Left-wing woman criticises feminism

Chelsea Fagan, a decidedly left-wing woman, makes the following criticism of feminism:

Everywhere from Tumblr to Twitter to Facebook groups, there are women getting together and talking about what it means to be both a woman and a feminist. And in many of these circles, there is a heavy focus on “male privilege,” and what that means in an operational sense. There are near-endless blogs dedicated to pointing out everything from the microaggressions to the sweeping legislation which subjugate women. And as the (righteous) anger against some of the institutional disadvantages women face brews, it manifests in a number of ways. “Misandry” has become a cute term to express one’s disgust for the patriarchy. “Kill all men” is another. They are small slogans and concepts which aim to take back a sense of control, of autonomy. The expression of hatred towards men — one regarded as benign because of the lack of societal power behind it — has become a kind of social currency in many more radical feminist circles. It wouldn’t be shocking to see a 16-year-old white girl’s Tumblr with a picture of her holding a heart-shaped card emblazoned with “I Love Misandry” and surrounded by sparkles. It’s cute, and it’s harmless.

But the idea of leveraging a universal hatred against men, or allowing ourselves to feel as though there is a clear divide in terms of gendered power, and that it falls distinctly on the men vs. women line, fuels a slippery slope of profound privilege denying. Because to pretend as though the 22-year-old white female blogger talking about her hatred of men from the comfort of her prepaid dorm at an Ivy League school does not hold many tangible privileges over, say, the undocumented male worker who is cleaning the bathroom stalls of her building at night, is ludicrous. There are countless privileges she has over him, and countless points of access she has in our society that he will never see.
 

To sum up: feminists believe that men are privileged at the expense of women and this leads to anger and, amongst radical feminists, to expressions of misandry (hatred of men) as a means of reasserting female autonomy. As it is assumed that women are a victim class, such hatred is thought to be toothless and therefore harmless.

Chelsea Fagan points out, reasonably enough, that this set of feminist beliefs fails at the first step, as the women making claims about male privilege are often a lot more privileged than large numbers of men in society (she could also have pointed out that the average man works hard in life for the benefit of wife and children rather than to subjugate women, so a measure of gratitude or love is a more appropriate response than anger).

It's a good criticism of the simplistic "group rankings" which occur in a liberal society: if you belong to a group which has been tagged as privileged you lose status in society, regardless of your own circumstances.

Even so, it would be better to ditch the leftist moral focus on privilege rather than merely to refine it.

Chelsea Fagan claims that intersections of privilege and oppression define our lives, but she is wrong. I am not defined by the fact that there are people more privileged than I am in society. There will always be distinctions in status, wealth, intelligence and education. That does not detract from my identity as a man, or as a member of a particular family, ethny or nation, or as a member of a church or a community.

Nor should questions of privilege determine moral status in society. If a man has more wealth and status than I do, that does not make him of lesser moral status; I would ask instead about his integrity, his character, his embodiment of culture, his contribution to society, the quality of his role as a father and husband, his loyalty to the larger tradition he belongs to and so on.

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The three prides

It's clearly the case that many Westerners lack pride. But when I write that I'm referring to positive rather than negative forms of pride. So how do we distinguish between them?

I can think of three kinds of pride, two of them of the positive variety, one of them negative.

Self-full or egoistic pride

This is pride in its negative aspect - the one that many religious traditions, including Christianity, condemn.

It is not necessarily bad in its origins. To live well we do need to exercise a controlling or directing will, one that at its best is guided by reason and prudence. This controlling will then regulates our appetites, thoughts, actions and impulses for our larger well-being.

When, instead of being controlled by our appetites or impulses, we do instead control them, we can feel a sense of self-mastery, of enhanced being and of masculine strength.

And the risk is that these benefits can lead us to think that the controlling will is itself the end good in life. And that can lead to a self-worship, an egotism, a will-full pride in self which then sets the limits of what we are receptive to very narrowly at the borders of self.

Little wonder that, as a counterbalance, many religious traditions then emphasise humility as a virtue. But we should understand humility as a counterbalance and not as a quality that should lead to self-erasure or to a lack of assertion of controlling will in its positive aspect.

Loving pride

This is the inspired pride that we feel on perceiving the good in that which we are closely related to, for instance, the beauty of our spouse, the cuteness of our child, the achievements or the finer qualities of our compatriots or ancestors or race. To feel loving pride is a sign of health, of wholesomeness of spirit.

The lack of such pride in many Westerners is an aspect of an alienated existence, something we should seek to overcome.

Masculine pride

I take masculine pride to be a mostly good thing - that is, unless it spills over into egotistic pride. What, after all, does masculine pride often involve? It involves a willingness to prove ourselves in life's challenges; to pit ourselves against adversity; to be emotionally strong; to keep to standards of honour; and to be courageous and loyal. There are good reasons for this kind of masculine pride to be fostered amongst boys, not the least of which is that it cultivates those qualities which men need to effectively fulfil an adult male role in society.

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Positive pride

One of the mistakes we can make is to reduce the good or the bad to single words which don't capture the complexity of moral worth.

An obvious example, and one which I've discussed previously, is the word pride. It's not possible to describe pride as either good or bad as it can be either depending on what exactly the word pride is being used to describe.

There are clearly positive forms of pride. For instance, pride is often associated with a warmth of love, as when we take pride in our children, our spouse or our people. Pride, in this sense, is a healthy sign of attachment - it would not be a virtue to be so cold or alienated or denatured that we were incapable of feeling it.

Pride can also be positive when it is a matter of not wanting to be bested. That's particularly true, I believe, for boys or young men - it is an aspect of a healthy competitive spirit that helps boys and young men to push forward their development. Even the dislike boys have of being bested by girls has a logical purpose: given that women tend not to have romantic feelings toward men they feel superior to, it makes sense for boys developing toward manhood not to want to be bested by their female counterparts.

Pride can be positive, or negative, in another sense: when it comes to wanting to hold to standards. For instance, if we take a pride in our appearance it can be positive (if it means not falling into slovenliness) or negative (if it becomes narcissistic or vain). If our pride in holding to standards helps us resist taking part in base actions that is positive; it can be negative, though, in other contexts, e.g. a woman who has an aristocratic standard and who therefore won't engage in ordinary work (snobbery?).

It's the same when it comes to communal pride. If we take pride in the history of our family, or in the beauty of our local surrounds, or in our national culture then we can be motivated to work to hold to the best of these things.

Miles Franklin was a well-known Australian author of the 1900s. She was on the left, but even so she was critical of some of the debasement of Western culture. Just after WWII she wrote a hostile review of a book by a much more radical woman, Christina Stead. She accused Stead of "writing a handbook on whores," one which depicted women "without shame or pride" - note how shamelessness is associated here with a lack of pride. Miles Franklin also tells the story in this book review of how two feminist men in 1920s America tried to persuade her to join their "free love" circle. They didn't get far because Miles Franklin was revolted by the idea of men describing themselves as feminists. She wrote:

[Floyd] and Charlie announced to me the glad tidings that they were feminists. I was so uninstructed that distaste awakened in me. It seemed to me that the word was related to feminine, and for a man to be feminine was to be effeminate, and utterly obnoxious to me, reared where men were men.

This is a more indirect example, but it does suggest the connection between a pride in her national culture and holding to positive standards (in this case, of masculinity).

Religious traditions have tended to emphasise the negative aspects of pride. That makes sense for two reasons. First, it is common for religious traditions to identify too strong an egoistic sense of self as a barrier to being receptive to the spiritual. Second, there is a sense in many human cultures that an overweening pride, (or hubris), when directed against the divine, leads to man's downfall.

There is a more specific understanding of this second negative aspect of pride. Let's say that man is confronted with a reality that has been determined for him, one in which important aspects of his being and his place within a larger order have already been cast without his choice. How does a man respond to this? If he is humble before God he might well accept his place in a larger order oriented toward the good. But if he, from a pride in his own capacity to make things as he will, is not humble but rebellious, then the given reality with all its predetermined distinctions will feel like a restriction, an impediment to his liberty.

This, it seems to me, is at least part of what the Christian tradition is criticising when it comes to pride; it can be seen in the story of Satan, of Adam and of Babel.

Proph at Collapse:The Blog has written a post on this theme:

reality itself is radically unfree: man's species, sex, race, nationality, time and circumstances of birth, and the authorities to which he is subject, to name just a few, are all determined for him without his consent or even his notice. In him, determinism reigns. With a strong sense of the sacred, this lack of freedom becomes understandable and rationalizable: through his participation in the sacred (for instance, by religious ritualism), man understands himself to be part of a rational order oriented toward the good. In other words, the sacred allows man to experience the authority of the order of being as legitimate. Without a sense of the sacred, reality becomes meaningless, senseless, and incomprehensible; the human condition becomes one not of citizenship and duty but of imprisonment and injustice. Rebellion against that order results, with predictable consequences.

I find this particularly interesting as it relates to trends we see in modern society. Clearly there are liberals who do fail to understand themselves as being "part of a rational order oriented toward the good" and who therefore reject predetermined aspects of being such as sex, race, nationality, forms of authority etc. At the same time, there is a risk that those who do understand themselves to be part of a rational order then become overly compliant toward all aspects of hierarchy or given conditions of life, leading to unnecessary injustices or inequalities. And the focus of the modern world (and the modern churches) often seems to be on an exaggerated attempt to demonstrate that one has not committed this error.

There is an irony, too, in that a hubristic pride before God can lead to a loss of the positive pride in belonging to a social order oriented toward the good - including the warmth of love that is associated with given forms of social distinctions, such as being a man or woman, father or son, Frenchman or Japanese etc.

However, although the churches do have reasons for criticising certain expressions of pride, it would be a gross mistake if they regarded pride as always a vice and never a virtue. That's not a reasonable position to take. It should be possible for churches to go beyond a single word and to explain in some depth how best to understand qualities like pride.

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C.S. Lewis & the Natural Law

There is an appendix to C.S. Lewis's book The Abolition of Man in which Lewis attempts to set out the natural law, in the sense of moral precepts known across different cultures and times. Lewis does a good job of this; of particular interest to traditionalists, he upholds in these laws particular ties of affection, duty and loyalty.

For example, his first natural law is the law of beneficence. But this is divided into a law of general beneficence and a law of special beneficence. Included as examples of special beneficence are these:

'Love thy wife studiously. Gladden her heart all thy life long.' (Ancient Egyptian. ERE v. 481)

'Nothing can ever change the claims of kinship for a right thinking man.' (Anglo-Saxon. Beowulf, 2600)

'I ought not to be unfeeling like a statue but should fulfil both my natural and artificial relations, as a worshipper, a son, a brother, a father, and a citizen.' (Greek. Ibid. 111. ii)

'This first I rede thee: be blameless to thy kindred. Take no vengeance even though they do thee wrong.' (Old Norse. Sigdrifumál, 22)

'The union and fellowship of men will be best preserved if each receives from us the more kindness in proportion as he is more closely connected with us.' (Roman. Cicero. De Off. i. xvi)

'Is it only the sons of Atreus who love their wives? For every good man, who is right-minded, loves and cherishes his own.' (Greek. Homer, Iliad, ix. 340)

'Part of us is claimed by our country, part by our parents, part by our friends.' (Roman. Ibid. i. vii)

'If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith.' (Christian. I Timothy 5:8)

Another natural law is the duty to parents, elders and ancestors:

'Honour thy Father and thy Mother.' (Ancient Jewish. Exodus 20:12)

'To care for parents.' (Greek. List of duties in Epictetus, in. vii)

'When proper respect towards the dead is shown at the end and continued after they are far away, the moral force (tê) of a people has reached its highest point.' (Ancient Chinese. Analects, i. 9)

 Another is to children and posterity:

'Nature produces a special love of offspring' (Roman. Cicero, De Off. i. iv,)

'To marry and to beget children.' (Greek. List of duties. Epictetus, in. vii)

An interesting law of nature is what is termed "magnanimity" by Lewis, meaning greatness of mind and heart, a refusal to be petty, a willingness to face danger, and actions for noble purposes. It is the opposite of pusillanimity. It has been defined as follows:

Greatness of mind; that elevation or dignity of soul, which encounters danger and trouble with tranquility and firmness, which raises the possessor above revenge, and makes him delight in acts of benevolence, which makes him disdain injustice and meanness, and prompts him to sacrifice personal ease, interest and safety for the accomplishment of useful and noble objects.

It's interesting that this overlaps considerably with the concept of "praetes" which is often (misleadingly it seems to me) translated as "meekness" or "gentleness" in the Bible. Here are some examples as collected by Lewis:

'There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in those who do an injury, the second in those who fail to protect another from injury when they can.' (Roman. Cicero, De Off. I. vii)

'They came to the fields of joy, the fresh turf of the Fortunate Woods and the dwellings of the Blessed . . . here was the company of those who had suffered wounds fighting for their fatherland.' (Roman. Virgil, Aeneid, vi. 638-9, 660)

'The Master said, Love learning and if attacked be ready to die for the Good Way.' (Ancient Chinese. Analects, viii. 13)

'Death is better for every man than life with shame.' (Anglo-Saxon. Beowulf, 2890)

Finally, I'd point out that you have to be careful in accepting natural law doctrine. Just because something exists in nature doesn't mean it's right or good. Natural law doctrine has to be either a partial justification ("nature intended us to do x") or else it can be argued for along the lines that an objective good can be discerned by the faculties given to men (e.g. reason, conscience). The Catholic encylopedia also points out that there are natural impulses or tendencies which are conflicting and so have to be harmoniously ordered:

Actions are wrong if, though subserving the satisfaction of some particular need or tendency, they are at the same time incompatible with that rational harmonious subordination of the lower to the higher which reason should maintain among our conflicting tendencies and desires. For example, to nourish our bodies is right; but to indulge our appetite for food to the detriment of our corporal or spiritual life is wrong. Self-preservation is right, but to refuse to expose our life when the well-being of society requires it, is wrong.

To be worthwhile an account of natural law has to be set out intelligently and comprehensively; Lewis's, I think, is likely to be one of the more productive accounts.

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Is pride a virtue or a vice?

Sometimes language fails us. We have a word "pride" that clearly has both positive and negative associations, so much so that it has been held to be both the crown of virtues and the queen of vices. Reduced to a word, we can then be led to either reject it or exalt it, both of which options seem inadequate. Ideally we would develop two clear terms: one to represent pride as a vice, the other pride as a virtue.

Pride as a vice

The Christian tradition tends to emphasise the idea of pride as a vice. It is listed as one of the seven deadly sins, and St Gregory considered it the queen of vices. We are told:

In almost every list, pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others.

That's a serious condemnation of pride. But it needs to be remembered that something very specific is being referred to here. Pride as the original deadly sin is understood by St Gregory to be,

that frame of mind in which a man, through the love of his own worth, aims to withdraw himself from subjection to Almighty God, and sets at naught the commands of superiors. It is a species of contempt of God and of those who bear his commission. Regarded in this way, it is of course mortal sin of a most heinous sort. Indeed St. Thomas rates it in this sense as one of the blackest of sins. By it the creature refuses to stay within his essential orbit; he turns his back upon God, not through weakness or ignorance, but solely because in his self-exaltation he is minded not to submit. His attitude has something Satanic in it, and is probably not often verified in human beings.

Most religions are opposed to a state of being in which we are so full of self that nothing else penetrates. The kind of pride described by St Gregory is even worse: it is a lack of humility before God motivated not by blind egoism but by a knowing self-exaltation.

The condemnation of this kind of pride is not unique to Christianity. The ancient world recognised as fatal character flaw in otherwise great men an overreaching pride, one that offended the gods and which brought about one's downfall. Even in Old English there is a term "overmod" which seems to mean something very similar to "hubris" or "overreaching pride".

Understanding the Ancient Greek concept of "hubris" helps us to understand some of the early Christian approaches to virtue and vice:

In ancient Greek, hubris referred to actions that shamed and humiliated the victim for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser...It was most evident in the public and private actions of the powerful and rich. The word was also used to describe actions of those who challenged the gods or their laws, especially in Greek tragedy, resulting in the protagonist's fall.

Hubris...was also considered the greatest crime of ancient Greek society. The category of acts constituting hubris for the ancient Greeks apparently broadened from the original specific reference to mutilation of a corpse, or a humiliation of a defeated foe, or irreverent "outrageous treatment" in general. It often resulted in fatal retribution or Nemesis. Atë, ancient Greek for "ruin, folly, delusion," is the action performed by the hero or heroine, usually because of his or her hubris, or great pride, that leads to his or her death or down-fall.

There seems to be much in the New Testament which cautions against hubris. To act from a position of power to inflict harm on others is something that the New Testament writers emphasised as a wrong, stressing instead the idea of self-controlled, merciful, benevolent action not motivated by an assertion of power.

So is the lesson then that "God hates pride as the root of all evil"? I think that's an unfortunate message to derive from this, as it strongly condemns not only the negative but also the positive connotations of the word pride. As I suggested earlier, it's a pity that we can't convey the negative associations with a particular term like hubris, or vainglory or vanity or narcissism.

Pride as a virtue

The positive side of pride has been described as follows:

With a positive connotation, pride refers to a satisfied sense of attachment toward one's own or another's choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people, and is a product of praise, independent self-reflection, or a fulfilled feeling of belonging.

Imagine a man who sets out to build a house. He shows great diligence, skill and perseverance and when the job is done, and done well, he has a momentary feeling of pride in his achievement. This is pride that is aroused by having worked hard and well to fulfil a useful task. Is that a deadly sin? I don't see why we should treat it as such - not unless it leads to a vain, closed-off egotism.

Imagine too a boy who is at an age at which he is developing his self-identity. He becomes interested in the life of his forebears and what they achieved and feels a sense of pride in family - one which helps to motivate him to develop the positive qualities that will enable him to contribute positively to the life of his family.

Perhaps too this boy starts to identify with his community, and he feels a sense of pride in the higher achievements of his community. This might help to bring him to a particular love for the great works of art and architecture that are part of his tradition; it might help to motivate him to uphold the standards achieved within the life of the community; it might also lead him to a closer sense of belonging and connectedness to a particular community. A deadly sin? Surely not.

This boy might also feel a sense of masculine pride, one which might make him feel ashamed to act weakly or contemptibly or basely.

Aristotle felt that pride was the crown of the virtues because added to other virtues it strengthened them. But Aristotle was careful to distinguish pride from hubris which he thought aimed:

to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater

Again, note the connection to certain New Testament themes, such as the distinction between justice and revenge, an opposition to achieving superiority by mistreating or disregarding others, a lack of mercy etc. Perhaps the classical and the biblical are not always as far apart as we think.

Anyway, here is the question that has to be asked. In contemporary Christian culture is it more important, to get the balance right, to emphasise the positive connotations of pride or the negative ones? I'm happy to hear the arguments of those who believe otherwise, but it seems to me that it's more important right now in our demoralised, alienated and guilt-ridden Western societies to emphasise the positive aspects of pride, the ones which belong to a healthy and fully-developed personality.

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