Stuck in the muck... (Kelsey Hunter, Week 9 Dialog)

This post is an elaboration on a comment I left on Will Brehm's post "Moving About in a Negligee" from the Thoughts on Theories blog. To summarize what I got out of his argument (and not do it the justice it deserves), he points out that we (our class, but also most other people) have become so involved in discussing the intricacies of the masculine-feminine dichotomy and so focused on the either or of "housewife" vs. "powerful, masculine woman" that we fail to see the theory for what it is worth. We need to step back and take an outside looking in approach in order to really figure out what is going on within a theory. I think this is a very good point. I also think that there are several important points this idea brings up:
1. Even feminists are biased.
2. We focus on the dichotomies and inequalities rather than the broader picture because they are familiar to us.
3. The reason so many of us fail to see the connection of feminism to IR is that we are stuck in the details and the level of the housewife, teacher, or manly female leader.

To elaborate on the first point, I believe that it is extremely important to have alternative views to world politics. I do think it is necessary to have viewpoints from the "others" (women, the Global South, etc), and Feminist theory and Postcolonialism have the potential to be extraordinarily influential and powerful. However, I believe that all theories (yes especially Realism as well) are biased to the views of the authors and their particular circumstances. We must expect this, as people have different experiences, educations, and values. The problem Feminism runs up against is that women have long been the "victims" of world politics, dominance by men, rape, inequality, and so many other things. In my opinion Feminists take the voice of the victim all too often, even as they are claiming that empowering women is key. As we have experienced, the victim, especially when she is a women and the perpetrator is a man is not often given the credibility or respect she deserves. The female bias in feminism prevents it from achieving the credibility it deserves. We made the point today in our presentation that Runyan and Peterson seem like they are whining, but in reality they are just presenting cold hard facts!

My point about the bias that is inherent in Feminist theoretical literature is that it prevents us from moving beyond that bias. We get stuck in the muck of masculine-feminine, housewife vs. powerful woman, and things like sexism in the military. These things are real to us, some women identify with the biases, some men and women abhor them; so our debate on feminism becomes as Mike, Erik, and Will pointed out- we lose sight of the relationship of feminism to IR and that is what matters the most in an IR theory class.