Ginsburg on feminism

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, once defined feminism as follows:

"Feminism … I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.' Free to be, if you were a girl—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if you’re a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, that’s OK too. That notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents, whatever they may be, and not be held back by artificial barriers—manmade barriers, certainly not heaven sent."

This definition conjures up a feeling that feminism is an expansive movement, one that is opening up new vistas of human experience to people, more opportunities, new fields of endeavour.

Maybe this is what some feminists intended or hoped for. I would argue, though, that in practice things have moved the opposite way - that there has been a narrowing of life for most people, a "thinning" of human experience, especially of those aspects of life that once provided a sense of meaning, identity and emotional support to individuals.

Why have things moved the wrong way? It is important to understand that the principle set out by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as a matter of logic, disallows as much as it permits. And what it disallows is, arguably, much more significant that what it grants.

What Ginsburg is arguing for is the autonomy principle, namely that what matters is a freedom to self-determine. Whatever is a barrier to us self-determining is thought of as a limitation, a cage, from which we have to be liberated.

We do not get to determine our sex. Therefore, according to the autonomy principle our sex should not influence what we might do or be in life. Ginsburg herself wrote:

The gender line helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage

And the Marlo Thomas song that she believes defines feminism has the stanzas:

They're closing down 'Girl Land'
Some say it's a shame
It used to be busy
Then nobody came

... And soon in the park
That was 'Girl Land' before
You'll do as you like
And be who you are.

There is an unfortunate logic at play here in which a girl can only "do as you like / And be who you are" by denying her own girlhood, something that you would think would be at the core of who she is and how she identifies.

It is the same when it comes to family life. To be autonomous means being independent. But a stable, successful marriage requires that men and women cultivate those aspects of their given nature, and those social roles, that make them truly interdependent.

Similarly, successful relationships require that individuals discipline themselves to a higher concept of behaviour, one that promotes high trust and one that places relationships within a larger concept of the good (of service to family, community, nation, God). But autonomy emphasises that we be free to act as we please, to act, as the song puts it, "as you like" without limitations. And so there is a shift to a low trust society with an unstable culture of family life.

There is also an assumption made by those who push autonomy that what matters most as a measure of life is our career. Career success is thought to override other aspects of life that were once thought significant, such as family. We are supposed to live primarily for one thing alone, for our job and for the values associated with it - for work values.

This is more than acceptable to those who have the most power in society. First, because it represents their own value set, but also because it focuses human life on patterns of work and consumption that benefits the plutocracy at the top of society.

If you think back just a few generations, an individual might have felt deeply connected in terms of purpose, social role, belonging, pride, self-worth, commitment, love and identity to the communities they were a part of (town, city, state, nation etc.); to family life and the goods associated with this; to their manhood or womanhood and the identity/values/roles attached to this; to long established ideals of moral behaviour (including to honour); and to the experience of what was "transcendent" in life (not self-determined, but a given part of existence) that connected us to the good, the beautiful and the true (in nature, in art, in religion, in love).

Can we trade all of this for a working life within a corporation or institution and claim that our lives have been expanded? That we have a wider circle of life? Or even that we are freer to be ourselves?

In my own experience, the answer is no. It feels instead as if life is being directed, over time, into a singular and narrower channel. This channel begins with the idea that what matters most is that we are self-determined, moves on to the related idea that our lives are then measured by self-achievement within the market place, which then means that we ideally cultivate "executive focus" skills as a means to this success, which then means that our lives are increasingly regulated by the needs and demands of the corporations or institutions we work for.

I am not entirely against this aspect of life. The pressures of work can help us, for instance, to achieve a higher level of self-governance and therefore build character. My concern is that there is little to delimit it, to provide boundaries to prevent it entirely dominating the culture we inhabit.

Which brings me to a further problem with Ruth Bader Ginsburg's approach to expanding life. According to her, the aim is to remove limits or barriers, as this will then give greater opportunity. But limits or barriers are not always a bad thing. They can protect. They can provide a delineated space within which certain aspects of life can be safely cultivated. They can demarcate, i.e. mark out spaces within which the variety of life can be maintained.

If we really wanted to maximise "self-determination" the smart thing would be to establish, as a community, an understanding of a common good, i.e. of what matters most in our individual lives within a community and then to act to secure this common good. This would give us a much greater control over the course of our lives.

As things stand now, our lives are being radically shaped by forces that we feel are alien to us: by powerful interests in society, by distant government, by a media we have no control over, and by a political philosophy which promises freedom from limitation, but which fails to delimit or protect or uphold, and which therefore places no barriers to the ever expanding dominance of work and consumption as the major source of values in modern life.

A note to Melbourne readers. If you are sympathetic to the ideas of this website, please visit the site of the Melbourne Traditionalists. It's important that traditionalists don't remain isolated from each other; our group provides a great opportunity for traditionalists to meet up and connect. Details at the website.

What are the first principles of modern society?

Rulings by supreme courts are useful things. Not because they demonstrate great wisdom or knowledge, but because they require the first principles on which a society is based to be openly stated.

Such was the case when the Iowa Supreme Court made its ruling on a proposed law which would require women to wait 72 hours before having an abortion. The court blocked the proposal on the following basis:

"Autonomy and dominion over one's body go to the very heart of what it means to be free," the justices wrote. "At stake in this case is the right to shape, for oneself, without unwarranted governmental intrusion, one's own identity, destiny, and place in the world. Nothing could be more fundamental to the notion of liberty."

There you have it. The first principle of a liberal state is "liberty" but understood in a very particular way, namely as an individual autonomy by which we can "shape, for oneself...one's own identify, destiny and place in the world."

I have explained many times before why this is such a negative and "dissolving" concept of liberty. It means, logically, that only the things that we self-determine are legitimate. The predetermined aspects of life, which we do not shape for ourselves, come to be thought of as "prisons" from which the individual has to be liberated.

But there is much that we do not determine for ourselves. We do not determine, for instance, our race and ethnicity or our sex. And yet these are significant aspects of identity and community. In a liberal society, though, they must be made not to matter, because they conflict with the liberal definition of liberty as a state of individual autonomy, in which what matters is a freedom to self-define and self-create.

It's interesting, too, that the supreme court justices use the phrase "dominion over one's body". Patrick Deneen, in his excellent book Why Liberalism Failed, writes about the shift in the early modern period in the understanding of man's relation to nature. Instead of being embedded in nature, the point instead was to stand outside and against nature, seeking dominion over it. Classical liberals, according to Deneen, applied this to the natural world around us but still accepted an embedded human nature that we might live by (albeit a cut down and distorted one by which human nature was understood to be a self-seeking one aiming at individual profit); modern leftist progressive liberals extended it to having dominion over human nature itself (i.e. we might choose our own nature) with a logical end point in transhumanism.

Hat tip: The Four Marks

How are the big issues decided? Obergefell vs Hodges 2015

In 2015 the Supreme Court of the United States decided in favour of homosexual marriage (Obergefell vs Hodges). The decision was a close one (5-4). Both the majority opinion and the dissenting opinions were argued for in terms of first principles, which gives an unusually clear insight into what is thought to matter by those who matter. Let's begin with the majority opinion. The introduction to the ruling states:

The fundamental liberties protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices defining personal identity and beliefs...

...The first premise of this Court's relevant precedents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.

The more detailed part of the ruling begins as follows:

The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity.

The petitioners in these cases seek to find that liberty by marrying someone of the same sex and having their marriages deemed lawful on the same terms and conditions as marriages between persons of the opposite sex.

I'm going to pause here, because this is the state ideology in a nutshell. What matters, we are being told, is a liberty to define our own identity. This liberty must extend equally to all persons. That is how we get to be autonomous and to have dignity as a person.

Justice Roberts in his dissenting opinion makes an obvious objection to this view. He writes:

The majority opens its opinion by announcing petitioners' right to "define and express their identity." The majority later explains that "the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy."...One immediate question invited by the majority's position is whether States may retain the definition of marriage as a union of two people...It is striking how much of the majority's reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage. If "there is dignity in the bond between two men or two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to make such profound choices," why would there be any less dignity in the bond between three people who, in exercising their autonomy, seek to make the profound choice to marry?

Isn't this right? If what matters is "a right to personal choice regarding marriage" that is "inherent in the concept of individual autonomy," then isn't my dignity being infringed upon if I cannot choose to marry two women?

And why should marriage be a lifelong union if what matters is a right to choice regarding marriage? If I want to choose to leave one woman and marry another, then aren't I being a good liberal in doing so? And why should marriage be an exclusive union? If my autonomy is at stake, then why shouldn't I define my identity in terms of having both a wife and a lover on the side? For that matter, why should the biological connection between myself and my children matter? Aren't we all autonomous individuals, defining our own identity? So why should paternity matter that much? Or maternity for that matter? And why should I be held to owe any duty of care to my wife or to my children? If I were to follow the logic of the Supreme Court, then I have no duty of care, but only a free choice to care, if that is what fits with how I choose to define my personal identity and beliefs.

And if the aim of my life is to maximise my autonomy, in which I have the greatest possible freedom to choose to act as I wish, then why would I even contemplate marriage in the first place? Why wouldn't I choose to live alone, free to pursue a single man/woman lifestyle, not having to compromise myself for another person?

Marriage only makes sense if the guiding principle of life is not, in fact, the idea that our dignity comes from a personal autonomy to define ourselves as we wish. Nobody limits themselves to one other person for the sake of autonomy. And you would be crazy to commit to parenthood in the belief that you would thereby maximise your personal autonomy.

When men believe that being a paterfamilias really matters, that it has meaning, then marriage flourishes. Men commit to this role, not out of a belief in autonomy, but because they believe that in doing so they are upholding some important part of their own manhood, one necessary to the wellbeing of their wife and children, and to the family lineage and national tradition that they belong to and identity with.

Family cannot be unsexed. It is a procreative union of a man and a woman that cannot endure unless men are absolutely persuaded of their own necessary role as husbands and fathers within it (and are confident in the support of the state in this role).

Homosexual marriage has the effect of unsexing the family. It forces us to believe that whether a family has a man and a woman, or two men, or two women is all the same. Therefore, a man being a man is of little consequence when it comes to family life. It means that a man is not expressing anything significant about himself as a man when it comes to what he does in or for a family.

Do we men really believe this to be true? Is the homosexual view really the truth about marriage and family? Is being a man something that is only incidental to our lives? Or is it perhaps something that is not expressed within a family, but only outside of it, in some other sphere of life? Could that really be the truth of things?

I just don't believe that this will ring true to most men. Most men have a profound experience of the way that men and women are called together to be in a procreative union with each other. It is part of the warp and woof of reality itself. And most men too have an instinct toward expressing some part of their manhood within a family, as a husband and father, and will, in most circumstances, be motivated to fulfil this instinct, even if this constrains their autonomy.