This article explores the roots of cultural feminism and its links to classical anthropology, and the New Utopia.
Cultural feminists have long celebrated women's values, rituals and communities. Many have gone to great lengths to excavate women's history, rebirth the goddess, and re-establish communities based on feminine ideals. But what exactly are these feminine ideals, and how did they develop? Interestingly, much of the argument of cultural feminists is rooted in the views of traditional anthropologists who have built an extensive discipline around the claim that women naturally nurture while men naturally hunt.
First, cultural feminists claim that their organizations form around the life affirming values of creation and peaceful co-existence which are thought to be rooted in innate, feminine attributes. These attributes are rooted in the biological imperative of women to birth children and nurture the community. In The Chalice and the Blade, feminist anthropologist Riane Eisler suggests that the survival of pre-industrial communities depended on the interconnectedness of women who shared resources, and facilitated community based child rearing practices. Pre-modern women were predisposed to nurture individuals and community since it increased their own chances of survival during periods of dependence brought on by natural cycles of childbearing, and by sickness or old age. The decreased mobility of women with dependent children leaves women vulnerable to community supports. Women's communities were eventually overthrown by a variety of forces that ensnared their creative and nurturing capacities within controlling social structures such as the Christian church.
And where are men in all this? Anthropologists suggest that their innate tendencies towards masculine behaviours led to roaming, and hunting behaviours. These behaviours meant men were gone from their familial communities for longer periods of time. Their survival often meant forming powerful gangs that competed for limited resources. Aggressive behaviour within these groups was avoided by implementing structures that designated rank and created structures for social control, and necessitated a more functional, less emotionally intimate form of bonding that many therapists (and wives) considered a problem in contemporary families.
Today, cultural feminists claim that their organizations form around the life affirming values of creation and peaceful co-existence which are rooted in innate, feminine attributes. Some justify the exclusion of men from their organizations on the basis that men are innately pre-disposed to aggression and violence. These masculine tendencies undermine the feminine ideal and obstruct growth towards matriarchal utopia. In so doing, cultural feminism reasserts traditional views of gender where women are thought to be relationship oriented, while men are considered more individualist.
So, what does all this mean? Who cares about the history of cultural feminist ideas? I think it is important to look at where our ideas come from, and to ask how those ideas currently serve us. History has a way of showing us what strange bedfellows there have been. Cultural feminist views reiterate traditional anthropological views that women's place in society is an effect of biological predispositions towards family life. They build on these traditional reductionists views, however, when they challenge the classical assumption that male supremacy is preferred. Instead they privilege matriarchy, and strongly recommend moving back towards female-centred values of caretaking and community. In this way, matriarchal societies are imagined as the new utopia.
