The Desire of Being Always Women
Posted by admin on October 4, 2008, 8:06 pm
Wollstonecraft writes: “This desire of being always women, is the very consciousness that degrades the sex” (99). What does she mean and would Haraway agree with her?
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October 15th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Wollstonecraft’s phrase, the “. . . desire of being always women,” breaks down to two aspects: the desire to be “always women” and the state of being “always women.” The state of being refers, of course, to all the conditions of being a woman at and before the dawn of the 19th century – all the presumed feminine attributes, the status, and gender roles constructed and imposed by the dominate male culture. The “desire” represents the acceptance, and thus complicity, of women in fulfilling their assigned position.
The “very consciousness that degrades the sex” describes this state of willingly seeking to fit the woman’s culturally prescribed image, but could also be extended to the societal “consciousness” that constructs the inferior other in the first place. Just an aside for clarification, substituting “subordinate” for “inferior” without the specific attributions of inferiority would still not alter the meaning here. Anyway, it is clear that Wollstonecraft sees the complicity of women in willingly assuming their societal role as making them major contributors to their own degradation. An idea, by the way, that a second-wave feminist pioneer friend of mine was shouted down for expressing at a Mary Daly event in the 1970’s (still before its time?). Overall, Wollstonecraft places this complicity within the larger picture of the inequality (which can be characterized as lack of freedom) that makes a truly free society impossible.
Concerning Haraway, I would have to say she would not only agree, but expand the point to include some examination of the absurdity of trying to present any population group as homogeneous. As she mentions, the diversity of opinion and personality within a smaller subgroup, such as feminists, exposes the fallacy of stereotyping a larger group — much less an entire gender.