It's 101 years since English
feminists denied English women from playing football - and the same
hostility against women playing football still persists*.
* Why do some women still have to "explain" why they like to play the world's most popular sport?!
Mary
Scharlieb, a racist feminist, top physician and gynaecologist (1921 as
an expert witness at FA): ‘Female football is an embarrassing, shameful
and disgracing activity, especially unsuitable for women’
FA BAN
(1921): ‘Complaints have been made as to football being played by women,
the Council feel impelled to express their strong opinion that the game
of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be
encouraged.‘
An
important theme in Mary Scharlieb's writings was the importance of
including a feminine point of view, in both medical and legislative
arenas.
As a feminist she drew heavily on the theories of race
superiority and argued that it was only natural that greater equality
between the sexes in UK should be achieved owing to their racial
similarity. As a matter of fact, she argued, there is more physical,
mental and moral resemblance 'between an Englishman and an Englishwoman …
than there is between an Englishman and a Bantu or Hottentot man.'
Peter
Klevius: Every feminine (or masculine) "point of view" hurts the
"beautiful game". Football is the hardest of sports - that's why
feminists thought if would hurt femininity - because you're not allowed
to use your hands/arms or tools. Your body and feet are multitasking in a
complex interaction with others in a way that no other sport can match.
Although more than 100 years have passed since the female
Harley Street physicians (backed by other women organizations) decided
to ban women from playing football, the feminist problem still persists.
Although many young girls are interested in football (the world's most
popular sport) when they reach puberty they also reach the legally
invisible but practically very real wall of sex segregation.
And
as you dear reader know, Peter Klevius, the world's foremost expert (sad
isn't it) on sex segregation, has all his adult life argued for de-sex
segregation, i.e. in accordance with Article 2 in the 1948 Universal
Human Rights declaration, which, for the first time in history, states
that sex ought not to be an excuse for limiting rights.
It's
pathetic to see grown up career women sitting as news anchors etc. all
with with heavy make up, lipstick, and ridiculous high heel shoes. Peter
Klevius sees nothing "sexy" about it but just desperate cultural sex
segregation. They look like clowns to Peter Klevius, who is a mighty but
respectful lover of women. And of course they have the right to look
ridiculous - only don't teach young girls that that's the way they have
to follow as well.
De-sex segregation doesn't deny anyone from
looking or behaving as they want. Sex segregation does - to an extent
that people have to alter their bodies or legal sex status for the
purpose of fitting in prejudicial and backward "gender" ideas.
And
to the really stupid readers: Yes there's a difference between men and
women. It's called heterosexual attraction and constitutes the only
analytical tool needed to clarify the bottomless "gender" confusion we
see still today. Everyone knows it but feminists avoid it.
And yes, men are statistically stronger and faster. So what?!
Peter Klevius wrote:
Peter Klevius*, the world's foremost expert on sex segregation (sad isn't it), obituary over a Jewish female patriarch.
* Why is it that a man seems to be the world's foremost defender of women's rights? The answer is threefold:
1
Only a man can understand biological heterosexual attraction (HSA),
i.e. the only thing that essentially segregates the sexes (see below).
2 Only a man feels safe from inferiority complex as long as sex segregation prevails.
3 Only a man can feel a coming inferiority complex in a de-sex segregated world.
Therefore
men have all reason to stick to Human Rights equality. As Peter Klevius
has always said since his teens: Negative (as opposed to the positive
s.c. "Stalin rights") Human Rights for a positive human future.
Do
realize the difference between folk feminism which is anti segragation
and true feminism which is the very opposite - already from the
beginning when resisting the vote etc.
And do realize that while
Mills wanted emancipation and Freud didn't. No wonder psychoanalysis
became so popular among feminists.
And no feminist seems to be
interested in Mary Woolstonecraft's advice on how to not foster
daughters to "follies". And the s.c. "glamour feminism" did just that.
In
the last chapter in Demand for Resources (1992) called Khoi, San and
Bantu, Peter Klevius notes that hunter-gathering societies where the
least sexist. With civilization came what Peter Klevius calls classical
sex segregation, and with "monotheisms" came religious sexism on top of
the classical.
US
Supreme Court needs to replace at least half* of its 100% religious
members with Atheists so to democratically represent the people
* Even most Jews are Atheists, although orthodox Jew Ruth Bader Ginsburg was certainly not..
Peter Klevius 'Woman' from 1979 Does the Human Right to 'freedom of religion' really mean freedom to violate Human Rights as e.g. islamic sharia (OIC) does?!
Anna-Karin Wyndham is a Swedish example of the female patriarchy 2020Precisly
because Peter Klevius is a defender of the most basic of Human Right,
he is called an "islamophobe" because islam can't stand Human Rights
equality.
Peter Klevius is offended by muslims' extreme injustice (sharia), and asks for more fairness.
Islam's schizophrenia
Islam
resides between the roof of the Saudi dictator family/OIC, and the
floor of Muslim Brotherhood. And the "house of Saud" wants to broom the
floor, while MB wants to take down the roof.
Muslims have an overwhelming problem if they want to follow islam while living in a civilized society based on Human
rights equality.
Peter
Klevius, the world's foremost expert on sex segregation (sad isn't it),
asks for your help because he doesn't see any other biological
difference between men and women than the onesided evolutionary
heterosexual attraction that Peter Klevius seems to be the only one
talking about but everyone knows about. So do you see something that
Peter Klevius doesn't?
But don't fall in the usual trap by
pointing to non-relational differences. Menstruating, delivering and
feeding a baby, etc. are not relational. And although heterosexual
attraction is only implanted in the male's brain, it's directly
dependent on the female. And it affects all women, incl. prepubertal
girls and centenary old ladies, precisely because how it outlines the
future of the former and the history of the latter.
As
Tertullian, "the founder of Western theology" said to women who wanted
to abandon heterosexual attraction by marrying Christ: "It's a sport of
nature."
And if a lesbian woman's body attracts "the male
gaze", i.e. heterosexual attraction, she has no other option than
covering it in a burqa-like package - but without becoming a muslim
because sharia would kill her lesbianism.
However, if we want
to live in a civilized world based on Human Rights equality, i.e. not
segregating between humans, then we need to release us from the
unnesseccary, stupid and destructive gender prison of sex segregation,
and the one sex that lacks sensitivity for heterosexual attraction has
to decide whether or when it wants to have anything to do with it. And
do remember, we healthy men are always there for you - but not for
cheating. So be responsible.
The seemingly seamless connection
between heterosexual attraction and reproduction is the mirage that a
disastrous sex segregation has been built on.
When will start educating children about heterosexual attraction and sex segregation?
Google
seems not to have a clue about heterosexual attractio. This is Google's
first on the subject: There are several types of sexual orientation;
for example: Heterosexual. People who are heterosexual are romantically
and physically attracted to members of the opposite sex: Heterosexual
males are attracted to females, and heterosexual females are attracted
to males. Heterosexuals are sometimes called "straight."
Peter Klevius: No wonder girls are confused when they don't get any adequate sex education at all.
Peter Klevius wrote:
Klevius sex and gender tutorial
Klevius' proposal to bright minded and non-biased readers: Do read
EMAH,
i.e. how continuous integration in Thalamus of complex neural patterns
without the assistance of one or infinite "Homunculus" constitutes the
basis for memory and "consciousness".
Klevius quest of the day: What's the difference between the Pope and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
Klevius hint: It's all about 'not sameness' and Human Rights! Human Rights IS 'sameness' stupid!
When God was created he was made like Adam.
When the basic idea of Universal Human Rights was created it was made like Adam AND Eve.
And for you who think heterosexual attraction, i.e. that women are
sexier than men, could be (exc)used as a reason for depriving women of
legal sameness. Please, do think again!And read Klevius Sex and Gender
Tutorial below - if you can!
The Plan of God
A Cardinal, a Pope and a Justice "from medieval times"
Keith O'Brien has reiterated the Catholic Church's continued
opposition to civil partnerships and suggested that there should be no
laws that "facilitate" same-sex relationships, which he claimed were
"harmful", arguing that “The empirical evidence is clear, same-sex
relationships are demonstrably harmful to the medical, emotional and
spiritual wellbeing of those involved, no compassionate society should
ever enact legislation to facilitate or promote such relationships, we
have failed those who struggle with same-sex attraction and wider
society by our actions.”
Four male members of the Scottish Catholic clergy allegedly claim that
Keith O'Brien had abused his position as a member of the church
hierarchy by making unwanted homosexual advances towards them in the
1980s.
Keith O'Brien criticized the concept of same-sex marriage saying it
would shame the United Kingdom and that promoting such things would
degenerate society further.
Pope Francis, aka Jorge Bergoglio: Same-sex is a destructive
pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere
bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to
confuse and deceive the children of God." He has also insisted that
adoption by gay and lesbian people is a form of discrimination against
children. This position received a rebuke from Argentine president
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who said the church's tone was
reminiscent of "medieval times and the Inquisition".
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 'Sex' is a dirty word, so let's use 'gender' instead!
Klevius: Let's not!
As previously and repeatedly pointed out by Klevius, the treacherous use
of 'gender' instead of 'sex' is not only confusing but deliberately so.
So when Jewish Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg proposed gender' as a
synonyme for 'sex' (meaning biological sex) she also helped to shut the
door for many a young girl's/woman's possibilities to climb outside the
gender cage.
The Universal Human Rights declaration clearly states that your
biological sex should not be referred to as an excuse for limiting your
rights.
Islam (now represented by OIC and its Sharia declaration) is the
worst and most dangerous form of sex segregation - no matter in how
modern clothing it's presented!
Klevius Sex and Gender Tutorial
What is 'gender' anyway?
(text randomly extracted from some scientific writings by Klevius)
It might be argued that it is the
developing girl, not the grown up woman, who is the most receptive to
new experience, but yet is also the most vulnerable. Therefore we need to address the analysis of the tyranny of gender before
the point at where it's already too late. I prefer to use
the term ‘female’ instead of ‘woman’, when appropriate in
this discussion. I also prefer not to define women in relation to
men, i.e. in line with the word 'universal' in the Human Rights
Declaration. In short, I propose 'gender blindness' equally as, for
example, 'color blindness'.
According to Connell (2003:184), it is an old and
disreputable habit to define women mainly on the basis of their
relation to men. Moreover, this approach may also constitute a
possible cause of confusion when compared to a definition of ‘gender’
which emphasizes social relations on the basis of ‘reproductive
differences’.
To really grasp the absurdity of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's and
others habit of confusing 'gender' with 'sex' one may consider that
“normal” women live in the same gender trap tyranny as do transsexuals.
The definition of ‘acquired gender’ is described in a guidance for/about transsexuals as:
Transsexual
people have the deep conviction that the gender to which they were
assigned at birth on the basis of their physical anatomy (referred to as
their “birth gender”) is incorrect. That conviction will often lead
them to take steps to present themselves to the world in the opposite
gender. Often, transsexual people will undergo hormonal or surgical
treatment to bring their physical identity into line with their
preferred gender identity.
This evokes the extinction of the
feminine or women as directly dependent on the existence of the
masculine or men. Whereas the feminine cannot be defined without the
masculine, the same applies to women who cannot be defined - only
described - without men.
Female footballers, for example - as
opposed to feminine footballers, both male and female - are, just like
the target group of feminism, by definition distinguished by sex.
Although this classification is a physical segregation – most often
based on a delivery room assessment made official and not at all taking
into account physical size, strength, skills etc. - other aspects of sex
difference, now usually called ‘gender’, seem to be layered on top of
this dichotomy. This review departs from the understanding that there
are two main categories that distinguish females, i.e. the physical sex
belonging, for example, that only biological women may participate in a
certain competition, and the cultural sex determination, for example
that some sports are less ‘feminine’ than others.
‘Gender’, is
synonymous with sex segregation, given that the example of participation
on the ground of one’s biological sex is simply a rule for a certain
agreed activity and hence not sex segregation in the form of stipulated
or assumed separatism. Such sex segregation is still common even in
societies which have prescribed to notions of general human freedom
regardless of sex and in accordance with Human Rights. This is because
of a common consensus that sex segregation is ‘good’ although its
effects are bad.
In Durkheim’s (1984: 142) view such ‘organized
despotism’ is where the individual and the collective consciousness are
almost the same. Then sui generis, a new life may be added on to that of
the main body. As a consequence, this freer and more independent state
progresses and consolidates itself (Durkheim 1984: 284).
However,
consensus may also rest on an imbalance that is upheld and may even
strengthen precisely as an effect of the initial imbalance. In such a
case ‘organized despotism’ becomes the means for conservation. As a
consequence, the only alternative would be to ease restrictions, which
is something fundamentally different from proposing how people should
live their lives. ‘Organized despotism’ in this meaning may apply to
gender and to sex segregation as well.
According to Connell
(2003) whose confused view may be closer to that of Justice Ginsburg,
gender is neither biology, nor a fixed dichotomy, but it has a special
relation to the human body mirrored in a ‘general perception’. Cultural
patterns do not only mirror bodily differences. Gender is ‘a structure’
of social relations/practices concentrated to ‘the reproductive arena’,
and a series of due practices in social processes. That is, gender
describes how society relates to the human body, and has due
consequences for our private life and for the future of wo/mankind
(Connell 2003:21-22).
Gender is neither biology, nor a fixed
dichotomy, but it has a special relation to the human body mirrored in a
“general perception.” What is wrong with this view is the thought that
cultural patterns only mirror bodily differences. Gender is “a
structure” of social relations/practices concentrated to “the
reproductive arena”, and a series of due practices in the social
processes. I.e. it describes how society relates to the human body, and
due consequences to our private life and for the future of wo/mankind
(Connell 2003:21-22). The main problem here involves how to talk without
gender.
... sex should properly refer to the biological aspects
of male and female existence. Sex differences should therefore only be
used to refer to physiology, anatomy, genetics, hormones and so forth.
Gender should properly be used to refer to all the non‑biological
aspects of differences between males and females ‑ clothes, interests,
attitudes, behaviours and aptitudes, for example ‑ which separate
'masculine' from 'feminine' life styles (Delamont 1980: 5 in Hargreaves
1994:146).
The distinction between sex and gender implied in
these quotations, however, does not seem to resolve the issue precisely
because it fails to offer a tool for discriminating biological aspects
of differences from non-biological, i.e. cultural. This is also
reflected in everyday life “folk categories of sex and gender” which
(most?) often appear to be used as if they were the same. Although
'masculine' and 'feminine' are social realities, there is a mystique
about their being predetermined by biology” (ibid). Furthermore the very
relational meaning of ‘gender’ seems to constitute a too an obvious
hiding place for essentialism based on sex. Apart from being
‘structure’, as noted above, gender is, according to Connell, all about
relations (2003:20). However, if there are none, or if the relations are
excluding, the concept of sex segregation may be even more useful.
It
seems that 'masculine' and 'feminine’ in this definition of gender is
confusingly close to the ‘mystique about their being predetermined by
biology’ when compared to the ‘reproductive arena’ and ‘reproductive
differences’ in Connell’s definition of gender. However, although
gender, according to Connell (2003: 96), may also be ‘removed’ the
crucial issue is whether those who are segregated really want to de-sex
segregate? As long as the benefits of a breakout are not clearly
assessable, the possible negative effects may undermine such efforts.
According
to Connell (2003:20) the very key to the understanding of gender is not
to focus on differences, but, instead, to focus on relations. In fact,
this distinction is crucial here because relations, contrary to
differences, are mutually dependent. Whatever difference existing
between the sexes is meaningless unless it is connected via a relation.
On the one hand, big male muscles can hardly be of relational use other
than in cases of domestic violence, and on the other hand, wage gaps
cannot be identified without a comparative relation to the other sex.
Biological
determinism is influential in the general discourse of sports academia
(Hargreaves 1994:8). However, what remains to analyse is whether
‘gender’ is really a successful concept for dealing with biological
determinism?
‘To explain the cultural at the level of the
biological encourages the exaggeration and approval of analyses based on
distinctions between men and women, and masks the complex relationship
between the biological and the cultural’ (Hargreaves 1994:8).
With
another example: to explain the cultural (driver) at the level of the
technical (type of car) encourages the exaggeration and approval of
analyses based on distinctions between cars, and masks the complex
relationship between the car and the driver. However, also the contrary
seems to hold true;. that the cultural (driver/gender) gets tied to the
technical/biological. The ‘complex relationship’ between the car and the
driver is easily avoided by using similar1 cars, hence making the
driver more visible. In a sex/gender setting the ‘complex relationship’
between sex and gender is easily avoided by distinguishing between sex
and culture2, hence making culture more visible. The term ‘culture’,
unlike the term ‘gender’ clearly tries to avoid the ‘complex
relationship’ between biology and gender. The ‘complex relationship’
makes it, in fact, impossible to distinguish between them. On top of
this comes the ‘gender relation’ confusion, which determines people to
have ‘gender relations’, i.e. to be opposite or separate.
This
kind of gender view is popular, perhaps because it may serve as a
convenient way out from directly confronting the biology/culture
distinction, and seems to be the prevalent trend, to the extent that
‘gender’ has conceptually replaced ‘sex’, leading to the consequence
that the latter has become more or less self-evident and thus almost
beyond scrutiny. In other words, by using ‘gender’ as a sign for ‘the
complex relationship between the biological and the cultural’,
biological determinism becomes more difficult to access analytically.
Gender
is neither biology, nor a fixed dichotomy, but it has a special
relation to the human body mirrored in a ‘general perception.’ What is
problematic with this view is the thought that cultural patterns only
mirror bodily differences. Gender is ‘a structure’ of social
relations/practices concentrated to ‘the reproductive arena’, and a
series of due practices in social processes. That is, it describes how
society relates to the human body and has due consequences to our
private life and for the future of wo/mankind (Connell 2003: 21-22). The
main problem here involves how to talk sex without gender:
‘Sex
should properly refer to the biological aspects of male and female
existence. Sex differences should therefore only be used to refer to
physiology, anatomy, genetics, hormones and so forth. Gender should
properly be used to refer to all the nonbiological aspects of
differences between males and females clothes, interests, attitudes,
behaviours and aptitudes, for example which separate 'masculine' from
'feminine' lifestyles’ (Delamont 1980 quoted in Hargreaves 1994: 146).
The
distinction between sex and gender implied in these quotations,
however, does not seem to resolve the issue, precisely because it fails
to offer a tool for discriminating biological aspects of differences
from non-biological ones, i.e. those that are cultural. This is also
reflected in everyday life. ‘Folk’ categories of sex and gender often
appear to be used as if they were the same thing. Although 'masculine'
and 'feminine' are social realities, there is a mystique about their
being predetermined by biology. Furthermore the very relational meaning
of ‘gender’ seems to constitute a too obvious hiding place for a brand
of essentialism based on sex. Apart from being ‘structure’, as noted
above, gender is, according to Connell (2003:20), all about relations.
However, if there are none - or if the relations are excluding - the
concept of sex segregation may be even more useful.
In Connell’s
analysis, however, gender may also be removed (Connell 2003:96). In this
respect and as a consequence, gender equals sex segregation. In fact it
seems that the 'masculine' and 'feminine’, in the definition of gender
above, are confusingly close to the ‘mystique about their being
predetermined by biology’ when compared to the ‘reproductive arena’ and
‘reproductive differences’ in Connell’s (2003:21) definition of gender.
The elusiveness of gender seems to reveal a point of focus rather than a
thorough-going conceptualization. So, for example, in traditional
Engels/Marx thinking the family’s mediating formation between class and
state excludes the politics of gender (Haraway 1991: 131).
What's a Woman?
In
What is a Woman? Moi (1999) attacks the concept of gender while still
emphasizing the importance of the concept of the feminine and a strong
self-conscious (female) subject that combines the personal and the
theoretical within it. Moi (1999: 76), hence, seems to propose a loose
sex/gender axis resting on a rigid womanhood based on women’s context
bound, lived experience outside the realm of men’s experience.
Although
I share Moi’s suggestion for abandoning the category of gender, her
analysis seems to contribute to a certain confusion and to an almost
incalculable theoretical abstraction in the sex/gender distinction
because it keeps maintaining sex segregation without offering a
convincing defence for it. Although gender, for example, is seen as a
nature-culture distinction, something that essentializes non-essential
differences between women and men, the same may be said about Moi’s
approach if we understand her ‘woman’ as, mainly, the mainstream
biological one usually classified (prematurely) in the delivery room. If
the sexes live in separate spheres, as Moi’s analysis seems to imply,
the lived, contextual experience of women appears as less suitable for
pioneering on men’s territory.
This raises the question about
whether the opening up of new frontiers for females may demand the
lessening or even the absence of femininity (and masculinity). In fact,
it is believed here that the ‘liminal state’ where social progression
might best occur, is precisely that. Gender as an educated ‘facticity’
then, from this point of view, will inevitably enter into a state of
world view that adds itself onto the ‘lived body’ as a constraint.
It
is assumed here that we commonly conflate constructs of sex, gender,
and sexuality. When sex is defined as the ‘biological’ aspects of male
and female, then this conceptualization is here understood as purely
descriptive. When gender is said to include social practices organized
in relation to biological sex (Connell 1987), and when gender refers to
context/time-specific and changeable socially constructed relationships
of social attributes and opportunities learned through socialization
processes, between women and men, this is also here understood as
descriptive. However, when description of gender transforms into active
construction of gender, e.g. through secrets about its analytical gain,
it subsequently transforms into a compulsory necessity. Gendering hence
may blindfold gender-blind opportunities.
In conclusion, if
gender is here understood as a social construct, then is not coupled to
sex but to context, and dependent on time. Also it is here understood
that every person may possess not only one but a variety of genders.
Even if we consider gender to be locked together with the life history
of a single individual the above conceptualization makes a single,
personal gender impossible, longitudinally as well as contemporaneously.
Whereas gender is constructive and deterministic, sex is descriptive
and non-deterministic. In this sense, gender as an analytical tool
leaves little room for the Tomboy.
The Tomboy - a threat to "femininity"
Noncompliance
with what is assumed ‘feminine’ threatens established or presumed sex
segregation. What is perceived as ‘masculinity’ or ‘maleness’ in women,
as a consequence, may only in second place, target homosexuality. In
accordance with this line of thought, the Tomboy embodies both the
threat and the possibilities for gendered respectively gender-blind
opportunity structures.
The Tomboy is the loophole out of gender
relations. Desires revealed through sport may have been with females
under the guise of a different identity, such as that of the Tomboy
(Kotarba & Held 2007: 163). Girls throw balls ‘like girls’ and do
not tackle like boys because of a female perception of their bodies as
objects of action (Young 2000:150 cited in Kotarba & Held 2007:
155).
However, when women lacking experience of how to act in an
effective manner in sport are taught about how to do, they have no
problem performing, quite contrary to explaining shortcomings as due to
innate causes (Kotarba & Held 2007: 157). This is also opposite to
the experiences of male-to-female transsexuals who through thorough
exercise learn how to feminisize their movements (Schrock & Boyd
2006:53-55). Although, according to Hargreaves (1994), most separatist
sports philosophies have been a reaction to dominant ideas about the
biological and psychological predispositions of men and women,
supposedly rendering men 'naturally suited to sports, and women, by
comparison, essentially less suited (Hargreaves 1994:29-30), the
opposite may also hold true. Separatism per definition needs to separate
and this separation is often based on biological differences, be it
skin colour, sex or something else.
From this perspective, the
Tomboy would constitute a theoretical anomaly in a feminine separatist
setting. Although her physical body would possibly qualify what makes
her a Tomboy would not.
The observation that in mixed
playgrounds, and in other areas of the school environment, boys
monopolize the physical space (Hargreaves 1994:151) may lack the
additional notion that certain boys dominate and certain boys do not.
Sports feminists have 'politicized' these kinds of experience by drawing
connections between ideas and practice (Hargreaves 1994:3) but because
of a separatist approach may exclude similar experience among parts of
the boys. Moreover, a separatist approach is never waterproof and may
hence leak Tomboy girls without a notion.
Femininity and feminism
Feminism and psychoanalysis as oppressors
According
to Collier and Yanagisako (1987), Henrietta Moore (1994) and other
feminist anthropologists, patriarchal dominance is an inseparable
socially inherited part of the conventional family system. This implicit
suggestion of radical surgery does not, however, count on unwanted
secondary effects neither on the problem with segregated or
non-segregated sex-worlds. If, in other words, oppression is related to
gender segregation rather than patriarchy, or perhaps that patriarchy is
a product of sex segregation, then there seems to be a serious problem
of intellectual survival facing feminists themselves. If feminism1 is to
be understood as an approach and/or analytical tool for separatism2,
those feminists and others who propose not only analytical segregation
but also practical segregation, face the problem of possible oppression
inherent in this very segregation (Klevius 1994, 1996). In this sense
oppression is related to sex segregation in two ways:
1. As a means for naming it (feminism) for an analytical purpose.
2.
As a social consequence or political strategy (e.g. negative bias
against female football or a separatist strategy for female football).
It
is notable that the psychoanalytic movement has not only been
contemporary with feminism, but it has also followed (or led) the same
pattern of concern and proposed warnings and corrections that has marked
the history of ‘feminism’ in the 20th century. According to S. Freud,
the essence of the analytic profession is feminine and the psychoanalyst
‘a woman in love’ (L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester 1992:189). But
psychoanalytically speaking, formalized sex and sex segregation also
seem to have been troublesome components in the lives of female
psychoanalysts struggling under a variety of assumed, but irreconcilable
femininities and professional expectations.
In studying the
history of feminism one inevitably encounters what is called ‘the
women’s movement’. While there is a variety of different feminisms, and
because the borders between them, as well as to what is interpreted as
the women’s rights movement, some historians, incl. Klevius, question
the distinction and/or methods in use for this distinction.
However,
it could also be argued that whereas the women’s right movement may be
distinguished by its lack of active separatism within the proposed
objectives of the movement, feminism ought to be distinguished as a
multifaceted separatist movement based on what is considered feminine
values, i.e. what is implied by the very word ‘feminism’3. From this
perspective the use of the term ‘feminism’ before the last decades of
the 19th century has to be re-evaluated, as has every such usage that
does not take into account the separatist nature underpinning all
feminisms. Here it is understood that the concept ‘feminism’, and its
derivatives, in every usage implies a distinction based on separating
the sexes - e.g. addressing inequality or inequity - between male and
female (see discussion above). So although ’feminism’ and ‘feminisms’
would be meaningless without such a separation, the ‘women’s rights
movement’, seen as based on a distinct aim for equality with men in
certain legal respects, e.g. the right to vote, could be described as
the opposite, i.e. de-segregation, ‘gender blindness’ etc.
As a
consequence the use of the word feminism in a context where it seems
inappropriate is here excepted when the authors referred to have decided
to do so. The feminist movement went back to Mary Wollstonecraft and to
some French revolutionaries of the end of the eighteenth century, but
it had developed slowly. In the period 1880 to 1900, however, the
struggle was taken up again with renewed vigour, even though most
contemporaries viewed it as idealistic and hopeless. Nevertheless, it
resulted in ideological discussions about the natural equality or
non-equality of the sexes, and the psychology of women. (Ellenberger
1970: 291-292).
Not only feminist gynocentrists, but also
anti-feminist misogynists contributed with their own pronouncements on
the woman issue. In 1901, for example, the German psychiatrist Moebius
published a treatise, On the Physiological Imbecility of Woman,
according to which, woman is physically and mentally intermediate
between the child and man (see Ellenberger 1970:292). However, according
to the underlying presumption of this thesis, i.e. that the borders
between gynocentrism and misogyny are not well understood, these two
approaches are seen as more or less synonymous. Such a view also
confirms with a multitude of points in common between psychoanalysis and
feminism. As was argued earlier, the main quality of separatism and
‘complementarism’ is an insurmountable border, sometimes contained under
the titles: love, desire etc.
