Female Privilege: The GOP, the War on Women, and Class

Let's talk about privilege.

priv - i - lege (n): a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most.

There's the now-ubiquitous take down of white male privilege explained in gamer terms (that I love, for the record, and I don't even play video games). And honestly, public discussions of privilege generally center on white male privilege, and for reasons well and good, but there are other types of privilege.

Female privilege, for example. Now, you must understand before you decide to crucify me that "female privilege" and "white male privilege" are not exact correlations. The kind of privilege I am going to talk about with regard to women is not the all-encompassing power of cultural superiority that white men hold. But still, there have traditionally been some privileges afforded one by being (white and/or wealthy) female. These privileges fall generally under the condition of "immunity" rather than "right," but that doesn't preclude them from being privileges, as you can see, from the above-quoted definition.

It's a political truism that there are two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. Generally, people don't specify which they mean because (in my extremely humble opinion) the people that yell the loudest about "freedom" usually mean "freedom from" and that's a rather inferior sort of freedom, don't you think? I think so. I mean, I'd much rather have the freedom TO go where I please than have the freedom FROM men yelling at me on the street. It is more important to me that I be able to set my own goals and accomplish them, which requires a more or less absolute freedom of movement, than it is to never encounter something unpleasant. That's how I parse the difference between freedom to and freedom from.

(N.B. - Ideally I'd have both, but I am, despite my unflappable optimism, a realist, and getting both is a little greedy so I'll take the freedom to, thankyouverymuch. And do whatever I can do ensure that maybe my great-great-great-great-great-granddaughters will have both.)

However, that's how I value-weight things. I am not the only person, nay, nor even the only woman in the world. And women have, since time immemorial, enjoyed a particularly privileged position when it comes to "freedom from." There are concrete examples, like street harassment: only going out with a male chaperone is a pretty effective way to not have dudes cat-calling and/or trying to grab parts of your body.

But the female privilege of freedom from extends much farther than such concrete examples, as privilege is wont to do. The privilege of freedom from is the freedom from all sorts of unpleasantness. Let's face it, everyone, the world is a pretty awful place. Navigating it is hard work. Making decisions, weighing options, walking the tightrope between self-care and caring for others: these are difficult, draining things. They are difficult and draining things for everyone, regardless of gender. But women have had the privilege of avoiding these things, by letting men make such decisions for them. The privilege of women has long been the freedom from having to chart a course through the universally-determined awfulness of the material world.

Sexism is, at its core, a belief that women are not capable of doing this. Women are not capable of making decisions, weighing choices, wielding power, and navigating the world. Because they are not capable, they must be protected, given freedom from having to do these things. That explains men that want to limit women's choices.

But what about women? They must realize that they're capable of choosing things for themselves, they must realize that they are capable of navigating the world. They must. Particularly high-power, high profile women, women like Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin and Nikki Haley, they must realize that the perception that women can't do the things they have done is wrong. So why do they (and hundreds of thousands of other women) align themselves with a political party that is dedicated to legally limiting women's choices? This is the question of the hour! Everyone is asking it!

Here's my take: privilege. It's not that these women are stupid, or self-loathing, which are the two explanations I see advanced most often. No, they are neither. What they are is deeply, deeply aware of their female privilege. We're at, you might say, a tipping point. Feminism has advanced to the point where women can indeed become Ann Coulter and Nikki Haley and even Hilary Clinton. But it has not advanced so far that actual equality is achieved, and thus, female privilege is preserved.

The option of retreating from the world, of ceasing to navigate it's awfulness and messiness, still exists for women of a certain class. The option of being protected and deferred to still exists. Women like Coulter and Haley and all the others are scared of losing that privilege.

At the Republican National Convention this year, there is something called the Women's Pavilion, organized and presided over by GOP women, where salon services and feminine hygiene products are available, and where women can meet to talk to other women "in ways women can relate to." The whole thing strikes me as redolent of a harem, minus the sexual overtones. Women winking over what the men say and speaking to each other in a coded, female-specific language; women occupying a place where men are forbidden; women assigned a specific sphere of influence. Even the name, "pavilion," calls up images of ladies sitting on comfortable chairs and shaded from the sun that might damage their complexions whilst they chat idly over lemonade. This is the privilege of women: a space "just for them," a language all their own. But, of course, by virtue of gender-exclusionary practices, nothing will get done in this women's pavilion. There will be lots of talk and no action. No decisions will be made, only communication, only translation.

Because the privilege of women is the freedom from decision-making. In an interview with Mary Anne Carter, organizer of this women's pavilion, a telling quote turns up:

I would think that the current healthcare bill that may or may not be repealed — I don’t want to call it ‘Obamacare’ but I can’t remember the name of it — is potentially a serious war on women, allowing women to make their own healthcare choices.

Allowing women to make their own healthcare choices, instead of having them dictated by a husband or a father or a doctor or even (in a pinch?) the government that is run by men is the real war on women, for those that are terrified of losing their female privilege. Having to take responsibility for those kinds of things, those things that happen in the real and awful and terrifying and messy world is a pretty scary thought. It's much easier to rest on female privilege, on the perception of the fairer and weaker sex, on the idea that women need a space and a language all their own, on the construction of the general world as male and therefore outside your purview.

Women have historically been great enforcers of gender roles. We shame and punish each other for being sluts, for breaking the rules, for doing what women aren't supposed to do. Why? Because we all know that we're capable of managing our own lives, but some of us really don't want to have to. The world is awful and living is hard.

The problem is, of course, that not all women have the option, the luxury of relying on the female privilege that is largely the demesne of the wealthy. And setting public policy for the comfort of the wealthy has never worked out indefinitely for any culture. But still, that doesn't stop people from clinging to their privileges with terror-hardened fingers.