Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited

Author(s): GORDON GRAHAM

Source: Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1994), pp. 155-170
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Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol.11,No. 2, 1994

Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited

GORDON GRAHAM

abstract This essay considers the movement away from a feminism based upon liber
principles, such as John Stuart Mill espoused, and towards a radical feminism which seek
upon more recent explorations of psychology, biology and sexuality. It argues that som
moves are philosophically suspect and that liberal feminism can accommodate the more s
elements in these radical lines of thought. [I]

If we take the heart of political liberalism to be the attempt to create political struc
will realise and respect the f undamental equality of citizens and their right to dete
themselves those things that are in their own best interests, we can see this aspiratio
in many of the political movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ant
and anti-apartheid, whatever other motivations their proponents may have had, b
upon an extension of the ideal of free and equal persons to groups that had hith
denied it. So too with feminism. For the most part the arguments of early feminist
purport to show that women are equal to men and therefore entitled to equal
political standing. The grounds upon which this claim was made differ, of cou
modern versions of feminism emphasize the need for equal economic and social op
as well as equal legal and political standing, but the basic strategy is the sa
consistent application of liberal principles to the treatment of women.
More recently still, however, feminism of this liberal kind has come under att
more radical versions. These versions also have their differences, some of
considerable that it may be misleading to speak of'radical feminism' as though it
thing. Still, here too, it seems to me, there is a basic strategy. Ali versions of
feminism, however else they may vary, reject liberal feminism on the ground
understanding of relations between men and women is too superficial and its prescr
gender neutrality in matters social and political is too simple minded. In this essay I
examine this radical feminist challenge. I shall argue that though there are con
strengths to be found in these radical lines of thought, they do not in fact obli
abandon liberal feminism and arguably may require us to endorse it.

There is no occupation concerned with the management of social affairs whi

belongs either to woman or to man as such; [n]atural gifts are to be found here
there in both creatures alike; and every occupation is open to both as far as t
natures are concerned.

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156 G. Graham

This claim was made two and a half thousand years ago in Plato's Repub
first extended statements of feminism based on liberal principles are probab
John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women, with a forerunner in Mary W
Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In both these works the argument is t
are as good as men, morally and intellectually, they should not therefore
inferior or less powerful position than men. Wollstonecraft, influenced by t
of social thought led by Richard Price, argues that the fundamental moral c
'person', and whiie men are generally treated as persons, women are treat
task then is to secure a world in which individuals are for the most part
irrespective of their sex. As Mill, writing in 1869, puts it, the legal relation
sexes should be governed by 'a principle of perfect equality, admitting no po
on the one side, nor disability on the other' [3],
Mill's essay on liberty has made him a major figure amongst liberal phil
essay on the subjection of women, given its date, has a surprisingly mode
may be taken, indeed, as the locus classicus of liberal feminism, and in fact
liberal arguments against slavery to the status of women, holding that in
respects the history of women is the history of a social enslavement which
been abandoned.

In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of
the female. And many ages elapsed, some of the ages of high cultivation, before
any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social
necessity, either of the slavery of the one or of the other. By degrees such thinkers
did arise: and (the general progress of society assisting) the slavery of the male sex
has, in all the countries of Christian Europe at least . . . been at length abolished,
and that of the female sex has been gradually changed into a milder form of
dependence. But this dependence, as it exists at present, is not an original
institution, taking a fresh start from considerations of justice and expendiency —
it is the primitive state of slavery lasting on . . . [4]

According to Mill, sheer familiarity with the fact of women's subordination to men
explains the widespread belief, on the part of women themselves as well as men, that it must
be so. When advocates of the status quo are pressed to find some justificatory reason, the
age-old, universal existence of inequality between the sexes leads them to appeal to the idea
that there is some natural difference between men and women which should determine their
respective social roles. Even Pufendorf, who in many respects is a liberal individualist and
regards men and women as fundamentally equal, thinks that an institution of marriage in
which women are subject to their husbands 'squares more precisely with the condition of
human nature' [5]. Mill therefore makes his chief argument one against this contention,
and, though there is much more to be said about this, in context it seems to me a conclusive
one:

One thing we may be certain of — that what is contrary to women's nat

they never will be made to do simply by giving their nature free play. T
of mankind to interfere on behalf of nature, for fear lest nature should
in effecting its purpose, is an altogether unnecessary solicitude. What
nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing. Wh
do, but not so well as the men who are their competitors, competition

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 Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited 157

exclude them from; since nobody asks for protective duties and bounties in favour
of women; it is only asked that the present bounties and protective duties in favour
of men should be recalled. If women have a greater natural inclination for some
things than for others, there is no need of laws or social inculcation to make the
majority of them do the former in preference to the latter. Whatever women's
services are most wanted for, the free play of competition will hold out the
strongest inducements to them to undertake. And as the words imply, they are
most wanted for the things for which they are most fit; by the apportionment of
which to them, the collective faculties of the two sexes can be applied on the whole
with the greatest sum of valuable result. [6]

It is perhaps worth pointing out that Mill is here taking no view on whether women do
have any special suitedness to specific social roles. His argument is intended to show that
whatever natural propensities there may be is not to the point when it comes to deciding
upon the legal standing of women. In alluding to womanly fittedness at all, he is merely
conceding a supposition to the other side of the argument. This is, no doubt, partly a
stylistic concession to the hope of a wider hearing, but there is another concession in the
passage just quoted which is not so innocuous and the rejection of which has constituted the
main development of liberal feminism. This is his contention that in the cause of women's
rights 'nobody asks for protective duties or bounties in favour of women'.
Mill strives for what is sometimes called 'gender blindness' on the part of society and the
law. And perhaps this is indeed the end at which liberalism should aim, an idea to which we
will return. But simply to commence a policy of strict equality between the sexes, given the
history of their relations to date, may well be to consolidate relations of inequality. For
instance, Mill was a fervent advocate of admission of women to all levels of education. Given
certain socio-historical facts, simply to treat applications from women for admission to
institutions of higher education on equal terms with applications from men is likely to result
in continued male domination of these institutions. The point here is exactly that which can
be made with respect to ethnic minorities. Those who have suffered serious inequality of
treatment will not be raised to equality merely by an open door policy; past disadvantages
may, as a matter of fact, make them unable to walk through the open door.
Thus the removal of legal impediments is not sufficient for liberal equality; some material
steps are also needed if the proper operation of a gender blind law is to be realised — hence
the policies of affirmative action or positive discrimination on behalf of women and others.
Those who press for such policies with vigour are usually regarded as 'radicals', but it is
important to see that they need be committed to nothing more than thoroughgoing
application of liberal principles in particular historical circumstances. The distribution of
wealth, power and responsibility between men and women should, from a liberal point of
view, be the outcome of free competition between individuals pursuing their self-chosen
purposes. To achieve this, something may well have to be done about the conditions with
which we begin; a given distribution can only be regarded as the outcome of free interaction
between equal parties if it arises from what has come to be referred to as 'a level playing
field'. In present historical circumstances, securing the necessary levelling may take an
extended period of social policy in which there are indeed 'protective duties and bounties in
favour of women'.

Nor are the formulations of the law or the policies of governments necessarily enough. It
may also take a self-conscious effort to eliminate the more nebulous forms by which cultural

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158 G. Graham

bias is perpetuated, hence recommendations about the playthings of chi

rejection of gender-inclusive language, for instance. All such affirmative
'radical' they are alleged (or purport) to be, are merely extensions of the
liberal principle. For this reason they are to be promoted and sustained n
sake but only so far and for so long as they are needed as means to the end
law and social policy. Just how effective they are, and when they may
achieved their effect, are difficult questions, but they are questions for soci
philosophy. In feminist programmes of this sort there is no fundamental am
values involved.
By contrast, a truly radical feminism questions the aims and values of the liberal world
itself — a world in which men and women are treated equally — or at least raises questions
about the fundamental values that liberal feminists accept. Carole Pateman, for instance,
thinks that conceiving of relations between men and women in terms of freely entered
contracts 'can obscure an important question: does contract become immediately attractive
to feminists or socialists if entry is truly voluntary, without coercion?' [7] In arriving at an
answer, we have to expose a crucial assumption on the part of liberal feminism.

To argue that patriarchy is best confronted by endeavouring to render sexual

difference politically irrelevant is to accept the view that the civic (public) realm
and the 'individual' are uncontaminated by patriarchal subordination. [8]

Radical Feminism may thus be seen to be the aspiration to a social and political theory
which is uncontaminated in this way.

There are at least three sets of ideas which have led feminists to reject liberalism. These ideas
are distinguishable, but in many writers there are elements of all of them at work in the
formulation of a more radical feminism. However, for analytical purposes it is possible to
separate certain themes and to consider them in turn. The first of these radical feminisms
has to do with differences between male and female psychology, the second with the nature
of human reproduction and the third with sexuality. Interestingly, of course, those who
exploit these ideas come into line, to a degree, with those traditionalists who have also
rejected the ideal of liberal equality between the sexes, but what makes such a rejection
feminist, it seems to me, is its being motivated by a concern with (what is perceived to be)
the true interest of women.
For convenience we might call the first 'psychological feminism' [9] and though there are
several important feminist writers who have drawn upon psychology and especially
psychoanalytic theory, I shall focus on one of the most influential texts, Carol Gilligan's In a
Different Voice. It should be said at the outset, perhaps, that in her introductory remarks
Gilligan is careful not to overstate the connexions between her researches in educational
psychology and a full feminist theory.

The different voice I describe (she says) is characterized not by gender but by
theme. Its association with women is an empirical observation, and it is primarily
through women's voices that I trace its development. But this association is not
absolute, and the contrasts between male and female voices are presented here to

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 Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited 159

highlight a distinction between two modes of thought and to focus a problem of

interpretation rather than present a generalization about either sex. [10]

Despite this note of caution, however, both Gilligan herself in a good deal of what follo
and many of those who have expanded upon the ideas in her work, have generally relat
to those differences between male and female that might be important for feminism. Th
are differences in what we may call their moral psychology. Gilligan's researches foll
upon those of Lawrence Kohlberg in the attempt to delineate stages of moral developm
in the life-cycle of children and young adults and she concludes that what has been taken
be the 'standard' pattern of development in human beings in general is in fact determined
patterns typical of masculinity. Where the moral development of women has diverged fro
the 'normal' pattern, this has, consequently, been regarded as evidence for the greater mo
limitations of females. Thus, the 'failure' to display a movement over time from view
moral problems and human relations in terms of personal feeling and emoti
involvement to the impartial viewpoint of rights and principles has been regarded as
attenuation in moral development.
But according to Gilligan

[w]hen one begins with the study of women and derives developmental constructs
from their lives, the outline of a moral conception different from that described by
Freud, Piaget, or Kohlberg begins to emerge and informs a different description
of development. In this conception, the moral problem arises from conflicting
responsibilities rather than from competing rights and requires for its resolution a
mode of thinking that is contextual and narrative rather than formal and abstract.
This conception of morality as concerned with the activity of care centers moral
development around the understanding of responsibility and relationships, just as
the conception of morality as fairness ties moral development to the understanding
of rights and rules. [II]

If Gilligan is right, what the evidence that psychologists have gathered shows is actually
repeated difference between female and male perceptions of moral problems.
difference, between what has come to be known as 'the caring perspective' and 'the jus
perspective', is not a matter of worse and better, less developed and more developed, but o
markedly different approach to human relationships in the moral mentality of women an
men.

Gilligan's investigations have been subjected to scrutiny from many dif

including their methodological adequacy. Some have argued that, even
caution, there is gross overgeneralisation at work, and others have claime
possible sources of difference — race or class for instance — have been
others have wondered if the 'different' voice she detects is not itself distor
Such doubts and queries are certainly important, though for the purpose
philosophy of feminism, they are not immediately to the point. Suppose
more especially those who have followed her are right and that, in gen
psychology of men and women differs in the way suggested. What is the be
the debate between liberal feminism and its critics? One line of thought
itself.

It is a theme of contemporary liberal philosophy that the foundations of social

arrangements may be explained and justified by the device of a contract. Thus Rawls's

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160 G. Graham

'original position' or Gautier's 'morals by agreement' purport to supply an

interested human being with a rationally compelling account of the basis and
association. Now if it is true that, as a matter of fact, the perspective of jus
rights is one readily adopted by one half of the human race, and equall
adopted by the other half, it seems to follow that contemporary liberal p
purporting to address itself to any and every human being actually fails to d
putting this is to say that the moral psychology of deliberators in the O
contrary to the way Rawls presents it, is partial rather than universal,
systematically partial. If so, the fundamental basis of modern liberal theory
and misrepresented.
This is of course only one more attack on liberalism at the point at which
have attacked it, most notably Michael Sandel in Liberalism and the Limits o
seems to have more obviously practical implications. The aim of liberal femin
espoused by Mill is to reform the public world by eliminating legal and socia
women so that there is open competition for educational advance, polit
gainful employment, a competition indifferent to the gender of the competi
being suggested, the conception of 'the public world' at work in liberal f
mentality of men better than that of women, such competition cannot be r
open and, whatever the law on equal opportunities may say, must resul
Indeed, many would argue that the very distinction between public and pr
such an important part in political liberalism is itself constructed upon a fal
of the psychology of 'persons'. In short, what masquerades as a neutral
extension of liberal philosophy is in fact an especially subtle form in wh
maintained.
If this is true and if, as seems clear to all but feminist separatists (both left and right
wing) [12], men and women must continue to share a social existence, feminism requires
more than simple equal opportunity. It requires a restructuring of the ways in which social
institutions are conceived to allow for these different approaches to employment, election
and so on. So for instance, whereas the application of liberal feminism might be thought to
require the provision of workplace creches in order to allow women to compete more
effectively with men in the job market, psychological feminism calls for a reconsideration of
the terms of employment. Creches and the like arise from a conception of women as
potential men. As a result the 'opportunities' they create are real opportunities only for those
women who are already sufficiently male-like in mentality, or are prepared to unlearn their
natural attitudes in order to take advantage of them. And since these will be in a minority,
masculinity will continue to dominate the social world.
One of the attractions of this way of thinking is that it seems to offer a potential
explanation for some puzzling phenomena — the continuation of male dominance in areas of
life — higher education for instance — where there has by now been a considerable history
of'equal opportunity' and 'affirmative action'. If all that is required is equal opportunity as
Mill conceives it, equal distribution should follow fairly swiftly as a matter or course, since
we can reasonably assume that there are no 'built in' differences in intelligence. But it has
not done so, and this seems to generate a further need for explanation. Gilligan's suggestion
that different psychologies are at work in producing this distribution is one plausible and
interesting theory and lends credibility to her general contention.
Nevertheless, there are considerable difficulties in arriving at a clear picture of the
alternative social world psychological feminism requires, a world which takes proper

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 Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited 161

account of these different voices. Wherever the justice perspective and the
perspective conflict it would seem that social institutions must favour one rathe
another, or else be founded upon a wholly new, and genuinely universal, categor
'person'. Such a category must not implicitly favour one voice, however, as liberal noti
person have done hitherto, but be 'androgynous' that is, an amalgam of the elem
essential to each of the two voices.
The idea of androgyny has been widely discussed and several important objection
theoretical and practical have emerged. As far as practice goes, the task of c
androgynous human beings to populate the reconstituted social world seems
daunting. Can the advance of feminist causes really require a refashioning of the ment
of men and women across the world? If so, psychological feminism will strike many as
better than a council of despair. As far as theory goes, replacing the traditional
conception of moral personhood with that of androgyny is also open to objection. First
is a question as to whether the two voices, at least as Gilligan represents them, can act
combined. Recent discussions of the relations between deontology and consequent
are both pertinent and illuminating here. If the 'male' concern with justice is a concern
rights conceived as side-constraints, and 'female' caring is directed chiefly at ben
results, there will be the same conflict here as the familiar conflict between Kanti
Utilitarian ethics.

Second, is there any reason to want this combination? Might it not result in the worst
rather than the best of both worlds? Or in mere combination rather than integration, what
Mary Daly has described as 'John Travolta and Farrah Fawcett-Majors scotch-taped
together' [13]? Even if we could find satisfactory answers to these questions, there is a
further, deeper doubt to be raised. Analyses such as Gilligan's arguably rest upon an
essentially superficial understanding of the differences between men and women. What she
points to are, at best, observed differences in the expression of mentalities. In order to
understand how they might be altered and/or combined, we have to understand the factors
that give rise to them. Androgyny is only a realistic and desirable end if we can see how it
might come about. And to see this requires an understanding of how and why the
differences arose. Another, and somewhat Marxist way of putting this is to say that
Gilligan's investigations proceed at the level of formulated ideas; what is needed is an
analysis and explanation of the material conditions of those ideas. To concede that this is so,
it seems to me, is to acknowledge the need to consider a second set of ideas that have had
considerable effect in feminist theory, namely those concerned with biology and repro
duction.

Another influential feminist text is The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone [14]. This
cannot be regarded as a response to Gilligan since its publication preceded that of In a
Different Voice by some twelve years. Nevertheless it is instructive, I think, to see
Firestone's ideas as a more radical extension of the line of thought suggested by Gilligan's
work. Firestone's orientation is basically Marxist: that is to say, she seeks to explain the
historical development of social forms in terms of material forces. Moreoever, she employs
the idea of class antagonism in the explanation. But the relevant classes are not those
involved in production so much as reproduction. The general idea is this.

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162 G. Graham

There is a radical difference in the contribution of men and women to the business of
human reproduction. Whereas the role of the male — insemination — is short, transitory
and relatively cost free, that of the female — labour, childbirth and nurturing — is long,
enduring and costly in psychological and social terms. This radical difference is a brute
matter of fact about reproductive relations as they have hitherto been in the history of
humankind. If there are differences in the moral mentalities of men and women, as
psychological feminism alleges, these reflect and are the outcome of this more fundamental
difference. Consequently, to amend the respective psychologies of men and women, even if
it were possible, would be fruitless while their respective contributions to human
reproduction remain so disparate.
Even if we reject Firestone's underlying Marxism and deny that the relations between the
two reproductive classes are antagonistic, we can hardly deny that the fundamental
institutions of every culture history has known are built around this difference. In particular
it is plausible to think that the liberal distinction between private and public worlds is
fashioned in the light of it. The private world of family and personal relations is clearly the
first world of women while the public world of impersonal relations and interpersonal affairs
is plainly the principal preserve of men. This has to do not with the influence, baneful or
otherwise, of philosophical or moral theories, but with the simple facts of human
reproduction. A woman's place is in the home because biology requires that it be so. The
world of politics and industry is a man's world because biology's demands upon men are
small.
So much of course will be agreed bv the most diehard traditionalist. But The Dialectic of
Sex has other dimensions that traditionalists are less likely to agree upon. What makes it
feminist, in fact, is its recognition that the institutions of private and public which biology
throws up give rise to quite different power relations. The public world of politics and
wealth creation and the private world of the family are not merely different spheres of
human activity. The first controls the second, and since biology frees men to dominate the
first and puts demands on women which severely restrict their ability to go beyond the
second, reproductive relations can thus be seen to generate patriarchy. Whilst
traditionalism sees patriarchy as the natural, and unalterable, order of things, it is patriarchy
above all else that feminism seeks to undermine and destroy.
But if it is the basic facts of biology that generate and sustain patriarchy, how is it possible
to destroy it? Firestone's answer is 'Technology'. For the first time in human history,
technological innovation — contraception, artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization,
implantation, even artificial placentae — present us with the prospect of radically altering
relations between men and women. By these technological means the reproductive
contribution of men and women will cease to be substantially different, and with that change
we may hope for, and expect, a corresponding alteration in the social roles that men and
women have been forced by biology to play. On this account androgyny will come about
through a change in material conditions, and even if we cannot say much in advance about
what androgynous people will be like, we can say that with their advent there will come an
end to patriarchy.
Firestone's analysis, it seems to me, has the advantage of being rooted in inescapably
important fact. Nevertheless to my mind it suffers from two defects similar to those that are
to be found in all Marxist-inspired analyses. First, despite the assertions of Marx and Engels
to the contrary, prescriptions based upon such analyses are generally Utopian. In
Firestone's case the Utopiauism is not far to seek. Just as Marx saw the resolution of class

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 Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited 163

antagonism in a world whose productive capacity was unlimited, so Firestone must hope for
a world in which the very considerable resources needed to make advanced technology
possible are available to all. That this is a Utopian dream is not a matter that needs much
argument. If salvation is possible only through the most advanced technology, salvation is at
best available to a tiny proportion of the 5.2 billion people currently estimated to inhabit the
world. Resources on the scale required are simply not available, and I understand by
'Utopian' any desirable political solution which is effective in a world we do not, and are
unlikely to, inhabit. Secondly, by stressing the material conditions under which social forms
emerge, Marx and Engels did not take sufficiently seriously the possibility that the influence
should extend in both directions [15] or that the worlds of social institutions and ideas
should on occasions have lives of their own. Perhaps it is true that the distinction between
the public and the private owes its origins to deep biological facts, but it does not follow that
such a distinction cannot come to have value in itself and be perpetuated at least in part
because of the value it has. However obsessive we may consider the liberal's concern with
this distinction, historical experience of the aspirations of totalitarian and authoritarian
governments gives individuals reason to preserve it, female no less than male [16].
Moreover, even if the distinction is not to be valued in itself, women may find that it secures
for them something that is of value. This point is in fact related to a criticism that feminists
have sometimes made against Firestone's severely biological outlook. Perhaps the biological
exclusiveness of childbearing also gives female reproducers exclusive access to an experience
of special value. It may even determine what is peculiarly valuable about being a woman.
Motherhood can certainly be a source of travail to women; this does not prevent its also
being a source of joy. In short, biologically engineered androgyny may on balance leave both
men and women the poorer.
Firestone of course denies that childbearing is something specially valuable and in a
memorably repellent phrase she compares giving birth to 'shitting a pumpkin'. But even
in the face of the pains of pregnancy, labour and childbirth, it seems intelligible, and indeed
reasonable, that women should resist the call to abandon their customary role in
reproduction, if it alone can create the sort of closeness that is only possible between a
mother and the child she nurtures. Even if this call is made on the ground that in no other
way can patriarchy be ended, patriarchy may still be a price worth paying, especially since
equal entry to the world of power relations need not strike women as a prize specially worth
obtaining. Might it not be an unconscious admission of the values of a patriarchal world for
women to strive for power over others?
Moreover, there is a feature of the analysis that arises from the Marxist tendency to
overlook the independence that the products of material conditions may acquire. Even if it is
true that the material conditions for the genesis of patriarchy are as Firestone alleges, its
continuation may be sustained by other factors, and hence patriarchy may persist even when
the original material conditions from which it arose are ended. Let us agree that the facts of
biology are important explanatory factors in the emergence of patriarchy. It may
nevertheless be true that the long accretion of social relations and evaluative ideas which
now surround it are sufficient to keep patriarchy in place. And they may do so even when
reproductive technology has done all that Firestone hopes for.
This is in fact a point that other feminists have raised. Technology too is part of the socio
political world, and so is its control. Even were reproduction to be refashioned along
technological lines, it might none the less remain within an exclusively male sphere of
influence, since for the most part technology has been the creation of men and is largely in

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164 G. Graham

their control. Many feminists regard gynaecology as a branch of medicine w

extends the control of women by men. In addition, for human beings as they
been, reproduction is surrounded by the context of sexual relations. Here too
for independent ideas and mentalities. Even though it is true that the conting
between sex and reproduction can be broken by technology, as effective birt
broken it, we cannot conclude that sexuality has not itself become, and will con
formative influence in gender relations. What it is biologically to be female m
to be less important than what it is culturally to be feminine. This is the thoug
third set of ideas at work in radical feminism, but before addressing them exp
be useful to summarise the position the argument has reached.
Against the liberal feminist the radical feminist claims that abstract equality
sexes is unattainable by mere changes in legal regulations or fashionable mor
absence of a deeper analysis, the causes of, and hence removal of universal patri
obscure.
Psychological feminism points to observable differences in the moral mentality of men
and women but observes that these are disguised by the tendency for masculine ways of
thinking to be represented as the rational norm. But I argued that even if we leave aside the
dangers of an inadequate methodology, this move to mentalities still seems too superficial.
What is at work in the creation and maintenance of such differences and how, if at all, is the
inequality between them to be overcome? The mere observation of contemporary
psychological differences, however carefully it is done, does not go any way towards
providing an answer.
A possible answer to both questions seems to lie with the appeal to fundamental facts of
biology and the consequent differences in the contribution of male and female to the all
important business of human reproduction. Here too, however, it is easy to be
overimpressed by the fundamental nature of these differences and build too much upon the
possibility of their being altered. Human institutions and the powerful ideas that
accompany them, even if they are the result of certain undeniable material conditions, may
nevertheless become important formative influences in their own right. The mechanics of
reproduction may alter radically and yet the relations to which they gave rise remain. This is
especially likely where human beings, chiefly in the context of industralised prosperity,
have ceased to see relations between male and female in terms of reproduction at all, and
have come instead to have those relations fashioned by deep-seated conceptions of sexuality.

That sexuality is the dominant factor in gender relations is a common theme amongst
feminist writers. Nor is it hard to see why this is so. If we are to assemble a complete picture
of gender relations we must set alongside biological differences and even differences in social
role, the moral theories and the artistic representations which have gone into making these
relations. One way of expressing this would be to say that while 'male' and 'female' are
biological classifications, the more important classification, which determines behaviour
and hence relations, is that of 'masculine' and 'feminine'. Such a distinction is at the heart of
Betty Frieden's influential book The Feminine Mystique and is also at work in Simone de
Beauvoir's The Second Sex, though neither of these writers, it seems to me, is as radical as
most of those who have followed up their explorations of the theme of sexuality.

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 Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited 165

Broadly the idea is this. The transformation of male and female to masculine and femin
is a process of acculturation during which male and female children are socialised in term
dominant conceptions of what it is to be a man or a woman. Their socialisation, in fact,
consists in their coming to understand themselves in these terms. These domin
conceptions are not consciously formulated or taught as objects of belief. Rather they inf
and are sustained by a wide range of individual attitudes and social practices, and reinfo
by the images presented in stories, artworks, advertising and so on. In these media
feminine is portrayed as essentially passive — the princess awaits her rescuing prince [17]
and consequently its ideal is possessed of the virtues of passivity — sympath
longsuffering, acceptance, demureness etc. By contrast, to be masculine is to be active
the ideally masculine has the virtues of manliness — deliberation, aggression, self-asser
and so on. So deep-seated are these conceptions that they are widely regarded as elemen
the nature of things, and as such they have determined relations between the two sex
Thus the feminine ideal is presented chiefly as an object of masculine desire, and domin
by it. It is the man who proposes marriage, initiates the sex act, provides for the fam
through activity in the public world of commerce and industry. The woman uses th
accoutrements of fashion — dress, makeup, scent and so on — to elicit a proposal. Her
is to stimulate and to respond to, but never to initiate the sex act, and she it is who ac
homemaker under conditions laid down and secured by her husband.
These conceptions do not function merely as ideal models. They also determine what i
count as improper behaviour and even perversion. A woman who is 'forward' with me
regarded as in some measure acting shamelessly, and since the man ought to dominate in t
sex act, those men who find it sexually stimulating to submit to women and underg
'punishment' are regarded as perverted. What it is specially important to note, howeve
that the complementarity of active man and passive women is asymmetrical. The feminine
defined in terms of the masculine. That is to say, the truly feminine woman is at all po
sensitive and responsive to the needs and desires of her male partner. But the masculi
since it includes activity in the public realm, is not defined by the feminine. The man is m
than just an active counterpart to the woman's passivity; he is an agent in the public re
Indeed this realm is in some ways his true theatre of activity, for while the central concer
the wife and mother must be the home, the man is permitted to disregard his home
family if and when great importance attaches to his work, and 'work' means his activ
beyond domestic confines.
According to many feminists it is these conceptions of masculinity and femininity,
the asymmetry in the relationship between men and women that results from them, t
perpetuate patriarchy, the rule of woman by man. Among the instruments of t
perpetuation, according to many feminists, are marriage and pornography. But perhaps
existence of both of these arises from a more basic inequality between the sexes. Because t
public realm, within which political and economic relations are determined, is conceive
as an essentially masculine preserve, political and economic control remains in the hand
men. This control is revealed in large part by the great numerical predominance of men o
women in positions of power. Even more revealing, perhaps, is the fact that when, contra
to the norm, a female leader does emerge, her behaviour will be systematically describ
and hence regarded, in different terms. Thus a woman who exercises power with confiden
and determination will be described as 'bossy' while a man acting in just the same way will
thought of as 'decisive' or authoritative. A woman's power will also be checked by resist
from those men who think it demeaning to take orders from a woman, whereas a ma

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166 G. Graham

power will be enhanced by women subordinates who accept the 'natural' auth
masculine over the feminine.
The conceptions of masculine and feminine which inform this analysis of power relations
between men and women are undoubtedly simplifications of rather more complex patterns
of belief and behaviour. But they are not caricatures. No one can reasonably deny that our
culture and perhaps most cultures have been permeated by conceptions of man and woman
very close to those described here, or that many contemporary attitudes, practices and
images, especially those in cinema, television and advertising, continue both to reflect and
sustain them. What is less certain, to my mind, is whether the resulting relationship
between men and women is properly described as patriarchy, and the extent to which these
images of masculine and feminine sustain it. Feminist writers who discuss these issues have
a tendency to emphasise the ways in which the traditional conception of 'the feminine'
distorts and limits women. No doubt there is truth in this. But so too, it may be argued, are
the lives of men distorted by the corresponding conception of what it is to be 'masculine' and
there have been those who have argued, in terms of these very images, that at a deeper level it
is men who are held in thraldom.
However this may be, even if it is indeed patriarchy that these images sustain, important
questions remain to be answered. Chief among these are the following: what is to replace
them, and how are they to be replaced? Curiously, in the literature it seems easier to find
answers to the second question than to the first. Feminist writers speak of raising
consciousness and generating solidarity amongst women as an interest group. Some think
that this can be accomplished through the formation of women's groups within existing
social forms, while others think it is possible only through a total separation of the sexes,
albeit only for a period. And these are generally regarded as the recommendations of the
most radical forms of feminism.
But what exactly is to emerge from these programmes of action? If the principal problem
with patriarchy is that it is an asymmetrical power relation between men and women, one in
which women as women are subject to men, it looks as though its replacement must consist
in an equal balance of power, or better a world in which power relations are not constituted
along gender lines at all. But is this not precisely what liberal feminism seeks? It might be
replied that liberal feminism of the Wollstonecraft/Mill variety seeks equal treatment for
women by urging us to disregard differences between men and women. In doing so,
however, it is effectively compelling us to conceive of women in an essentially masculine
mould. By contrast, radical feminism seeks an equality within which women can not only
acknowledge but celebrate their nature as women, including their sexuality, their
motherhood, their mentality (and similarly for men, presumably).
But is there a real contrast here? As we saw earlier, liberal feminism can admit the
necessity of deep social change, and even a measure of social engineering if this is what the
promotion of free and equal individuality between citizens requires. Moreover, when liberal
feminists urge us to treat both adult men and women first and foremost as persons, they need
not deny that there are important and ineliminable differences between the sexes. Nor need
they deny that these differences will play a significant part in determining the structure of
the social institutions compatible with a free and equal society. They need only assert that
these differences properly enter into the calculation via the principle of respect for persons,
not directly. This is not something peculiar to gender differences either. There are many
differences between people which an intelligent application of the principle must take into
account. It is erroneous to argue that a commitment to treating people equally means

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 Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited 167

treating them as though they were the same. On the contrary, equal treatment will normally
require making a special effort to allow for differences. Equality before the law does not
consist in treating the innocent and the guilty alike, and equal access to buildings for the
physically handicapped requires that they be given a different kind of entrance.
If a fundamental commitment to liberal equality can in this way accommodate any
ineliminable differences between men and women, then the world in which patriarchy has
ended is a world of free and equal persons where the terms of social intercourse, including
both social institutions and cultural norms, are such that differences in gender and sexuality
are properly recognised, given proper weight, but do not arbitrarily determine the
education, fortune, mode of life or sexual relationships of adult individuals. Certainly in
such a society both norms and institutions, especially that of marriage, may have to be
reconceived. But such reconceptions, however radical they may be, can all be accommo
dated to the fundamentals of liberalism if they can be shown to be necessary consequences of
the consistent application of liberal principles. Radical feminist writers have certainly
pointed to important dimensions in contemporary relations between the sexes, and in doing
so may have made clearer the obstacles to ending patriarchy, but they have not shown that
its most desirable replacement is anything other than the world at which the liberal feminist
aims. Whether such a worid is ever accomplishable, and whether the gender-specific
thought patterns of human beings which sustain them are alterable, even by the sorts of
measures those known as radical feminists propose, is quite another matter. For the
purposes of political theory, however, what matters is the ends and not the means of public
policy. And as far as this is concerned, it seems to me, the original aspirations of liberal
feminism are those which foster and sustain all these supposedly more radical versions also.

There is, however, a further issue to be considered before this conclusion can be accepted as
it stands. The strategy of my argument allows its conclusion to have two different
interpretations. If it is true that liberal feminism and the radical versions I have been
considering differ over means and not ends, we can take this to imply, as I have done, that at
bottom the radicals are liberals too. This interpretation has behind it the assumption that
any really important difference between the two must be one of ends and not means. At the
same time, some account must be given of what makes them both varieties of feminism. One
plausible account, which I have already endorsed, is that both have the aim of furthering the
interests of women by seeking the end of patriarchy. But if this is their shared aim, and the
end that is peculiar to feminism, the only further difference there could be between them is
one of means. Consequently, the concerns that arise from an emphasis on the importance of
sexuality do distinguish a more radical version of feminism than that arising from the liberal
concern with law and public policy. And if, in reply, it is claimed that radical strategies can
be assimilated into the liberal feminist's programme, this only goes to show that liberals are
radicals too. It follows that there is no fundamental disagreement between them, and hence
no disagreement from which the liberal version can emerge the victor. In short, on this
second interpretation, contrary to appearances, my conclusion does not favour liberal
feminism in any interesting sense.
Now it seems correct to claim that if there is a shared end and differences over means are
not ultimately significant we only have one thing — feminism; the radicals are liberals and

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168 G. Graham

the liberals are radicals. There is thus no vindication of liberal feminism. Ho

may be a vindication of liberal individualism in this provided we can find a fur
feminism which does not share the liberal individualistic values. And, it seem
is indeed such a version. This is the feminism espoused by lesbian separatists
My defence of liberal feminism consists in finding its values still at wor
versions, despite appearances to the contrary. This is accomplished by con
observations of radical feminists about differences in the psychology, reprod
especially sexuality of men and women as either a catalogue of obstacles to be ov
factors to be accommodated in securing equality between men and women. Th
course that accommodation is possible. This is not an assumption with which
agree. Some feminists have argued against it, claiming that the obstacles to l
created by psychology, sexuality and so on cannot be overcome, and that the
possible is equality between the sexes as interest groups, not equality in relation
individual men and women. This, it may be alleged, is because the differences
and women are such that any social interaction will lead to patriarchy unless it
equal group strength. And group strength can only be preserved by solidarity,
can only be preserved by social separation [18]. This need not be taken to im
can be no interaction between men and women, only that the interaction mu
between certain tribes or trading partners — i.e. conducted on the ba
advantage without any suggestion of integration. What is ruled out above al
intercourse and reproduction within the context of the traditional family, beca
relationship through which patriarchy persists. And if sometimes liberal measu
have success, such success will be temporary if marital relations of the fa
continue. That is why, on this story, liberal feminism is inadequate; its indi
war with its feminism and for this reason it is essentially unstable.
It seems clear that the view I have expounded briefly here is indeed a variety
quite distinct in its fundamentals from the liberal version. Of course, the mere
is this different form does not by itself show it to be one worthy of belief or
need to know why we should accept it in preference to a liberal feminism in
sort of radicalism considered earlier. Or rather, since it is important that n
begged against it, we need to know why women should accept it.
To begin with, lesbian separatism rests upon empirical claims that need
evidential support and it is difficult to see how such support could be assem
because many of them are both negative and hypothetical. For example, the s
to show that if men and women continue to compete for jobs, devices suc
maternity leave, differential promotion levels and the like, can never be
establishing equal competitition. But who can know with any measure of cert
future will hold, still less what it will never hold? Again, a separatist has t
heterosexual sex continues, the images of sexuality with which we are famil
unaltered. Yet given the dramatic change in attitudes to sex in the Western
latter half of the twentieth century, changes almost certainly unforeseeab
nineteenth, it seems only reasonable to be cautious about such an ambitious
The second point to be made is this. Even if we suppose that there is re
something of the lesbian separatist's pessimism, to believe perhaps that withou
of the sexes the end of patriarchy is very unlikely, there is still a need for wom
cost/benefit analysis. It may be true that where heterosexual relations pers
always be patriarchy, but it does not follow that the rigours of patriarch

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 Liberal vs Radical Feminism Revisited 169

substantially reduced in favour of women. In fact they obviously can; the subjection of
Western women to their husbands and lovers is much less than that of women in traditional
Islamic societies and considerable numbers of women have experienced and welcomed a
translation from the latter to the former. The possibility of substantial reductions of this sort
may greatly lessen the attraction of separatism, provided of course that separatism itself has
costs.

That it does have costs for women seems to me obvious. There is no reason to think that
under a regime of lesbian separatism both sexual and reproductive relations will be as
satisfactory for the majority of women as in the heterosexual world with which we are now
familiar. This is not a matter of guesswork, or a prejudice against lesbianism, I think, but a
straightforward recognition that evolution has been at work in the formation of human
sexuality. Sexual preference and orientation is not usually a matter of choice, though it may
be coloured or controlled by personal will or social forces. The unlikelihood of major
changes in this respect raises a further question. When women's preferences are for
heterosexual relations, is the separation of the sexes to be enforced, and if so with what
justification? Whether such separation is in the interests of women is, as I have been argu
ing, a matter that must be judged by cost/benefit analysis on the part of individual women.
To override this judgment on the grounds that they cannot be trusted to pursue their own
interests properly is to slip into authoritarian maternalism.
Finally, and most importantly from the theoretical point of view, there is no reason in the
abstract to think that equality between the sexes conceived of, not as sets of individuals, but
as two interests groups, will either come about, or be preserved by separatism. As in many
other cases of separatism — apartheid in South Africa for instance — the separation may be
inherently unstable and can only be preserved by one interest group's coming to dominate
the other. It is, I suppose, mere speculation as to which side would dominate which in the
separation of the sexes, but most people's intuition, I think, is that women would not be the
winners. Moreover, if it is true of men also that their sexual preferences do not alter under
conditions of separation, such an arrangement might put women in greater danger of
violence, assault and hence subjection.
It may seem odd to spend so much time combatting a position that only very few feminists
feel inclined to endorse. The reason for doing so, however, is the logical importance of its
possibility. If the most successful of the radical feminist positions I considered earlier,
namely that which draws our attention to the importance of sexuality, is still fundamentally
liberal, albeit an advance on the feminist position normally associated with liberalism, and if
we have reason to reject the still more radical separatist position, then though many liberal
thinkers have much to learn from feminist writers, feminist theory confirms rather than
refutes political liberalism.

Gordon Graham, Department of Moral Philosophy, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife

KY16 9AL, UK.

NOTES

[1] I am indebted to Paula Boddington, Liz Fraser, Susan Mendus and Elspeth Graham for many helpfu
criticisms of an earlier draft.
[2] Plato Republic trans. F. M. Cornford (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1941) Bk. V 455.

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170 G. Graham

[3] 'The Subjection of Women' in J. S. Mill On Liberty and other writings ed. Stefan
Cambridge University Press 1989) p. 119.
[4] Mill op. cit., p. 123.
[5] See Carole Pateman (1988) The Sexual Contract (Oxford, Polity Press) pp. 50-1.
[6] Mill, op. citpp. 143-4.
[7] Pateman op. dr., p. 8.
[8] ibid. p. 17.
[9] Labels like this are never very satisfactory- Some of the ideas I am concerned with here
grouped with others and called 'psychoanalytic feminism'. See Rosemary Tong (1989
(London, Unwin Hyman), Chapter Five.
[10] Carol Gilligan (1982) In a Different Voice (Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Pre
[11] ibid. p. 19.
[12] See Andrea Dworkin (1983) Right Wing Women (New York, Coward-McCann).
[13] Mary Daly (1978) Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston, Beacon Pr
[14] Shulamith Firestone (1970) The Dialectic of Sex (New York, Bantam Books). In accordan
criticisms I bring, it is worth noting that Firestone's influence has been on theorists rat
feminists.

[15] Engels tries, but fails, to accommodate two-way influences in the essay Socialism: Uto
Marx-Engels: Selected Works in One Volume (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1968).
[16] Marilyn Friedman addresses some of the issues here on behalf of feminist communita
and modern friendship: dislocating the community Ethics, 99 (1989).
[17] An idea subtly reasserted in a trivialised form by advertisements of the 'and all becaus
Tray' variety.
[18] Iris Marion Young, (in Polity and group difference: a critique of the ideal of universal citizenship, Ethics 99,
1989) has argued for the indispensability of social groups, and hence the necessity of group representation, and
includes women as one of the social groups. This might be thought to generate a less drastic form of women's
solidarity. But since groups can be represented by individuals who are not members of those groups (lawyers
acting on the part of children for instance), this seems too weak a basis to satisfy most radical feminists.

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