A sharper perspective on this matter is particularly important to feminist
thought today, because a major tendency in feminism has constructed the
problem of domination as a drama of female vulnerability victimized by male
aggression. Even the more sophisticated feminist thinkers frequently shy
away from the analysis of submission, for fear that in admitting woman's
participation in the relationship of domination, the onus of responsibility
will appear to shift from men to women, and the moral victory from women to
men. More generally, this has been a weakness of radical politics: to
idealize the oppressed, as if their politics and culture were untouched by
the system of domination, as if people did not participate in their own
submission. To reduce domination to a simple relation of doer and done-to
is to substitute moral outrage for analysis.
-- Jessica Benjamin, "The Bonds of Love"
What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism.
It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books
and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes
and, most important, corporate America's message, which ru...
