Feminism

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From a
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Law Alone:
Debate with Phytlis Schlafly
am here to discuss the meaning and future of women’s rights.
Mrs, Schlafly claims to speak as a woman, to and for all women.
So do I. She claims to speak from the woman in all women. So
do I. She claims to speak about what women know from our own
lives. So do I. And about our deepest fears and aspirations.
We bring you two views on women’s situation. The differences between us require asking one of the most important and neglected
questions of history: What is it to speak as a woman? Who speaks for
women?
I speak as a feminist, although not all feminists agree with everything I say. Mrs. Schlafly speaks as a conservative. She and I see a
similar world, but we portray it differently. We see similar facts but
have very different explanations and evaluations of those facts.
We both see substantial differences between the situations of
women and of men. She interprets the distinctions as natural or individual. I see them as fundamentally social. She sees them as inevitable or just-or perhaps inevitable therefore just-either as good and
to be accepted or as individually overcomeable with enough will and
application. I see women’s situation as unjust, contingent, and imposed.
In order to speak of women as a feminist, I need first to correct
Mrs. Schlafly’s impression of the women’s movement. Feminism is
not, as she implicitly defines it, liberalism applied to women. Her
attack on the women’s movement profoundly misconstrues feminism. Her critique of the women’s movement is an artifact, an application, of her long-standing critique of liberalism, just as her attack
on the ERA is an artifact of her opposition to the federal government.
In the waning days of the last attempt to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, I twice
debated Phyllis Schlafly, a leading conservative opponent. One debate took place at
Stanford Law School, Stanford, California, Jan.26,1982; the other was at the School of
Theology, Claremont, California, Mal 76, 7982.
2-t.
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Women as such are incidental, a subplot, not central, either to liberalism or to her critique.
Liberalism defines equality as sameness. It is comparative. To
know if you are equal, you have to be equal to somebody who sets
the standard you compare yourself with. According to this approach,
gender difference is the evil of women’s situation because it enforces
the nonsameness of women and men. Feminism-drawing from socialist feminism lessons about class and privilege, from lesbian feminism lessons about sexuality, from the feminism of women of color
lessons about racism and self-respecting communities of resistancefi llHT il; not define equality this way.
‘l{b*,5: ipns,
@-o@-o{hen.things.
Differentiation, to feminism, is just one strategy in keeping women
down. Liberalism has been subversive for us in that it signals that we
have the audacity to compare ourselves with men, to measure ourselves b@ms. \4h.”dodffi2:[o the
r soTo value
, thing else. We seek not only to be valued as who we are, but to have
i access to the process of the definition of value itself . In this way, our
‘ demand for access becomes also a demand for change.
Put another way, Mrs. Schlafly and I both argue that in a sense
“women are not persons,” but with very different meanings. When
the right affirms women as women, it affirms woman’s body as a determinant of woman’s existing role, which it sees as her rightful
place. Feminists criticize the social disparities between the sexes that
not only exclude women from personhood as that has been defined,
that not only distort woman’s body and mind inseparably, but also
define personhood in ways that are repugnant to us. Existing society’s image of a person never has represented or encompassed what
we, as women, with women’s experience, either have had access to
or aspire to.
pursuits. But
cid,aNper’-Wmtm*somen.
We also criticize rnale
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women’s we
This is not accurate.
imposed upon our bodies-what it means to be a woman or a man
is a social process and, as such, is subject to change. Feminists do
not seek sameness with men. We more criticize what men have made
of themselves and the world that we, too, inhabit. We do not seek
I have asserted that women’s place is not only different but inferior,
that it is not chosen but enforced. To document that, I need to ask:
what is women’s situation? Because it happens to each of us in isolation, one at a time, it looks individual, even chosen. Mrs. Schlafly
teaches that if we follow the rules for women’s role, are energetic,
cheerful, diligent, “positive,” and make smart choices, the world is
ours. To confront her requires us to ask not only what happens to
women who step out of women’s place, but also what happens to us
lrz that place. What about women who do not seek different bargains
with society, but live out society’s traditional bargain for women, the
bargain she defends?
I want to share with you a body count from women’s collective
experience in America. We all start as little girls. One of two hundred
of us, conservatively estimated, is
father. When brothers, stepfathers, uncles, and friends of the family
are included, some estimate that the rates rise to two out of five.r As
we grow we are pressureffi a&dffir&s6*x.iqr
vi,r& –
aliggd* And we are, for behavior that is not punished, is even encouraged, in little boys. I would like Mrs. Schlafly to explain that.
Any one of us can be @fue**:.,Gonservd- tiv s. A recent random
study-i een victi,+^ -4″=-8..s-.+ iEres+_including
in ddf *nit”g”.. (olor.2 What
does Mrs. Schlafly propose to do against rape? What is her position
on rape in marriage? Is there any such thing, or is it women’s duty to
submit? Could that be part of why rape is so prevalent? In the same
random study, onlv..7.8@?,iei*encing ro
sexual assault or harassment.3 How does Mrs. Schlafly’s vision of society account for or respond to this?
J+
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dominance over men.
Our issue
Approaches
Women are systematically beaten in our homes by men with whom
we are close -,ttis er”M”one*hird
oe
stud’ia+I4i@@red
men/
Most women work outside the home as well as inside it-in the
female job ghetto, in high-heeled, low-status jobs with low pay. Mrs.
Schlafly purports to be for equal pay for equal work, but unequal pay
is a function of the traditional male-headed family she defends, in
which a man’s higher wage is justified because he supports a family.
A woman’s wages are extra. This is part of why women’s work, even
when we head families, as increasingly we do, brings home fiftythree to fifty-nine cents to the average male dollar. Even adjusted for
education and years worked, women make less.6 How does Mrs.
Schlafly explain this?
Marriage is women’s destiny, a destiny she defends and seeks to
extend. Now three of five marriages end in divorce after about five
years, leaving the woman with approximately one child, approximately no income, and a standard of living drastically below that of
her former husband.T Who among us can afford Mrs. Schlafly’s
“choice” of exclusive home and motherhood? The privileged few,
mostly white and upper-class women. Why doesn’t she demand a
wage for the housework she vaunts-and with it social security, pension rights, and disability insurance for her work, not his. Every right
she seeks for homemakers is based on the man’s work, not the woman’s. Doesn’t she know that housework ls work? The government
doesn’t have to pay for it: private business or families can.
In this context, it is instructive to ask: What is woman’s best economic option? In 1981, the average streetwalker in Manhattan earned
between $500 and $1,000 a week.8 Aside from modeling (with which
it has much in common), hooking is the only job for which women
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boyfriends
lence to women and calls that civilization.
ried to their murderers.s When
spouses, the figures rise.
US
a half
will she tell
Not by Law Alone
as a group are paid more than men. Check that out in terms of what
we are valued for. A recent study shows that the only difference between hookers and other women with similar class background is
that the prostitutes earn twice as much.e Thirteen percent of us are
or have been prostitutes.l0 She can “reject” it it she wants. But instead
of calling us immoral, why doesn’t Mrs. Schlafly target the conditions
that make prostitution fundamental to women’s social status?
Now consider how similar the condition of prostitutes is not only
to that of women who make a more permanent sex-for-survival exchange, but to those of us who must make it daily, Sexual harassment
on the job amounts to that, except we have to do all that other work
too. A study of the federal workplace found that 42 percent of all
female employees reported being sexually harassed in the preceding
two years, 17 percent severely.ll
make a group the size of Denver, Colorado. Does she think we ask
for rape too?
While all this goes on,
None of us can afford this risk, bu
women’of color. In New York in 1970, hall of the women who died
from abortion-related causes were Black; 44 percent were Puerto Rican.12 Mrs. Schlafly works to make abortion once again criminal, or
as burdened a choice as it can be made, without in any way empolvering women to refuse forced sex. Why doesn’t she ask whether
women really have power over the sex act when she blames us for
getting pregnant? What is her position on contraception? What is she
doing to make abortion unnecessary?
The feminist view of women’s situation comes to this: across time
and space, there is too much variance in women’s status, role, and
treatment for it to be biological, and too little variance for it to individual. In this view, women and men appear biologically more alike
and socially more different than is generally supposed. Our social
treatment certainly is different-the difference between power and
powerlessness. Woman’s commonality, which includes our diversity,
comes from our shared social position. This is our explanation of our
situation. I want to know: does Mrs. Schlafly think rape, battery,
prostitution, incest, sexual harassment, unequal pay, and forced marences reasonable
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Approaches
vl ? Are they sex differences?
\t
women’s situation seriously from
women’s standpoint. We have exposed the outrages of forced sex and
forced motherhood. Women respond to feminism:before,I thought
it was my fault. Mrs. Schlafly says, ii is your fault. Women respond
to feminism: before, I thought I was alone. Mrs. Schlafly says, you
are alone.
Now I want to consider with you the role of the law in the future
of women’s rights. The law alone cannot change our social condition.
It can help. So far, it has helped remarkably little. The way the crime
of rape is defined and what we have to prove to be believed do not
fit our experience of the injury. The reality is that not only married
women, but also women men know or live with, can be raped at will.
Men know this. Rape is not illegal, it is regulated. When a man assaults his wife, it is still seen as a domestic squabble, as permissible;
when she fights back, it is a crime. On the other hand, it has been
empowering to women that sexual harassment has become illegal. It
has meant that a woman who resists a man’s incursions knows she
is not alone, that someone besides her thinks that access to her body
is not automatically his right. The law has also helped women not to
be considered criminals when we need to end a pregnancy. We punish ourselves enough.
The feminist question for the future of women’s rights is: if we acquire and use these forms of power, including economics (the modern equivalent of the hunt), the use of physical force (of which war
is a form), and the ill we use them
we use I
not w of
identifications? what are our loyalties? to whom are we accountable?
Women who oppose the ERA see it as making them neutered “persons” yet fear they will be treated as women. This is not an illusory
fear. Women say to the state: we do not trust you to give as much as
you take. Feminists concur. But opposing the ERA on this basis plays
on these fears without confronting the fact that it is an unequal so26
I see the ERA in this context. T nd
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.i”,y-, society that the ERA in women’s hands could improvewhich makes these fears rational. I am for the ERA. I think it is progressive if not transformative. It is one of many small initiatives we
can use. Whenever I hear the right attack it, I am more for it than I
was before, because they think it will be so far-reaching. The realityand I do not concede that the ERA is dead-is more modest. It would
give women a place in the Constitution, strengthen some gains we
have made, and provide one basis for going further.
Two of the right’s favorite problems with ERA are the draft and gay
marriages. ERA would probably compel the military to be genderneutral on some level. I ink
if a war is
ralt ls pro a
. tnemalexs&l&”,#aft
We have had enough of policies
sequences of those policies. As to the civilian effects of the military,
it trains men in violence. Battered women complain that their husbands learned abusive skills in the military. Don’t they want us to
learn to kill?
On the issue of gay marriages, I doubt the ERA would be interpreted to legalize them, although I would not be against that. Most
marriages would continue to be heterosexual; Persons secure in their
heterosexuality would not be threatened by the availability of this
option. I do wonder, though, why gay men and lesbians would want
marriage, even as feminists are exposing some of its problems as a
social institution. I understand the desire to legitimate unions, and
the legal consequences are not minimal. I do think it might do something amazing to the entire institution of marriage to recognize the
unity of two “persons” between whom no superiority or inferiority
could be presumed on the basis of gender.
I am clear that everything women need will not be accomplished
by the ERA, and not by law alone. To have a future, women’s rights
will have to mean an end to pornography-not its containment or
suppression or regulation, but an end to the demand for eroticizing
women’s degradation. I mean a world in which men are no longer
. I would like Mrs. Schlafly to
i6il frersef to the question: why do they want it? Until the day
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discriminates against men. It is also profoundly inconsistent for Mrs.
that
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Approaches
The ERA is most positive when we remember what it is part of,
when we remember what it would be like to have rights worth having. Not only to be allowed to play with the boys, but to question
why the point and ethic of sports is competition. Not just to be taken
bodies and express our sexuality in ways that are not scripted out of
scraps of stereotype. We want not only to be able to defend ourselves,
but not to have to, every minute of every day, and to change the
conditions that have made the test of strength not whether one can
bring forth life, but whether one can end it.
So that we remember where we are going-and, in Monique Wittig’s words, “failing that, invent,” t3 I propose we ponder a further
step. I call it the women’s rights amendment. It reads: the subordination of women to men is herebv abolished.
Look: Women resent the society that defines rape as something other
than a violation of us, that does not believe us when we protest that
pornography as freedom of speech without considering that it alscr
terrorizes and silences women, ot as the right would have it, the
why men
This is a society that turns away from the beating of women in the
home, which it calls a, haven, and affirms the family to which battery
is endemic. It resists paying women for housework, the work most
of us do, saying our reward is commendation and appreciation. We
would like to be able to eat that. It resists equal jobs for us, and equal
pay when we do the same or comparable work, yet refuses to see that
our so-called options are connected: r,r,ork for nothing at home, little
in the marketplace, a little more (at least for a while) in the street. We
resent having motherhood forced on us by unwanted sex, being deprived of or discouraged from using contraception, having guilt or
poverty keep us from abortions, and then being saddled with the
entire care of children-alone. We want to be able to want our chilI
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woment bodies are not used to sell cars, cosmetics are not a necessity
to the success of a woman’s image, and we are not humiliated and
violation, that looks to make it all right by asking whether we deserved it or desired it or en;oyed it. We resent the society that protects
Not by Law Alone
dren. We resent being blamed for what men do to us, being told we
provoked it when we are raped or sexually harassed, living in constant fear if we face the fact that it could happen to us at any minute,
becoming willing, being shrunk to the size of a life trying just not to
be next on the list of victims, knowing that most men could probably,
statistically, get away with it. We have had enough of the glorification
of this heterosexuality, this erotization of dominance and submission,la while woman-centered sexual expression is denied and stigmatized.
I would like to return to the issue of who speaks for women and
ask a feminist question to answer it. How do our lives express our
analysis? Mrs. Schlafly tells us that being a woman has not gotten in
her way. That she knows what she is saying because it happened to
her. She could be one of the exceptional 7.8 percent, although who’s
to know? I do submit to you, though, that any man who had a law
degree and had done graduate work in political science; had given
testimony on a wide range of important subjects for decades; had
done effective and brilliant political, policy, and organizational work
within the party; had published widely, including nine books; was
instrumental in stopping a major social initiative to amend the Constitution just short of victory dead in its tracks; and had a beautiful,
accomplished family-any man like that would have a place in the
current administration. Having raised six children, a qualification not
many men can boast of (and if so probably with less good reason)
did not make the difference. I would accept correction if I am wrong,
and she may yet be appointed. She was widely reported to have
wanted such a post, but I don’t believe everything I read, especially
about women. She certainly deserved a place in the Defense Department. Phyllis Schlafly is a qualified woman.
I charge that the Reagan administration has discriminated against
Phyllis Schlafly on the basis of her sex. Not that she’s “running with
the wrong crowd”-her phrase for women whom men victimize. She
has been excluded by the image that women are unfit for the things
she is good at, rejected by the men she helped put in power, unfairly
presented as shrewish and uncongenial and odd and cold by the
press. But like many women, although on a grander scale than most,
and taking many of us with her, she has also been enlisted as a participant in her own exclusion. She has actively furthered the image
of women as properly outside of official power, as at best volunteers,
a role she continues to play-although notice she had to leaae home
to defend its primacy to her as a woman-so that now she has no
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Approaches
explanation for her exclusion other than her own less than totally
“positive woman” attitude.
For it is the values of the traditionally male spheres that define the
underlying continuity, the central coherence, the guiding preoccupations of Mrs. Schlafly’s life: the hunt-material success individually, economic policy on the political level; warfare-triumph in competition in her personal life, defense policy on the national level;
religion and morality-the virtues of motherhood and family life,
and the pursuit of traditional social values on the level of social design, as in her opposition to abortion, and her career in law, the secular religion.
Before she decided that feminists create the problems we fight,
back in 1967, she knew sexism when she encountered it. When she
was attacked for having six children as a disqualification for a party
post, she placed a cartoon in her book Safe-Not Sorry showing a door
labeled “Republican Party Headquarters,” with a sign reading “Conservatives and Women Please Use Servants’Entrance.” Now the conservatives are in. Are women still to use the back door?
I am not saying that her finger near the nuclear trigger would make
me feel particularly safe-just that by the standards set by the men
in the job, she should be there. I privately believe she has been trivialized by her association with women’s issues. I’m saying her analysis of her own experience is wrong. Their foot is on her neck, too,
and I, for one, am willing to give her this chance to change her mind.
How do you know when a group is on the bottom? It may be some
indication when they can be assaulted, and authorities ignore them;
physically abused, and people turn away or find it entertaining; economically deprived, and it is seen as all they are worth; made the
object of jokes, and few ask what makes the jokes funny; imaged as
animallike, confined to a narrow range of tasks and functions, and
told it is all harmless or inevitable and even for their benefit as well
as the best they can expect, given what they are. These are all true
for women. In addition, we are excluded from inner circles and then
rejected because we don’t know the inside story; told we can’t think
and had our thoughts appropriated for the advancement of others;
told the pedestal is real and called ungrateful and lacking in initiative
when we call it a cage; and blamed for creating our conditions when
we resist them. When a few of us overcome all this, we are told we
show there are no barriers there and are used as examples to put
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explanation for her exclusion other than her own less than totally
“positive woman” attitude.
For it is the values of the traditionally male spheres that define the
underlying continuity, the central coherence, the guiding preoccupations of Mrs. Schlafly’s life: the hunt-material success individually, economic policy on the political level; warfare-triumph in competition in her personal life, defense policy on the national level;
religion and morality-the virtues of motherhood and family life,
and the pursuit of traditional social values on the level of social design, as in her opposition to abortion, and her career in law, the secular religion.
Before she decided that feminists create the problems we fight,
back in 7967, she knew sexism when she encountered it. When she
was attacked for having six children as a disqualification for a party
post, she placed a cartoon in her book Safe-Not Sorry showing a door
labeled “Republican Party Headquarters,” with a sign reading “Conservatives and Women Please Use Servants’Entrance.” Now the conservatives are in. Are women still to use the back door?
I am not saying that her finger near the nuclear trigger would make
me feel particularly safe-just that by the standards set by the men
in the job, she should be there. I privately believe she has been trivialized by her association with women’s issues. I’m saying her analysis of her own experience is wrong. Their foot is on her neck, too,
and I, for one, am willing to give her this chance to change her mind.
How do you know when a group is on the bottom? It may be some
indication when they can be assaulted, and authorities ignore them;
physically abused, and people turn away or find it entertaining; economically deprived, and it is seen as all they are worth; made the
object of jokes, and few ask what makes the jokes funny; imaged as
animallike, confined to a narrow range of tasks and functions, and
told it is all harmless or inevitable and even for their benefit as well
as the best they can expect, given what they are. These are all true
for women. In addition, we are excluded from inner circles and then
rejected because we don’t know the inside story; told we can’t think
and had our thoughts appropriated for the advancement of others;
told the pedestal is real and called ungrateful and lacking in initiative
when we call it a cage; and blamed for creating our conditions when
we resist them. When a few of us overcome all this, we are told we
show there are no barriers there and are used as examples to put
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other women down. She made it-why can’t you? We are used as
tokens while every problem we share is treated as a special case.
“Look around you,” as Mrs. Schlafly says. If the fact that women
are physically less able than men is proven by our comparative absence in physically demanding roles, why isn’t the fact that women
are not as smart as men proven by our comparative lack of presence
in tenured faculties, Congress, the courts, executive boardrooms,
university presidencies, editorships of newspapers and publishing
houses?ls Why don’t the few women who achieve athletically prove
that any woman can, just as Mrs. Schlafly tells you the tokens in the
roles I have mentioned prove that we are all capable of such achievements, if only we would try? She says, any woman can.
women can’t so long as those who make it are the privi
but the
will alwa ,s/ rrv rr !
. You can’t claim to speak
for 53 percent and support changes for a few.
Let’s return to the question of personhood and rights. Women of
the right know that women are socially not persons. Either they acquiesce in this or are fearful of embracing the illusory image of life as
“person,” knowing they will still be treated as women. No wonder they
want protection. But male supremacy is a protection racket. It keeps
you dependent on the very people who brutalize yotr so you will
keep needing their protection. Feminists know that protection produces the need for more protection–and no rights of your own.16
I have often wanted to ask Mrs. Schlafly: why are you so afraid of
our freedom? Now I am beginning to see that if you assume, as she
does, that sex inequality is inalterable, freedom looks like open season on women. We deserve better, and we will have it. I personally
promise you, Mrs. Schlafly, that the only question for the future of
women’s rights, as with the ERA, is not whether but when.17
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, as an individual woman, can.