Guest post by Josh Spokes
Reflexively voicing your “support for their right to choose this choice” actually serves a regressive, right-wing political project.
Have you ever noticed that the idea of “choice” and “agency” is only ever invoked to defend the right to enact stereotyped roles that have not only been culturally favored, but culturally enforced?
I’m serious—that’s really important and worth talking about. One only ever gets pushback about “defending their right to X” when the X is taking on a stereotyped role.
When was the last time you saw someone—-in our context of politically liberal, “freethinker” types who are talking among themselves—make a point of “defending” the right to make these choices?
- A woman with a butch affect
- A gay man with a queeny demeanor
- A black woman who eschews religious talk and doesn’t want to be your mammy
You DON’T. You only ever get people saying you’re “taking away her agenciesss!!!” when you are questioning what it means to enact:
- “Femininity” as defined by high heels, lipstick, and “girl stuff”
- “Straight acting” gay bros
- Black women who inhabit the role of “soulful church-goer.”
Please consider what you’re doing when you enact the “It’s their choice and I defend it!” Ask yourself if it seems strange that the choices you’re defending are the very ones that are not in danger, and that are still actually culturally mandatory for a lot of people.
Ask yourself if it seems out of place that you’re signaling ethical distance from friends who question these things, and whether you really want to say that they—not the enforcers of convention—are the illiberal threat.
Because it is very strange.
The issue gets confusing, because sometimes people feel they or others are being inappropriately judged for their choices. But there’s a big difference between judging the meaning (or, usually, meanings,) embedded in a thing and judging a person for doing said thing.
I do lots of not-feminist things, and that’s OK. I don’t need to defend them by claiming they’ve transmogrified into feminist things simply because I, a woman and a feminist, have chosen to do them.*
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* For whatever reason! And, yes, the reasons can be interesting and revealing and worth unpacking.
Sure. The Duggars too feel they are being inappropriately judged for their choices. Most or all people feel that at least some of the time, and some of the time they’re right.
Just like my mother claimed to be constantly under attack for her choice to be a stay-home wife and mother. My father would have it no other way; was it a choice? And actually, I never saw said attack. I did see women on TV and in the movies (and other places) claiming their right to make a different choice, thereby triggering a new outburst from my mother, who was never, never, never told she had to go to work. When we got our first woman doctor in town (this was in the 70s), it was an attack on her “choice”. ??? The mere existence of women who make different choices than you does not constitute an attack on your own choice (if it really was a choice when no one ever gave her a chance to find out if she was interested in something besides The Edge of Night, the subject of 88.3% of her conversations).
You said “The Edge of Night.” All of a sudden it’s 1981 and I’m sitting in front of a large, console TV in a wood cabinet looking at that stylized city skyline at night.
No, I haven’t noticed that. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. Back then, feminism was using words like “Choice” and “Agency” to justify allowing women to make choices to compete with men in fields that traditionally did not allow them in and to make choices about their bodies and sexuality that were previously considered unforgivable by society. We’ve come a long way since then. The “stereotyped roles” that “choice” and “agency” are now being invoked to defend are choices that were once the norm and no longer are.
Josh, can you come live at my house and do my thinking for me? You do so much better a job at it than I do!
I especially love this: “Ask yourself if it seems strange that the choices you’re defending are the very ones that are not in danger, and that are still actually culturally mandatory for a lot of people. Ask yourself if it seems out of place that you’re signaling ethical distance from friends who question these things, and whether you really want to say that they—not the enforcers of convention—are the illiberal threat. Because it is very strange.”
Exactly. Exactly, exactly, exactly.
Yes, I have noticed this. I think we sometimes contribute to the effect when we get drawn into arguments about whether or not ‘X’ occurs in nature, or if ‘X’ has a genetic cause, or how common or popular ‘X’ is (or isn’t), or what the scriptures says about ‘X’ and so on.
So many claims and assertions aimed at supporting the argument that ‘X’ is a choice! We often get engrossed in debating the bullshit when the response should just be, “And that would be a bad thing because…?” I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory answer to that.
Beth: We’ve come a long way, but those old forces are still around, especially in some places and some sub-cultures.
I usually see the problematic form of “choice critique” in privileged allies more than fellow-travelers, though. I have heard a lot of self-declared feminist men, for instance, launch attacks on the burqa, or traditional ‘modest Christian’ dress codes, which overstepped from criticising the culture to criticizing the women.
They’re absolutely the norm, Beth, and it’s astonishing to claim otherwise. Are you seriously positing that stay-at-home-moms, lipstick and heels, and taking your husband’s surname, are now not only minority choices, but culturally frowned upon by the mainstream?
Last I heard stay-at-home-moms are now a minority. The other stuff, no.
Then what is your point, if you agree that these choices are not culturally frowned on?
To add to what Josh was saying just above, it isn’t even just that the choices are not frowned on. There is an entire industry of books, articles, etc, devoted to demonstrating the rightness of women “choosing” to stay at home. Almost always it is centered around a certain privileged group of affluent women who have husbands with high powered jobs that earn more in a year than my husband and I put together earn in 2 years. Then they use those women as a club to bash the rest of us with.
These choices may now be minority, but they are still the culturally favored choices, and to deviate from them is still suspect, even in an age where more women are choosing careers outside the home than are choosing the traditional position. Even in my feminist friends, both male and female, there is a certain tendency to assume that there is something superior about the traditional choices, and that women who choose that are somehow better than the rest of us (most of these friends themselves in demanding professional jobs, but feeling guilty about it).
And just try letting your ex have custody temporarily while you recover from a potentially fatal disease! The vultures will circle…the child belongs with his mother. Oh, really? His father was a good father, able to support him, and not needing regular hospitalization. Still, I was an evil, immoral, bad mother for making the best choice for my son. And strangely enough, he has come out of it all just fine, even though he had a couple of years where his time with me was weekend visitation rather than full custody.
The traditional role, now minority, is still in a favored position.
My point was that your claim “Have you ever noticed that the idea of “choice” and “agency” is only ever invoked to defend the right to enact stereotyped roles that have not only been culturally favored, but culturally enforced?” is not accurate in my experience.
Choice and agency were used by feminists in the 60’s and 70’s to justify women being allowed to make choices that were NOT the culturally favored options at the time. So I don’t hear those words as signaling ethical distance from those who question the choice, but signaling that respecting the choice and agency of others to make their own decisions is more important than which choice is selected.
Ah. Thanks for the explanation, Beth. I understand what you’re saying is the motivation of the people I’m talking about. To the extent that it is, I think it’s a poor way of deciding what to support or critique.