Oh 'difference', a reminder that you are what we say you are

By Lauren Hermanus

I read (on a blog) that chicks and okes are different. I shuddered. But my shuddering was linguistically motivated. I like other colonially trained young ladies find the word, “chick”, inane. I find the invoked comparison of a female of the human species with a downy, speechless, flightless, tweeting little thing, odd. But, you know, cheeky mare, old cow, and the parochial favourite, bitch, women rouse a desire to compare us with animals. “Bitch” is interesting. It can also be used to refer to a man if he has been sufficiently stripped of those things we commonly associate with masculinity: agency; sexual prowess; opinions and a deep, firm and commanding voice.

Having recovered from my initial shock I must admit that some residual discomfort remained. I hear slogans chanted form the mouths of educated women, “feminism is dead!” My friends visit strip clubs where they watch other women straddle poles in uncomfortable looking panties because they are just as sexually expressive as men. Other friends of mine do not dream of gazing at poles but grinding their fun-parts up against them while they themselves are gazed at. It is a more traditional approach if you think about it. Men in the viewing seats; ladies on the auction block. A third contingent of my feminine friends positively push their male companions out the door and into the strip club with a lunch box, money for booze and strict instructions to get sexual gratification. It seems women are also different from each other. And whatever the difference between women and men, there is certainly no consensus as to what it is.

It must be said that those friends who hail the death of feminism — let us define it as attention to the question of sexual difference and the role that various answers has in shaping society — have not suffered the burden of their gender as many South Africans do. They have not, for example been raped in order to teach them whom they are allowed to love as some gay and lesbian men and women have. They have not been forced to have unprotected sex because they have no agency in the relationship. They have also not been in physically or emotionally abusive domestic relationships. They have, however, all walked down South African streets and feared being raped because they are women. Some have felt themselves on the fringes of a male-dominated workplace. And many have starved themselves; hurt their feet in torturous shoes and been called whores, sluts and slappers for any number of reasons, only some of which have anything to do with their sexual preferences. There are things it would seem as old as this old gal feminism herself.

Yes, men and women are different. This difference has a history as long as broader human story. Unlike the difference between bitches and dogs, for example, the difference between women and men is not natural. Yes, blah, we are all animals. Boys have penises et cetera. However, we are peculiar animals with language and political institutions and psychological norms and social norms and codes and laws and the need to attribute meaning to life and all it constituent areas. These various enterprises do not incorporate an external and essential idea of sexual difference from outside. Difference only becomes meaningful within these various areas in which words are used to give it meaning. Illustrations are in order.

We still, by and large, believe that women are the kinds of things that are attracted to men and that this should be taught and enforced. Many South Africans find the Civil Unions Act offensive. Here the definition of women within the law is at odds with that within our general social mores. Not mine! Let us be clear. Luckily the law has won this time. We also generally believe that women are the sorts of things at whom we are all entitled to look. Allow this slightly hyperbolic point for want of space: none of my friends watch men at strip clubs and almost all find the idea preposterous and even emasculating for the man on the pole. Sports Illustrated invites well-proportioned lasses to become the fodder for adolescent sexual awakening, and builders whistle even when we are covered in cumbersome winter garb. Sexual difference is a powerful thing.

There are cases where the difference between men and women needs to negated in the service of more important differences like, for example, between healthy consensual sex and rape. Our Constitutional Court made exactly this concession when it conceded that the sexual violation of men also constituted rape, after a lower court had said in no uncertain terms that sex is not about a penis “penetrating” a vagina. It seems a trivial thing, but I am sure that for the male victims of rape it is not. And for our society as a whole, it is not. It is not trivial when the definitions and rules in society change and allow new expressions of ourselves.

Both women and men participate in the norms that constrain us. Sometimes this is done with lots of room for choice. And sometimes we are unable to move and unaware of that fact. We are all socialised by various channels to believe that certain things are acceptable and others not. Even us left-leaning-pinko-liberal-free-the-panda-hummus-eating-wine-sipping-humanities-educated-individuals. Even we do not get our ideas from inside our skulls or from a higher and more perfect source than language, culture and all the other institutions for which no one signs up.

Here I approach my conclusion, arrived at from an admittedly oblique angle. In my informed and considered opinion, and (I’ll take it) speaking as a woman with no desire to grow a penis, feminism is a heterogeneous, interesting and vitally important discourse. Unlike some feminists, I do not believe that it only pertains to women. Feminism is a critical perspective from which the violence implicated in the way we understand the world in terms of sexual difference becomes visible. If language and culture and other institutions are the media through which difference becomes meaningful, and if these things change over time (which they do, sorry fundamentalists) then is it not better to actively engage in the process than to glibly dismiss the discussion and lose out on the opportunity to change the world?

There is feminism that I find to be intellectually limiting, overly-prescriptive and even offensive. There is feminism for porn fans and feminism for prudes. To dismiss hundreds of years of different women articulating that “different” perspective that can be collected under the banner of feminism is chauvinism at its worst. It is a pillar of sameness that refuses to tolerate a challenge from outside its smug self. I shave my legs and wear mascara and study in a field dominated by men. My experience is not the same as anyone else’s but it has much in common with various groups of individuals for complex and colourful reasons. I have many polysyllabic sentences yet to write on the subject. No one has to listen and similarly, no one needs to shut me up. Not one person I know who dismisses feminism with a fowl swoop over the dinner table has read any of what I consider to be intellectually respectable feminist writing (across disciplines) and tend to ignore the gender dimension of social problems. We have a president now in power at whose rape trial people chanted, “burn the bitch”. Why? That is all that we annoying feminists ask. “Why” upsets the apple cart. But I happen to value my right to “why” and encourage everyone out there to try it out.

Lauren Hermanus is a (graduate) scholar of philosophy and complexity theory.