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Power, Resistance, and Science: A Call
for a Revitalized Feminist Psychology[1]
by Naomi Weisstein.
Transcribed for digital reproduction by John Burke.
(Editors Note: Naomi Weisstein was a founder of the CWLU. She rocked
the psychology establishment with the 1968 article "Psychology
Constructs the Female" This 1992 article was part of a series of
articles commemorating her feminist classic.)
I am overwhelmed
by the generosity of the comments on "Psychology Constructs the
Female" (PCF), and I welcome this opportunity to participate in
a new discussion about the article and to suggest new directions for
a feminist psychology. When I wrote PCF in its original form in 1968,[2]
the second wave of 20th century US feminism had begun to sweep the country.
Transformation charged the air. Women like myself, who had been too
intimidated to speak in public, were delivering fiery orations to wildly
enthusiastic audiences. Women who had previously considered same-sex
sex a crime worse than strangling one's baby declared themselves lesbians.
Even the resentment that women of different classes and races usually
felt for each other was temporarily muted. We were creating an alternative
social context which, in turn, redefined who we were. Thus I was writing
from direct experience when I said in PCF, "A study of human behavior
requires first and foremost a study of the social contexts within which
people move, the expectations as to how they will behave, and the authority
which tells us who they are and what they are supposed to do."
But an understanding
of how important the social context is in determining behavior seems
now to have faded from consciousness. We have a psychology which is
still "depoliticized," "individualized" and "decontextualized'
(Sandra Bem), still "mired in essentialist views about the differences
between men and women' (Rhoda Unger). An area that calls itself feminist
psychology averts its eyes from the larger barbarism of the social
context in which we operate. It chooses instead to put forth a notion
of female difference which, while no longer biologically based, is
nevertheless essentialist, or at least highly decontextualized (e.g.
Gilligan, 1982; Ruddick, 1990.) Feminist psychology has also claimed
that females have a different way of knowing, or know different things
than men do, and therefore that science, a male pursuit, is largely
irrelevant to the study of gender (e.g. Ros Gill, Una Gault, Oonagh
Hartnett and Jane Prince; see also Harding, 1991.) In this paper,
I will suggest, in total agreement with Sandra Bem and Rhoda Unger,
that we feminist psychologists open our eyes once more to a larger
social context and begin to focus on questions of social change.
This means that we should return to an inquiry into power and how
people resist power. Then, I will suggest that my focus on social
change puts me at odds with the current post-modernist feminist obsession
with the limitations of science, an obsession which is essentially
conservative.
POWER
We feminist
psychologists need to study power (cf. Sandra Bem; Rhoda Unger; Kahn
and Yoder, 1992.) It is clear to me that if we are ever to replace our
gendered, genocidal world with a less barbaric, more just and generous
one, we must understand how "cultural, institutional, situational,
interpersonal and psychological power" (Sandra Bem)--and, I might
add, economic power--sustain the current brutality. Sandra Bem summarizes
the task perfectly in her question to feminist psychologists: "where
is psychology's analysis of how [power and privilege operate to maintain
the status quo with respect to gender, sexuality, race, or class...
how power gets into the heads of both the marginalized and the powerful
alike?" I would add two other questions as well: (1) where is psychology's
analysis of the brutality that accompanies power?; and (2) are some
of the ugly and violent behaviors associated with gender limited to
gender alone, or do they crop up whenever power is unequally distributed?
I would
be particularly interested in studying these last two questions. Gender
is a most complex and intricate phenomenon, but at the interpersonal
level I think that a good portion of the oppressiveness of gender arises
from the fact that one person has enormous power over the other. Especially
when they are relating to women, and especially when they are "in
love," men have been observed to be arrogant, insensitive, unsympathetic,
punitive bullies (Hite, 1987; Kitzinger et al., 1992; Spender, 1990.)
At the same time, women, especially when they are relating to men and
especially when they are "in love," have been observed to
be mild, sensitive, empathic, forgiving pussycats (Hite, 1987; Kitzinger
et al., 1992; Spender, 1990.) How does this dynamic between men and
women arise? Does it need a specifically sexist ideology to hold it
in place, or will any power-justifying ideology do? I suspect the latter
(Snodgrass, 1985; Wood and Karten, 1986). But this can easily be tested.
In Skrypnek's and Snyder's (1982) elegant experiment an individual acted
in accord with an unseen partner's gender expectations regardless of
the individual's own sex. This paradigm can be modified so that the
partner has assumptions about types of power that the other individual
may have in addition to is/her gender. Then we can ask whether the behaviors
I mentioned also show up regardless of gender when differences in power
are assumed to be present.
Consider
also the hatred, sadism and violence that men direct against women
everywhere. Two and a half decades of feminist research, analysis and
agitation have shown us the incredible violence that women suffer all
over the world. More than one hundred million women who should be part
of the earth's population are missing from it (Sen, 1990.) Where are
they? Rape, child molestation, wife beating, female genital mutilation,
torture, female infanticide and murder are the dark underside of male
power over women. Eruptions of male violence are considered "random," "inexplicable," a product of "male rage, out of control."
But are they? Certainly, such action is not just random, but is rather
to be understood within the context of a sexist ideology, which permits
and promotes it. However, beyond that, this kind of violence seems to
happen to every marginalized group: violence against the powerless seems
to accompany every hierarchical culture that I know about. I am convinced
that violence is an inevitable accompaniment of the interactions between
the powerful and the powerless, regardless of gender. The question,
"Is it the power locked up in gender, or is it power itself?"
is a researchable one. Using approaches such as those taken by Stanley
Milgram in his studies of obedience to authority (see PCF), feminist
social psychology can experimentally manipulate power and study such
dependent variables as a rise in sadism and/or violence against another
person.
RESISTANCE
As long
as men have power over women, our gender oppression will continue. As
feminists, we need to oppose male power in all its cultural, institutional,
situational, interpersonal and psychological forms. As feminist psychologists,
we need to understand how resistance arises and the circumstances under
which it is effective. This leads to a variety of questions dealing
with: individual agency despite gender hegemony; individual defiance
versus collective resistance; the dynamics of collective resistance.
I would
begin with Rhoda Unger's brilliant exploration of the paradox of
feminist dissent: if we are so deeply aware of how socially constructed
our world is, what enables us to defy the social order? (Una Gault
raises a related issue in a slightly different way when she talk about
the need to recognize individual agency in the construction of social
forms.) Unger accounts for this paradox by showing how a non-conscious
sexist ideology made conscious loses its effectiveness; and by describing
a feminist epistemology which is able to tolerate contradiction. By
investigating these issues, Unger and Gault increase the sophistication
of our social constructionist theories, exploring the slippage between
a monumentally overdetermined gender imperative, and the sheer stubbornness
and quirkiness of individual defiance.
But if
we are to have social change, we need more than individual resistance.
This may occasionally start things rolling, but it cannot change
the relations of power by itself. The status quo is a social conspiracy
against the powerless, and nothing is more feeble against a social
conspiracy than individual defiance. We have to oppose power with
power--it is as simple as that; we need collective resistance. As
anybody who has ever tried it knows, it is extremely difficult to
oppose power and authority. How, then, do we persuade substantial
numbers of people to do it? In other words, how do we develop collective
resistance? And how do we maintain it? Part of the answer is that
collective resistance sets up an alternative context which, in turn,
maintains that resistance. But it is a tricky business, and it often
does not work. We need to use our arsenal of social psychological
concepts and techniques to figure out how collective resistance
develops and thrives. Now is the perfect time to study collective
resistance, at least in the USA, where militant women's groups have
begun to form again.
SCIENCE
Feminist
psychology has to a great extent abandoned a concern with subjugation
and sedition and has begun to focus reflexively on issues of methodology
and epistemology. So, for instance, Una Gault and Oonagh Hartnett and
Jane Prince accuse PCF of narrowly questioning the scientific validity
of the methods psychology uses to study women, when it should be questioning
whether scientific methodology in general is a useful approach to the
study of gender. Ros Gill goes even further and implies that PCF reverse
science with a capital "S". At first, I was perplexed by this.
PCF criticized a sexism in psychology that cloaked itself in the authority
and grandeur of science. What better way to criticize this pretense
than by showing that the sexism had nothing whatsoever to do with the
science? But now I get their picture of PCF. It is as if internationally
known gangsters are meeting in the most elegant resort in Monaco, and
I stand outside wearing my science-nerd beanie hat with the airplane
propellers on top of it, screwing up my little face, purple with indignation,
and yelling, "You guys are not telling the Truth! You promised
to tell the Truth!" In other words, how could I have been so naive
as to think that Science could have told us anything in the first place?
Science, according to such feminist epistemologists as Harding (1991),
is a "western," "bourgeois," "imperialist,"
"androcentic project", whose knowledge is "embedded in
social relations." (In the old days, we used to call this "pig"
science [Weisstein et al., 1976].) Science describes not ultimate reality
but merely the relativist and subjective reality of those who serve
it and whom it serves.
I agree
with much of this characterization of science. I speak from 30 years
of experience as a neuroscientist who has done insurgent research in
vision and cognition that has often been infuriating to the scientific
establishment. Science does not get us to the noumena--our ideas are
filtered through our cultural and social categories, the ongoing social
context and our social rank--but filters do pass information, and science
is one of the intellectual procedures that holds open the possibility
of constructing a model of reality that works and predicts. I believe
science can not only change our relation to the natural world (think:
penicillin), but it can also change our social world. (For instance,
if we really could figure out how resistance to power arises and is
maintained, then we could begin to dismantle patriarchy.) Science affords
prediction and control, and therefore it can give actual recipes for
social change, providing us feminists with a kind of countervailing
power.
Moreover,
science has its own internal momentum which makes it partially independent
of the social relations in which it is embedded. Arrogant, dogmatic,
and bullying as science is, the ideas of science do change when the
old paradigms are found to be inadequate. Even scientific ideas wedded
to existing power relations can be overturned. "Male science"
can indeed be coerced into demonstrating "female" truths.
(For example, see Rhoda Unger's discussion of my neuroscience research;
also Weisstein, 1970, 1973 ; Weisstein and Maguire, 1978.) I should
add that if, due to our social location, there actually is a difference
in the structure of female or feminist thinking, (an hypothesis I entertain
on alternate Wednesdays, just barely) then Science needs us as much
as we need science. The old positivism and behaviorism of "pig"
science is breaking up. A new more humanistic mind is now needed for
the study of the brain and human behavior.
I'm still
wearing my beanie hat, aren't I? I don't think I can take it off. Feminist
epistemologists would argue that, although the scientific method may
eventually lead to recognition of dissenting information within its
domain, the domain itself is highly limited. But the domain is in fact
practically unlimited. Science (as opposed to the scientific establishment)
will entertain hypotheses generated in any way: mystical, intuitive,
experiential. It only asks us to make sure that our observations are
replicable and our theories have some reasonable relation to other
things we know to be true about the subject under study, that is to
objective reality.[3] "Aha!", feminist epistemologists might cry, "there
is no objective reality. We are all too different from each other to
know anything but our own subjective realities, and certainly men and
women are too different from each other to agree on some universal truth."
But here the argument stops cold. Whether or not there is objective
reality is a 4000-year-old philosophical stalemate. The last I heard
was that, like God, you cannot prove there is one and you cannot prove
there is not one. It comes down to a religious and/or political choice.
I believe that current feminist rejection of universal truth is a political
choice. Radical and confrontational as the feminist challenge to science
may appear, it is, in fact, a deeply conservative retreat.
Ros Gill
mentions the "tentativeness," "anxiety" and "paralysis"
of postmodernist poststructuralist counter-Enlightenment feminism. Of
course, there is paralysis: once knowledge is reduced to insurmountable
personal subjectivity, there is no place to go; we are in a swamp of
self-referential passivity. Poststructuralist feminism is a high cult
of retreat. Sometimes I think that when the fashion passes, we will
find many bodies, drowned in their own wordy words, like the Druids
in the bogs. Meanwhile, the patriarchy continues to prosper.
It has
been my experience that, in times of no movement, reality itself
falls into question. In times of dynamism, change and movement, people
abandon doubts about reality, properly seeing them as part of the conservative
past which they are rejecting. The fog lifts. The fact of movement
gives us a clearer picture of what is really out there--what we are
fighting against, and what we are fighting for. We need a feminist
scholarship which will, once again, be infused, revitalized, and
renewed, by movement. Women are subjugated all over the world, and
with the consolidation of corporate male rule, our situation will continue
to deteriorate. Let us return to an activist, challenging, badass feminist
psychology. More than one hundred million women are missing from
the face of the earth. We can help to insure that future generations
of women will not suffer this holocaust.
[1] As I am in poor health with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction
Syndrome, I am particularly grateful for the support, both intellectual
and logistical, of Edith Hoshino Altbach, Virginia Blaisdell, Aleatha
Carter, Judith Rich Harris, Amy Kesselman, Jesse Lemisch, Catherine
Rose, Rhoda Unger and Elizabeth van Hoerenberg.
[2] After its first presentation to an audience of feminist activists
at Lake Villa, Illinois, in October 1968, this paper was presented
as "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche as Scientific Law: Psychology Constructs
the Female" at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association
at the University of California, Davis, in November 1968. The paper
was published, more or less as delivered, by the New England Free Press
and, with revisions, in a dozen other places leading to the revised
version of 1971, which is the text offered here. (The 1971 version has
been reprinted about two dozen times.)
[3] I should note that I am delighted with the new feminist methodologies
as ways to develop better hypotheses. Biography, emphasis on the
experiential, and the requirement that those gathering information
must be empathic, egalitarian and participatory are all, I think great
advances in our ability to know the world. But all these methods have
their own pitfalls: biography and accounts of direct experience are
subject to the fictions that we tell ourselves about ourselves. Una
Gault's suggestion that observers can only be fairly observed by like-minded
observers may make sense in some areas. But no interpersonal interaction
is free from the distorting expectations of the participants .
REFERENCES
Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Harding, S. (1991) Whose Science, Whose Knowledge? Milton Keynes:
Open University Press.
Hite, S. Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress. London:
Penguin.
Kahn, A.S. and Yoder J.D. (1992) (eds) Women and Power: Special Issue
of Psychology of Women Quarterly 16 (4).
Kitzinger, C., Wilkinson, S. and Perkins, R. (1992) (eds) Heterosexuality:
Special Issue of "Feminism and Psychology" 2 (3). Ruddick,
S. (1990) Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. London:
The Women's Press.
Sen, Amartya (1990) "More than One Hundred Million Women are Missing",
New York Review of Books, 20 December.
Skrypnek, B. J. and Synder, M. (1982) "On the Self-Perpetuating
Nature of Stereotypes about Women and Men", Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology 18: 277-91.
Snodgrass, S.E. (1985) "Women's Intuition: The Effect of Subordinate
Role on Interpersonal sensitivity", Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 49: 146-55.
Spender, Dale (1990) "Reflecting Men Twice Their Size", paper
presented at the International Women's Studies Conference, Hunter College,
City University of New York, June.
Weisstein, N. (1970) "Neural Symbolic Activity: A psychophysical
Measure", Science 168: 1489-91.
Weisstein, N. (1973) "Beyond the Yellow Volkswagen Detector and
the Grandmother Cell: A General Strategy for the Exploration of Operations
in Human Pattern Recognition", in R. Solso (ed.) Contemporary
Issues in Cognitive Psychology: The Loyola Symposium. Washington,
DC: W.H. Winston.
Weisstein, N. and Maguire, W. (1978) "Computing the Next Step:
Psychophysical Measures of Representation and Interpretation",
in E. Rise and A. Hanson (eds) Computer Vision Systems. New York:
Academic.
Weisstein, N., Blaisdell, V. and Lemisch, J. (1976) The Godfathers:
Freudians, Marxists, and the Scientific and Political Protection Societies.
New Haven CT: Belladonna Press.
Wood, W. and Karten, S.J. (1986) "Sex Differences in Interactive
Style as a Product of Perceived Sex Differences in Competence",
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 50: 341-7.
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