Feminists are False Women: "The Bible Tells Me So"

'True Woman' movement seeks counter-revolution to feminism -- that's the headline.

A group of conservative Christian women is seeking 100,000 signatures on a "True Woman Manifesto" aimed at sparking a counter-revolution to the feminist movement of the 1960s. -- that's the lead-in to the news article.

[T]he document calls not for equal rights, but instead proclaims 

that men and women are created to reflect God's image in "complementary and distinct ways" . . . 

that women are called "to honor and support God-ordained male leadership in the home and in the church" . . . 

that men are to be the heads of the homes . . . 

that [female submission] is taught in Scripture -- that's the skinny.

Never mind that the very first American feminists, women and men, were Bible-reading, church-going Christians.  

Never mind that their "Declaration of Sentiments" was that "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."  Never mind that they wrote a commentary on the Bible called The Woman's Bible.  Never mind that the most-recent feminist manifesto (a third-wave document), Manifesta, invokes the Sentiments of that first-wave.

Never mind that many "Bible believing church going" Christians today (men and women, feminists and uncommitted) are as egalitarian as the God of Genesis and Jesus is.

Never mind that the Bible, as sexist and pro-slavery as it is, never says even once anywhere that "men are to be the heads of the homes."

[HT Polycarp]

Translating Aristotle's Sexism: Part 2

Aristotle wrote the bible on rhetoric for elite Greek males.  One of his main books on the subject is what we call the Rhetoric. 

At first glance, it seems that Aristotle is not particularly hard on females in the Rhetoric as he is in his other treatises.  Rhetoric historian Cheryl Glenn says he gives the female poet Sappho a “nod” in his book but otherwise makes “no provision for the intellectual woman” (Rhetoric Retold 49).  George A. Kennedy, whose translation of the Rhetoric is the most widely used among rhetoricians, says “Aristotle usually envisions only males as speaking in public, but he clearly did not think that rhetoric was a phenomenon limited to males, for he draws examples of rhetoric from Sappho (a woman poet of the early sixth century B.C.E.) and from female characters in epic and drama” (On Rhetoric ix).  Rhetorician Carol Poster suggests that because he authored so many other misogynistic works, we don’t even need to read Aristotle’s Rhetoric for rhetorical theory, especially when considering feminist rhetorics; Poster’s implication is that the sexism in the treatise is due only to the author’s gynophobic intentions elsewhere (“(Re)Positioning Pedagogy: A Feminist Historiography of Aristotle's Rhetorica”).

Feminist literary historian F. A. Wright, likewise, seems to struggle initially with the absence of blatant hatred of women and girls in the Rhetoric.  In fact, when surveying Aristotle’s copious claims “of the deficiencies in women” (204) in his extant texts, Wright suggests that “[w]e have to go to the Rhetoric to get Aristotle’s idea of their [i.e., women’s] merits” (Feminism in Greek Literature 204).  The scholar pinpoints this paragraph from the Rhetoric below, saying “This passage is significant” (204):

θηλειων δὲ αρετὴ σώματος μὲν κάλλος καὶ μέγεθος, ψυχης δὲ σωφροσύνη καὶ φιλεργία ανευ ανελευθερίας. --Aristotle Rhetoric 1361a

The excellence of females is (a) physical, a large and beautiful body; (b) mental, virtuous moderation and love—but not a sordid love—of work. --traditional phallogocentric translation

In the case of female children, excellence of body means beauty and stature, [excellence] of mind [means] temperance and industry, without servility. --Kennedy’s traditional phallogocentric translation

A female’s good character really comes from a body with a good large figure, but also from a personality with "wise submissiveness" and affection for work without preoccupation from freedoms. --a feminist rhetorical translating

Wright quickly follows up the passage with an aptly sarcastic commentary on Aristotle’s phallic intentions.  Wright correctly claims here that women were viewed by Aristotle, even in his Rhetoric, as passive prostitutes, as slaves working for the pleasures of men.  Wright notes:

First, it will be seen, comes physical attractiveness.  The excellent woman must be good-looking, and by ‘good-looking’ we mean tall and stout, for ethereal grace does not suit the harem-master’s taste.  Secondly, she will be temperate in her desires; the word ‘Sophrosyne,’ ‘virtuous moderation,’ is the chief virtue in a woman:  it is the faculty of ‘doing without’—love, food, pleasure, consideration, etc.—and the Greeks, unlike the Romans, really did admire this passive merit even in men.  Thirdly comes industry, with the restriction that a woman must not be a slave to work:  she has other even more important duties—her master’s pleasure, for example—and work must not be allowed to interfere unduly.  In his conception of female virtue Aristotle has advanced somewhat from Pericles’ negative ideal, but he has not got very far.  (204-05)

Wright’s sarcasm rightly recognizes Aristotle’s prejudices against women.  On Wright’s second point, classics scholar Anne Carson concurs:

The celebrated Greek virtue of self-control (sophrosyne) has to be defined differently for men and for women, Aristotle maintains.  Masculine sophrosyne is rational self-control and resistance to excess, but for the woman sophrosyne means obedience and consists in submitting herself to the control of others. (Men in the Off Hours 142). 

When Aristotle uses the word σωφροσύνη (or sophrosyne) in the Rhetoric, as in the excerpt above, the traditional phallogocentric translator renders the phrase “virtuous moderation.”  Aristotle has not bothered to comment in the passage about how the term applies differently to females.  Thus, traditional, phallogocentric translator either does not feel obligated to note that Aristotle intends the word to be disparaging of females, or he does not recognize that Aristotle is biased against women.  Since neither the original Greek context nor the traditional English translation convey the sexism of Aristotle overtly, commentators such as Wright and Carson must make explicit the masculinism that is otherwise left implicit. 

The commentary of Wright and Carson show Aristotle’s low view of females around his term σωφροσύνη and his other descriptive qualities of women.  The traditional translator completely misses Aristotle’s bias against females.  Nonetheless, a feminist rhetorical translating of this Greek sentence explicitly demonstrates the phallic in the Rhetoric in the way the traditional translator does not.  Aristotle, to her, is saying in sarcastic tones that females with "good character" are, for example, "wisely submissive" to males.

Translating Aristotle's Sexism: Part I

A feminist rhetorical translator may choose her own agency to make meaning of the original text.  If a female, she may start by recognizing that she’s really an outsider to the text, if it’s a misogynistic or gynophobic text. 

She may, for example, “overtranslate” the masculinism in the most blatantly sexist of Aristotle’s texts, such as quoted below from Generation of Animals 737a.  To “overtranslate” is to “add shock value” in the translating, especially in comparison to the traditional phallogocentric translation.  The traditional translation, she may recognize, can undertranslate the separational violence in Aristotle’s cold and ostensibly objective observation about females in nature.

ὥσπερ γὰρ καὶ ἐκ πεπηρωμένων ὁτὲ μὲν γίγνεται πεπηρωμένα ὁτὲ δ’ οὔ, οὕτω καὶ ἐκθήλεος ὁτὲ μὲν θῆλυ ὁτὲ δ’ οὒ ἀλλ’ ἄρρεν.  τὸ γὰρ θῆλυ ὥσπερ ἄρρεν ἐστὶ πεπηρωμένον· --Aristotle Generation of Animals 737a

If mutilated young are born of mutilated parents, it is for the same reason as that for which they are like them. And the young of mutilated parents are not always mutilated, just as they are not always like their parents; the cause of this must be inquired into later, for this problem is the same as that. --traditional translation by Arthur Platt

born [generated]  mutilated [peperomia] --traditional, key-word focus

Just as the young of mutilated parents are sometimes born mutilated and sometimes not, so also the young born of a known female are sometimes female and sometimes male instead.  The female is, in fact, a mutilated male, like the poisonous flower, the pereromia, if beautiful, then deadly still.  --a feminist rhetorical translating

The reader should notice how in Arthur Platt’s English translation, there is no gender reference at all.  His is an undertranslation. The translator’s focus is on Aristotle’s discussion of “mutilated young” in these sentences, as if gender is not relevant.  Although not shown here, Platt only discusses females in the immediately subsequent statement where Aristotle begins to differentiate male and female young in relation to the presence or absence of sperm.

In contrast, the feminist rhetorical translator brings out the fact that, in these very sentences, there are explicit references to θῆλυ or “females,” as opposed to ἄρρεν or “males.”  Aristotle’s logic separates the genders absolutely and purely with no mix of characteristics.  Hierarchically, his logic classifies males as superior.  The translator recognizes the process and product of Aristotle’s logic. 

Furthermore, the translator herself makes explicit a couple of other things only implicit in Aristotle’s Greek language.  First, she explicitly associates being “born” with “a female.”  She knows that γίγνεται (“are born”) may pun with γυναῖκας (“women”) and with γινώσκω (“know”), even if Aristotle does not intend or hear the puns.  The pun with “known” has the double meaning of “cognition” (which a female, according to Aristotle, will not have) and of “having been sexually known” (which is one reason, according to Aristotle, that females exist in nature for males). 

Second, the feminist rhetorical translator brings out the overt fact that the root word, πηρόω, or “mutilate,” sounds in transliterated English like the name of the poisonous plant, “peperomia”; she knows that, etymologically, the English word comes from a different Greek root:  πεπέρι, from which comes the word pepper.  The puns for the feminist rhetorical translator may be intentionally explicit word plays. 

The puns stretch and strain the meanings, not only by ignoring etymologies but also by generating new explicit meanings to trouble the implicit sexism.  The translator flaunts the etymological issues of origins as with the separate etymological “roots” noted above for “born,” “woman,” and “know” and for “mutilate” and “peperomia.”  She recognizes with Hélène Cixous that:

The origin is a masculine myth. . . . The question, ‘Where do I come from?’ is basically a masculine, much more than a feminine question. The quest for origins, illustrated by Oedipus, doesn’t haunt a feminine unconscious. Rather it’s the beginning, or beginnings, the manner of beginning, not promptly with the phallus, but starting on all sides at once, that makes a feminine writing. A feminine text starts on all sides at once, starts twenty times, thirty times, over. (qtd. in Mairs, 85) 

The feminist rhetorical translator also generates the kinds of meanings that Mary Daly does.  Daly, in Gyn/Ecology, invents (and “re-cognizes”) wordplay in American culture; she reappropriates the male-superior contexts of  words such as “therapy,” “bureaucracy,” and even of the Total Woman of Marabel Morgan in phrases such as “the-rapist,” “bore-ocracy,” and the “Totaled woman” (Simon 21).Notice how Daly is not concerned with the origins of the original terms but with how the original phrases sound to the female in American culture.  The “overtranslation” of sexism in the Greek text illustrates one implication of feminist rhetorical translating: agency for the translator with respect to meaning making when the text forces her to be a silent outsider.