PARTISAN REVIEW
181
ly where support for 'the emancipation of slaves stood two centuries ago.
Just as througJhout the millennia of unquestioning acceptance of slavery,
the age-old oppression of women is justified by an appeal to presumed
inequalities "natural" to the species, the vast majority of people on this
planet - women as well as men - remain convinced that women have a
different "nature" than men, and that these "natural" differences make
women inferior.
Educated people in urbanized countries, especially those wlho regard
themselves as liberals or socialists, often deny they believe these differ–
ences make women inferior. That women
differ
from men, they argue,
does not mean that women are not ·the equal of men. Their argument
is as dishonest as ,the separate-but-equal argument once used to defend
the legal segregaltion of 'the races in schools. For ,the specific content of
these supposedly innate differences between women and men imply a
scale of values in which the qualities assigned to women are clearly less
estimable than those assigned to men. "Masculinity" is identified with
competence, autonomy, self-control, ambition, risk-taking, independence,
rationality; "femininity" is identified with incompetence, helplessness, ir–
rationality, passivity, noncompetitiveness, being nice. Women are trained
for second-class aduJthooo, most of what is cherished as typically "fem–
inine" behavior being simply behavior ,that is childish, servile, weak, im–
mature. No wonder men balk
at
accepting women as their full equals.
Vive la difference
indeed!
Not expecting women to be truthful, or punctual, or expert in
handling and repairing machines, or frugal, or muscular, or physically
brave makes all women who are - exceptional. Every generation pro–
duces a few women of genius (or
at
least of irrepessible eccentricity)
who win special status for themselves. But the historical visibility of the
Trung sisters, Joan of Are, Saint Theresa, Mademoiselle Maupin, George
Eliot, Louise Micihel, Harriet Tubman, Isabelle Eberhardt, Marie Curie,
Rosa Luxemburg, Amelia Earhardt, and the other of that small band,
is understood to follow precisely from their possessing qualities that
women do not normally have. Suoh women are credited with "mascu–
line" energy, intelligence, willfulness, and courage. Examples of
un–
usually capable and genuinely independent women do not shake the gen–
eral
presumption of women's inferior1ty, any more than the discovery
(and favored treatment) of intellectually talented slaves made cultivated
Roman slaveowners doubt the naturalness of slavery: the argument from
"nature" is self-confirming. Individual lives whioh do not confirm the
argument
wilJ
always be taken as exceptions, thereby leaving the stereo–
types
in
tact.
