Nor are liberal feminists persuaded by the arguments for patriarchy. The notion
that male domination enters into the very fibre of relationships ignores the
importance of privacy and choice. Women are, or can be, agents, and the notion
that the personal is political is a totalitarian credo that does not allow individuals
to decide matters for themselves.
Some liberal feminists argue that prostitutes are sex-workers who choose a
profession that others dislike, and the legalisation of prostitution would enable
women who wish to pursue careers in this area to do so without hindrance and
condemnation. Liberal feminists see the campaigns against pornography as
oppressive and authoritarian. Not only do such campaigners find themselves
working with extremely conservative pressure groups, but the attempt to ban
pornography leads to censorship – the prevention of people acting in unconventional
ways which, liberal feminists insist, do not harm others.
The attitude of radical feminists, in the eyes of liberal feminists, towards the state
and legal reform is generally negative and radical feminists suffer from an absolutist
outlook that prevents them from seeing that gradual change, based upon rational
discussion, is far more effective than utopian fantasies.Socialist feminist critique
Socialist feminists have no difficulty in extending the notion of politics at least to
workplaces and the family, but they see the idea of sisterhood as dangerously
abstract. Socialist feminists want to stress that women belong to different classes
and their interests vary according to their class position. Socialist feminists are not
necessarily opposed to the notion of patriarchy, but they insist that it is much more
complex than the radicals imagine.
In the first place, it is a system that arises historically, and even if Engels’s account
is not wholly plausible, he is correct to assume that patriarchy has not always
existed, and that it is connected with private property and the state. Second, socialist
feminists want to distinguish between different kinds of patriarchy. There is an
important distinction to be made between the kind of explicit patriarchy that exists
in medieval and slave-owning societies, and a liberal patriarchy in which male
domination coexists with liberal notions of consent and freedom. In fact, it is the
gulf between theory and practice that makes the socialist critique possible, for
women in developed liberal societies enjoy formal rights that contrast with their
lack of real power. This kind of analysis is only possible if patriarchy itself is placed
in a very specific historical context.
Socialist feminists, like liberal feminists, see no problem in forming alliances with
men, since men can be in favour of emancipation just as privileged women can be
opposed to it. It is true that men benefit from patriarchy, but the socialist emphasis
upon relationshipsmean that men have their own lives limited and warped as a
result of patriarchal prejudices which regard women, for example, as the natural
guardians of children.
Even though socialist feminists would not accept extreme left-wing strictures
against feminism as being inherently bourgeois and a distraction from class struggle,
they tend to see the concern of radical feminists with lifestyle and sexuality as the
product of a middle-class outlook that ignores the problems faced by women
workers.324 Part 3 Contemporary ideologies