Whose knowledge? Standpoint theory, revisited

So I had class today and like I said we're reading bell hooks and all and I came home to find another serendipitous discovery: there's this big discussion going on in various blogs about women who don't call it rape.  I read the one over at Alas and part of the discussion included this whole idea of feminist standpoint theory (or theories?) and about privileged points of view and all that.  So basically the question asked over there is why do women sometimes not call it rape? and whose word do we take in such situations?   I'm gonna focus here on the more theoretical implications of "whose word do you take" and leave the specifics of the rape thing for the Alas discussion.

Here's an expanded version of my comment from the discussion over there:

"I think women have a lot to lose in society’s terms by calling it rape. For the victim there are all the reasons cited above but for the women in the class who didn’t want to call it rape in front of their classmates, they might be thinking any number of things including class dynamics (just because the class is taught by a women doesn’t mean it’s not male-oriented), or not wanting to cede the woman’s control over the situation. Depending on how the case was worded it could’ve sounded like the woman employed some pretty smart survivalist psychological tricks to defuse the situation and get out of it alive. Calling it rape would devalue that proactive strategy and make her more of a victim which isn’t very empowering. And I think [the other commentators] are right in that the popular myth in our society is that rape is when someone grabs you in a dark alley, so it might very well be a problem of terminology [and lack of education].

But that brings us to the whole standpoint theory and priviledged viewpoints discussion [...]

One, I have to say I really like standpoint theory a lot and I’ve heard the essentialism criticisms of it [i.e. that standpoint theories are essentialist] and I think that they’re right on if someone is arguing that there is only ONE female standpoint but I don’t think that has to be the case. [In fact, as this quote from the Wikipedia entry shows, it's clearly not:

many standpoint feminists have pointed out that because of the many differences that divide women it is impossible to claim one single or universal “women’s experience”(Narayan)]. 

My understanding of standpoint theory is that it says that all knowledge is localized within a specific time and space and that things like gender and race provide context for those standpoints. The world looks different depending on where you view it.  [Only a superficial reading of the theory can view it as relying on a unitary, singular, essentialist concept of women.]

And regarding priviledged standpoints, I don’t think that means some knowledge from some standpoints is better, per se, than others, but that people who have various sorts of oppressions are in a better position to critique the structures of dominant society because they directly feel the effects of those unequal structures. [Again the Wikipedia article:

Their location as a subordinated group allows women to see and understand the world in ways that are different from and challenging to the existing male-biased conventional wisdom (Narayan).

Now the way this quote is worded does imply a unitary concept of women but I'm arguing that it doesn't have to.  Any particular person's location as a member of a subordinated group could give them a privileged standpoint.  So women are more likely to understand sexism than men and people of color are more likely to understand racism]  But that doesn’t mean they’re always going to do that; there are other complicating factors. Women aren’t born feminists. [People of color aren't automatically anti-racist.  We're all enculturated into "this dirty, rotten, filthy system".]

This doesn’t mean that there’s no room in feminist movements for people whose standpoints put them in a more dominant position in society, just that they might have to work harder to see the problems with the dominant structure because it directly benefits them. Not that they won’t ever be able to, just that it takes effort; it’s a learned thing. Precisely because of this, I don’t think standpoint theory means to exclude men from discussions on sexism and white people from discussions on racism. Like bell hooks says there has to be transformation on both sides. Feminism has to be learned by everyone.

I think in some ways it’s offensive to assume that because they’re women they should see this case as rape when 1.) feminism isn’t inherent in all females and 2.) there might be strategic reasons for those women in that context not to have called that a rape.

So when we say stuff like "I wonder how different things would be if a black woman were president" it doesn't necessarily mean things would be any different.  That black woman could be Condoleeza Rice.  On the other hand, she could be Barbara Lee. To me, what standpoint theory says is simply that someone's given social position within the dominant structure of society makes it more or less likely that they will have a view of the world that is more or less critical of that dominant structure.  It's not a hard and fast rule.  But your chances of getting someone who really knows and understands oppression is better with someone who has more likely experienced it themselves.  Not always.  Some white men are better than some black women at understanding sexism and racism.  But not usually.

Comments

[trillwing]

Nice post. I stumbled over here from BlogHer's blogroll. I, too, have done a lot of thinking over the past few years about standpoint theory. My current thought is that it's kind of limiting in some contexts. For example, I'm currently writing about a group of late 19th-century and early 20th-century women scientists and how they disseminated knowledge to laywomen. It doesn't seem to me that any of these women ever viewed the world from a singular perspective (individually or as a group). Instead, I'm finding it more useful to work with Kathy Ferguson's theory of mobile subjectivities, which allows for varying contexts and shifting allegiances.

When writing about "my" scientific women, I've found it difficult to go beyond the theoretical if I'm referencing standpoint theory. But with mobile subjectivities, I can pinpoint what alliances they forged in different contexts and hypothesize as to why they did so.

If you know of a way to synthesize standpoint theory and mobile subjectivities, I'd love to hear it.

[silverside]

You should check out the thinkers associated with phenomenology. Phenomenology goes over much of the same ground.

You describe how not calling it rape might enable woman to diffuse a difficult social situation.

I think this is also true in term of a woman's dynamic with herself. Often the immediate response to trauma is to distance oneself from it, otherwise the experience is overwhelming. It is not uncommon for women to describe rape in disinterested terms, as if it happened to someone else. Ignorant people often misinterpret this response as proof that the woman is lying. On the contrary, very often the people who have experienced the worst situations come across as flat, emotionally uninvolved, apparently without "ownership" in what happened. This is also consistent with shock.

Sometimes it may take years for someone to say, "I was raped," Or "I was beaten nearly to death," or "I was tortured," and feel connected to the experience at all.

[barb]

wow, these comments are great. "phenomenology" and "mobile subjectivities"... I'll want to look into those.

[barb]

"where we stand has consquences for political action" from Bitch|Lab

[Bitch]

Wolf whistles for a great mind! :)