The entire roundtable on the Marston/Peter Wonder Woman is here.
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My interest in Wonder Woman has always been lukewarm, with a back issue collection ranging somewhere between Dazzler and She-Hulk. The bondage theme led me to try one of those DC Archive editions, but the mind-numbing repetition of “oh, you’ve bound my bracelets” and “now, I have you tied up with my lasso” only proved what I thought impossible: how meek and boring sadomasochism could be. I imagine what Suehiro Maruo might do with the character – questionable as feminism, true, but free of tedium. This is a roundabout way of saying I prefer my feminist icons with teeth. And William Marston wasn’t interested in artistic ambiguity, but propaganda:
[That w]omen are exciting for this one reason — it is the secret of women’s allure — women enjoy submission, being bound [was] the only truly great contribution of my Wonder Woman strip to the moral education of the young. The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound. … Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society. [p. 210, Jones]
Submission as an essential quality of womanhood might sound dubiously feminist, too, if not for Marston’s insistence that what is woman’s by nature should be a virtue for man to follow. There was no Sadean intent for us perverts. Submission was Marston’s end to violence, not a subset. When moralizing critics of his day objected to the overtly fetishistic nature of Wonder Woman, Marston’s response was that bondage is a painless way of showing the hero under duress. Unfortunately, he was correct: his and Harry Peter’s depiction is about as troublingly kinky as the traps laid for Batman in his sixties TV show. As issue 28 indicates, even the villains use physical force only to subdue the heroines, never for torture: When Wonder Woman and her mom are bound by burning chains, Eviless makes it clear that the flames don’t actually burn. [p. 20] As fetish or drama, this is about as flaccid as it gets.
When I read about Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang’s revamped version of Amazonian culture (pun wholly endorsed), it sounded more to my taste than Marston and Peters’. I won’t repeat the argument I had with Noah about the potential in the revamping, but I would like to emphasize that I more or less agree with the idea behind the original Amazonian myth: there’s something to fear about a culture made up exclusively of warrior women. To me, feminism promotes the end to discrimination against women, but it will not rid the world of other social ills like totalitarianism, xenophobia, or any form of bigotry that isn’t directed at minimizing the humanity of women (e.g., it can be perfectly consistent with misandry and the sexist exclusion of men). As Paradise Island shows, feminism isn’t mutually exclusive to any of these ills.
If there’s a danger to Marston’s feminism, it’s in his tranquil submission to a “loving” authority. Don’t ultra-nationalists love their country? He circumvents this problem by making his heroes as anodyne as possible. We should trust the Amazonians, because we know they are pure and virtuous. Granted, this hardly sets Wonder Woman apart from all the other classic DC heroes, but isn’t that a problem? Even a feminist heroine can be as indicative of the fascistic aesthetic as any of her male counterparts. Marston’s creation helped with equality in representation, but it did so by presenting some ideas that any libertarian-minded type should find fairly repellant (and by ‘libertarian’ I mean the philosophical belief in free will, not necessarily the political variety). Fear need not lead to hatred (e.g., Marston’s Amazons don’t hate men, but they surely fear them as a social disease); it could be the basis for a healthy skepticism. Any society that promotes a totalizing agenda should be feared and distrusted, as should art promoting such an agenda, whether it’s rooted in misogyny or feminism.
Wonder Woman and the Objectivist
If Marston had a perfect Earth 2 counterpart, it would look a whole lot like his contemporary, Ayn Rand. Where he promoted the collectivist submission of self to others, she viewed self-assertion as the highest virtue and altruism as evil. He was resolutely feminist, she resolutely anti-feminist. His heroic ideal was female, hers male. What’s interesting is that despite Rand’s libertarian bona fides, she basically agreed with Marston that the essence of woman is to “submit to a loving authority”:
For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship – the desire to look up to man. “To look up” does not mean dependence, obedience, or anything implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration; and admiration is an emotion that can be experienced only by a person of strong character and independent value judgments. … Hero worship is a demanding virtue: a woman has to be worthy of it and of the hero she worships. Intellectually and morally, i.e., as a human being, she has to be his equal; then the object of her worship is specifically his masculinity, not any human virtue she might lack. … Her worship is an abstract emotion for the metaphysical concept of masculinity as such. [from “About a Woman President,” quoted in Gramstad]
They just disagreed on the gendered structural ideal to which women should “look up.” As Thomas Gramstad lists them (because no way in hell am I going to bother reading the author herself), the characteristics Rand was likely thinking of as ontologically masculine heroism are the regular, positive clichés one associates with phallic power: “being strong, enduring, independent, verbally accurate, competent in making and using tools, persevering and excelling in one’s activities, and in the ability to organize and lead.” A good woman has the ability to recognize such virtues as deserving of worship by possessing some of the classic feminine clichés: “emotional openness, the ability to listen and nurture, being cooperative, easygoing, warm, loyal, playful, adept at non-verbal communication skills, and able to identify and express emotions.” [ibid.] Rand was adamant that a woman could never be a hero, only a hero-worshipper. To attempt the latter would be a denial of her ontological/structural femininity. Despite her disavowal in the quote above, it’s hard to see how this view doesn’t promote the inferiority of women and their need to be dominated by men, a de facto submission.
Marston, however, had no trouble with submission; it’s the moral obligation of his heroes. So Steve Trevors makes a good contrast to Rand’s heroic ideal. As a feminist parody of Lois Lane and the superhero’s imperiled significant other, Steve is a neutered joke on that most manly of professions, the soldier. He’s what Valerie Solanas called — in her own mocking of phallocentrism, S.C.U.M. Manifesto — an auxiliary member, “encourag[ing] other men to de-man themselves and thereby mak[ing] themselves relatively inoffensive.” [p. 21, Solanas] (She could’ve provided another alternate Wonder Woman preferable to the real thing, with far more imaginative uses of the lasso, I’m sure.) If little boys saw him as a sissy with not much to admire, maybe they should consider that’s the kind of role model little girls are saddled with their whole life. But Marston wasn’t doing satire. Little boys were to aspire to be more like Lois Lane than Superman.
Where does all this knee-bending end? With a nod to Aristotle (a favorite of Rand’s): Man submits to Wonder Woman, she submits to Hippolyte and the gynocentric dogma of Paradise Island, which is derived from Aphrodite. But does the goddess obey a higher principle, or is she, by sheer force of will the loving authority sui generis, the prime lover? You’re going to reach a dominating will or order at some point that’s not submitting to anything higher. Despite all the chauvinistic nonsense (and there was plenty), Rand attempted to identify responsibility within the self, rather than have the individual relinquish control to another, whereby an authority is entrusted to follow whatever moral principles Marston believed to be beyond the individual’s grasp. Thus, I find Gramstad’s feminist correction of objectivism a far more consistently moral view than either Marston’s or Rand’s. Accordingly, heroic virtue shouldn’t be seen as gendered, but “androgynous,” borrowing from the instrumental and expressive values commonly identified within the respective provinces of “masculine” and “feminine.” Nor should one act as the heroic model because of obedience, but through autonomous agreement with the various characteristics constituting that model.
If Marston’s argument for being bound doesn’t sound like fascism’s bundle of sticks, it’s because his fantasy of Wonder Woman always has her using Amazonian power in the most decent way possible. Well, that, and because fascism is assumed to be the prime example of knuckle-dragging masculinity. In his argument against separating cinematic form from fascistic function (“Fascism/Cinema”), Robin Wood identifies certain tropes of Leni Riefentahl’s Triumph of the Will as latently fascistic, if not explicitly so, wherever they appear [p. 19-23]: empty rhetorical speeches connoting nationalism and ideological purity as the solution; dehumanized spectacles of people functioning as a machine; phallic power display; the indoctrination of children into “the dominant ideology (patriarchy, capitalism) as unquestionable fact and truth”; an obsession with cleanliness and work (e.g., alienated labor is spun as service to the represented ideology while a pleasurable activity such as sex is repressed and seen as dirty); the ideology is represented as the inherent vox populi [1]. If a woman can be the fascist auteur, why can’t a feminist society be fascist?
Despite its presentation as a revolutionary utopia against patriarchy, Paradise Island exhibits all of these tropes (and I’m just talking about issue 28): Men aren’t allowed on the island for fear of contamination (ideological purity and nationalism). The Amazonian view is presented as unquestionable fact in the empty rhetoric of Hippolyte, which sounds like she had one of the pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a speechwriter: “The only real happiness for anybody is to be found in obedience to loving authority.” [p. 48] As already seen, Marston intended to indoctrinate children into his counter-ideology (the dominant ideology of the Amazons). Just like the throngs of people cheering the Nazis on in Reifenstahl’s film, all the Amazons seem to be of one mind (which goes along with Marson’s notion of a “a stable, peaceful human society”). Whatever fetishistic quality bondage might’ve had for Marston personally, its use in his comic is always in service of the Amazonian ideological state apparatus. When the lasso falls into the hands of Eviless, the solution is not to destroy such a dangerous tool, but for the proper authority to regain its control (normalizing the kink as productive work in place of the dangerous and mysterious world of private sexuality). Should anyone be unwilling to submit to the loving Amazonian authority, Wonder Woman never has a problem with classic “phallic” displays of purely violent repression (presumably a transitory measure like the temporary dictatorships of utopian leftist thought). And, like a clockwork orange, these unruly types are sent to Transformation Island for a Venus girdle fitting and re-programming [2].
Wonder Woman and the Utilitarian
Liberal do-gooder resistance to retributive justice can often slip into the most totalitarian of utopian ideas. By focusing on utilitarian notions of rehabilitation and deterrence, rather than a just punishment to fit the crime, the criminal’s agency can be diminished for the general good. What results is a society that begins to look like a penal colony. There are the science fiction dystopias such as A Clockwork Orange and The Minority Report, but also B. F. Skinner’s utopian model for the real world, Walden Two, where a centrally planned system of positive reinforcements has eliminated crime through the shaping of behavior (the behaviorist had no truck with talk of free will, Beyond Freedom and Dignity being one of his major popular works). And, to my mind, Marston’s Transformation Island is a more horrifying, feminine version of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon.
The concept is ubiquitous nowadays (cf., the masthead above), but briefly: The panopticon is a circular prison with a watchtower in the center covered in two-way mirrors, where guards can observe any of the prisoners through the glass walls of their cells that face the tower. It’s a model of efficiency: few to no guards are needed at any given time, because the prisoners can’t determine when they’re being watched. Thus, they learn to act as if they’re always being watched. Besides the obvious visual analogy of the tower to the phallus, the concept can be read as masculine due to its use of Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze.” [3] Similar to what’s done with Rear Window, substitute the film audience for the guards, the screen for the glass walls and images of women for the prisoners, and you pretty much have her view of cinematic pleasure. The woman/prisoner exists as spectacle (connoting “to-be-looked-at-ness”), “freezing”/disrupting the progression of narrative/legal order, which is what the masculine camera/guard’s gaze is ultimately searching for: “This alien presence [erotic or criminal spectacle] then has to be integrated into cohesion with the narrative [patriarchal or legal order].” [4] [p. 203, Mulvey]
Transformation Island’s rehabilitation isn’t merely concerned with controlling behavior, or what can be seen, but in the complete restructuring of the criminal’s affective states and desires. As Ken Alder points out, the early popular reports on Marston’s beloved polygraph tended to code its subject as feminine due to stereotypes of women “as emotional, secretive, and deceitful, identifying them with ‘nature’.” [p. 9] Similarly, Amazonian rehabilitation is “feminist” because it goes beyond the conscious expressions, behind the visible and, of course, replaces the typical male rational observer with the care of matriarchal authority. A successful transformation occurs when the subject not only conforms to Amazonian law, but willingly resists being freed from the psychic chains of her Venus girdle. There is no engagement with the subject as an individual, only a one-size-fits-all, Manchurian Candidate-styled reformatting of the transgressive will with a servile Amazonian one (such as the reformed Irene [p. 21]). I guess the Borg could be seen as a peaceful society – I mean endogenously, they’re matriarchal, work well together and always remain so calm – but is it anyone’s idea of a loving authority? Maybe Marston’s. Irrespective of gender alignment, this is pure dehumanizing objectification being sold as loving care.
The panopticon is particularly scary as a structuring metaphor for society itself. People willingly displaying themselves on online social networks and getting accustomed to the accretion of cameras in banks, businesses and on the streets are instances of Shoshana Zuboff’s “anticipatory conformity”:
I think the first level of that is we anticipate surveillance and we conform, and we do that with awareness. We know, for example, when we’re going through the security line at the airport not to make jokes about terrorists or we’ll get nailed, and nobody wants to get nailed for cracking a joke. It’s within our awareness to self-censor. And that self-censorship represents a diminution of our freedom. [quoted in Cox]
As the sense of privacy erodes, people modify their behavior to fit what the omnipotent gaze, the collective will, wants. The Amazons are much more Orwellian, erasing and rewriting the self until it conforms to their utopian ideas (Newspeak is dialectic compared to the Venus girdle.) And Marston thought this absolute dominance a good message to promote to children, all for some twisted version of feminism. Again, totalitarianism and feminism are not mutually exclusive.
Rest up and come back for the thrilling conclusion tomorrow.
[1] I don’t disagree that much of this imagery is always potentially fascistic, only that it can’t still be appreciated for it’s formal beauty as such. Wood (following Mulvey) uses the example of Busby Berkeley’s spectacles in a fairly dismissive tone due to the objectification of women for the male gaze, as if simply appreciating their organized beauty is little more than swallowing fascistic rhetoric. Putting aside the issue of whether such objectification is always bad, I can’t help but think of Claire Denis’ equally beautiful and “mechanized” movement of the French Foreign Legion in Beau Travail. It is militarized, organized and very phallic, but is that all there is to it? (Clips of both examples can be easily found on YouTube.) To reduce all appreciation of these examples to the dehumanizing and totalizing gaze seems entirely too simplistic, even where there is a penumbra of fascism. Fascism has to have some appealing qualities; otherwise, no one would ever freely choose it.
[2] I’m not the only one to connect Wonder Woman with fascism:
On the surface at least, William Marston’s texts for Wonder Woman — a self- proclaimed feminist hero — subverted these [patriarchal] stereotypes. […] Yet Wonder Woman fights Dr. Psycho with tactics that hardly differ from the dissembler’s own fascist propaganda. Although she espouses liberal rhetoric and is a fierce advocate of feminist equality, when she ties up Dr. Psycho with her truth lasso, he is obliged to tell the truth. Bound by her lasso, Wonder Woman’s adversaries are ‘‘forced to be free.’’ [p. 9, Alder]
[3] Too much credence has been given to the genderification of the kinoeye. Before Mulvey’s essay, the subsequent explosion of gaze types (sadistic, male, masochistic, female, transcendent, etc.) and critiques from other feminist theorists like Kaja Silverman, Linda Williams and Carol Clover, the supposedly sadistic voyeur par excellence, Alfred Hitchcock, had already implicitly dismantled such an idea with his notion of suspense. That is, the filmmaker creates suspense by giving the audience more knowledge of the danger faced by the protagonist (with whom the audience identifies) than the character has. The way Hitchcock often did this was by placing the camera with the villain. This pro forma technique doesn’t assert identification with the villain, but, quite to the contrary, creates a sympathetic fearful affect for the protagonist, male or female. Silverman suggests much the same in “Masochism and Subjectivity”:
I will hazard the generalization that it is always the victim — the figure who occupies the passive position — who is really the focus of attention, and whose subjugation the subject (whether male or female) experiences as a pleasurable repetition from his/her own story. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the fascination of the sadistic point of view is merely that it provides the best vantage point from which to watch the masochistic story unfold. [quoted in Clover, p. 105]
While Clover (in the same essay from which the above quote was taken) tempers her theorizing with the observation that a camera is sometimes just a camera. [p. 90-1]
[4] I’d grant that this is an analogy, not a homology: According to Mulvey’s psychoanalytic approach, dealing with the alien presence is really a way of decreasing castration anxiety. The “two avenues of escape” for the male unconscious are sadistic voyeurism (“pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt […], asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness”) or fetishistic scopophilia (“the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous”). [p. 205] Both avenues might be pursued in the integration of a narrative female figure, but unless the criminal is a femme fatale, only voyeurism would seem applicable in the panopticon.
Update: Read part 2.
References:
Alder, Ken, “A Social History of Untruth: Lie Detection and Trust in Twentieth-Century America” (2002), a .pdf download from author’s website.
Clover, Carol J., “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film” (1987/1996) in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, Barry Keith Grant (Ed.): p. 66-113.
Cox, John, “The Evolution of Surveillance: Security Comes with a Cost” (2009) on the author’s website.
Creed, Barbara, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection” (1986/1996) in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, Barry Keith Grant (Ed.): p. 35-65.
Gramstad, Thomas, “The Female Hero: A Randian-Feminist Synthesis” (1999) on POP Culture: Premises of Post-Objectivism.
Jones, Gerard, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book (2004)
Mulvey, Laura, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975/1986) in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, Philip Rosen (Ed.): p. 198-209.
Paglia, Camille, “No Law in the Arena” (1994) in Vamps & Tramps: p. 17-94.
Solanas, Valerie, S.C.U.M. Manifesto (1968) on UbuWeb.
Williams, Tony, “Phantom Lady, Cornell Woolrich, and the Masochistic Aesthetic” (1988/2003) in Film Noir Reader (7th Edition), Alain Silver & James Ursini (Eds.): p. 129-143.
Wood, Robin, “Fascism/Cinema” (1998) in Sexual Politics & Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond: p. 13-28.
This is pretty exciting. I think this is probably the longest piece of negative criticism there’s ever been about Marston/Peter (and you’re only at part 1!), and definitely the most ideologically charged one since Wertham accused him of promoting lesbianism (which he does, of course — though that doesn’t look like quite the indictment now that it did then.)
There’s so much to disagree with here…I’ll try to keep it focused and not too long, though. I think this is a key moment in your piece:
Your tone is dismissive there…but that dismissiveness seems more like hand-waving than like an effort to actually engage the relevant question. That question being…was fascism actually invested in traditional masculinity?
I’m not an expert here (and you can bet your ass Robin Wood isn’t either), but from what I’ve read, the answer is that fascism was in fact extremely committed to traditional gender roles. It insisted on women being mothers, it referred to the homeland as the fatherland…and it was obsessed particularly with a hypermasculinized image of men centered around violence and force.
This, it seems to me, is extremely uncomfortable for your thesis. If historical fascism was defined in no small part by its gender politics, and the relationship of those gender politics to violence, then there really cannot be a feminist fascism. And there certainly cannot be a pacifist fascism. Certainly, Marston’s pacifism was not absolute — but he did ideologically and strenuously assert the value of peace rather than war, which couldn’t be more opposed to historical facism.
I understand that what Wood and you are trying to do is abstract the practices of Nazism from the ideology — to tar any and all ideologies that are not based on autonomous humans autonomizing morality with the Holocaust. But I think doing that makes you look fairly silly, and ends up turning an essay with a lot of really smart insights into an extended example of Godwin’s Law.
The reason I say it has smart insights is that, while WW is *not* fascist, it *is* obsessed with political control — which, as you say, has a lot of disturbing consequences. But I think labeling that obsession as “fascism” both over and under sells it.
It oversells it for the reasons I said above; mainly, an authoritarian society that is pacifist is just really different than an authoritarian society that is militantly pro-war.
It undersells it because…well, fascism lost. It’s not a live ideology anymore, much as folks of all ideological stripes kind of wish it was so that they could tar their enemies with it. Sure, it exists in far right loony parties here and there, but it’s thoroughly discredited.
The ideology in Wonder Woman, on the other hand, didn’t lose. Patriarchal control is dead, but matriarchal control is somewhat different. Marston suggests that people can be controlled through love, and especially through desire — that (as Sharon suggested) their selves can be transformed through the pleasure of dominance and submission. I would submit (as it were) that that is not how fascism works — talk about love of the fatherland if you like, but the truth is that the father is about force, and fascism is about force. But capitalism now…that seems to me like an ideology much more attuned to the manipulative technologies of desire — both in terms of the market and in terms of “alternative” discourses of therapy, education, addiction counseling, and social work.
In other words, I think your impetus to score rhetorical points re: fascism makes you suggest that Marston is a force that has been vanquished; one that autonomous moralizers like yourself have long ago figured out how to respond to. I don’t think that’s at all the case. Marston’s ideology is still very much a live issue, both for better and for worse, and labeling it as fascism is, I think deceptive and dangerous. Every form of control isn’t force; every oppression isn’t fascism, and pretending that they are is sloppy analysis which doesn’t make anyone more free.
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One more point. You insist that feminism
Again, I think this is simplistic. As I said, fascism rested on traditional gender roles; challenging those gender roles doesn’t get you to utopia, necessarily, but it does mean that you’re not worshipping force in the same way, which is a pretty important (and I think overall positive) difference. Similarly, you ignore the way in which misogyny is central to *masculine* identities. And if you think it isn’t, try going outside tomorrow in a skirt and lipstick and see what sort of comments you get. Or…are you perhaps inclined to self-censor yourself and not do that?
Misogyny is directed not just against women, but against femininity — you can see it yourself, I think, in your own disdain (borderline disgust?) for Steve Trevor in this essay…or this piece explains it pretty clearly. The point being…feminism is not just about putting women’s bodies in the same places as men’s bodies. It’s also (very often) about challenging gender roles…and gender roles are central to how people see themselves and how societies operate.
As just one example, increased rights for women pretty much uniformly result in better lives and increased rights for children (I talk about traditional gender roles and child rape here, for example. And any development worker will tell you that improved rights for women increase outcomes across the board. Steven Pinker argues in “Better Angels of Our Nature” that increased rights for women has had a massive effect on worldwide levels of violence. There’s just a lot of evidence that feminism and increased rights for women have a profound effect on all people, not just on women. I don’t even see how you can seriously argue otherwise…unless, of course, your argument is explicitly ideological rather than descriptive.
All right…well, that did sort of sprawl out of control…but hopefully not too irritatingly…. Thanks again Charles; this is a great way to end the roundtable.
Since your argument seems to rest a bit on terminology, what would you call “an authoritarian society that is pacifist”? Paradise? I’m sure Charles would hate that as well.
Oh, I’m not saying Charles wouldn’t hate it. But I don’t think the issue is just terminology…or, perhaps, it’s better to say that the force of Charles’ argument is in the labeling, right? It’s in naming Wonder Woman as fascist. But it’s not fascist. It’s something else, which Charles probably would still hate…but he should hate it for the right reasons, not because he thinks its fascist (which it isn’t.)
An authoritarian pacifist society is in some ways the dream of capitalism, or of some forms of capitalism anyway. Present day Japan, for example? Is that paradise?
The main thrust of Woolf’s 3 Guineas was, of course, the link of fascism to patriarchy (she argued that England itself was full of “Hitlerism” which didn’t go across very well in 1938).
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Noah Berlatsky says:
This is pretty exciting…
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Indeed! Pretty great stuff, and the charges made are convincingly argued ones. Not that they diminish my enjoyment of the Marston/Peters WW any. (Is there anyone who reads ’em for the philosophical wisdom?)
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I’m not an expert here…but from what I’ve read, the answer is that fascism was in fact extremely committed to traditional gender roles. It insisted on women being mothers, it referred to the homeland as the fatherland…and it was obsessed particularly with a hypermasculinized image of men centered around violence and force.
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Yes, fair enough. But, have fascist-type governments always been so “tradition-minded”? Haven’t some of those societies (as noted in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_militaries_of_ancient_Greece ) held homosexual love in high esteem, hardly what we think of as “traditional gender roles”?
And, isn’t keeping women oppressed and exploited the human condition, revoltingly, prevalent throughout the world in democracies, communist and fascist regimes, the only thing varying being the degree of the exploitation? Therefore not something uniquely conjoined to fascism?
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If historical fascism was defined in no small part by its gender politics, and the relationship of those gender politics to violence, then there really cannot be a feminist fascism.
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Sure, if you tack “traditional gender roles” into a definition of “fascism”, and insist that modern-day versions of fascism that might deviate from the template cannot arise, “then there really cannot be a feminist fascism.”
But, if you instead go by the far less idiosyncratic, and widely-accepted dictionary definition:
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fas·cism
1. a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
2. the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.
3.a fascist movement, especially the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922–43.
(Dictionary.com)
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1. any ideology or movement inspired by Italian Fascism, such as German National Socialism; any right-wing nationalist ideology or movement with an authoritarian and hierarchical structure that is fundamentally opposed to democracy and liberalism
2. any ideology, movement, programme, tendency, etc, that may be characterized as right-wing, chauvinist, authoritarian, etc
3. prejudice in relation to the subject specified: body fascism
(World English Dictionary)
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…As a rule, fascist governments are dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses a magnetic personality, wears a showy uniform, and rallies his followers by mass parades; appeals to strident nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of both foreigners and “impure” people within his own nation, such as the Jews in Germany. Although both communism and fascism are forms of totalitarianism, fascism does not demand state ownership of the means of production, nor is fascism committed to the achievement of economic equality…
(Cultural Dictionary)
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And, the other part of the argument:
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fem·i·nism
1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.
2. an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.
(Dictionary.com)
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a doctrine or movement that advocates equal rights for women
(World English Dictionary)
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The doctrine — and the political movement based on it — that women should have the same economic, social, and political rights as men.
(Cultural Dictionary)
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Pretty damn specific and limited in its basic scope! No mention in the basic definition of feminism as a commitment to democratic society, pacifism, etc. Therefore, there’s no reason why there “really cannot be a feminist fascism.”
(However, a feminist fascist movement — aside from a few wacko individuals — is a pretty damn unlikely phenomenon.)
Ancient Sparta was not a fascist state. It was an authoritarian state, but it’s not the same thing. Fascism was a particular historical phenomenon, which included a specific take on gender politics — a take which many smart people have argued was central, not peripheral, to the ideology.
Every non-democracy we don’t like is not fascism. Saying it is (Islamofascism!) obscures a lot more than it reveals.
And for pity’s sake, and not for the first time — the dictionary is written by people. The nature of fascism has been the subject of wide and intensive debate. At the very least read the Wikipedia article or something, huh?
If we’re going to parse definitions, then Sparta was a military state, which is a particular form of authoritarian state. Soldiers were at the top of the heap and all other institutions existed to support the military.
This means nothing in the scope of the debate, but I wanted to play too. You guys are cool.
Which does sound fairly fascistic, I have to admit…. Fascism was really also about massive surveillance and using the power of the modern state to ensure purity and terror — it was also about fetishizing folk culture…it’s a modernist phenomena. It just seems bizarre to project it backwards like that.
Fascism was really also about massive surveillance and using the power of the modern state to ensure purity and terror — it was also about fetishizing folk culture…
Sparta had that too. They had secret police to monitor the helots. Young boys, or at least the sons of the Spartiates, were sent to military school and lived in regiments. They weren’t given enough to eat, so basically snuck out at night and stole. They could kill helots, but if they got caught they were punished, for getting caught, not for the killing. It taught “self reliance” and kept the peasants in line.
As to purity, male children, again the sons of the Spartiates, would be abandoned if they were deemed weak after birth. If a potential Spartiate was found wanting during his military education, he was cast out of the military, taking him and his heirs out of the top of society. Citizenship had a test. Failed and you were screwed. You could be a perioikoi, which meant not a slave, but you didn’t get to have a say in the running of society.
Spartans only gave monuments or markers to men who died in battle or to women who died giving birth, because producing the next generation of Spartiates. Spartan women enjoyed privileges beyond that of other women in other Greek city states. They handled the property and left the important work of soldiering to the men folk.
So, they were the first military state, had the Krypteia, a proto-secret police that hunted down dangerous helots as part of a population control policy. Spartiates were greatly outnumbered and lived in fear of rebellions.
Nazis were greatly influenced by Spartan society. I mean there’s eugenics, secret police, obession with superiority and purity, social constructs meant to shape how people thought about society and their role to serving it.
But the cult of Sparta was the cult of Sparta. There was no one person at the top like Hitler or Sadaam Hussein. The facistic society of the 1930s that most closely resembled Sparta was Japan. Tojo was just the leader of the military, but it was the military that ruled.
But the Spartans apparently played great basketball. But all this is moot. The more important question is whether WW and her Amazons are an unhealthy authoritarian society. Whether you call it fascistic or dictatorial or whatever? I will say reform Island would seem very familiar to Winston Smith.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Ancient Sparta was not a fascist state. It was an authoritarian state, but it’s not the same thing.
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Which is why, after researching Sparta’s government ( http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/governmen1/a/aa070699_govt.htm ) last night, I nipped its name from my post.
(But, thanks for all the info re Sparta, Jim S!)
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…[fascism is] a modernist phenomena. It just seems bizarre to project it backwards like that.
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Which is why I’d given myself some “arguing room” by referring to “fascist-type governments.”
Why, here in America, we’re blithely zipping along on the way to a “fascist-type” democracy. The latest milestone, encountered at http://thismodernworld.com/ :
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An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.
The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the independent Broadcasting Board of Governors, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.
The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.
The bi-partisan amendment is sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State.
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Of course, Texas had to be involved! More at http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/congressmen-seek-to-lift-propaganda-ban
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Fascism was a particular historical phenomenon…
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So it’s safely buried in the past, then? Doesn’t the spirit of some “historical phenomena,” like witch-hunting, still persist? (In Africa, suspected witches — a common accusation is that they caused their victim’s penises to shrink, believe it or not — are still getting burned.)
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…which included a specific take on gender politics — a take which many smart people have argued was central, not peripheral, to the ideology.
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Well, “many smart people” have surely argued that vegetarianism is central to pacifism (“As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields,” – Leo Tostoy). Does that then mean if a group is not vegetarian, it can’t truly call itself “pacifist”?
Why, there’s even a book arguing how “pacifism, communalism, and vegetarianism were important parts of the message of Jesus”: http://www.amazon.com/The-Vegetarianism-Jesus-Christ-Christianity/dp/0945146019 . Are we then to treat Christianity as promoting those ideals?
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Every non-democracy we don’t like is not fascism. Saying it is (Islamofascism!) obscures a lot more than it reveals.
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Sure. Which is why I love those dictionary definitions…
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And for pity’s sake, and not for the first time — the dictionary is written by people. The nature of fascism has been the subject of wide and intensive debate. At the very least read the Wikipedia article or something, huh?
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Yeah, “the dictionary is written by people.” People who are massively-qualified experts at their job. An attitude which does not go well these days, where the prevalent attitude is “everything is just an opinion, therefore my opinion is just as good as yours, no matter how much of that fancy book l’arnin’ you got, Mr. Fancy-Pants Elitist!”
And the fact that the dictionary definitions are so concise, sticking to the basics of what “fascism” and “feminism” are, is to avoid the controversial parts. Surely, if there are parts of fascism that are “the subject of wide and intensive debate,” then — if one is going to be precise and avoid going into fuzzy territory — it’s best to avoid stuff like arguing that “traditional gender roles” are a central part of fascism.
Why, there are plenty of feminists arguing how gay/transgender rights are an important part of feminism, yet plenty of early feminists would’ve been horrified and outraged to see those included in a dictionary definition. And “many smart people” — of the lesbian persuasion, by a strange coincidence — arguing that heterosexuality and feminism are incompatible.
Some post-civil war women in America who wanted to be given the vote argued how it would give their fellow Caucasians more votes to counter those of newly-enfranchised black males. Why not, then, say that “racism” is an important part of feminism?
…And that’s why dictionary definitions are a useful lingua franca in discussions, though they necessarily leave out all the possibilities and debatable interpretations.
“I will say reform Island would seem very familiar to Winston Smith.”
Except, you know, no rats.
I didn’t know all that about Sparta! Was there a direct influence on Nazi Germany?
I know one thing that influenced Hitler was U.S. Indian policy….
And Mike, saying fascism was a historical phenomena doesn’t mean its necessarily safely buried in the past. Still, it’s worth acknowledging that it’s incredibly discredited and that it’s one of history’s most spectacular losers. The constant fear of a new fascism tends to obscure other, to me much more relevant, ways in which modern states control people. Like I said, I think WW has much more in common with those than with fascism per se.
Re Paradise Island…I think it’s pretty problematic to link women-only spaces to Nazi purity regimes. I mean, Bryn Mawr does not have all that much to do with Auschwitz, IMO. When disempowered groups create spaces for themselves to bond and organize, it’s very different than when groups in power round people up to put them in concentration camps.
A better analogy than Nazi germany might be the Michigan Womyn’s festival, which has its own problems with its exclusionary policy of course….
In his ‘History of Western Philosophy’, bertrand Russell devotes an entire chapter to Sparta; this seems curious only now, but at the time — the 1930s — I think he was definitely trying to link Sparta to Fascist philosophy, to show that it had a historic pedigree.
I agree that Paradise Island isn’t a Fascist or crypto-Fascist polity. But it certainly is a totalitarian one.
Well, I think there’s some question about its totalitarianism too… As Ben Saunders and Sharon Marcus both pointed out, there’s a radical Christian ethics on paradise island in a lot of ways, and there’s a question of whether it’s supposed to be a real society at all or a metaphorical…well, paradise.
In other words, you can read it as not being a proscription for how to set up a society, but rather as an injunction to build your life around love and submission. I think there are elements of both at work…but it’s worth remembering that the person who most famoulsy condemned Christianity’s slave morality was Nietzsche, whose philosophy was not itself exactly inimical to fascism.
Also, the claim that Spartan valuation of “homosexuality” is somehow an opposition to “traditional” gender roles doesn’t completely hold up. Part of the valuation of gay male love/sex was linked to the notion that “male” was the ideal or superior gender and that, therefore, the most exalted form of love could only be between men. That is, Greek homosexuality was a byproduct of extreme patriarchy, not some kind of opposition to it (or at least some have argued this to be the case…I’m not an expert on Ancient Greece). Sedgwick goes into some of this in _Between Men_– She notes that in modern Western civ. homosexuality is cordoned off from homosociality as a means of perpetuating misogyny and the use of women as “objects of exchange”–but other patriarchal societies (like the Greeks) have had more fuzzy lines between male homosociality and homosexuality, without necessarily disturbing underlying misogyny.
Somewhat funny that Russell was invoked, since the Cambridge Apostles self-consciously referred to the Greeks as models for their own blurring of homosocial/homosexual divisions—which also often had an undercurrent of misogyny.
Last note. The other info on Sparta came from my memory. This next stuff comes direct from Wikipedia. I remembered reading the Nazis admired ancient Sparta, so I doubled checked using Wikipedia. The info seems well documented and adheres to what I remember.
Anyway . . .
“Laconophilia is love or admiration of Sparta and of the Spartan culture or constitution. Sparta was subject of considerable admiration in its day, even in its rival, Athens. In ancient times “Many of the noblest and best of the Athenians always considered the Spartan state nearly as an ideal theory realised in practice.”[105] Many Greek philosophers, especially Platonists, would often describe Sparta as an ideal state, strong, brave, and free from the corruptions of commerce and money.
Young Spartans Exercising by Edgar Degas (1834-1917)With the revival of classical learning in Renaissance Europe, Laconophilia re-appears, for examples in the writings of Machiavelli. The Elizabethan English constitutionalist John Aylmer compared the mixed government of Tudor England to the Spartan republic, stating that “Lacedemonia [meaning Sparta], [was] the noblest and best city governed that ever was”. He commended it as a model for England. The Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau contrasted Sparta favourably with Athens in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, arguing that its austere constitution was preferable to the more cultured nature of Athenian life. Sparta was also used as a model of social purity by Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.[106]
A new element of Laconophilia by Karl Otfried Müller, who linked Spartan ideals to the supposed racial superiority of the Dorians, the ethnic sub-group of the Greeks to which the Spartans belonged. Adolf Hitler praised the Spartans, recommending in 1928 that Germany should imitate them by limiting “the number allowed to live”. He added that “The Spartans were once capable of such a wise measure… The subjugation of 350,000 Helots by 6,000 Spartans was only possible because of the racial superiority of the Spartans.” The Spartans had created “the first racialist state”.[107]”
A fascinating society, unique in the ancient world. I wouldn’t want to live there, but then I wouldn’t have wanted to live anywhere in the ancient world. I’ll take 2012, Kardashians and all.
“Lacanophilia,” ha! Somebody please do something with that! Maybe call it “Seminar 300.”
Everyone trying to argue for gay feminist fascism (a la Rush Limbaugh) should really check out the Pink Swastika, a book on how National Socialism was totally gay. It really works to call stuff you hate “Nazi”:– Barack Obama for example.
I hate spinach. It’s so Nazi!
To continue from what eric b said, Greek homosexual practice was very different from the current ideal of a loving and equal relationship between consenting adults.
Greek homosexuality often manifested as pederasty, and was an inherently unequal relationship between an older man (who did the penetrating) and a younger man (who was penetrated). So rigid gender roles persisted even in homosexual relationships.
That’s true– laws and taboos around homosexuality in Greece and Rome had quite a bit to do with who was “pitching” and “catching”– even in the Bible at some point. I got all that from John Boswell, whom I should reread.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that the Athenians thought Sparta was ideal–the Athenians thought Athens was ideal. They believe themselves autochthonous, which is about as conceited as it gets (leaped directly from the land, in case you’re not up on your Attic Greek).
For the same-sex thing…. Bert is correct. Pitching and catching is pretty important, yes. Better to be the pitcher, obvs. It’s also more about an adult Athenian male citizen’s desires. If he wants someone, of course he should have them, duh, why is that even a question. That might be a female slave, a male slave, a free female companion (hetairae), a citizen-born woman, etc. The only tricky part is if it’s another male citizen, in which case, he should still probably have them, but he might have to actually, like, woo them and treat them right. One of the (I think) charming things about the ancient notions of sexuality is that they are much more fluid and also that they consider love a disease that makes the sufferer totally nuts.
As for facism, “Hieronymus the Peripatetic declares these love affairs with boys became widespread because it often happened that the vigour of the young men, joined to the mutual sympathy of their companionship, brought many tyrannical governments to an end.”
A few prominent Athenians admired Sparta though. Plato seemed to have a high regard for their political system.
Sexual relations between free male citizens is an interesting subject, and one where Greek attitudes were inconsistent. The Spartans tended to regard these relationships as inappropriate, though they still happened anyway. The Thebans went in the opposite direction, and actually built a superb military unit based on homosexual couples – The Sacred Band. The idea was that no man would flee from battle and shame himself in front of his lover. Of course, they got wiped out at Charonea anyway, but that’s neither here nor there…
I hate to interrupt the informative discussion on the Spartans (which I’m enjoying), but:
I don’t know why, but my mind somehow blocked out the word ‘authoritarian’ while writing this thing. But I definitely agree that the Amazons are authoritarian. I guess I was more concerned with Marston’s totalizing view, where he wanted to reduce everyone to the same unifying thought.
Noah,
I probably wasn’t clear enough about Wood. I associate him with the view that fascism is inherently — maybe ‘ontologically’ is a better word — masculine. To him, dehumanization of women is part of its aesthetic (thus, his example of Busby Berkley musicals). It is very much about phallic power displays. And, when you look at reality, he’s got a point, at least in terms of history. Where I’d disagree is that it’s somehow impossible to imagine, as if it’s an absolute contradiction in terms (like a square circle), that a matriarchy couldn’t be just as fascistic as the patriarchal examples we have. But in order to imagine this, one has to drop the psychoanalytic (sexist) assumption that power is necessarily masculine. I don’t think you’re willing to do this, which means you actually agree with Wood. If you’re going to insist on ‘patriarchy’ or ‘phallocentrism’ being part of the definition of fascism, then it’s tautologically true that there can be no thought of a feminist fascism.
Anyway, Suat’s right, I don’t much care whether Paradise Island is really existing fascism. Rather, I had two points with the analogy: That Marston’s utopia shares enough with Wood’s fairly common outline of the fascist aesthetic (e.g.) that it should cause any fellow travelers to worry about their views. And that it’s pretty remarkable that minus the one feature (the sexist diminution of women), the Amazons could’ve had their own Triumph of the Will as a propaganda film. That is, Fascism and Paradise Island both belong to the genus of totalitarianism.
Now for some scattershot replies:
“Marston’s pacifism was not absolute — but he did ideologically and strenuously assert the value of peace rather than war, which couldn’t be more opposed to historical fascism.”
Peace through enforced uni-thought is peace, I guess. But if that’s all it is, then count me a warmonger.
“Similarly, you ignore the way in which misogyny is central to *masculine* identities.”
I’m not sure on your intent here. If you mean “some masculine identities,” then I agree that some men are misogynists. But I don’t see why that’s a problem for my essay. So I’m guessing you mean “all masculine identities,” which, of course, I’d say is horseshit. Can you prove that not using a feminist spin on a discredited science like psychoanalysis? I’m betting not. I don’t dress as a woman for the quite obvious fact that I’m not a woman. I do wear braids and women’s jeans, though, whatever that says. The notion that a hatred of women is the cause of why many women don’t like to see men dress as women and vice versa seems so prima facie silly that I don’t think it really needs to be argued … but we can, I suppose, if you wanna. Suffice it to say, I have no problem with men wearing makeup and dresses, shaving their legs, or anything else that most women like to do. I’d feel silly, because I like jeans and Western shirts. That’s who I am. I’d feel just as goofy going out dressed in goth attire, although I have friends who dress that way, too. Similarly, I hate tattoos, but one of my best pals is a tattoo artist. You can have an aesthetic disagreement without it being the result of some deep childhood tragic development in the unconscious that surfaces as a hatred of those you consider fashion victims. As I see it, the problem comes about when either you submit completely to what another wants, or you force your aesthetic on another. (I mean, as a grown adult — identity development is always a bit of cultural warfare.)
And my disdain for Steve Trevor isn’t rooted in any hatred of women, but in the fact that he is the type authoritarians can count on as a “good employee.” I don’t care about the gender of the authoritarian in question. He’s a bad role model for boys and girls … and transgendered people, too. Plus, I have just as much disdain for Rand’s view of women, so how does that fit into your reductionism?
You do make me really appreciate Paglia more and more.
Thanks for such a great reply.
Hey Charles. It’s not psychoanalysis; my comments are mostly inspired by Julia Serano, a trans woman who wrote about misogyny re: femininity in her book Whipping Girl. She argues that a lot of feminism is quite anti-femininity, and that that denigrating femininity is also misogyny. She argues that most of the prejudice she encounters is misogyny; people who have contempt for her because, though she once had male privilege, she identifies as a woman.
Serano says that when feminists are misogynist in this way, one of the things they say is, basically, it’s not women we hate, it’s submission/weakness/lack of assertiveness. Like Steve. Who actually spends a lot of the series rescuing people and performing very brave acts and generally being fairly heroic. Which brings up the question of why you dislike him. And it’s hard not to conclude that you dislike him because he’s not being sufficiently manly; that is, even though he is brave, he’s not the center of the action, and he expresses his willingness to submit to women on occasion.
And are you really telling me that the way you dress, your fashion choices and how you present yourself, have nothing to do with your gender identity? That seems pretty insane, Charles. Again, I say, dress in a skirt and lipstick for a day, and see what happens. You will encounter a ton of misogyny, I can just about guarantee it. It’s not about what you like or don’t like; it’s about what people around you perceive as contemptible or mockable. A lot of what is contemptible and mockable in our society is anything having to do with women. That doesn’t have anything to do with Freud. It just has to do with looking around you…and acknowledging that your choices, your desires, and yes, your fashion sense are not the result of glorious autonomous individual expression, but maybe have something to do with the people around you.
Again, the point isn’t that women can’t be in charge in an authoritarian state. The point is that fascism had a central and important link to patriarchy, and that most other authoritarian states do to (Sparta, as we’ve said — and Stalin was very into traditional gender roles, despite the supposed communist ideology.) Again it’s about masculinity and femininity as ideologies, not about male and female bodies per se. You don’t have to be a gender essentialist to acknowledge that masculininity and femininity *are* ideologies*, and that they shape the way people act and think. The point is that fascism is built (in no small part) on masculinity. Marston rejects masculinity in favor of femininity. He believes in peace, not war; in submission, not dominance; in love, not patriotism. That doesn’t necessarily mean his utopia is in fact paradise, and you can obviously disagree with it. But you don’t seem able to acknowledge that the differences are real differences, which is part of your inability to admit that masculinity and femininity (*not* necessarily men and women) are different. And because you won’t admit that, it makes it very hard for you to understand, or to even think about, why women are oppressed, or why simply declaring “women can have ice-pick penises too!” is not an especially effective or encouraging call to arms.
Or, to put it another way, as just an example, a world in which women are valued equally with men would have to be a world in which childrearing is more valued than it is now. That would be a different world. Not necessarily better in every way, but different.
Hmm; should perhaps change that to say one in which children are more valued. Obviously Nazis valued child rearing…but only so they could have soldiers to send off to the slaughter.
“And are you really telling me that the way you dress, your fashion choices and how you present yourself, have nothing to do with your gender identity? […] Again, I say, dress in a skirt and lipstick for a day, and see what happens. You will encounter a ton of misogyny, I can just about guarantee it.”
But, Noah, that isn’t misogyny. It’s a disgust with what doesn’t fit one’s categories. Would you call a similar disgust with very butch women misandry? I’m betting you’d also call that misogyny. (As a little metal head, I was called ‘fag’ enough to know what it feels like.) Of course, fashion is related to gender (I tried to acknowledge this by stating, “I don’t dress as a woman for the quite obvious fact that I’m not a woman”). It’s just that bullying assholes treat any violation of their narrowly defined social categories with contempt. A hatred of a man dressing as a woman isn’t the same as a hatred of a woman for the quite obvious reason that these catcalling dipshits aren’t saying the same thing to everyone dressed as a woman.
“You don’t have to be a gender essentialist to acknowledge that masculininity and femininity *are* ideologies*, and that they shape the way people act and think.”
I agree, but you do have to be something of an essentialist to take all the characteristics commonly associated with those gender ideologies as necessary. If you don’t, then women can be seen acting in “masculine” ways without being, in fact, masculine. Not every grab for power is phallic.
One last last note.
“I will say reform Island would seem very familiar to Winston Smith.”
Except, you know, no rats.
Yeah, but in the end, everyone still ends up loving Big Mother.