Difference and Dominance
My preferred way of engaging with books is reconstruction. These notes were created during my reading process to aid my own understanding and not written for the purpose of instruction. With that said, I’ve decided to share these unedited notes on the off chance they are helpful to other readers.
She is critiquing the current notion of gender equality which is fundamentally based off of a male standard. When it is expressed as sameness, women are judged against the criteria of men. When it is expressed as difference, it is women's delta to men that are highlighted (the differences are not equal).
A built-in tension exists between this concept of equality, which presupposes sameness, and this concept of sex, which presupposes difference. Sex equality thus becomes a contradiction in terms, some thing of an oxymoron, which may suggest why we are having such a difficult time getting it.
Mainstream thought follows two paths within this tension. You can be the same as man, demand equal pay and opportunity. Or you can be different from man, demanding affirmative action or extra rights such as maternity leave.
She isn't trying to argue which strand is better but to critique the philosophical assumptions on both of these approaches. She calls this underlying basis the "difference approach" because it is focused on reifying the differences between sex. It paints a picture of natural sexual differences leading to irrational dominance. Her critique is that no matter which strand you choose in the "difference approach", the definition of the concepts themselves are sexist because the female gender is always defined with respect to the male gender.
The main theme in the fugue is "we're the same, we're the same, we're the same." The counterpoint theme (in a higher register) is "but we're different, but we're different, but we're different." Its underlying story is: on the first day, difference was; on the second day, a division was created upon it; on the third day, irrational instances of dominance arose. Division may be rational or irrational. Dominance either seems or is justified. Difference is.
Both strands of the difference approach presumes a male standard. What this doctrine fails to see is the massive amounts of social inequality that led to this natural inequality.
Under the sameness standard, women are measured according to our correspondence with man, our equality judged by our proximity to his measure. Under the difference standard, we are measured according to our lack of correspondence with him, our womanhood judged by our distance from his measure. Gender neutrality is thus simply the male standard, and the special protection rule is simply the female-standard, but do not be deceived: masculinity, or maleness, is the referent for both.
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Men's physiology defines most sports, their needs define auto and health insurance coverage, their socially designed biographies define workplace expectations and successful career pat terns, their perspectives and concerns define quality in scholarship, their experiences and obsessions define merit, their objectification of life defines art, their military service defines citizenship, their presence defines family, their inability to get along with each other— their wars and rulerships — defines history, their image defines god, and their genitals define sex.
In the sameness strand, for example, she thinks it is unfair for women to be treated equally to men in the case of custody court because on average men have more vocational opportunities and tends to come off as "better parents" in the eyes of the law. Thus treating them fairly would be unfair.
In the difference strand, for example, she thinks it is problematic to give women extra maternity leave than men. This presupposes a gendered standard that women be the primary care givers. Indeed they are the child-bearers as their sex dictates but they don't necessarily have to be the care givers, that is a cultured and gendered construct.
Instead, the view she highlights is that these differences arise from domination, that they proceeded from domination, so women never had a fair chance, in either branch. She calls her reading the dominance approach as opposed to the difference approach. She isn't saying there are biological differences whatsoever, but simply many of our gendered ideals have nothing to do with these actual biological differences e.g. women are child-bearers but not necessarily care-takers. A more extreme reading is that we can use technology to even out these sex differences.
Here, on the first day that matters, dominance was achieved, probably by force. By the second day, division along the same lines had to be relatively firmly in place. On the third day, if not sooner, differences were demarcated, together with social systems to exaggerate them in perception and in fact, because the systematically differential delivery of benefits and deprivations required making no mistake about who was who.
Normatively, she is suggesting we take a step back and redefine what it means to be man and women on a gender level from the ground up, not from the basis of a male standard but from a basis where the differences between each gender is respected. She is also asking us to reexamine a highly gendered society where the male virtues are coined as desirable.
If differentiation is discrimination, affirmative action, and any legal change in social inequality, is discrimination—but the existing social differentiations which constitute the inequality are not? This is only to say that, in the view that equates differentiation with discrimination, changing an unequal status quo is discrimination, but allowing it to exist is not.
She is arguing that whether to give women special rights isn't about morality its about politics, its not about how the sexes are different, its about men oppressing women and that they need to "take [their] foot off our necks". As long as we are in the differences mind of thinking we are presuming the male standard and never going to achieve gender equality. Gender equality can only come from an elimination of dominance.
To summarize the argument: seeing sex equality questions as matters of reasonable or unreasonable classification is part of the way male dominance is expressed in law. If you follow my shift in perspective from gender as difference to gender as dominance, gender changes from a distinction that is presumptively valid to a detriment that is presumptively suspect. The difference approach tries to map reality; the dominance approach tries to challenge and change it. In the dominance approach, sex discrimination stops being a question of morality and starts being a question of politics.
This is very much a critique of Wollstonecraft's abandonment of female virtues for the male virtues. It allies with Foucault's idea that power is knowledge, the most powerful people in the world are the ones who get to set and define these categories that we operate in every day.