The Tao of Feminism

            The struggle of women in the face of masculinity and patriarchy is no new dilemma.  The ancient philosophy of Taoism deals with this struggle in the context of constant wars.  By the twentieth century, the war seemed to be on women and feminism was its adversary.  These two ideologies beautifully support each other and are independently strong and persuasive.

            Taoism embraces and embodies many characteristics of femininity.  None are more prevalent than yielding and non-control.  These characteristics come as a response to the warring states period in eastern history.  In these constant wars, masculine characteristics were widely utilized as means to seize and control others. Taoism attempts to explain the advantages of yielding and non-control.

            “Return is the movement of the Tao.  Yielding is the way of the Tao” (Tao Te Ching 40).  Such a sentiment would be considered weak from a more masculine prospective.  The masculine would ask, “Shouldn’t the strong advance and firmly hold steady?”  The Tao would lead us to believe otherwise.  Even in the context of war, contracting compels the expansion of the opposition, widening the gaps in its armor.  The one who yields is flexible, and can withstand more than the rigid.  The flexible will endure a greater force before it breaks.  If the strong is not easily broken, than the strong is soft.  Although the Tao seeks peace, its feminine tendencies would fare better than the masculine against conflict.

            The Tao would have us believe that less is more.  That it is better to be content with some than to strive for excess.  “Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.  Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.  Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.  Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner” (Tao Te Ching 9).  One goal of yielding is the acquisition of balance.  As the world expands, we contract; as the world contracts we flow naturally into that void.  The masculine would believe that more is better.  Taoism more so suggests a balance that prevents ourselves from expanding to the point of conflict with our counter balance.  If having enough is the goal, having excess is as destructive as having deficiency.  Such is balance and the way of the Tao.

            When we yield and move away, what we gain is an increased prospective.  “Rather than make the first move it is better to wait and see” (Tao Te Ching 69).  The masculine might think that it is better to advance and enforce its own will.  Rather, it is as if a stone is attacking a pond.  The pond does not go out to oppose the stone.  The stone will plummet toward the pond while the pond lay still, waiting.  When the stone arrives, it is taken in by the yielding water.  The pond, therefore, envelopes the stone.  “When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield” (Tao Te Ching 69).

            Many seek control to then make the world what they want it to be.  “The world is sacred.  It can’t be improved.  If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.  If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it” (Tao Te Ching 29).  The arrogance of masculinity believes that if only it had control, the world would be greatly improved.  I think not.  The nature of the beast that is war, the mechanism of masculine conquest, brings damage to the very world it fights over.  Such damage is exemplified by the trenches of World War I which still can be seen as scars on the landscape of France.  “The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them.  She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle” (Tao Te Ching 29).  The world is better left to its own devices.

            The Tao goes further to explain that the best outcome would be born from the natural course.  “Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself… [The Master says] I let go of all desire for the common good, and the good becomes common as grass” (Tao Te Ching 57).  This is difficult for the masculine to accept because it mean s accepting that things are already better than he can make them.  Humility is required to let go of control, whereas the masculine thinks superiority is needed.  I think that the Tao shows a great optimism in human nature.  How can it be thought that people require controlling when those who seek control (the masculine) are people themselves?  People are naturally good, if left to do so naturally.  A masculine perspective seeks to control others.  So who is more fitting than the non-masculine?  Masculine efforts over the feminine have had no positive effects on people as a whole, but rather devastating effects on women.

            The male dominated control over women, throughout history, finally led to the feminist movement.  Feminism is a movement toward social balance for women.  Despite the achievements of feminist, women are still colonized by males.  Women are also conditioned to act in accordance with sexist stereotypes.  Despite a historical awareness of women’s struggles, this post-feminist construction is known as ‘enlightened sexism.’

            Cultural domination is a feminist prospective that is as undeniable as it is disturbing.  Women live in a world which is dominated by men and wen’s culture.  Women, similar to many races and nationalities, have been controlled and colonized by men.  This colonization is, in several respects, worse than other colonizations.  The first of these reasons is that women are a much larger percentage of the population to be oppressed.  The reality being that women are a majority of people on the planet.  But to make such large scale oppression worse, “women are not now in possession of an alternative culture, a ‘native’ culture which, even if regarded by everyone, including ourselves, as decidedly inferior to the dominant culture, we could at least recognize as our own” (Bartky 25).  Because women have no culture of their own to embrace, they are forced to embrace a culture which is systematically designed to subjugate the women embracing it!  Furthermore when that cultural standard is challenged, the women dominated by it will defend it.  This defense of a culture that oppresses the defender is most disturbing when it is exacted against its own liberator, feminists!  Now women are fighting against the liberators of women.  To be clear, women are not, in this instance, defending the men directly.  They are instead defending the stereotype of women which men have created to cage women.  This cage is the only identity that women have.  ‘What it means to be a women’, in the eyes of men, is what feminists attack.  Therefore, the next systematically oppressive device is to have women embrace their own stereotype under the notion that the stereotype is the expression and result of an already achieved liberation.

            The term for this is ‘enlightened sexism’ and has been used by feminist author Susan Douglas.  In her writings she defines this term as “a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime” (Douglas 18).  Enlightened sexism suggests, falsely, that women have achieved complete liberation and equality.  “Indeed, full equality, has allegedly been achieved. So now it’s okay, even amusing to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women” (Douglas 18).  But what about women’s lack of identity?  The answer from the patriarchy:  a pre-existing sexist stereotype of a sexualized woman who is primarily interested in men, motherhood, and being ‘girly’.  What is worst of all, the implied ‘equality’ possessed by women causes their women to reject any counter/cultural movement, such as feminism, that might challenge their, now supposedly liberated, place in society.

            The identity of women under enlightened sexism is exactly what men want it to be for their own purposes.  First, women are sexualized to make them mere objects for men to possess.  “Enlighten sexism sells the line that it is precisely through women’s deployment of their faces, bodies, attire, and sexuality that they gain and enjoy true power” (Douglas 18).  When really, this notion reinforces the sexual objectification.  This dehumanization solidifies the male dominated view of men being the rulers of ‘mankind.’  Next, as mothers women are expected to produce more men who will be considered superior to them.  Last, women are to be obsessively ‘girly’.  This cyclically enforces the first two stated aspects of the stereotype.  In the pursuit of being ‘hyper-feminine’ (exaggerated characteristics of the stereotype), women make themselves more sexual and more oriented toward children and homemaking.  Women have been subject to the forces of the male world that they were born into.  It is true to say that women have experienced a substantial amount of oppression, but they have endured.

            But is this ability to endure a result of the Taoist concept of yielding?  Has yielding been to the disadvantage of women?  No.  The disadvantage of women has been patriarchal policies of social inequality.  Historically, women’s feminine influence, such as yielding, has benefited humanity, even if men were in charge and being influenced by women.  The Taoist concept of yielding is even more applicable now, since the rise of feminism, in order to resist enlightened sexism.  If women can maintain an identity of the true feminine, like the branches of a flexible tree, then stereotypes won’t break it like a powerful wind.  It’s true that historically, women have bowed the lowest, but now that civil rights have been mostly achieved, social inequalities are one of the last weapons that the patriarchy has.  But how are women supposed to rise in a male dominated society obsessed with controlling women like objects?

            Remember, “If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it” (Tao Te Ching 29).  And lose women, men surly will.  It can already be seen how women are moving up the social ladder.  This is most evident in education.  Some women are beginning to rise in politics and business.  This should not suggest that social equality is in anyway near, but it is considerably better than any recent historical period.  Taoism would have us believe that the patriarchal control over women is not to last.  The natural course is toward balance.  The more that the Tao is embraced and the lass that enlightened sexism is embraced, the more distant we will be from the cultural domination of women.

            Taoism more than supports the feminist agenda, it empowers it and provides women with a guide to the true nature of feminine characteristics, in contrast to the sexist patriarchal female characteristics.  At the same time, feminism fights to encourage women to move closer to a Taoist persuasion and farther from a patriarchal one.  The final victory of both Taoism and Feminism is for both genders, not just women, to embrace the ideas present in each respective discipline, to the benefit of all.

Works Cited

Bartky, Sandra Lee. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

Douglas, Susan J.  Girls Gone Anti-feminist. In These Times, 2010. Print.

Stephen Mitchell and Laozi,. Tao Te Ching. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Print.