Liberal Feminism Responds
It is likely that a liberal feminist would disagree with the wide scope MacKinnon has arranged for what constitutes as sexual discrimination, which catalogues any activity that promotes the “subordination of women to men” as sexually discriminatory. This is worrying for liberal feminists in two ways. First, such a method of classification is broad and difficult to define. There are many practices that can be conceived as either detrimental or beneficial to the task of furthering equality. For example, affirmative action can be seen as a method that provides equal opportunities to women, or it can be seen as reinforcing gender stereotypes and fostering animosities between genders. The point made is that there exist …show more content…
Thus, in terms of jurisprudence, it is impractical and challenging for judges to determine exactly what should be considered discriminatory if one were to proceed by MacKinnon’s standard. Secondly, there is the fear that such a one-sided evaluation of sexual discrimination might wrongfully disadvantage men. While MacKinnon might see this as a nonissue (for how can men ever be discriminated in a system that favours them), a liberal would be concerned with any elements that could signify inequality (even if it was the other way around). In these two ways, liberal feminism would disagree with MacKinnon’s dominance analysis, as the qualifications for such a standard is too abstract to apply to real cases, as well as the fact that it could possibly infringe on the rights of other groups.
In my opinion, while MacKinnon’s analysis on how power relations precedes gender differences is accurate, it does not invalidate the fact that significant improvements to gender equality have been made through means that were suggested by liberal feminism. On the other hand, it is hard for me to perceive how …show more content…
One of them being that it is actually reinforcing the patriarchal conception of gender. Furthermore, most feminists perceive the shared traits of women to be a consequence of social and cultural conditioning rather than a biological given. By this train of thought, there exist even less reasons for women to embrace the role of care-takers (besides being conditioned to be good at it). Relational feminism could argue that rather than forcing every woman to embrace traditionally feminine traits, it is proposing that the virtues themselves be recognized, which would in turn improve gender equality (since men and women will not be held in contempt for exhibiting these
It is likely that a liberal feminist would disagree with the wide scope MacKinnon has arranged for what constitutes as sexual discrimination, which catalogues any activity that promotes the “subordination of women to men” as sexually discriminatory. This is worrying for liberal feminists in two ways. First, such a method of classification is broad and difficult to define. There are many practices that can be conceived as either detrimental or beneficial to the task of furthering equality. For example, affirmative action can be seen as a method that provides equal opportunities to women, or it can be seen as reinforcing gender stereotypes and fostering animosities between genders. The point made is that there exist …show more content…
Thus, in terms of jurisprudence, it is impractical and challenging for judges to determine exactly what should be considered discriminatory if one were to proceed by MacKinnon’s standard. Secondly, there is the fear that such a one-sided evaluation of sexual discrimination might wrongfully disadvantage men. While MacKinnon might see this as a nonissue (for how can men ever be discriminated in a system that favours them), a liberal would be concerned with any elements that could signify inequality (even if it was the other way around). In these two ways, liberal feminism would disagree with MacKinnon’s dominance analysis, as the qualifications for such a standard is too abstract to apply to real cases, as well as the fact that it could possibly infringe on the rights of other groups.
In my opinion, while MacKinnon’s analysis on how power relations precedes gender differences is accurate, it does not invalidate the fact that significant improvements to gender equality have been made through means that were suggested by liberal feminism. On the other hand, it is hard for me to perceive how …show more content…
One of them being that it is actually reinforcing the patriarchal conception of gender. Furthermore, most feminists perceive the shared traits of women to be a consequence of social and cultural conditioning rather than a biological given. By this train of thought, there exist even less reasons for women to embrace the role of care-takers (besides being conditioned to be good at it). Relational feminism could argue that rather than forcing every woman to embrace traditionally feminine traits, it is proposing that the virtues themselves be recognized, which would in turn improve gender equality (since men and women will not be held in contempt for exhibiting these