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Bribery and Intimidation: A Discussion of Sandra Lee Bartky's "Femininity and Domination:Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression"Author(s): Rhoda Hadassah KotzinReviewed work(s):Source: Hypatia, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter, 1993), pp. 164-172Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Hypatia, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810308 .Accessed: 16/03/2012 12:32

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SYMPOSIUM

Bribery and Intimidation: A Discussion of Sandra Lee Bartky's Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression

RHODA HADASSAH KOTZIN

A review of my undergraduate students' commentaries on two of Bartky's essays serves as the occasion for elaborating on Bartky's analyses of factors that sustain and perpetuate the subjection and disempowerment of women. In my elaboration I draw from John Stuart Mill's statement: "In the case of women, each individual of the subject-class is in a chronic state of bribery and intimidation combined. " I conclude by raising the question, How is personal transformation possible?

Over the years I have had the privilege of hearing most of the essays included in this volume when they were presented as works in progress at conferences of the Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy. Sandra Bartky's work has stimulated and influenced my thinking in so many ways that it would be difficult for me to specify in detail my indebtedness to her, and I won't try here. Instead, I shall approach the essays as if they were "assigned reading" in the course in feminist philosophy that many of us are teaching, or will be teaching, or wish we had been born late enough to have taken instead of teaching it.

I have in fact used two of Sandra's essays in a course I have been teaching- Philosophical Aspects of Feminism-a "300"-level course chiefly for under- graduate juniors and seniors. The essays are "Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness" and "On Psychological Oppression." I scheduled them for some class sessions during the last two weeks of the course. All the students were required to read both essays. For each essay a student was assigned to give a five-minute oral presentation, part exposition and part commentary,

Hypatia vol. 8, no. 1 (Winter 1993) © by Rhoda Hadassah Kotzin

Rhoda Hadassah Kotzin

which was followed by a general class discussion. In addition, students could elect to write commentaries on one or both of Bartky's essays as part of their final written assignment for the course. My guidelines for the students' com- mentaries included the following:

1. Be constructive without being uncritical.

2. Pick out what you find to be correct, insightful, well argued, convinc- ing, worthy of being explored further, or worthy of being taken seri- ously, and explain why you find it so. Where appropriate, you might make reference to other authors. You might think of ways of strength- ening the paper, e.g., by considering and replying to actual or possible objections. And where you think something is worth exploring further, become a collaborator with the author of the paper.

3. Should you find something you think is unclear, not well argued, inaccurate, exaggerated, minimized, trivialized, treated dismissively, distorted, asserted without being supported, left unexamined, or oth- erwise faulty or deficient, make your point very specifically and tactfully and make some concrete, specific suggestions for correcting it or making up the deficiency. Again, become a collaborator with the author of the paper and do what you can to rescue it. And if, even though you are as supportive and constructive as you can be, you find that you remain unconvinced, state your doubts or objections clearly but tactfully.

In most cases the oral presentations and commentary essays brought up three scenarios as told by Sandra Bartky:

1. The interior dialogue that takes place in the toy department of Marshall Field's.

What if, just this once, I send a doll to my nephew and an erector set to my niece? Will this confirm the growing suspicion in my family that I am a crank?... Must I seize every opportu- nity? May I never take the easy way out? (Bartky 1990, 19-20)

2. Harassment on the street, whistles, and catcalls.

[T]here is more involved in this encounter than their mere fragmented perception of me.... I must be made to see myself as they see me [as a "nice piece of ass"]. (Bartky 1990, 27)

3. The job interview in which the male interviewer stares at the breasts of the young woman being interviewed and she is discomfited, feels humiliated, performs badly, and fails to get the job (Bartky 1990, 27).

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And the issue of concern with appearance was often brought up by the students:

[T]he imperative not to neglect our appearance suggests that we can neglect it, that it is within our power to make ourselves look better-not just neater and cleaner, but prettier, and more attractive. What is presupposed by this is that we don't look good enough already... that there is something wrong with us as we are. (Bartky 1990, 29)

My students' responses to these two essays might be roughly divided into three groups. The first group consists of those whose commentary essays came out less than constructive and less than tactful. Bartky's work (or perhaps Bartky herself) was characterized as "neurotic" (the toy store dilemma, being upset by catcalls, being overly concerned about her appearance). Some stu- dents viewed Bartky as a "crybaby" who blames other people (i.e., men) for everything that is wrong with her life. To be sure, later investigation revealed that the authors of these (blessedly few) commentaries were male students- and they were a very small minority of the male students at that.

A second group of undergraduates, mostly female and mostly about nineteen to twenty-one years old, were surprised and impressed by the idea that there can be such a thing as psychological oppression. They were persuaded that Bartky was on the right track in trying to explore how fragmentation and mystification, resulting in self-estrangement or psychic alienation, are effected through stereotyping, cultural domination, and sexual objectification. These students showed, however, a certain impatience to get on with the business: Now that we have a handy way of stating what is the matter, we should not just wring our hands and say, "How awful!" Let us now turn to changing things instead of just analyzing and reanalyzing what is wrong. Most of these students were taking their first philosophy course and were looking for less talk and more action, or at least a blueprint for action.

The third group consists of undergraduate students who were over twenty- five years old, or had themselves undergone what they would characterize as "becoming" something of a feminist, or had been hassled in bars or other public places, or had been treated in a harassing manner in a job interview, or had been harassed on the job by a male co-worker or supervisor, and could find their own counterparts to the rage, confusion, suspicion, wariness, and self- doubt about which Bartky writes so evocatively.

For this third group, the moral of the toy department story seems to be: at this stage in the development of feminist consciousness, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. Once the issue (which toy for which child?) is raised, there does not seem to be a satisfactory solution. That is because day-to-day living has been transformed into a "series of invitations to struggle" (Bartky 1990, 20). Regarding the catcalls, hoots, whistles, and remarks made

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by self-appointed graders, it seems to be that any man or group of men feels entitled not only to render a judgment on any woman walking along minding her own business, but also to announce it to her. The students realized that this is harassment even though, when confronted, a "grader" might point out that the woman was after all given a high grade and should feel complimented, not insulted. They understood the whistles and catcalls as part of a "ritual of subjugation" (Bartky 1990, 27). And women who had themselves experienced interviewing and on-the-job harassment had their own stories to tell.

These more sympathetic and older and more experienced students (and those with more training in philosophy) looked at some of the lessons that Bartky draws from her examples and scenarios in the first two essays in this volume and found that she renders articulate some important insights about what forms the domination/oppression of women can take. They came to believe that it is much more deep and pervasive than they had earlier sus- pected. As to suggestions for how to go on with the work, some wished that Bartky could expand on what there is in the process of becoming a feminist that is in any way joyful, as she had said it was for her. Some thought it would be helpful to their own morale to offer some real hope of change.

How might Sandra Bartky respond to these three groups of student com- mentators? As to the first group, I would reply that Bartky is no crybaby and I am sure that she needs no help from me in responding to these students' objections. Obviously, spending nine weeks studying philosophical aspects of feminism with me did not change all hearts and minds. As to the other two groups, I would like to attempt a "Bartkian" response, based mainly on the later essays in this volume. Here I stop short of claiming collaboration with the author but try to suggest, or at least insinuate, something of what I would like to see Bartky do in the way of proceeding with what I take to be a long-term project.

Let us start with the demand for a blueprint for action. It might be objected that we cannot give a plan for action because we are so saturated, as it were, with male domination that we do not have a very clear idea of what a society that is completely free of gender oppression would be like. I would suggest in response that one does not have to be utterly clear about everything in order to be clear enough about some things. For example, a feminist vision of such a society would be of a society without prostitutes, a society without either the formal institutions or informal practices around prostitution. But what do we do about prostitutes and prostitution in the here and now? If it is a blueprint for action that is wanted, then it is possible to say that we should work toward decriminalizing prostitution while realizing that we are at best reducing the extent of the harmful consequences, under the present laws, to women who right now are prostitutes, without thereby approving of prostitution as an institution (see Bartky 1990, 50). At the same time, when we ask ourselves what it would take politically to produce a society in which gender oppression

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would be recorded in the history books as belonging to a past era, we might not be clear about what such a society would look like (in detail) or how, even in terms of overall strategy, to bring it about. Even so, we could still say that it would surely be a society where the institution of prostitution would not exist, where the issue would not even arise.

At this point I am going to bring in a pair of allies for Sandra Lee Bartky: Harriet (Hardy) Taylor Mill and John Stuart Mill. Suppose that they are right in thinking that the subordination of women by men is the hardest form of group oppression, subordination, or subjection to eradicate and will be the last to go. To be sure, Bartky would insist that gender issues are not played out independently of issues of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, class, age, physical handicap, sexual orientation, etc. Nor are they played out indepen- dently of some particular time period, set of laws, or other culture-specific conditions. Nevertheless, it is possible, within culture-specific conditions, to pick out gender-related forms of oppression and to attempt to disclose both that and how they oppress women, as well as to specify some of the ways that various other modes of oppression are intertwined with male domination within these culture-specific conditions (and, of course, features of an individual's situation). Harriet Taylor Mill and John Stuart Mill give several reasons for believing that the subjection of women is deep and pervasive and very difficult to eradicate.1

When, however, we ask why the existence of one-half of the species should be merely ancillary to that of the other ... the only reason which can be given is, that men like it. (H.T. Mill 1970, 107)

Custom hardens human beings to any kind of degradation, by deadening the part of their nature which would resist it. And the case of women is, in this respect, even a peculiar one, for no other inferior caste that we have heard of have been taught to regard their degradation as their honour.... The plea that women do not desire any change, is the same that has been urged, times out of mind, against the proposal of abolishing any social evil-"there is no complaint"; which is generally not true, and when true, only so because there is not that hope of success, without which complaint seldom makes itself audible to unwilling ears. (H.T. Mill 1970, 117-18; italics added)

We must consider, too, that the possessors of the power have facilities in this case, greater than in any other, to prevent any uprising against it. Every one of the subjects lives under the very eye, and almost, it may be said, in the hands, of one of the masters-in closer intimacy with him than with any of their

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fellow-subjects; with no means of combining against him, no power of even locally overmastering him, and, on the other hand, with the strongest motives for seeking his favour and avoiding to give him offence. In struggles for political emanci- pation, everybody knows how often its champions are bought off by bribes, or daunted by terrors. In the case of women, each individual of the subject-class is in a chronic state of bribery and intimidation combined. (J.S. Mill 1970, 136-37)

Bartky would perhaps add the following: The depth and pervasiveness of women's subordination are even greater than had been suspected. Legal remedies, though necessary, will not suffice. Removal of economic barriers or forms of economic disempowerment (whatever they might be) is necessary but not sufficient. And even both together are insufficient. Removing all "disabilities" and disadvantages based on religion, nationality, ethnicity, age, physical characteristics, and all the rest, still will not do it. Indeed, getting rid of all the formal institutions and their corresponding social sanctions that tend to keep women in their place will not suffice.

Bartky has fastened on processes or mechanisms of informal sanctions. It would be useful to think of them as operating through modes of what John Stuart Mill called bribery and intimidation and sometimes both combined. These are the techniques of co-optation. They operate not so much to produce, but to maintain and perpetuate, male domination and female disempower- ment. By "bribery" we might understand those things that Bartky characterizes as "seductive": they seem positive and they might make us seem to ourselves to be fine or decent or noble or competent or effective or powerful or important and worthwhile and appreciated. By "intimidation" we might understand those processes or mechanisms which make it less costly to avoid or not aspire to certain things, or not to believe we deserve them, or not even to believe it is appropriate for us to hope for, pursue, or desire them. This is a process that makes certain things appear to be either out of the question for oneself or too costly to others (and hence immoral as well as inappropriate) and perhaps even too costly to oneself.

The last three chapters of Femininity and Domination disclose some ways that bribery and intimidation operate. In the essay on Foucault and femininity, Bartky (1990, 63-82) explores the requirement of conformity to norms of femininity and the means by which it is secured, making the point that our "femininity" is a constructed femininity. We may be pleased or displeased with what we have done, and continue to do, with our hair, skin, makeup, clothes, and our size, shape, and weight. We may be unaware of the extent to which our motility and use of space conform to an imposed and inculcated conception of what is feminine and what is unfeminine. In this essay, Bartky brings out some of the ways in which we have been turned into our own chief supervisors

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in the discipline of the body. These discussions render more articulate what the "intemalization" of oppression consists in and some of the ways it is produced.

In the essay "Shame and Gender" (Bartky, 1990) the principal theme is "intimidation," not through threats and formal sanctions, but through infor- mal ways of disempowering women by teaching them how to keep themselves down and making it psychologically costly to be too uppity. Bartky points up the effect of pervasive "social learning" on the construction of self-assessing emotions. She argues that the very activity of self-assessment (as described in the standard theories) supposes a certain type (i.e., a "male" type) of moral agent capable of being ashamed of himself for what he has done or for failing to measure up to a clearly given standard. The low self-esteem of the women Bartky is talking about is not like that. It is rather a global feeling-tone, a vague and unarticulated sense of being inadequate, not a response to anything in particular that is shameful. In this essay on shame Bartky gives a richly elaborated extension of her earlier essay on psychological oppression. Now we see that the informal sanctions are everywhere in society, even in education, long thought to be the most egalitarian of our institutions. The assaults on self-esteem are difficult to detect just because they are ubiquitous. They are micro-assaults; they occur every day, everywhere.

In the last essay of this volume, Bartky (1990, 99-119) argues that women's feeding men's egos and tending men's emotional wounds-the work of "female tenderess"-may or may not benefit men as much as the women whose emotional labor is expended in this way are persuaded it does. But what is noteworthy is that it is, by and large, not reciprocated equally. Bartky argues that this unreciprocated care-giving by women to adult men (not babies and children) with whom they are in intimate relationships may give the illusion of power, competency, importance in someone's life, but it is in the final analysis disempowering for women. Women's provision of emotional suste- nance with little in return may be one of the most important ways in which "conventional femininity" reveals itself as profoundly seductive.

What is so seductive about it? It seems to offer us pleasures and gratification: that is why it works when it works. That is why it is so hard to renounce, and perhaps that is the "bribery" that is not recognized as bribery. Some kinds of bribery are a bit easier to detect. This kind is a setup, a giving with one hand and taking away with the other. The "mystification" that Bartky talks about in her earlier essays receives a new articulation: "We are offered real and gratifying feminine satisfactions in return for what this same femininity requires that we renounce" (Bartky, 1990, 116). And as Bartky points out, these gratifications are the harder to renounce if there are not alternative sources of gratification. No wonder not all women are feminists.

But some are. If not yet feminists, many women are on their way to becoming feminists. How is it possible? I want to tur, in conclusion, to the issue of what

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Bartky has termed the "politics of personal transformation" (Bartky 1990, 45-62).

In addressing the question why this or that is so seductive, Bartky wants to avoid calling certain changes "voluntary." As she rightly points out, the claim that anyone, and hence any woman, can change, if she really wants to, whatever she disapproves of in her own desires, attitudes, ways of responding, and the like, is both attractive and disempowering. It is attractive because it

suggests that we are not mere puppets. But this extreme version of voluntarism easily leads one to something like blaming the victim for allowing herself to be a victim (it leads to absurdities as well, it seems to me). On the other hand, giving an account in which what is seductive is determined-indeed, over- determined-is not only a position of hopelessness; it also runs contrary to our own experiences and observations, for, it would make both deviance and resistance inexplicable. Surely some of the people some of the time do see

through things and are in fact able to get past them, even though others are not so able and even though no one, it seems, sees through everything all at once or all of the time. I suggest that sometimes seeing through things is a matter of realizing that one has been held in place by a combination of bribery and intimidation. Perhaps the intimidation does not work as well any longer because the external sanctions have become weakened and one comes to see that the main enforcer of the norms, at this point, is really oneself.

But even if a bribe is seen for what it is, there is no guarantee that one will be able to mount a resistance that is more than an empty gesture. Perhaps the lack of an alternative source of gratification makes it in fact too difficult to give up. It is possible to slide back and forth between seeing through things and trying to change them, and not really seeing through them.

However, sometimes "transformation" is in fact possible and is in fact accomplished. One is no longer under the sway of a mystification. One no longer regards oneself as a living, breathing battlefield where one is damned if one does and damned if one doesn't-at least with respect to some particular issue. Seeing through the seductiveness (the bribe) is not a guarantee, but if it can be shown how it is possible, then we have an account of what personal transformation can be, instead of vague hand-waving and appeal to metaphors, analogies, and various rhetorical devices.

And this is where I would strike a balance between the last two groups of students I started out talking about. What to recommend in the way of going on from here? More exploration in the phenomenology of oppression, with an eye to exploring as a possibility getting out of it. My suggestion for how to go on from here would be further exploration of the question, After the process of mystification has been uncovered, what makes self-transformation possible?

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NOTE

1. Their remarks might also be construed, it seems to me, as offering an early and partial response to one of the questions Bartky raises: Why aren't all women feminists?

REFERENCES

Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Feminity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York: Routledge.

Mill, Harriet Taylor. 1970. Enfranchisement of women. In Essays on sex equality, ed. Alice S. Rossi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mill, John Stuart. 1970. The subjection of women. In Essays on sex equality, ed. Alice S. Rossi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.