Reference no: EM132866604

Question 1: Do women possess greater morals, more substantial values than men? Do women conceptualize power differently than men?

• Bourgeois white women active in the feminist movement presented their struggle to obtain power in the terms set by the existing social structure as a necessary prerequisite for successful feminist struggle. "Many participants in feminst movement sincerely believed that women were different from men and would exercise power differently" (Hooks 86). Women's values, or the values attributed to women, are different from those which run America. This may be out of politics, ignorance, fear, or conditioning. Whatever the values women have pursued-have been allowed to pursue-they are not the same as men's. Statements like this one were commonly expressed sentiments in feminist circles. They mystify the true nature of women's experience. Women, though assigned different roles to play in society based on sex, are not taught a different value system. It is women's overall acceptance of the value system of the culture that leads her to passively absorb sexism and assume a pre-determined sex role. Although women do not have the power ruling groups of men often exert, they do not conceptualize power differently. "like most men, most women are taught from childhood on that dominating and controlling others is the basic expression of power" (Hooks 87).
• The issues around which women and men feel differently, illustrated recently by "the gender gap," do not constitute a different set of values. Feminist rhetoric pushing the notion of man as the enemy and the woman as the victim enabled women to avoid doing the work of creating new value systems. When contradictions like this one are pointed out, the stereotypical feminist response is that these women are carrying out the orders of men, that they are male-identified. Narrowly focused feminist ideology tends to equate male development and perpetuation of oppressive policy with maleness; the two things are not synonymous. By making them synonymous, women do not have to face the drive for power in women that leads them to strive to dominate and control others. The responsibility for female commitment to domination and control over others can be simply placed on men. If more feminist women had actively reconceptualized power, they would not have, consciously or unconsciously, shaped feminist movement using the class and race hierarchies that exist in the larger society. They would not have encouraged women to emulate men, the so-called "enemy".