Women are not defective men. Someone should tell the feminists.
Leah Libresco Sargeant’s excellent new book, The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto, provides a needed rebuke to feminists who do not champion women as women. Men and women are different, no matter how many #GirlBoss movies Hollywood churns out or how many gender studies seminars try to muddy the waters. And as Sargeant puts it, “A feminism that fears acknowledging difference will be unable to advocate fully for women or children.” Unfortunately, most feminists have instead tried to efface womanhood in order to make women better fit into a world devoted to a false (and very male) ideal of individual autonomy.
Sargeant, however, insists that “the world is the wrong shape for women” rather than the other way round. This is often true at a basic physical level; things, from cars to medications, tend to be designed for the average man, and women are expected to cope. There are exceptions — my petite wife finds airplane seats comfortable, whereas I, at 6 feet tall and wider than I’d like, do not. But the contrast between us usually confirms Sargeant’s point.
And the world being the wrong shape for women goes well beyond designs for cars and countertops to careers, kids, and culture. The problem is not just a matter of differences of average size and strength, but that “Women, more than men, are physically marked by relationships of care.” Specifically, motherhood keeps women from fitting. Women’s bodies are shaped by the asymmetries of human reproduction, and as Sargeant explains, “A baby, or even the potential of a baby, strikes at both the aspiration to autonomy and the illusion of interchangeability between the sexes.” Glorifying individual autonomy as a normative ideal creates a conflict between women’s equality and the realities of human embodiment and reproduction. Thus, the heart of Sargeant’s alternative approach to feminism is her recognition that:
“Women’s bodies and relationships are shaped by dependence, which makes us exceptional and unwelcome in a world that expects men and women to be autonomous (or at least to pretend to be). A world that is unwilling to acknowledge dependence as foundational to human life is unable to treat women as equal in dignity to men. It can make space for women only insofar as they find ways to hide or ameliorate the problem of being women, which is to say, the problem of being tied to those who depend on us.“
But feminists have taken the lead in telling women that “their equality requires another person’s subjugation” — that the key to women’s emancipation lies in making their children presumptively illegitimate and disposable via abortion. In response, Sargeant goes beyond the usual pro-life argument that a human in utero has a right to not be killed. This is true, but arguing on these grounds tends toward an implicit acceptance of the idea that there is a fundamental conflict between the interests of parents, especially mothers, and their unborn children, with the pro-life view just prioritizing the baby’s right to life.
Equality Is Not Interchangeability
Sargeant, in contrast, attacks as both inhuman and anti-woman this setting of mothers’ rights against those of their children. As she explains, “Babies can’t survive a culture that despises dependence … Women may be able to stagger on, maimed, but we cannot live a full, flourishing life when our basic biology is treated as a design flaw … If a core part of a women’s human experience is framed as her body betraying her, then women cannot and will not be treated as equal in dignity to men.”
If equality means interchangeability, then men and women cannot be equal, and the asymmetric realities of human biology mean that making autonomy a normative ideal will always imperil the acceptance of women as fully human. Furthermore, a culture that idolizes autonomy will also denigrate children, who are decidedly not autonomous. At best, we might regard childhood as “a brief, slightly embarrassing apprenticeship” and choose to “round up” to include children among those who “count as fully human.” But even if we accept this patch, it does not resolve the limits of biology, which make it harder for women to attain the ideal of autonomy. And so Sargeant argues that for women, the false ideal of autonomy “leads us to hate ourselves for what we are.”
Thus, there are a multitude of technologies and techniques to help women better approximate the (male-coded) ideal of independence. These often treat “womanhood as a congenital deformity”– a set of biological burdens that need to be defeated lest they keep women from attaining full freedom and self-actualization (and, incidentally, from inconveniencing their employers and sexual partners). After all, if we are to be autonomous, we necessarily need to take control of our bodies, and female fertility, menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and the like are untidy and interfere with schemes of predictability and control. But as Sargeant points out, “if there’s no room for changing rhythms in life, then a woman’s body will always be considered pathological.”
Of course, the inhuman effacement of the body is not confined to women. Men are not always as bound by relations of dependence as women, but we are still finite, contingent beings. Dependence and care are integral to the human condition, and not one of us is capable of attaining and sustaining the ideal of autonomy. Despising dependence also leads to denigrating those who care for the dependent. In a culture that worships autonomy, even efforts to illustrate the value of care — such as calculating how much it would cost to hire people to do all that a housewife does for her family — can be demeaning. Sargeant acknowledges that “Translating care into cash helps people avoid talking about unwaged work as worthless,” but reducing care to the market value of a series of tasks is also dehumanizing. Care is more than labor, and love’s accounting does not conform to autonomy’s ideal of keeping a clean balance sheet with the world. Rather, it rejoices in being part of a web of obligations, dependencies, and gifts.
But organic, relational approaches to caring for the needy can conflict with inflexible rules and bureaucracies. Sargeant complains that “Far from helping citizens fulfill their duties to one another, our laws too often treat the most natural relationships of dependence as suspect.” She has a point — it is not hard to find regulations that interfere with simple kindness to the poor, or that make it harder to care for family members and friends. However, there are good reasons for some of the targets of her ire, such as the intentional inhospitality of some public spaces — e.g., benches with dividers in them to prevent people from lying down comfortably. Irritating as these are, public hospitality requires public order, which in many cities has been lost to filth, drugs, and disorder. Similarly, when it comes to government assistance, fraud poisons the well of accommodation.
The False Idol of Autonomy
The loss of public trust and order furthers the denigration of private care in favor of professional care, which also serves the ideal of autonomy as the public funding of professionals replaces personal obligation. For example, Social Security deliberately penalizes parents (mostly mothers), for “taking time away from work, even when they are raising the children that Social Security depends on in the long term.” This economic injustice is encouraged by a “feminism that regards women who give of themselves as letting their side down.” Caring for and teaching one’s own children at home is denounced as degrading servitude, whereas earning wages by caring for and teaching other people’s children elsewhere is extolled as fulfilling empowerment.
This exemplifies the false idol of autonomy, which leads us away from genuine flourishing. As Sargeant observes, “Our ties to others are not an obstacle to self-actualization, they are the foundation for the authentic self.” It is our vulnerabilities “that allow us to extend ourselves in love and receive love in return.” Indeed, as C.S. Lewis put it, to love is to be vulnerable. The ideal of autonomy is incompatible with love, for love binds us to others. Not only do we take on obligations to them that cannot be fully defined in advance, but our well-being becomes intertwined with that of others — we rejoice with and for them, and also become vulnerable through them and to them.
To reject dependence and vulnerability is to reject the loves we are meant for. Though Sargeant focuses on women, she notes that men, too, are harmed when dependence is despised and vulnerability avoided. It is good for men, as well as right for them, to respond to the asymmetries of human nature with solidarity rather than selfishness. Freeing men from obligations gives us more autonomy — and also makes us unhappier because it makes us unnecessary.
As Sargeant sees it, “men lose a lot when they are told they are not needed, that their spare strength is superfluous at best, a threat at worst.” Men want, even need, to be needed, to have a cause, a purpose — a princess to save, a kingdom to protect, a castle to build, a queen to love. This is why the pseudo-traditionalism of “tradwife” influencers who insist that a husband’s work is “exclusively outside the house” will only hurt men. Not only is it not actually traditional, it is degrading to men. It reduces a man to a “customer in his own home” and a “recurring direct deposit into his family’s bank account.” A man thus diminished is easily displaced or replaced.
Men and women are different, but neither sex thrives in pursuit of the false idol of autonomy. Our differences make us complementary and interdependent. As a result, Sargeant concludes:
“To treat each other justly we must be honest about who we are. Men and women are deeply dependent creatures. We cannot build a just society on a false anthropology of independence. We cannot have a feminism that does not begin with recognizing and rejoicing in the embodied difference between men and women, and women’s greater exposure to dependence.“
What of the Pagans?
Sargeant has provided an essential alternative to feminist ideals that efface womanhood, and The Dignity of Dependence should be assigned on every college campus in the country. This book is a much-needed antidote to the poisonous alienation between the sexes that besets our culture.
Given all of this excellence, it seems unfair to ask for more, but I wish Sargeant had better explained the source of the dignity she sees in dependence. She turns to Alasdair MacIntyre’s work to argue that dependence is an essential, universal part of being human. Indeed, we all begin our lives absolutely dependent, and we often end them the same way. But it is not clear why we should view this as “what makes us most human.” It is universal and unavoidable, but is it the essence of being human, rather than, say, the capacity for mastery — to be overcomers and rulers of nature and ourselves?
Sargeant seems to be relying on her readers already sharing the conviction that men and women are equal, and that if the ideal of autonomy is incompatible with that equality, so much the worse for the ideal of autonomy. But what of those who are willing to say that the weaker, the vulnerable, and the dependent are not equal in dignity and worth to the strong, the powerful, and the independent? In short, what of the pagans, both ancient and modern?
Paganism is the human default, and viewing human beings as unequal in worth and dignity is the historical norm. It is intuitive; we may all start out dependent and weak, but some rise higher than others and are therefore worth more. Of course, we all have the same end; even the mightiest will die. But the leveling of death may seem to only reinforce the hierarchy of those who are still under the sun and not underground. Even those who affirm the equal value of every human life may struggle to articulate this conviction in terms of dignity, especially when we observe the decline of those we love.
Dependence at the beginning of life may be our natural state, but there is sorrow in our later return to it. We cannot deny the tragedy of the strong being laid low, of the wise losing their wits — of all the disease and disability and decay that flesh is heir to. The reason advocates for assisted suicide harp on “death with dignity” is that the process of dying often seems to be without dignity.
But amidst these evils, we may detect the source of our dignity, which is indeed tied to our common origin and shared doom, for in them there is a shared hope. Which is to say, the dignity of dependence comes from depending on God. Sargeant is a convert to Christianity — specifically Roman Catholicism — but she does not dwell upon the divine in this book. Yet God is the source of our dignity, which comes not from our own strength, but from being in the same boat — made by the same Creator, suffering under the same curse of sin, redeemed and restored by the same grace.
Only by recognizing our dependence upon God for our existence and our salvation can we find dignity in dependence and value the weak as we do the strong. It is through the divine indignity of the incarnation and cross that we see our incalculable worth to our Father in heaven. It is in the resurrection, not our accolades and accomplishments, that we find hope for the renewal of the world in glory, and the fulfilment of our longings. We will find the source of our dignity when we look with hope for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.