Enemy Death

After President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden was dead, I was glad to see that Rod of Alexandria and Joel Watts directed us to the words of certain Jews:

one young rabbi said:

43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the [imperial] tax-collectors do the same?

and one wise king had already said:

17 Do not rejoice when your enemies fall,
and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble

And in quoting Matthew 5:43-46 and then Proverbs 24:17, Joel and Rod might have also quoted many, many others (i.e., 2 Samuel 3:32, Job 31:29, Psalm 35:15, Psalm 35:19, Proverbs 17:5, Proverbs 24:18, Obadiah 1:12, Micah 7:8). 

The history of the Jews is replete with enemies and responses.  In September of last year, Rachel Barenblat was re-learning and teaching the history and posted on "The early history of Jews in Muslim lands"; in October she noted "Jews in medieval Christendom" and a few of their "dreadful enemies" back then and over there.  And, on the day when much of the the world watched the wedding of a future king perhaps and his bride, the history of the marriage of enemy Adolf Hitler to his bride was overshadowed for a moment; and who then celebrated the next day remembering that racist, sexist, evil enemy's death?  I'm sure there were some but we were quieter, weren't we?

I think a lot about enemies, and about this very Jewish concept of loving enemies, or of praying for them, or at least of forgiving them at some point.  How does that happen?  I have enemies.  Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and some who are still very much alive.  The goal for me is not to get rid of enemies.  I just can't do it, often for very real and practical reasons.  "Vengence is mine" is one of those scriptures quoted around me when I was little, and often it seemed very sour-grapes and was mostly helpful because it helps you imagine God as your hit man. 

But I think that there's more to it than just hanging around waiting for the one and only God (who happens to be on my side) to take out my enemy, to kill him.

There is much to learn from the abused and from the oppressed here that echoes the real Jewish sentiments of enemy love.

And reading Anne Lamott, when President George W. Bush was in office taking out all of our enemies, I used to laugh at how she'd work out forgiveness of him, because God commanded her to do so, because this was a scriptural thing to do. She learned not to grit her teeth and not to drink the poison of resentments.

And reading bell hooks, I learn about "definition."  How Aristotle, the enemy of females, taught definition was to avoid ambiguities, to define precisely, to "objectively" put your enemies into little and much lower boxes so as to keep yourself free and above and alive; I think I blogged at least once about his strategy.  But hooks has a better way of defining.  Here's one of her definitions that includes the word enemy, and that acknowledges with some force who that must be:

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago [in 1985]. It was my hope that at that time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.
("Feminist Politics: Where We Stand," Feminism is For Everyone: Passionate Politics, page 1)

Notice her phrases "my hope" and "broad enough" and "to include" and "open-ended" and the repeated, "to understand."   This is key to loving one's enemy, to real understanding, I believe.  Notice who this woman's enemy is, although she suffered much because of men:  "[one does not need to] imply that men were the enemy."  This in not mere rhetoric.

This is a way of opening up the possibilities.  It's akin to what Sappho does, to what Anne Carson helping us read and translate Sappho does (from her book, Eros: the Bittersweet).  It speaks to love, to hate, to how we divide unto death, or pray and forgive.  Yes, it's that Jewish idea, but here's from a Greek, from an English poet's perspectives that might help:

It was Sappho who first called eros "bittersweet." No one who has been in love disputes her. What does the word mean?....  Here is contradiction and perhaps paradox. To perceive this eros can split the mind in two. Why? The components of the contradiction may seem, at first glance, obvious. We take for granted, as did Sappho, the sweetness of erotic desire; its pleasurability smiles out at us. But the bitterness is less obvious. There might be several reasons why what is sweet should also be bitter. There may be various relations between the two savors.  Poets have sorted the matter out in different ways. Sappho's own formulation is a good place to begin tracing the possibilities. The relevant fragment runs:

Ἕρος δαὖτέ μ᾽ ὀ λυσιμέλες δόνει,
γλυκύπικρον ἀμάχανον ὄρπετον
Eros once again limb-loosener whirls me
sweetbitter, impossible to fight off, creature stealing up
_____________________________(LP, fr. 130)

It is hard to translate. "Sweetbitter" sounds wrong, and yet our standard English rendering "bittersweet" inverts the actual terms of Sappho's compound glukupikron. Should that concern us? If her ordering has a descriptive intention, eros is here being said to bring sweetness, then bitterness in sequence: she is sorting the possibilities chronologically....  But it is unlikely that this is what Sappho means....  Love and hate bifurcate Eros....  Paradox is what takes shape on the sensitized plate of the poem, a negative image from which positive pictures can be created. Whether apprehended as a dilemma of sensation, action or value, eros prints as the same contradictory fact: love and hate converge within erotic desire.
____Why?

Notice how Anne notices how "Love and hate bifurcate Eros" but also how "love and hate converge within erotic desire."  This isn't mere rhetoric.  This isn't just poetry.  This isn't at all how an extremist like Osama bin Laden or Adolf Hitler or an elitist like Aristotle would do things.  Yes, I know they're all men.  But who is implying the nature of the enemy?  My enemies?  Love our enemies?  Pray for those who hate us?  What kind of contradictory poetry or rhetoric or Bible teaching is that?

My wife and I once attended a conference on Love and on loving enemies; it was led by a counseling psychologist whose area of research was sexual abuse, on dealing with the trauma afterwards, on confronting the abusers.  His best friend, he said, was a scholar on the Hebrew Bible.  They advised, he told us, to define our enemies, "but to use a pencil with an eraser."  He then gave several categories for abusers of others so as to begin to have strategies and boundaries for moving forward with them in life.  "But," he reminded, "as you define the people in your life, write with that pencil and be ready to use the eraser to make changes."  I like that.  It seems Jewish in some ways, Bible-like in some ways, feminist in some ways, poetic and Sappho-like and literary-with-real-life in some ways.  As I think about what Joel and Rod posted as they thought about the death of Osama bin Lin, killed by the United States of America as announced by its president, it's useful.  I have living enemies today.  And if I pray for my enemies, then how does that change them and me?  It does.  Rather than causing enemy death, it tends to make me question why they are my enemy, death deserving.  These sorts of words, then, and practices, are helpful.

the Bible: bell hooks

Throughout our history, African-Americans have recognized the subversive value of homeplace, of having access to private space where we do not directly encounter white racist agression. Whatever the shape and direction of black liberation struggle (civil rights reform or black power movement), domestic space has been a crucial site for organizing, for forming political solidarity. // In our young minds houses belonged to women, were their special domain, not as property, but as places where all that truly mattered in life took place—the warmth and comfort of shelter, the feeding of our bodies, the nurturing of our souls. There we learned dignity, integrity of being; there we learned to have faith. The folks who made this life possible, who were our primary guides and teachers, were black women . . . [who fostered] a radical political dimension . . . [and who created] a site of resistance and liberation struggle.

--bell hooks

"Homeplace: a Site of Resistance"

Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago [in 1985]. It was my hope that at that time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.

--bell hooks

"Feminist Politics: Where We Stand"

Feminism is For Everyone: Passionate Politics

page 1

"Ongoing discussion about the wide range of issues

that come under the heading of reproductive rights is needed

if females of all ages and our male allies in struggle

are to understand why these rights are important."

--bell hooks,

"Our Bodies, Ourselves"

Feminism is For Everyone

Have you read much of bell hooks?  She was born Gloria Jean Watkins and has influenced how a number of us approach the Bible.  Some of this gets very personal, so if you're more interested in objective and objectivized readings of the Bible, then do ignore this post please.  Well, and claim now (with the three epigraphs above you've worked your way through) that you've read some of bell hooks' writings.

But if your mother told you stories as a child, especially if your household was a refuge from sexist or racist kyriarchy in any way, then I bet you're already familiar with bell hooks (perhaps without even knowing it).  Once upon a time, Julia Caesaris the Elder and Julia Caesaris the Younger and their little brother Julius Caesar may have benefited from such respectful home training. 

My own story is of my own mother telling us stories in her childrens' very difficult upbringing, and of her reading the bible with me anyway.  I've blog-told it now twice at least.  (The first telling was an "Ongoing discussion about the wide range of issues that come under ...," a discussion not only that a contentious and challenging man blogger friend prompted but also that a thoughtful and thankful woman blogger friend supported me in much more because she really understands the bible and women and the personal with the physical and the political. // And with respect to my home training, I've told of my other mothers, also of Nancy now twice at least.  bell hooks has helped me never ever to underestimate the spiritual support and influence of mothers telling stories.)

Lest I bore you more, please do read more interesting encounters with bell hooks by others: 

Here's Rod of Alexandria re-membering what happened his first semester as a Th.M. student.

Here's Julia M. OBrien working and blogging as a Hebrew Bible\Old Testament scholar.

Here's Jeff a blogging feminist ally in one of a series of posts on the personal.

Here's "The Feminist Texican," a teacher, a Chicana feminist blogger, learning.

Here's Linda Lopez McAlister, reviewer of Malcolm X, the film, and the misogyny-prone man.

What about you, then?  Are you "from a Bible-toting, Bible-talking world where scripture was quoted in everyday conversations"?  Then might you not find something in bell hooks helpful perspectives too? 

Here's her own story:

Coming from a Bible-toting, Bible-talking world where scripture was quoted in everyday conversations, I lacked the psychological resources and know how to positively function in a world where spiritual faith was regarded with as much disdain as being from the geographical south.

Where does she go from there?  And where do you and I? 

Since Aristotelians Need Definition & System:

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago [in 1985]. It was my hope that at that time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.

--bell hooks
"Feminist Politics: Where We Stand"
Feminism is For Everyone: Passionate Politics
page 1

Ugly Distortions or Misunderstandings?

There's so much wrong in Alice Lindsey's vicious "Paradox of Feminism" that I just don't know how to begin to respond. Is she intentionally distorting feminism or does she not fully understand it? How would she respond to similar sorts of charges against her Anglican church? Besides, I can't figure out how to leave comments on the site where she's posted. (I can say her only reference to Jesus is to "the Body of Christ," by which she means "the church"; and I add, this is not the Jesus who loves women and men.)

Perhaps others of you readers will respond here or figure out how to comment there.

Here's Lindsey's ugly definition and unloving thesis (with a link to the website at the end):

Defining Feminism

It is helpful to define terms at the start, so I will define Feminism as a political ideology that sees the relationship between males and females as one of inequality, subordination, or oppression, and which identifies the dominant males in society as the sources of oppression.

Feminism is essentially a Marxist-socialist-liberal ideology which focuses on gender struggle. The Feminist concern is voiced in public about equal legal rights, equal pay for equal work, harassment in the workplace, abuse and trafficking of women and children, and global awareness of women's health needs.

As we consider the importance of these concerns, we are able to see why Feminism has advanced into all areas of our life. It speaks in the lexicon of fairness and justice and it is difficult for a Christian to speak against Feminism and not sound bigoted, reactionary or dim-witted. If Christians, especially Christian women, lack understanding of the nature of our differences and are unskilled in our engagement of Feminist rhetoric, we are easily marginalized.

Marginalization is a political tactic that Feminists have employed successfully and which gay activists learned from feminists. This tactic is used by those who already have gained sufficient control to be able to marginalize those who don't agree with them. For example, gay activists have used marginalization in many states to silence opponents of gay marriage bills. Marginalization takes many forms, but one of the most common is to misrepresent your opponent as small-minded and backwards.

Feminism, as an ideological thread in the weave of 20th century American life, poses a significant challenge to Christianity. It influences our outlook on family, church, education and politics, and while politically vocal Feminists often succeed in marginalizing their opponents, the Feminist agenda clearly is not good for the Church.

My Thesis

While I have been asked to address Feminism in the context of today's society, I want to speak more directly to the challenges that Feminism poses to the Church as the Body of Christ. My thesis is this: What is good for the Church is good for society. What is bad for the Church is bad for society. Simply stated, I regard the Church's welfare and edification as a litmus test for the innovations that appear in society. To narrow the scope, I will speak primarily about western society, although many of the points I wish to make apply to all societies.

"As Eye See It : The Paradox of Feminism" - Alice Linsley

The F Word (and the R word, the T word, the B word)

Feminism.  It's a word in the English dictionary.  It has a stable, objective meaning.  We'd all agree, for example, that it does not mean "cowboy" or "vivorum" or "复杂性" or "σκεῦος."  And yet, are you neutral in your understanding of "feminism"?  Doesn't the word (and your use of it in writing or in speaking or even in reading and in listening) immediately cause you to participate in its force, subjectively?  "No, I am not a feminist," you might protest.  And most of us would, likely, agree with you.  But then we all -- each one of us -- could get into an argument over who "is" a feminist and who is not a feminist.  Among self identifying feminists, this happens regularly, so that there are "waves" and there are kinds ("afrafeminism" and "womanism" and "academic" feminism and so forth) and there are memories of Mary Daly post mortem in which she's a "dangerous" or a "radical" or a "theological" or a "no longer representative of me and my sort of" feminist.  The safest definition of the word "feminist" I have found so far is "a supporter of feminism."  But what if a true "feminist" could care less about "feminism" per se?  Feminism cares about feminism?  You get the point of my personal questions, don't you?  There's an inclusivity in the questions whether you're finding yourself on the outside or the inside of this word "feminism."  These are rhetorical questions, aren't they?

Rhetoric.   You know what that word means, don't you?

Translation.  As with feminism and rhetoric, translation begs for experts.  You can get a Ph.D. in it.  And if you have less than that, well then, what other kind of training is necessary to talk about it, or to do it "right" and not wrong?

Bible.  If we all could agree that it really means βιβλία [biblía] "books," then there would be so much less disagreement, right? We might not have to define biblioblogger or learn to read Alexa ratings or to count down from 50 or to count women so delicately if we're not one or so vigorously even if we are one or to "draft criteria for inclusion in" or to pronounce "niche" correctly. It might not matter so much whether someone else includes me or you so much or not. Alas. words. I know what they mean but then they change, change you, change me.

Can (Black) Men REALLY Be Feminists?

"The black men who contributed to this book overwhelmingly concur that feminism provides benefits in their lives that make them better people. The way they behave now, in private and in public, suggests that they really are feminists. Most of us can gain insights into alternative ways of being through their stories of challenge and change.

As we saw from the narratives of participants in this study, popular notions of masculinity set men against one another and against women, which inevitably leads to conflict and, all too often, violence. Almost any man can identify with the emotionally, spiritually, and even physically crippling effects of that kind of masculinity. Indeed, a system based on male domination is problematic, divisive, and self-destructive for those who seek social justice on behalf of African Americans, and for the good of society as a whole. The experiences these men recount are not entirely confined to African Americans--they occur to men in any patriarchal society, regardless of race, sexuality, or class."
--Aaronette M. White, "Can Black Men Really Be Feminists?"
Ain't I a Feminist?:
African American Men Speak Out

on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom, page 192.
(HT Samhita Mukhopadhyay, at feministing.com)

"Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago [in 1985]. It was my hope that at that time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy."
--bell hooks, "Feminist Politics: Where We Stand"
Feminism is For Everyone: Passionate Politics, page 1.

"So for the record, I am a feminist. My daughter is, too."
--Leonard Pitts Jr., "Prepare yourselves, readers, for liberal use of the 'F' word"
The Miami Herald

(also linked here)

dear reader

This morning, she and I are talking, like we enjoy doing so much. She's on her way to run while it's still 72 degrees Fahrenheit this Texas morning. I'm sitting here looking at a friend's note on a draft of my dissertation: "My favorite passage," he's rather generously noted. So, rather randomly, I throw it out into our conversation:

"My thesis is this: Translations of Aristotle's Rhetoric have been ostensibly faithful to Aristotle's authorial intentions; but a feminist translation shows that rhetoric is translational and feminist, even when Aristotle intends to theorize it, to define it, otherwise. Something like that. Sure, I define feminism in opposition to sexism, but I'm undefining definition as something more than mere opposition and binary. Feminism is not just the avoidance of sexism; it is the voicing of the unvoiced. It it the translating of the untranslated. It is the speaking of the speakeresque. . . So, to be very clear, the feminist translating does not reverse the sexism in the text, but rather it opens the text up to alternate readings not constrained by a sexist intention, a masculinist logic, or an elitist's language."

She replies by saying she'd picked up a couple of books I bought for our daughter and suspects they suffer from the Donna Jo Syndrome. Anne Lamott and Donald Miller don't so suffer, she says. And she explains more as I impatiently keep demanding that she get to the point. Donna Jo, one of our good friends, uses more words than she needs to. Oh, I reply. I'm thinking something else to myself but not saying it to her: that in Bird by Bird Lamott herself advises writing shoddy drafts. It's actually the writer's word that sort of rhymes with shoddy. I'm writing one bird after another here, and when someone writes in the margin that it's a "favorite," well. Okay. Yes, and who has to read this stuff anyway? Four professors on a dissertation committee, people who make their living professing things like classical rhetoric and feminist rhetorics and writing tutorial theory & practice and new testament greek and feminism. So I return to talking with her, to listening to her, and she's saying, she this best friend of mine who makes her living by writing professionally and winning awards and cash prizes, that she will be back soon before it gets to be 74 degrees Fahrenheit, on this Texas morning. I pledge to run our dog, named Bear, to the Trinity River, just as soon as she gets back.

And I go back to that friend who'd written the "favorite" comment. He'd asked, "Why, if it's a methodology--in addition to being activism--does it have to be called 'feminism'?" It doesn't, I want to say. And he's gone on, "Why the 'fem' when both men and women can employ the methods?" To which I say (to myself), "Yes, Why?" But "fem" I remember is no simple abstraction. "Feminism," I say, "who defines that? Who gets to say what the Feminine is? Now, tell me about your mother. Simply now, please define her for us. Write a dissertation."

She's back. It's after 8am and up to 74 degrees of Texas heat. She remembers talking with our daughters when they were out together last night, "I meant to tell you." One of them has told her (the one who just graduated elementary school), "Our class is R-rated," which translated means that there's some profound promiscuity going on. "But Jake [one of the boys] texted Susan [one of the girls in class] from Arizona saying that he's thinking of turning his life over to Jesus. Isn't that weird." She tells me that she asks our daughter, "Why is that weird?" And our day moves on. I'm going to run that dog, Bear, to the Trinity.

So I write to you now, dear reader. What sense does that make?

feminismS (essence? estrangement? expulsion?)

Intellectuals insist:

"De-scribe what you mean by feminism!"

1. "Define its essence."
2. "Differentiate it from, say, traditionalism. Declare its estrangement from so-called masculinism. "
3. "Do acknowledge the extreme expulsion it expects. Either defend it or deconstruct it."

feminists foster feminisms other-wise:

1. essence? pluralities

Sonja K. Foss, for example, discusses “feminist criticism,” which she explains “has emerged as one method by which scholars engage in research designed to intervene in the ideology of domination” (157). She concedes this is simply “[o]ne common definition of feminism [that most] features the concept of equality, exemplified in definitions such as the belief that women and men should have equal opportunities for self expression” (151). Thus, she names more than a dozen “various kinds of identifications” (152) within the “three waves or stages” (151) of "feminism" [153]). Foss agrees that one may attempt to describe “the essence of feminism,” but she refuses to essentialize the pluralities. Feminisms, for the most part, seem to be involved in “the effort to eliminate relations of domination not just for women but for all people” including “women, African Americans, old people, lesbians, gay men, or others” (153); hence, what is named singularly “feminist criticism is the analysis of rhetoric to discover how the rhetorical construction of gender is used as a means for domination and how that process can be challenged so that all people understand that they have the capacity to claim agency and act in the world as they choose”(157). And, generally, perhaps “the concern of feminist critics is with relationships of domination of all kinds, not simply those based on gender . . . [but also any of many] based on race, class, sexual orientation, or any other dimension of identity” (157). Therefore, for that method of rhetorical criticism concerning “relationships of domination,” Foss explains, there is that “label—feminism.” (See the chapter "Feminist Criticism" in Rhetorical Criticism, 3^rd ed, 2004).

2. estrangement? no, and yes

Patricia Bizzell asks:

"Have [Jacqueline Jones] Royster, and other feminist scholars for whom she has now more completely articulated methodologies already in practice, departed radically from the rhetorical tradition?"

So Bizzell answers:

Yes, and no. No, because their work relies upon many of the traditional tools of research in the history of rhetoric. No, because the rhetors they have added to our picture of the history of Western rhetoric seem to me to be working within this tradition and enriching it, rather than consituting utterly separate or parallel rhetorical traditions. But yes, because in order to get at activities of these new rhetors, researchers have had to adopt radically new methods as well, methods which violate some of the most cherished conventions of academic research, most particularly in bringing the person of the researcher, her body, her emotions, and dare one say, her soul, into the work. (“Feminist Methods of Research in the History of Rhetoric: What Difference Do They Make?” (Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30, Fall 2000: 17)

3. explusion? rather: a sheltering and nurturing in a babel of eroticism, attachment, and empathy

Nancy Mairs writes on the difference between the "fundamental structure of patriarchy" and "women's language":

The difference that emerges here [i.e., in language marked as “feminist”] is not the polarity intrinsic in the dominant discourse [i.e., unmarked masculinism], which reduces “woman to man’s opposite, his other, the negative of the positive.” No, this is an absolute and radical alterity that enfolds the other, as in pregnancy a woman’s immune system shuts down in such a way that she shelters and nourishes, rather than rejects and expels, the foreign body within her: “Cells fuse, split, and proliferate; volumes grow, tissues stretch, and body fluids change rhythm, speeding up or slowing down. Within the body, growing as a graft, indomitable, there is an other. And no one is present, within that simultaneously dual and alien space, to signify what is going on.” Feminine discourse is not the language of opposites but a babel of eroticism, attachment, and empathy. (Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer, 40-42)

Aristotle's Sexism: the Two Best Contemporary Resources

Some of you have asked offline: "Where's the definitive proof Aristotle was sexist?"

The two best contemporary works I've read that answer this question are the following:

Feminism In Greek Literature From Homer To Aristotle (first published in 1923) by F. A. Wright
and
The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 Bc-Ad 1250 (1997) by Prudence Allen

Allen thoroughly reviews everything extant that Aristotle ever wrote or said (or was quoted as writing or saying) about women. She carefully identifies how Aristotle's statements on woman relate to four categories important to his predecessors: Opposites, Generation, Wisdom, and Virtue. Then Allen summarizes for us, and comments on, what Aristotle has said:

1. The male is separated from the female, since it is something better and more divine in that it is the principle of movement for generated things, while the female serves as their matter.

2. A woman is as it were an infertile male.

3. The female is as it were a deformed male.

4. The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled.

In these statements the superior valuation of man over woman is explicitly stated. However, it is also present in the theory of contraries and in other aspects of Aristotle’s thought about sex identity. Aristotle stands out from his predecessors in that he gave a complete rationale for his theory of sex polarity. He developed reasons and arguments for the philosophically significant differentiation of the sexes and for the superiority of man over woman. Therefore, he is correctly identified as the founder of the sex polarity position. . . . [H]e also laid the groundwork for another theory of sex identity in his philosophy of definition. (page 121)


Wright gives direct quotes of all the salient texts of Aristotle on "women." Then he ends his book by saying:

. . . In every department of civilized existence the influence of Aristotle must still be taken into account, and his judgment of women's positions in society--a view sincerely held and on the whole most temperately expressed--has had far more effect on the world than have the idealist theories of Plato. . . . In Aristotle's time, for reasons which this brief survey of Greek literature has, perhaps, made plain, the facts of women's nature were certainly not sufficiently comprehended. . . [A]ny true appreciation of a woman's real qualities, . . . Aristotle, by the whole trend of his prejudices, was opposed. His mistake was that he failed to realise the moral aspects of feminism. A nation that degrades its women will inevitably suffer degradation itself. Aristotle lent the weight of his name to a profound error, and helped to perpetuate the malady which had already been the chief cause of the destruction of Greece. (pages 202, 222)

[update:  other works by others are here.]

Tekmērion: a technically unambiguous text but a sure sign of nothing

I’ve got some explaining to do.

First, the self-identifying feminists on my dissertation committee have asked me, “Are you coining ‘feministically’? It has the pejorative connotation. You know, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, ‘Man cannot speak for woman.’ Will you be able to heed that?”

Second, a linguist blogger friend has challenged me saying, “I believe the evidence is overwhelming that texts are far less ambiguous than you make them out to be -- and far less dependent on intertextuality -- otherwise literature would not be translatable.”

Third, my good friend yesterday requested an explanation asking, “Why do you have to call yourself a ‘feminist’? I have this reaction to the word, and it has so much negative baggage. ‘Feminism,’ but come on, any ‘-ism’ is so reductive and limiting. ‘Communism,’ ‘Marxism,’ even the less charged ‘egalitarianism’ or less social ‘trinitarianism’ limits.

I’ve given them all straightforward answers. But there’s more. It seems crooked at first, but it’s not. It seems silly but if you keep reading you’ll see some serious translating, feministically. I’m asking these questions now first:

Are texts really ambiguous and dependent on intertextuality and untranslatable? Are words connotative of some nature, whether a sexed body or a gender-hardwired brain or some negative thing? Won’t you let me dodge (just a moment longer) your questions about categorical mismatch? Would you listen if I told you stories instead of propositions?

Sometimes when I teach adult learners of the English language I’ll show them the old lady / young lady optical illusion. But first I’ll cut off the corners of the picture and make it into a circle and wad it up and throw it at a startled student. Invariably, everyone laughs involuntarily to my great relief, and the student unfolds the paper, orients it, and begins with the others in the room to describe what they see: “it’s an old woman.” “it’s a young lady, see?” And when pressed, they go on. “No, no dog.” “no airplane.” And when the questions are more open ended, asking what else they observe, it gets quiet. But then there are comments about the clothing and about the race of the women and about their class and their ages and their hair and about the artist’s intention, and about mine.

One of my teachers used to say this in a different sort of class: “What we need is ‘radical relativism within rigid restraints’.” My teacher was quoting Nelson Goodman.

(But a scholar on objectivism and the problems of relativism came to the campus where I work now. When we talked, he objected to the statement on the grounds that Goodman was playing with words for alliterative impact but had no idea, really, what real relativism is. “What he means is ‘pluralism,’ the visiting scholar told me, and he mailed me a published article he’d written on that very topic to prove it to me.

((The funny thing is that I was once a visiting scholar at a very pluralistic campus. A friend, a member of the religion department there, invited me to speak, as a linguist, in a lecture series on “religion and _______.” Now the school had ‘Christian’ as one of its names but in its marketing it was invariably just “C,” kind of like the “F” in KFC just because “fried” is starting to have so many negative connotations for the body. (“Christian” University connotes “bible college” and other unhealthy such things I suppose). Anyway, I asked the audience of religionists to define “religion.” Silence. Then a smart-alecky grad student pipes up with “The True definition is . . .” which trailed off into his laughter and everyone else’s including mine. The professor of Islam finally gave the serious answer: “Religion cannot be singularly defined.” So I asked if they’d let me offer a definition of “language,” the topic of my talk. And I quoted or paraphrased or translated Noam Chomsky: “The human faculty of language seems to be a true 'species property,' varying little among humans and without significant analogue elsewhere.” I went on to center my talk around Goodman’s famous statement, insisting that we humans need both radical relativism and rigid restraints. Afterwards my friend protested saying he’d spoken with an elephant named Emily in India through a human interpreter. Language, you see, for him didn’t need the human restraints.))

But if Goodman uses ‘relativism’ when another scholar says he means ‘pluralism,’ what did you think he means? What do you believe really?)

I don’t believe a word or a text of words is ambiguous. Rather, we human beings supply the radical relativism. And we offer the rigid restraints as well. But some, and Aristotle is classic here, want to believe the text and that nature (with no regard for humanity or our bodies and our minds and our spirits) is rigid and restrained. Aristotle never met Albert Einstein. He never met Werner Heisenberg either. But that’s some imaginative radical relative fantasy to arrange such a meeting.

John Henry Freese and George Alexander Kennedy did meet Aristotle’s text. They then “translated” it. But they focused on rigid restraints, on the alphabet of the Greeks, on transliteration as if somehow to preserve the lack of ambiguity in the text. So here’s from Book I, chapter 2 (page 1357a). First Freese, then Kennedy. Then you’ll read Aristotle’s words, and next to it a translating rhetorically, feministically:

[16] As to signs, some are related as the particular to the universal, others as the universal to the particular. Necessary signs are called tekmeria; those which are not necessary have no distinguishing name. [17] I call those necessary signs from which a logical syllogism can be constructed, wherefore such a sign is called tekmērion; for when people think that their arguments are irrefutable, they think that they are bringing forward a tekmērion, something as it were proved and concluded; for in the old language tekmar and peras have the same meaning (limit, conclusion).

16. In the case of signs [sēmeia], some are related as the particular to the universal, some as the universal to the particular. Of these, a necessary sign is a tekmērion, and that which is not necessary has no distinguishing name. 17. Now I call necessary those from which a [logically valid] syllogism can be formed; thus, I call this kind of sign a tekmērion, as though the matter were shown and concluded [peparamenon]. (Tekmar and peras [“limit, conclusion”] have the same meaning in the ancient form of our language.)

[16] των δὲ σημείων τὸ μὲν ούτως έχει ως των καθ' έκαστόν τι πρὸς τὸ καθόλου, τὸ δὲ ως των καθόλου τι πρὸς τὸ κατὰ μέρος. τούτων δὲ τὸ μὲν αναγκαιον τεκμήριον, τὸ δὲ μὴ αναγκαιον ανώνυμόν (5) εστι κατὰ τὴν διαφοράν. [17] αναγκαια μὲν ουν λέγω εξ ων γίνεται συλλογισμός: διὸ καὶ τεκμήριον τὸ τοιουτον των σημείων εστίν: όταν γὰρ μὴ ενδέχεσθαι οίωνται λυσαι τὸ λεχθέν , τότε φέρειν οίονται τεκμήριον ως δεδειγμένον καὶ πεπερασμένον: τὸ γὰρ τέκμαρ καὶ πέρας ταυτόν εστι κατὰ (10) τὴν αρχαίαν γλωτταν.

[16] As to signs, some are related just as each and every thing is to the universe, while others just as the universe is to the part. The forceful ones are the sure-signs. (Those which are not forceful are the ones carried through and yet unnamed). [17] Now, I call the forceful ones those birthed from an arrangement of statements: thus, such a sign is a sure-sign. In fact, when someone thinks there’s a decisive statement, they think it’s carried forward as a sure-sign, something as if it were shown and limited; and “sure,” in fact, is “limit” from the beginning in the mother tongue.

Now, what explaining is left to do?

The Help reviewed: bell hooks, Oprah, and Melissa Harris-Perry

In the previous post, I gave you homework to read The Help and to see the film.  Let me now confess I haven't finished the book.  My spouse did, and she gave it, some reluctantly, to a former neighbor, our friend before I had a chance to read it all.  I say "some reluctantly" because our friend, our former neighbor, is AfricanAmerican and we're not.  We're EuroAmericans.  And we'd read the reviews by bell hooks and by Oprah Winfrey.  And if you haven't yet seen the reviews, then I'll share them here, including the very important one also by Melissa Harris-Perry.

Anyway, our friend's spouse called me last night.  It was the first time we've spoken since we moved nearer where I work, away from the former neighborhood.  He's also AfricanAmerican.  He called to invite me to attend a "man" conference at The Potter's House tonight in Dallas, a conference led by T. D. Jakes.  So in just a bit, I'll drive up to our friends' home and go with him.  If we dare, we might discuss men and women and black and white, and The Help, written not by an AfricanAmerican although a portrayal of AfricanAmerican women through the telling by a character not an AfricanAmerican woman.  bell hooks may or may not be someone we discuss tonight, although I'd like to ask my friend taking me to the T. D. Jakes conference on manhood how she might critique what we're doing. 

When my spouse first brought home The Help to read, my first question was, "I wonder what bell hooks says about this book?"  I knew what hooks had said about "Homeplace: a Site of Resistance."  She said:

Throughout our history, African-Americans have recognized the subversive value of homeplace, of having access to private space where we do not directly encounter white racist agression. Whatever the shape and direction of black liberation struggle (civil rights reform or black power movement), domestic space has been a crucial site for organizing, for forming political solidarity....(page 47, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics)

When I was a young girl the journey across town to my grandmother's house was one of the most intriguing experiences... there ... all that loud talk, the talk that was usually about the old days ... but also how we lived and survived as black people, how the white folks treated us.  I remember this jouney not just because of the stories I would hear... because we would have to pass that terrifying whiteness -- those white faces on the porches staring us down with hate....  Such a contrast, that feeling of arrival, of homecoming, this sweetness and the bitterness of that journey, that constant reminder of white power and control.

I speak of this jouney as leading to my grandmother's house, even though our grandfather lived there too.  In our young minds houses belonged to women, were their special domain, not as property, but as places where all that truly mattered in life took place—the warmth and comfort of shelter, the feeding of our bodies, the nurturing of our souls. There we learned dignity, integrity of being; there we learned to have faith. The folks who made this life possible, who were our primary guides and teachers, were black women. 

Their lives were not easy.  Their lives were hard.  They were black women who for the most part worked outside the home serving white folks, cleaning their houses, washing their clothes, tending their children -- black women who worked ..., whatever they could do to make ends meent, whatever was necessary.  Then they returned to their homes to make life happen there.  This tension between service outside one's home, family, and kin network, service provided to white folks which took time and energy, and the effort of black women to conserve enough of themselves to provide service (care and nurturance) within their own families and communities is one of the many factors that has historically distinguished the lot of black women in patrcarchal white supremacist society form that of black men.  Contemporary black struggle must honor this history of service just as it must critque the sexist definition of service as women's "natural" role.

. . . [they fostered] a radical political dimension . . . [and created] a site of resistance and liberation struggle (page 41, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics)

I shall never forget the sense of shared history, of common anguish, I felt when first reading about the plight of black women domestic servants in South Africa, black women laboring in white homes. Their stories evoked vivid memories of our African-American past....

I want to remember these black women today. The act of remembrance is a conscious gesture honoring their struggle, their effort to keep something for their own. I want us to respect and understand that this effort has been and continues to be a radically subversive political gesture. For those who dominate and oppress us benefit most when we have nothing to give our own, when they have so taken from us our dignity, our humaness that we have nothing left, no “homeplace” where we can recover ourselves. I want us to remember these black women today, both past and present. (Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics pages 42-43).

hooks got me remembering Nancy.  Nancy was The Help for my white family when I was a little boy in Corsicana, Texas USA during the Jim Crow era.  Did Nancy or her daughters and sons fear when they passed into our neighborhood and into our home?  And what subversion of the segregation in very very profound ways.  What feminism.  What love in contrast to hate.  What a critique of the status quo, of the power, of the white supremacy, of the patriarchy.  I've asked my dad and mom if they know where she is today.  What is she doing?  No, they tell me- they don't know.

So how does bell hooks critique The Help?  Isn't it about black women, the very ones she remembers and wants historically to be remembered?  Here's her fair and good and just assessment:

“Here, I’m going to be mean,” she said, noting that the books she would mention are beloved by many, including The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Help, and The Secret Life of Bees. “These books are seen as showing the organic, fun time we can have together,” she said. “Regardless of race, we can be light, sentimental, we don’t have to be political.” Then she called this avoidant perspective for what it is: “… bullshit.”

Stockett, who wrote this book because she was inspired by her own perceived experience, is seen by hooks as “slobbering” all over her nanny, who Stockett admittedly hadn’t seen since she was 16. “She didn’t know what happened to her,” hooks said. “How does she know this black woman forgave her? She doesn’t tell us where she got her information from, but she doesn’t have to, because that wasn’t the point of the book.”

hooks addressed this thread as well: that these books want to perpetuate the outright mythology (my word, not hooks’) that women of multiple races and ethnicities are not really separated by anything after all: “we’re just two people with nothing standing between us,” hooks said. But there is a difference, and it’s that “white folks are not called to extreme choices.” And it is often those who have the luxury to decline to be political, because they can be, who oppose Marxist, feminist, and post-colonial readings of texts, who like to say things like “let’s not get all political about this,” who prefer to approach “the text on its own terms,” who are perpetuating the fiction that social equality has been achieved: “by centering on the lives of women” in these books, hooks said, “the anti-feminist, pro-racist idea is pushed that the patriarchy has been dismantled, that it has ended, that there is no need for feminism, and that society is now post-racial.”

“Bonds of affection?” hooks asked. “Why not also show the rage, the anger, the hatred, as well as the bonds of affection?”

Applying frank, powerful and controversial racial analysis to leading theories has been the intellectual duty that hooks has fulfilled for decades, and hearing her speak on such terms was remarkably refreshing and inspirational. At IC on Tuesday, she used her hallmark description of the American political system, imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, over and over again, and she sounded at once dated and invigorating, both antiquated and completely fresh. The black feminist perspective that she fashioned is threatened by an encroaching social and political fascism that she mentioned toward the end of the talk. But she emphasized Pema Chodron in her approach to “start people where they are” and to find the “openings” in seemingly airtight systems: “what I learned from Foucault is that there are no closed systems,” she said. “All systems have openings. You have to find the openings.”

For hooks, that opening was in writing. Once she started writing, she said, “suddenly there was room for me in a system that doesn’t want me and doesn’t pay me well.”

In response to the person who asked about giving up privilege, and in response to someone else who suggested that demolishing the class system must precede any kind of social equality, hooks emphasized that the formation of strong and healthy self esteem is crucial to what she called “mutuality:” equality might be beyond the scope of what is immediately realistic, but no matter how much privilege you have, you don’t need to dominate others, she said, and for this, “the challenge is to be engaged where we are, loving ourselves and others, where we are. This is crucial to our struggles.”

The above is a report by Danielle Winterton, who heard bell hooks when she appeared at Ithaca College Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010.

Now, here's Oprah, from O Magazine:

Then: The Help
By Kathryn Stockett
464 pages; Amy Einhorn/Putnam

Practically from the moment it was published in 2009, the reading world embraced Kathryn Stockett's The Help, a debut novel about black maids who finally speak up about their white employers during the civil rights movement. A fixture at the top of most best-seller lists, it became the feel-good book of the year.

Now: Glorious
By Bernice L. McFadden
250 pages; Akashic

Bernice L. McFadden's riveting novel, Glorious, starts in the Jim Crow South and moves to the Harlem Renaissance, and finally to the same civil rights era Stockett chronicled, but it's a grittier, more brutal tale. Easter Bartlett, a young black woman, flees Georgia after seeing too much, including a mob lynching of a pregnant woman. Easter is no victim, though. In Harlem she encounters a world where crowds gather to cheer the "Black Moses" Marcus Garvey and publishers enthuse about the exotic genius of "Negro" writers. Still, it's hardly a postracial paradise. McFadden—in vivid vernacular—brilliantly skewers the vanity of self-congratulatory liberals. A white woman returning from Paris with her black lover gushes, "Before our encounter, I had never even spoken to a Negro. They were invisible to me and now I see them everywhere!" Easter achieves some brief literary fame, but by 1961, she is tired, and battered by stubborn racial attitudes. In confronting one final injustice, she doesn't just survive; she triumphs—gloriously. — Karen Holt

And Oprah is listening, liking the book but wanting to hear what others say and think about the movie.  She's publicly called for our opinions.

And then, finally, here's Melissa Harris-Perry noting how the film based on the novel neglects the history that “it was rape, it was lynching, it was the burning of communities”:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So now I'm off to hear T. D. Jakes.   I wonder if he's seen or read The Help, what he thinks.  Maybe tomorrow I'll have opportunity to say more.

Anne Carson and Anne Lamott on Resurrection

Listen to silly Anne Lamott and foolish Anne Carson, wanting hoping desiring so gullibly to keep open the historic and literary possibilities of resurrection, as women see it. The one Anne speaks of Jesus, the other Anne of another Greek-fabled drama, Alcestis in Alcestis by Euripides.

Euripides, of course, is that one of whom the Historian F. A. Wright, in his Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle says: “Euripides and Plato are almost the only [male] authors who show any true appreciation of a woman's real qualities, and to Euripides and Plato, Aristotle, by the whole trend of his [sexist, bigoted] prejudices, was opposed.” But I’m reading the “scholarship” of another “historian” (supposedly) who scoffs, like Aristotle, at true appreciation of a woman’s views. I’m talking about James F. McGrath and his newly published book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith. McGrath is crying for reviews, but not this one here. In his book, again and again (on more than a dozen pages so far), McGrath feels like he has to pooh pooh the inclusion of women as credible witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus in the gospel of Mark. Not surprising. His historiography is straight phallogocentrism. What I mean by that is this. Hélène Cixous, in her book Stigmata: escaping texts, translates and quotes “Clarice Lispector, who did not think in terms of phallogocentrism.” Cixous points out that Lispector provides a definition of the term: “We have seen this before; it is the ‘phallocratic system’ . . . this is how she [Lispector] conceives of it: a ‘system of inflexible last judgment, which does not permit even a second of incredulity’” (123). Now the English translation of Cixous’s French translation of Lispector’s Brazilian Portuguese has yielded the term. The three together have made “phal-” from Aristotle’s φαλλικὰ (“ph-a-l-l-ika”); “logo,” from Aristotle’s λόγος (or “l-o-g-os”) which he himself makes (by) his λογική (or “l-o-g-ikē” aka LOGIC); and “centric” from Aristotle’s κεντρική (or “k-e-n-tr-ikē”). McGrath, like father Aristotle, does not permit even a second of incredulity. He redefines “faith” and “history” under the guise of “religion.” Enough of that then.

Here’s Anne Lamott in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith:

I don't have the right personality for Good Friday, for the crucifixion: I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection. In fact, I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday school, who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny outside the tomb: everlasting life, and a basket full of chocolates. Now you’re talking.

In Jesus’ real life, the resurrection came two days later, but in our real lives, it can be weeks, years, and you never know for sure that it will come. I don’t have the right personality for the human condition, either. But I believe in the resurrection, in Jesus’, and in ours. The trees, so stark and gray last month, suddenly went up as if in flame, but instead in blossoms and leaves--poof! Like someone opening an umbrella. It’s often hard to find similar dramatic evidence of rebirth and hope in our daily lives. (140).

Here’s Anne Carson in Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides:

What does Alkestis' resurrection mean for the sacrificial contract that Admetos had negotiated with Death? This question is never addressed in the play. Mathematically Death is down one soul; common sense (what the Greeks call Necessity) tells us such a situation can’t last. But Herakles seems a character able to override common sense. He releases Alkestis simply by choosing to do so. As if to say, within every death a life stands waiting to be set free, should anyone have the nerve to do it. As if to say, try looking deep into a house, a marriage, or an idea like Necessity and you will see clear through to the other side. Death, like tragedy, is a game with rules. Why not just break the rules?

Rules broken by Euripides in Alkestis include the rule of closure. What are we to make of the ending? Can we be sure the veiled women is alive? that she is Alkestis? that she will live happily ever after with her husband and children? Critics have doubted all these. There is a kind of nuptial drama staged in the final scene--perhaps a parody of the ancient Greek wedding, which centered upon an unveiling of the bride before the eyes of her husband and some exchange of words between them--that stalls oddly at its peak moment. Here the bride is unveiled to her husband at 971/1121 (or so it seems to me; critics doubt this too) but she will not be permitted to speak for three days due to her death-polluted condition. An eerie silence carries her into the big dark house of her unconventional husband.

I find I want to say less rather than more about Alkestis. Not because there is less in this play but because the surface has a speed and shine that evaporate with exegesis, like some of [Alfred] Hitchcock’s plots. Or a trembling of laughter, terrible if it broke out. (248-49)

Aint I a Womanist Too?

Womanist theology is a response to sexism in black theology and racism in feminist theology.  When early black theologians spoke of “the black experience,” they only included the experience of black men and boys.  They did not address the unique oppression of black women.  Feminist theologians, on the other hand, unwittingly spoke only of white women’s experience, especially of middle- and upper-class white women.  They did not include issues of race and economics in their critiques.  Many womanists also feel that feminist theology operates in opposition to men and is anathema to the church.  Womanist theologians want to maintain their connection to black men and remain faithful to the church traditions from which they come.  The term womanist allows black women to affirm their identity as black while also owning a connection with feminism.  Employing Alice Walker’s definition of womanist in her 1983 collection of essays In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, womanist theology makes significant contributions to the fields of black and liberation theologies.

----

above, an excerpt from the Introduction to Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology, by Monica A. Coleman.

This evening, Coleman gives the opening lecture - “Ain’t I A Womanist Too?: Third Wave Womanist Religious Thought” - for the Third Wave Womanism Conference at Claremont School of Theology.  (HT Rod of Alexandria)

Aristotle's Hellenistic "rhetoric": (p)resuming "feminisms"

Aristotle makes no provision for the intellectual woman, except for his nod to Sappho: “Everyone honours the wise . . . . [T]he Mytilenaeans [honour] Sappho, though she was a woman” (Rhetoric 2.23.1389.b). Otherwise, Aristotle denied any philosophical or rhetorical contributions by women.

--Cheryl Glenn, Rhetoric Retold

h `wsper Sapfw,

`oti to apoqnwiskein kakon: `oi qeoi gar `outw kekrikasin: apeqnwskon gar an.

[as says Sappho,

To die is an evil. The gods, in fact, have so judged; otherwise, in fact, they would die.]

--Aristotle, The Rhetoric

For this project, I’m making (if also contending for) two assumptions. (Let's call them presumptions.) First, rhetoric is already inherently feministic. Second, the key terms (the very rhetoric) of the Hellenist language of the Rhetoric are much more “feminine” than previous English translations suggest.

(And I’m not just referring to Greek grammar but also to lexis and to what Helene Cixous might say is embodied femaleness in writing, “l'écriture feminine.” Isn't the body of Helen what Homer and Sappho and Gorgias, in Hellenistic poetic rhetoric, wrote of? Who inspired whom? Cixous’s feminisms might embody Nelson Goodman’s insistence on radical relativism within rigid restraints. Her feminisms should get at what Alan Lightman must do when he quotes Richard Feyhnman as saying: “What we need is imagination, but imagination in a terrible straightjacket.” And we might try to see, as Lydia H. Liu does, translation as more collaborations between “guest language” and “host language” and less as a “source language” perverted by a “target language”). So, rhetoric is already inherently feministic (if also masculinistic). This view is not unlike Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s starting points: that the public sphere, legal rights, and spiritual life are natural for women (if for men also). She, of course, re-reads rightly-enough and resistantly-enough the Declaration of Independence and the English-translated Bible; so she writes the Declaration of Sentiments (with her colleagues who elect her their spokesperson) and The Woman’s Bible (which is too feministic for some of her more-traditional co-suffragists).

With respect to Aristotle, I will assume that “rhetoric” was not his usual (masculinist) “project” of defining and classifying the subjects of his study. That is, for all the (man-ish) defining and classifying he does (or tries to do) in the Rhetoric, he was theorizing what others (including women, even Sappho) were doing when they did rhetoric; and what they did as rhetoric may actually have un-done Aristotle’s typical (male-oriented) project. (It has provided the means for the equal citizenship of women and the abolishment of slavery, two things the misogynistic, dominant Aristotle clearly wrote against outside of the Rhetoric).

To go on with this assumption, I have juxtaposed the two epigraphs above—Glenn’s and Aristotle’s quotations. Glenn’s quick conclusion seems to be that Aristotle only “nods” to Sappho “though she was a [mere] woman.” (Really, maybe that’s all Aristotle actually wanted to do; or maybe our English translations reinforce such a masculinist reading). Glenn in her correct recognition of Aristotle’s general position against women fails to say that the quotation she excerpts from the Rhetoric is ambiguous in Hellenistic Greek: that Aristotle may actually be quoting another male writer (i.e., Alcidamus) who gives the (Mytilenaeans’s) view about Sappho. In fact, Aristotle (a few lines beyond his quotation of Alcidamus that Glenn incorrectly attributes singly to Aristotle) goes on himself to call Sappho “wise.” Moreover, Aristotle then quotes Sappho herself in the context of his quoting Plato, Isocrates, and other exemplary (albeit male) rhetor(icians) (Rhetoric 2.23). Furthermore, earlier in Book I (chapter 9), Aristotle quotes Sappho, who rebukes (the male) Alcaeus for his silence due to his evil and his own shame. Likewise, Aristotle himself (in Book III, Chapter 3) rebukes the very same Alcidamus who seems to have given some praise to Sappho (through the Mytilenaens) “although she was a woman”: Alcidamus (with several other men) is charged with four counts of using language poorly. Aristotle, in contrast, only praises the rhetor(ician) Sappho as noteworthy.

If female-and-male rhetoric is not Aristotle’s typical project (i.e., both misogynistic views and masculinist binaries, in his works other than the Rhetoric), then one could ask whether Aristotle as a fledgling rhetorician became more of a rhetorician later in life than he was a scientist-philosopher. After reading Reclaiming Rhetoric, Rhetoric Retold, and Available Means, I can’t help but wonder how much rhetoric Aristotle learned from women.

What must his (male) mentors and friends have said to him as he ventured into theorizing (dame) rhetoric, the (untruths and uncertain) means of sophists? What had Phaestis taught her little Aristotle before they moved to Athens, before he learned to read Sappho’s poetry (grappling with issues of love and persuasion as did Homer and Hesiod and, later, Isocrates and Gorgias)? What had his mother taught him to prepare Aristotle to hear (of) Aspasia’s speeches (written for Pericles and written up by Plato) and Aspasia’s dialectic method (taught to Socrates and attributed only to him)? Once Aristotle’s mother passed away, what did his aunt Arimneste teach him when he lived in her home? Why did Aristotle ultimately move with his wife, Pythias, and his daughter (also named Pythias) to the island of Lesbos (of Sappho) to set up his academy? Had he not invariably and elsewhere theorized (these) women as lesser than man (in his blatantly misogynistic writings)? Thus, did he not have to reconcile his Rhetoric, on the rhetoric(s) of man (and woman), with his other writings? In his second paragraph, does Aristotle not depart from (undertheorizing, male) rhetoric(ian)s when he writes: “Enqumematon . . . esti soma thj pisteoj? More personally now, have I (a man) not learned enough of the art of language, from (women’s) rhetoric, to see how (such a small beginning to) Aristotle’s Rhetoric can be (re)translated (i.e., feministically as: “The things of the heart . . . are the body of belief”)? Still, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton rightly says, “man cannot speak for her.” Thus, she would insist on the equality of woman and man, such that even a man can speak for him (what he’s learning from her).

Even if Aristotle never budged from misogynism or from his masculinist epistemology, even if he did not sometimes see himself more as a rhetor(ician) or didn’t become some sympathetic to the feministic of rhetoric), then the Rhetoric still shows, I believe, two important possibilities for reformations of the document by its (womanly) rhetoric therein. First, (even) Aristotle’s rhetoric (i.e., as not only theorized but as also employed in his Rhetoric) is wonderfully different from (Plato’s) philosophy and from Aristotle’s other defining and categorizing works (as works of a dominant, anti-woman, pro-slavery male). Specifically, rhetoric tends to be more inclusive of (gendered) persons (i.e., both women and men) while philosophy (and Aristotle’s epistemology and philosophic methodology) tends to work in exclusive (perhaps male-like) binaries. Second, with dramatically different results, a person may “do” philosophy (or any other discipline) rhetorically or may philosophically “do” rhetoric.

A second of my theses is that key terms of the original language are much more feminine than English translations have suggested. In Aristotle’s notes on rhetoric (i.e., the Hellenistic Greek language treatise, the Rhetoric), he works much more inclusively (i.e., with riveted attention to his audiences) than in his other works, and his rhetorical methodology is more than (mere bifurcating and classifying) philosophy. For example, Aristotle leaves key terms in the Rhetoric —such as our transliterated “rhetoric,” “dialectic,” “enthymeme,” “pisteis,” and “topoi”—undefined. (Okay, he seems to start with the definition of our transliterated rhetoric as the antistrophos of dialectic; and he later says, “let’s suppose rhetoric is the viewing of what might be considered the available means of persuasion.” But how sloppy are those definitions! Full of undefined terms!) Aristotle was not being careless; instead, I believe, he was to a large degree enacting (perhaps unconsciously, sloppily) the very rhetoric he theorizes. That is, by leaving central words without definition, Aristotle calls on his audience to co-create meanings with him. Furthermore, from the get go, he explicitly says that rhetoric is something “all people” do; but he also makes particular notes to individual audiences (such as his students, other rhetoricians, the person on the street, and so forth) in different sections of the document.

To read it differently, or rhetorically from a feminist perspective, the result is changed. Translation of the Hellenistic Greek can help or hinder. What if, as Jan Swearingen seems to exclaim, pistis has to do with the (womanly) qualities of belief and expression(ism)? What if en-thymeme had more to do with what is in-the-heart than with some “counterpart” to a formal method of logic? What if antistrophos was understood more as a “differing sister” (as both John Freese and Jeffery Walker suggest independently) or as a “different sort of turn” in which “turn” recalled something a human body (maybe even a woman’s body) had to do? What if topoi were “places,” even metaphorical, that connote the context of the physical body, of a non-abstract, fleshly situation? What if techne, as Janice Lauer understands it, is “skill” as generative, “productive knowledge” and not necessarily something in the middle between “theory” and “practice”?

A review of some of the regard women rhetoricians have for (feminist) rhetoric is important to show the need for the project of translating the Hellensitic language of the Rhetoric in ways understood (or marked) as womanly. Different rhetoricians have contributed and developed various aspects of women’s rhetoric. At the risk of essentializing their ideas, I summarize some of the central thoughts below.

Andrea A. Lunsford has stressed the need for women to reclaim rhetoric since rhetoric is a woman (i.e., Dame Rhetoric). Cheryl Glenn has emphasized work that is “tethered” to the (masculine) tradition (“Position”) but also regenders and remaps the entire history of rhetoric (by employing historiography, feminism, gender studies, and postmodernisms). Susan Jarratt has focused on memory and re-membering in her recovery of rhetor(ician)s such as Sappho. Michelle Ballif regards “little narratives” as ways to read resistantly and to undo the “master narratives” of the likes of Aristotle. Patricia Bizzell welcomes all the above mentioned methods and adds that emotion and subjective care plays an important role in feministic rhetoric. Helene Cixous critiques phallo-logo-centrism by calling women (and men) to l'écriture feminine or the writing of the (woman’s) body through awareness of embodiment. Nancy Mairs builds on the notions of embodiment by exploring multiple dimensions of the body, or poly-morphing as feministic. Charlotte Hogg embraces Montaignian essaying as (feministically) including the mundane in writing. And each of these scholars regards the other, the audience.

Aristotle’s Rhetoric is as feminine as the art of rhetoric and as womanly as the history of (even) classical rhetoric. Hence, through translation, it can be . . .

reclaimed;

regendered;

re-membered;

regarded as not so grand and as not so authorized and as not so canonized;

And, through translation, it can. . .

include subjective, emotive elements;

refuse abstraction far beyond the human body;

be polymorph-y if also binary;

be mundane if regarding style;

relate sensitively to various readers.

Translating Aristotle's Sexism: Part 3

The following is a sample of a few more of Aristotle’s biological and political writings.  It’s for the doubters.  And can many of us doubt his male-dominating influence on our persistently patriarchal cultures today?

Aristotle is writing to coldly observe what he sees in nature.  He is, in most cases, using logic to define and academic elitist language to classify.  The entire process of his describing is a male prescribing.  Excerpts of Aristotle’s Greek with my feminist rhetorical translating appear below.  But I have bracketed the technical transliterations or sexist terms usually included by masculinist translators.  This translating and bracketing serves as my only commentary on these passages.  The aim of including them here is to recognize that Aristotle was thoroughly phallic in his various writing.  By no means am I trying to be comprehensive with the selections.  I begin with his physical science first and then move to his social science writings.  The bracketed phrases below indicated the “traditional phallogocentric translation,” and what precedes the bracketed phrases is the contrastive feminist rhetorical translating.  For example, in the first set of tables below, the Greek word ὑστέρα is presented followed by its traditional phallogocentric translation, “a hysteria,” which I bracket; then, both before the brackets and in a fuller context in another box, I show “a uterus” as a feminist rhetorical translating.  I give several tables in succession without commentary below.  My purpose is to illustrate Aristotle’s most blatantly phallic writings and how a feminist rhetorical translating recognizes and highlights the phallicism.

Τοῦ δὲ θήλεος ἴδιον μέρος ὑστέρα, καὶ τοῦ ἄρρενος αἰδοῖον, --Aristotle History of Animals 493a

a uterus, [a hysteria] --traditional phallogocentric translation

The respective part of a female is an emptiness, a uterus, and of a male is a spear, a penis. --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

Ἔχουσι δὲ πλείους οἱ ἄρρενες τῶν θηλειῶν ὀδόντας καὶ ἐν ἀνθρώποις καὶ ἐπὶ προβάτων καὶ αἰγῶν καὶ ὑῶν· --Aristotle History of Animals 501b

humans [men]  --traditional phallogocentric translation

Males have more teeth than females in the case of humans [men], sheep, goats, and swine.  --a feminist rhetorical translating

Οἱ δ’ αἴλουροι οὐκ ὄπισθεν συνίοντες, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ὀρθός, ἡ δὲ θήλεια ὑποτίθησιν αὑτήν· εἰσὶ δὲ τὴν φύσιν αἱ θήλειαι ἀφροδισιαστικαί, καὶ προσάγονται τοὺς ἄρρενας εἰς τὰς ὀχείας, καὶ συνοῦσαι κράζουσιν.   --Aristotle History of Animals 540a

a sexual way [physically aphrodisiacal, peculiarly lecherous], and comes on to [wheedles] the male cat  with sexual advances, and cries out [caterwauls] --traditional phallogocentric translation

Cats do not come together in intercourse  from the rear with respect to the female, but the male stands erect and the female puts herself underneath him; and, by the way, the female cat is naturally attracting in a sexual way, and comes on to the male cat  with sexual advances, and cries out as they come together. --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

 

Ἔστι δὲ καὶ δύσθυμον μᾶλλον τὸ θῆλυ τοῦ ἄρρενος καὶ δύσελπι, καὶ ἀναιδέστερον καὶ ψευδέστερον, εὐαπατητότερον δὲ καὶ μνημονικώτερον,. . . . . Βοηθητικώτερον δὲ καί, ὥσπερ ἐλέχθη, ἀνδρειότερον τὸ ἄρρεν τοῦ θήλεός ἐστιν  --Aristotle History of Animals 608b

more lying [with pseudo behavior], readier to deceive manlier [braver] than the female.  --traditional phallogocentric translation

The female is more dispirited and more despondent than the male, more shameless and more lying, readier to deceive and possessing a better memory for grudges . . . . But as we have stated, the male is more able to help and is manlier than the female.  --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

Ἔοικε δὲ καὶ τὴν μορφὴν γυναικὶ παῖς, καὶ ἔστιν ἡ γυνὴ ὥσπερ ἄρρεν ἄγονον· ἀδυναμίᾳ γάρ τινι τὸ θῆλύ ἐστι τῷ μὴ δύνασθαι πέττειν ἐκ τῆς τροφῆς σπέρμα τῆς ὑστάτης --Aristotle Generation of Animals 728a

[morphed] like . . . in form [sperm] seed or semen. --traditional phallogocentric translation

Now a boy is like a woman or wife in form, and the woman or wife is, as it were, a childless impotent male; for it is through a certain lack of ability that the female is female, being unable to concoct the nourishment in its last stage into seed or semen. --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

διὸ γένος ἀεὶ  ἀνθρώπων καὶ ζῴων ἐστὶ καὶ φυτῶν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τούτων ἀρχὴ τὸ θῆλυ καὶ τὸ ἄρρεν ἕνεκα τῆς γενέσεως ἂν εἴη τὸ θῆλυ καὶ τὸ ἄρρεν ἐν τοῖς ἔχουσιν. βελτίονος δὲ καὶ θειοτέρας τὴν φύσιν οὔσης τῆς αἰτίας τῆς κινούσης πρώτης—ᾗ ὁ λόγος ὑπάρχει καὶ τὸ εἶδος—τῆς ὕλης, βέλτιον καὶ τὸ κεχωρίσθαι τὸ κρεῖττον τοῦ χείρονος. διὰ τοῦτ’ ἐν ὅσοις ἐνδέχεται καὶ καθ’ ὅσον ἐνδέχεται κεχώρισται τοῦ θήλεος τὸ ἄρρεν· βέλτιον γὰρ καὶ θειότερον ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως ᾗ τὸ ἄρρεν ὑπάρχει τοῖς γιγνομένοις—ὕλη δὲ τὸ θῆλυ. συνέρχεται δὲ καὶ μίγνυται πρὸς τὴν ἐργασίαν τῆς γενέσεως τῷ θήλει τὸ ἄρρεν· αὕτη γὰρ κοινὴ ἀμφοτέροις. --Aristotle Generation of Animals 732a

[men] humans [generation] birthings the [definition] statement and the [form] visual,  [cause] birth mixes sexually [mingles]  work of birth [generation] --traditional phallogocentric translation

This is why there is always a class of humans and animals and plants. But since the male and female essences are the first principles of these, they will exist in the existing individuals for the sake of birthings. Again, as the first efficient or moving cause, to which belong the statement and the visual, is better and more divine in its nature than the material on which it works, it is better that the superior principle should be separated from the inferior. Therefore, wherever it is possible and so far as it is possible, the male is separated from the female. For the first principle of the movement, or efficient birth, whereby that which comes into being is male, is better and more divine than the material whereby it is female. The male, however, comes together and mixes sexually with the female for the work of birth, because this is common to both. --a feminist rhetorical translating

In addition to observations in his physical-science writings, Aristotle says similar things in his ethical, political, and metaphysical works.  In these, Aristotle is also sexist:

ἐν οἷς φανερόν ἐστιν ὅτι κατὰ φύσιν καὶ συμφέρον τὸ ἄρχεσθαι τῷ σώματι ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς, καὶ τῷ παθητικῷ μορίῳ ὑπὸ τοῦ νοῦ καὶ τοῦ μορίου τοῦ λόγον ἔχοντος, τὸ δ’ ἐξ ἴσου ἢ ἀνάπαλιν βλαβερὸν πᾶσιν. ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ζῴοις ὡσαύτως· τὰ μὲν γὰρ ἥμερα τῶν ἀγρίων βελτίω τὴν φύσιν, τούτοις δὲ πᾶσι βέλτιον ἄρχεσθαι ὑπ’ ἀνθρώπου· τυγχάνει γὰρ σωτηρίας οὕτως. ἔτι δὲ τὸ ἄρρεν πρὸς τὸ θῆλυ φύσει τὸ μὲν κρεῖττον τὸ δὲ χεῖρον, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἄρχον τὸ δ’ ἀρχόμενον. τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι καὶ ἐπὶ πάντων ἀνθρώπων. --Aristotle Politics 1254b

the chief nature [physical properties] the person [soul, psyche] over the body [soma], the statement [the rational element] over the passionate [pathetic, pathos] broken apart [analysized]. humans [men]; [physical] nature ruled [by man]; this principle [trope], people or humankind [all men]. --traditional phallogocentric translation

And it is apparent that the chief nature born together is that of the person over the body, and the mind and the parts of the statement over the passionate is natural and expedient; whereas the equality of the two or the chief part of the inferior is always hurtful or broken apart. The same holds good of animals in relation to humans; for tame animals have a better nature than wild ones, and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled; for then they are preserved or rescued. Again, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; the one rules, and the other is ruled; and this principle, by force, extends to all people or humankind. --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

ἐπεὶ δὲ τρία μέρη τῆς οἰκονομικῆς ἦν, ἓν μὲν δεσποτική, περὶ ἧς εἴρηται πρότερον, ἓν δὲ πατρική, τρίτον δὲ γαμική (καὶ γὰρ γυναικὸς ἄρχει καὶ τέκνων, ὡς ἐλευθέρων μὲν ἀμφοῖν, οὐ τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἀλλὰ γυναικὸς μὲν πολιτικῶς τέκνων δὲ βασιλικῶς· τό τε γὰρ ἄρρεν φύσει τοῦ θήλεος ἡγεμονικώτερον, εἰ μή που συνέστηκε παρὰ φύσιν, καὶ τὸ πρεσβύτερον καὶ τέλειον τοῦ νεωτέρου καὶ ἀτελοῦς)—ἐν μὲν οὖν ταῖς πολιτικαῖς ἀρχαῖς ταῖς πλείσταις μεταβάλλει τὸ ἄρχον καὶ τὸ ἀρχόμενον (ἐξ ἴσου γὰρ εἶναι βούλεται τὴν φύσιν καὶ διαφέρειν μηδέν), ὅμως δέ, ὅταν τὸ μὲν ἄρχῃ τὸ δ’ ἄρχηται, ζητεῖ διαφορὰν εἶναι καὶ σχήμασι καὶ λόγοις καὶ τιμαῖς, ὥσπερ καὶ Ἄμασις εἶπε τὸν περὶ τοῦ ποδανιπτῆρος λόγον· τὸ δ’ ἄρρεν ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ θῆλυ τοῦτον ἔχει τὸν τρόπον. ἡ δὲ τῶν τέκνων ἀρχὴ βασιλική· τὸ γὰρ γεννῆσαν καὶ κατὰ φιλίαν ἄρχον καὶ κατὰ πρεσβείαν ἐστίν, ὅπερ ἐστὶ βασιλικῆς εἶδος ἀρχῆς. (διὸ καλῶς Ὅμηρος τὸν Δία προσηγόρευσεν εἰπὼν πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τετὸν βασιλέα τούτων ἁπάντων.)  φύσει γὰρ τὸν βασιλέα διαφέρειν μὲν δεῖ, --Aristotle Politics 1259b

what’s home-order-esque [economics, the science of household management] the ruler-esque [despot, leader]  the father-esque [paternal] relation, the marriage-esque [conjugal] these two at least [both] rule [trope or mode of government], City-state-esque control [political, republican government] a kingdom [monarchy]; by nature [physically] to command [rule hegemonically] nature [physics] and the older [presbyterian] and fully developed [telos] younger and immature [a-telos]). City-state-esque control [Politics, republican government] nature [physical properties] patterns and statements [schematics and logistics, or insignia and titles] statement [logos, speech] relationship [trope] The rule [of the father] affection [philea] and of seniority [presbyter], good form [kalos, finely] father [pater] of men or husbands and of gods [theos], by nature [by physics] --traditional phallogocentric translation

And since, as we saw, what’s home-order-esque has three divisions, one the relation of the ruler-esque to slave, of which we have spoken before, one the father-esque relation, and the third the marriage-esque—(for it’s a rule over woman or wife and over children, these two at least as under freemen, yet not with the same sort of rule, but over the woman or wife as in the exercise of City-state-esque control and over the children as in a kingdom; for the male is by nature better fitted to command than the female except in some cases where their union has been formed contrary to nature and the older and fully developed person than the younger and immature). It is true that in most cases of City-state-esque control the ruler and the ruled interchange in turn (for they tend to be on in equal level in their nature and to have no difference at all), although nevertheless during the period when one is ruler and the other ruled they seek to have a distinction by means of patterns and statements  and honors, just as Amasis made his statement about the foot-bath; but the male stands in this relationship to the female continuously. The rule over the children on the other hand is that of a king; for the male parent is the ruler in virtue both of affection and of seniority, which is characteristic of a kingdom or royal government (and therefore Homer by good form designated Zeus by the words of the father of men or husbands and of gods, as the king of them all women and men).  The rule that a husband has over his wife, a free person, is the same sort of rule that exists over free persons in a City-state.  For by nature [by physics], the kingdom ought to be this way. --a feminist rhetorical translating

ἄλλον γὰρ τρόπον τὸ ἐλεύθερον τοῦ δούλου.  ἄρχει καὶ τὸ ἄρρεν τοῦ θήλεος καὶ ἀνὴρ παιδός,. . .  . ὥστε φανερὸν ὅτι ἔστιν ἠθικὴ ἀρετὴ τῶν εἰρημένων πάντων, καὶ οὐχ ἡ αὐτὴ σωφροσύνη γυναικὸς καὶ ἀνδρός, οὐδ’ ἀνδρεία καὶ δικαιοσύνη, καθάπερ ᾤετο Σωκράτης, ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν ἀρχικὴ ἀνδρεία ἡ δ’ ὑπηρετική, --Aristotle Politics 1260a

otherwise [troped, has no deliberative faculty at all] custom-esque culture of good character [ethical arete, moral virtue] all women, men, slaves, and free [all men] the restraint [temperance]; manliness [courage] Dike’s Justice [justice] ruler-esque [archike] server-esque [hyperetike] --traditional phallogocentric translation

The slave of the freeman or free woman, in fact, is otherwise; the female of the male has rule, as does a child. . . . Clearly, then, the custom-esque culture of good character belongs to all women, men, slaves, and free but the restraint of a man or husband and of a woman wife, or their manliness and Dike’s Justice, are not, as Socrates maintained, the same; his manliness is ruler-esque, but what she has is server-esque. --a feminist rhetorical translating

Aristotle’s voice in these passages is that of the misogynist.  He assumes, reasons, and concludes that the male sex is superior to the female sex.

Nonetheless, a defender of Aristotle may claim that among scholars generally “[t]here is a great deal of confusion over what Aristotle says in his biological writings about females and whether what he says about them there is ideological”; this is what Robert Mayhew says in The Female in Aristotle's Biology (2).  And Mayhew argues that he himself can “determine” that Aristotle’s biological treatises “are products of honest science” and “not of bias and ideology” (2).  Moreover, a feminist may allow that “Aristotle is never dogmatic . . . and does not profess to give anything but the somewhat casual expression of his own personal knowledge and opinions”; this is what Wright says in Feminism in Greek Literature (218-19).  Wright adds that “[i]t is unfortunate that [Aristotle’s] experience of women was misleading, and that the problems of feminism do not always fall within the confines of science” (221).  

I think, to be fair, there should be a look at both Aristotle’s “ostensibly-honest” science but also at passages in which he seems “friendlier to females” than normally he seems.  Of course, there are only a few more-obviously benign passages by Aristotle on females.  These include the following:

ἀνδρὶ δὲ καὶ γυναικὶ φιλία δοκεῖ κατὰ φύσιν ὑπάρχειν· ἄνθρωπος γὰρ τῇ φύσει συνδυαστικὸν μᾶλλον ἢ πολιτικόν, ὅσῳ πρότερον καὶ ἀναγκαιότερον οἰκία πόλεως, . . .   οἱ δ’ ἄνθρωποι οὐ μόνον τῆς τεκνοποιίας χάριν συνοικοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν εἰς τὸν βίον· εὐθὺς γὰρ διῄρηται τὰ ἔργα, καὶ ἔστιν ἕτερα ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικός· ἐπαρκοῦσιν οὖν ἀλλήλοις, εἰς τὸ κοινὸν τιθέντες τὰ ἴδια. διὰ ταῦτα δὲ καὶ τὸ χρήσιμον εἶναι δοκεῖ  καὶ τὸ ἡδὺ ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ φιλίᾳ.  --Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics 1162a

an affectionate friendship [philea] by nature [physicality]; a human being [a man] naturally [physically] City-state-esque [politicking]  human beings [men]  life [bios]  these two . . . at least [both; necessarily the one is not the other] --traditional phallogocentric translation

But a man or husband and a woman or wife seem to have an affectionate friendship by nature; for a human being, there is naturally a coupling together —even more than being naturally City-state-esque, inasmuch as the household is earlier and more forceful than the City-state . . . human beings live together not only to create children in households favored together but also for the various purposes of life; for from the start the work is divided, and that of men or husbands and women and wives are different; so they help each other by sharing their individuality. It is for these two reasons at least, for utility and sweet pleasure, that there seems to be something special found in this kind of affectionate friendship.  --a feminist rhetorical translating

 

διόπερ οἱ μὲν ἀνδρώδεις τὴν φύσιν εὐλαβοῦνται συλλυπεῖν τοὺς φίλους αὑτοῖς. . . . γύναια δὲ καὶ οἱ τοιοῦτοι ἄνδρες τοῖς συστένουσι χαίρουσι, καὶ φιλοῦσιν ὡς φίλους καὶ συναλγοῦντας. μιμεῖσθαι δ’ ἐν ἅπασι δεῖ δῆλον ὅτι τὸν βελτίω. --Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics 1171b

manly by nature [courageous physically] affectionate friends [philea]. . .  to copy [to mimick] --traditional phallogocentric translation

Therefore, those who’re manly by nature take on this blessed resistance to sharing their own pain with their affectionate friends. . .  In contrast, women or wives and these different men or husbands favor mourning together, and are affectionate and friendly with affectionate friends and with sufferers together. However, it is clear that in everything one ought to copy the better sort. --a feminist rhetorical translating

But even these passages (i.e., from the Politics and Ethics), that sound to Mayhew somewhat kinder to females. do not make the pro-Aristotle Mayhew retreat from his observation that “Aristotle’s conception of the female is, in general and in many details, false” [i] (2).  This exceptional concession for Mayhew actually supports the view of most people who recognize Aristotle’s misogyny and his pro-slavery views.  Most agree with F. A. Wright:  When Aristotle said “‘Women and slaves are inferior [to all men and especially to free men . . . ] by the conditions of existence as I see them: therefore they are inferior by the laws of nature’ . . . he was wrong in this matter” (Feminism In Greek Literature From Homer To Aristotle 219, 221).  An examination of Aristotle’s own phallic statements makes clear that his methods and his conclusions by them are suspect.

---

[i] Mayhew, in his The Female in Aristotle's Biology: Reason or Rationalization, does determine that “Aristotle’s conception of the female is, in general and in many details, false.”  His aim, however, seems to be to discredit other Aristotle scholars who find the Greek man to be a sexist misogynist.  Mayhew adds:  “But frequently, too little care is taken over rigorous scholarship on the part of some of his fiercest critics.  Often, there is little concern for what precisely his views are on a particular issue.  Nor is there much concern with presenting support for the claim that his arguments about females are little more than rationalization” (2). 

Mayhew would, rather, have done well to review Gareth B. Matthews’s “Gender and Essence in Aristotle,” which considers whether Aristotle intends a “Complementarity Theory” or a “Norm-Defect Theory” of difference between the sexes; Mayhews carefully examines all of Aristotle’s writings on the difference to show that sometimes Aristotle does not seem to speak of females as defective males.  But Mayhew also completely ignores the two best contemporary works that are concerned precisely with both Aristotle’s science and his philosophy on females and women.  The best works are the following books by two of the “fiercest critics” of Aristotle’s sexism: Feminism In Greek Literature From Homer To Aristotle (first published in 1923) by F. A. Wright and The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution 750 Bc-Ad 1250 (1997) by Prudence Allen