is unique – and difference becomes something not to celebrate, but a justification
for discrimination, and discrimination mystifies and misrepresents genuine
differences. So that unless we link equality with difference, we ride roughshod over
both. Hartsock (1998: 60) distinguishes between difference as equality and difference
as domination. We would go further and argue that when you dominate another,
you ignore his real differences and exploit a stereotypical and propagandist version
of his identity. This is not a real difference but an imaginary one. In other words,
unless difference is linked to equality, it ceases to be a meaningful category.
Does this mean that women have nothing in common with each other, and
therefore feminism itself is concerned with a category – ‘women’ – that does not
exist? It is certainly true that women differ from one another: some are rich and
some are poor; some are white and some are black; they have different sexual and
linguistic identities, etc. But they also have something in common. They are all
subjugated by patriarchally minded men (and women), they are all subject to
stereotypes, they all have biological differences that have social implications. This
is why we argue in the discussion on sex and gender that the idea that differences
disappear in an egalitarian society is wrong, because it assumes that equality excludes
difference. In fact, each presupposes the other. To suggest that differences must take
the form of ‘oppressive gender hierarchies’ (Hoffman, 2001: 41) is a liberal view
that can take either a conservative patriarchal form (men are different from women- therefore they are justified in oppressing them), or a radical feminist form (women
are different from men – therefore they should keep themselves apart). Why not
argue that men and women are both the same and different? They are all human
beings, entitled therefore to human rights, and, like all human beings, each is
different from the other.
A feminism that chooses between equality anddifference ends up unwittingly
with a position of domination or separatism. Neither really advances the cause of
women’s emancipation.
Liberalism and difference
Liberalism is historically significant because it is based upon what one of us calls
elsewhere ‘subversive abstractions’ (Hoffman, 1988: 150). Liberalism argues that
all individuals are free and equal, and it rests its case on these propositions as
universal principles. This is subversive because it rejects medieval and authoritarian
notions of a natural hierarchy that identifies people as inherently unequal with some
explicitly entitled to dominate others. Liberalism ostensibly rejects ‘differences’ on
the grounds that each of us is an individual who is the ‘same’ as the other.
The problem is of course that while these principles are undeniably subversive,
they are also abstract, and because they are abstract, repressive hierarchies come
slithering in through the back door. The abstraction arises because people are seen
as property – each individual has property over himself. Why is this abstract?- It is abstract because it ignores the fact that people only become aware of
themselves as individuals in relation to others. This means that property is both
individual and social – the control that people have over their own bodies and
their own objects arises because others cooperate.
Chapter 21 Difference 475