Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities

Chapter 4. Feminism, Community, and Law

Chapter 4 Feminism, Community, and Law Feminist Communitarianism: Why Communities Should Matter amid “Universalism” My analysis of the legal culture of feminists entails the need for feminist communitarianism. Feminist communitarianism is not an oxymoron. Feminists and communitarians have ascribed significance to social reciprocity and criticize the private-public dichotomy while underscoring a contextually embedded self (Frazer and Lacey 1993). Yet, nonfeminist communitarians have neglected gender equality for the same reasons that many other (male) politicaltheorists have downplayed the predicament of women, as areflectionof male dominationin humanepistemology and philosophy (Grimshaw 1986; Okin 1989, 1990). The importance that communitarians have attributed to communal public good has not by itself rendered a nonfeminist conception of social relations, culture, law, and politics. Unfortunately, certain communities have deprived women of their basic right to equality. This has been a severe problem in some communities but certainly not in all communities. It is also a severe problem in any nonegalitarian human setting. This deprivation is not a necessary conceptual defect of communitarianism. Most communitarians have not justified depriving individuals of their rights; on the contrary, they yearnto empowerindividuals,men andwomenalike, throughlegitimization and legalization of their communal ties (Etzioni 1991, 1995a, 1995b; Gutmann 1992, 1994; Putnam 2000; Taylor 1994). This necessitates , inter alia, more consciousness-raising among women and more communication among women who have experienced a similar predicament and are aware of their conjunct sphere. Okin’s criticism of MacIntyre notwithstanding (Okin 1989), a community may become a friendly sphere of public communication. It may 147 148 Communities and Law spur mutual help among women in a space that makes such communication among deprived women the only means of challenging injustice , subordination, sexual colonization, and violence (Abu-Lughod 1995; Ferguson 1995; Freedman 1995; Grimshaw 1986; Ruddick 1989; West 1998). We shall see this in the following analysis. Communities may also be sources of collective resistance in order to attain social rights and deconstruct male domination (Bart 1995; Freedman 1995; E. Honig 1995). There is neither solid empirical evidence nor a theoretical basis for the claim that communities necessarily situate individuals in a nonnegotiating, nonempowering, and deradicalizing space. Weiss and Friedman have shown in their survey of feminist communities how women can empower each other, even though feminist communities are not necessarily harmonious (1995). Conceiving communities as necessarily coercive spaces is highly myopic. Within feminist communities, different interactive voices exist as to the scope and meaning of their boundaries. Do they include only heterosexual women or also lesbians; should they include only one ethnicity or a multiplicity of ethnic identities; and so on. Similarly, which feminist issues should be components of grassroots consciousness-raising? Furthermore, debate exists as to whether and how women should prioritize their ethnic, social class, and other cultural identities in order to constitute feminist communities that narrate a common constitutive sisterhood (Ferguson 1995). As this chapter and the next will demonstrate, there is a diversity of communitarian solutions in theory and practice to the predicament of women even within coercive communities. Feminist noncommunitarian thinkers have regarded communities in skewed and hyperskeptical ways. Marxist feminism has presumed that communities are necessarily patriarchal and constitute structures of domination (Hartsock 1983). This may be true in some communities , for example, religious fundamentalist communities, but such an overwhelming essentialist claim ignores the fact that male domination and violence exist in a diversity of social structures. Hence, Hartsock’s Marxist criticism of male domination addresses some instances in some communities, including male domination within the proletariat (E. Honig 1995; Pateman 1989). Marxist feminism, however, cannot constitute theoretical criticism of communitarianism since it has downplayed the issue of which Feminism, Community, and Law 149 purpose a community generates and how communal practices may assist women to overcome joint problems. There is no necessary contradiction within communitarianism between moral unity and gender equality. Communitarians have different conceptions of which “good life” a community should advance (Barber 1984; MacIntyre 1984, 1988; Sandel 1982, 1996; Unger 1976; Walzer 1983). A careful probing into feminist communities will show that, as in the case of national minorities (see chap. 3), nonruling communities may generate autonomy within their spaces. Furthermore, examining feminist communities as heterogeneous and multifaceted settings should prevent us from reducing feminist experiences to essentialist simplicities. Communitarians have been criticized for encouraging tradition at the expense of women’s liberty (Okin 1989). I share Okin’s criticism of MacIntyre’s tendency to favor some ancient traditions as bases of justice . But opposing the content of specific traditions does not substantiate a theoretical criticism...