to help absorb the hard times and revel in the good – soft, warm, giving, supportive. I have grown into my father in many ways, becoming more and more like him with each passing year, but I have also inherited my mother’s drive. She took an emotionally turbulent, and at times abusive, childhood and transformed it into a deep desire to improve the lives of children who have it much worse: those who have experienced deep trauma, neglect, and abuse, whose lives would likely be cut very short or spent in prison if not for the intervention of the state and agencies such as the Casey Family Foundation, where she spent the majority of her career as a social worker.

My sister, too, became a trail-blazer – leading the way for me to college, gathering successes, awards, and building community here in Missoula, MT (I still meet people who ask me, “hey, you’re Eve Whitaker’s little brother, aren’t you?”). She has since moved on to success in L.A. as a TV and occasional documentary producer. Two of my role models have been these women, not to mention the many amazing friends, girlfriends, and other women that have impacted my life, so it has only seemed natural to me that the inequality of the genders is an institutional, not a natural, phenomenon.

So why was dinner with Karen challenging? It was challenging because she is not the type to let you get away with just saying, “I support women” or even “I am a feminist.” She pushed me to examine what that means and how far one still must go to make the feminist vision (or one of them, as there are many) a reality. We still live in a world dominated by white, male, heterosexuals and a system constructed to ensure their continued power. And while this year’s democratic primaries were historic in featuring a woman and a black man, the very fact that this is historic in 2008 should tell us how far we still have to travel.

Karen describing the flow of “Unhealthy Institutions and Social Systems.” From a) faulty beliefs to b) impaired language, thinking, to c) behaviors of domination, and d) unmanageability.

The saddest thing according to Karen is that young people today are losing touch with their roots. Women today, especially, must understand the enormous barriers that women have overcome to attain the semblance of equality they now enjoy. Women such as Karen, who have fought to change the system for 30+ years, and suffered for their efforts – Karen’s career effectively ended three times – are not being honored. In many circles, as Christopher Preston, the only UM Philosophy professor to have feminism listed in his teaching interests, noted, ‘feminism’ itself has become a dirty word.

The inspiring aspect is that Karen (and others along side her) did persevere. She has brought her career back from the ashes time and again, often reinventing herself and with her the world of feminist philosophy in the process. Her latest work, Gendering the History of Western Philosophy, brings men and women from western philosophy into conversation for the first time.

As she described it, the old model of introducing feminist thought in any field was that of “add women and stir” – essentially taking the standard class in, say, ethics, and putting in a week of feminist thought. This model was always doomed to failure because of the shifted framework inherent in feminism. Teachers had to choose: teach feminism using the language of domination (that of ‘standard’ philosophical thought), or shift into the feminist language and confuse the heck out of the students. Most often they did the former and, to no one’s surprise, the students simply glossed over the very deep social, philosophical, and historical critiques inherent in feminism.

As we began discussing my own work on Kant and Buddhist ethics, lights went off for both of us, instantaneously it seemed, that this was exactly the problem I have faced and would continue to face if I followed the parallel model of “add Eastern thought and stir.” I cannot simply give a Kantian analysis of Buddhist ethics (as I did in my MA thesis). I must bring the two into conversation, into mutual critique. I must inhabit both worlds and speak for them on equal footing. Otherwise one is left dead, a piece of historic material to be examined through the living eyes of the other.

So, yet another challenge to me, along with more fully ‘owning’ my feminism and thinking about it in my daily life, is getting back more fully into my thesis work… A difficult task with so many wonderful distractions and fascinating tangents to explore, but ultimately its completion will be the next great step in my life, so it’s gotta be done!