APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy

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Analyzing Backlash to Progressive Social Movements¹

Ann E. Cudd
University of Kansas

I. Introduction

In 1991 Susan Faludi published Backlash, and the term has become a commonplace of feminist activism and scholarship ever since.² Most feminists, and progressives generally, hold that there is currently a backlash to the progress made in the wake of the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements of the 1960s and 1970s. But little has been done by social theorists to define and clarify the concept of backlash. To say that some event or series of events is an instance of backlash is to make a judgment that is at once both descriptive and normative. For both descriptive and normative purposes, we need to be clear about how to identify backlash and distinguish it from phenomena that are superficially similar. We need to be able to judge whether an event fits into a pattern of growing reaction against some progressive social movement, or whether the event is isolated, anomalous, and not worthy of serious concern by social theorists or activists. Thus, we need a working definition of backlash, one that shows how the concept fits into other central concepts of social and political theory, such as equality, oppression, and social progress. This paper is intended to clarify the concept of backlash in order to ground social theory about progress and backlash.

What counts as a backlash event or period or set of acts and what doesn’t count? The case that I think might be taken as paradigmatic for social backlash is the period of increased violence against blacks in the Jim Crow South following Reconstruction. The case is paradigmatic not only because it was such a strong reversal of progress, but also because the direction of change is clear and unmistakable. Jim Crow was a rapid reversal of rights and freedoms that had previously been secured by blacks during the period of Reconstruction. The Jim Crow period is sufficiently far back in history now for us to see clearly that it was a systematic change in the laws, institutions, and social climate that reversed the progress of a previous period. A similar period of increased violence against women in the 1980s and 1990s seems to be following on the progress of the Women’s Movement. This is more clear internationally than in the U.S., with the prime example being the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. Also, witness the increased violence against gays and lesbians in the wake of progress in the Gay Rights Movement.

Physical violence is the most obvious but not the only sort of reaction to progress. In the academy, where physical violence is rare (but not unheard of), backlash usually comes in the form of institutionally sanctioned, or at least unprevented, abuses of power. At the 1998 Eastern Division APA meeting, a group of us came together to discuss issues of backlash to feminism in the academy. The assembled panel bore witness to a number of problems faced by feminists and women, and discussed how the term "backlash" might apply. First, we noted departments that seemed to be quite eager to hire women, then do a number of uncollegial and unprofessional things to get rid of them—either by harassing them, by disrespecting their work or their other contributions to their departments, by unfairly denying them tenure, or by making their working conditions so difficult that they fail to earn tenure, or give up before trying.³

Second, we discussed the fact that feminism as a topic and methodology of philosophy has been granted a place at the national meetings, but there remains a reluctance of the philosophers at the top institutions and journals of the first rank to publish feminist pieces. Indeed, in some quarters there is simply outright hostility to feminist philosophy. Two examples come to mind here. In his address as chancellor of Boston University and host of the most recent World Congress of Philosophy, philosopher John Silber attacked feminist philosophy as "an assault on reason."⁴

In a review of feminist work in various disciplines, the Times Literary Supplement asked Colin McGinn for an overview of the significance of feminism in philosophy. He writes, "feminism now has a place in many philosophy departments, for good or ill, but it has not made any impact on the core areas of the subject."⁵

Third, we discussed the changing climate for feminism in the classroom: while the students I taught ten or so years ago were either on the Left politically or at least curious and interested in feminism and generally respectful of me, now when I teach feminist perspectives on classical issues in my large intro class, a small but noticeable number of them walk out. Recently I taught an introductory class in which I made a point of including works by women and nonwhites. While I had generally good evaluations, one student carved "Cudd is a bitch," "I hate Cudd," and "Fuck Cudd" so deeply into one of the desks of the classroom that it had to be replaced.

Again, it is hard to read these events precisely, but taken together they suggested to us an ominous erosion of the progress that many think women and feminism are making in the profession and the academy generally. I would argue that these are not merely anomalous fluctuations from a norm of civility and progress for women, but that these represent genuine instances of backlash against women and feminism in the academy.

Two kinds of problems threaten the project of identifying a particular period or series of events as backlash. One kind of problem is that an event might not be any kind of a backlash at all, but rather an event following another that is difficult to characterize as part of the same narrative of history. Perhaps it is anomalous, perhaps it slightly opposes the previous progress but does not suggest a significant social movement. The other kind of problem is that some periods might indeed oppose the social movements of a previous era, but the previous era was not itself a progressive social movement. For example, let’s suppose that the current opposition to affirmative action were overcome and affirmative action programs, perhaps in altered forms, were reinstituted. Then we might imagine those who oppose affirmative action on grounds that it violates the rights of whites and men would say that there is a backlash occurring. As another recent example, Mark Roe, in an article in the Columbia Law Review, counts as "backlash" any economic policy that opposes economic efficiency.⁶

But such policies would include labor-friendly policies, like laws that favor labor unions or impede the ability of businesses to fire employees without warning or quickly buy and dismantle companies, and these are clearly policies that so-called progressives would favor.

In its normative use, "backlash" connotes something to be avoided, something that is excessive in its zeal and reactionary in aim. My purpose in this paper is to outline a theory of backlash that is a normative theory—a theory that carries with it an implicit moral judgment that such a social period is to be avoided, is somehow wrong. To do this we need a theory of backlash to social progress, where "progress" carries the normative implication that it is good, a kind of period of social change to be encouraged.

II. Progressiveness

In the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau argued that civilization has brought increasing inequality and enslavement, and in this sense humans could not be said to be making progress. Indeed, quite the reverse, Rousseau held that civilization had meant moral decline, and that the decline had worsened as humans strayed further from their origins in the primeval wilderness. Rousseau held that the beginning of the decline came with the origin of private property and the division of labor. It was at this point that humans were able to profit from enslaving one another, by making one person do the work that was required for the survival of two. Increasing technical knowledge in agriculture, manufacture, and social organization thus brought about decreases in freedom and equality. Even if Rousseau has the historical facts wrong, he persuasively argues that increasing civilization can mean political regress, not progress.

If progress does not automatically correspond to growing civilization or technical change, how then are we to define progress? "Progress" is a relational term that implies an end or goal toward which the thing progressing is moving. There are many possible social goals, but they reduce mainly to two classes of goals: goodness and rightness or justice. A society might pursue some happiness or righteousness, as examples of pursuing goodness, or a society might pursue equality or efficiency in production and trade as a matter of justice. I don’t mean to suggest that goodness and rightness are exclusive, though they are likely to compete at times. We might say that a society progresses when it becomes more good or more just. The good and the right may sometimes conflict, in the sense that making progress toward goodness might require a sacrifice of justice, or vice versa.

Now let us look at two paradigm examples of social progress. Perhaps the clearest case of social progress in human history has been the abolition of chattel slavery, insofar as that has happened. Closely behind that in clarity is the institution of universal suffrage, at least in democratic nations. Both of these changes have clearly marked a change in the way that human beings view other humans (at least other competent adult humans)—as fellow persons of dignity and respect rather than as lesser beings because of some accident of their birth, be it race or class or gender. Now one might argue that there are still blind spots even in the most progressive states: failure to extend the vote to noncitizen residents or the virtual enslavement of the underclasses in low wage jobs, for example. But that is only to argue that further progress can be made, not that abolishing slavery and extending suffrage are not examples of clear progress. To argue that they are not progressive would require one to show that for every such extension of humanity or voting rights there is a corresponding erosion of humanity or rights somewhere else in the world, or to show that somehow the focus on individuals that democracy and liberalism requires is somehow nonprogressive. While the first of these seems empirically quite implausible, the second is a position that could be argued by a fascist, or by one who holds a religiously based comprehensive moral view, or perhaps by a communitarian, or by a utilitarian under some bizarre conditions of social life. It might be argued by some feminists that such individualism is masculinist, and hence nonprogressive. I think all these views are mistaken, but it is beyond the space available to provide a full defense of the thesis that the human individual is to be held morally primary. I will simply acknowledge that my concept of progress is fashioned assuming this basic liberal thesis.

There are also clear cases of regression (again, relative to the basic liberal thesis just stated): holocausts and totalitarian regimes of various stripes. What makes these regressions is that they deny the respect due all persons to whole classes of people. Consider the Holocaust in Europe in this century and the Nazi regime that brought it about. Jews and others were viewed as "vermin," as something less than human, and their annihilation was thereby alleged to be justified. The Nazi regime was a good example of a fascist totalitarianism—the German people were claimed to be personified in a single man, which symbolically annihilated the personhood of individual Germans. Dictators like Ferdinand Marcos, who do not even attempt a rhetorical justification for their actions, deny the equal worth of their fellow citizens by ignoring their wishes and needs and plundering their wealth. Religious totalitarians, like Ayatollah Khomeini, claim that God has chosen them to dictate, to overrule the wishes or the needs of the people and demand their ultimate sacrifice when the dictator sees fit to do so. Might someone argue that one or more of these are not cases of regression but are really social progress? To do so, one must either deny the equal worth and dignity of individual persons or deny that persons ought to able to have some realm of individual choice and some voice in collective decision making in their societies. To anyone who would deny either of these tenets, I admit, I haven’t much to say in this paper.

Finally, there are some unclear cases that I want to mention to delineate the concept of progress that I am pursuing. Some who agree with the tenets of equal worth and dignity and democratic choice (perhaps Rousseau included), would argue that our increasingly technological lifestyle is regressive in that it destroys valuable ways of life, while others would assert that it constitutes social as well as technological progress because the standard of living of the worst-off member has been raised (an argument made by Locke, among others). Some, perhaps Rousseau included, would argue that capitalism is regressive because it reduces a large class of persons to meaningless automatons, impoverishing some as some grow fabulously wealthy, while others assert it is progressive because the total social product or average level of wealth is higher than with previous forms of social production. I don’t wish to decide these matters here; but I do want to offer an account of social progress that explains how reasonable people, people who agree on the progressiveness of extending human dignity and democratic choice, could disagree on these cases but not on the clear cases of progress and regress that I identified above.

Generalizing from what I call the clear cases, then, I want to suggest that increasing social justice is progressive and increasing oppression is regressive. Progress, I would argue, is to be defined in terms of the reduction of oppression. "Oppression," on my view, is a normative term that names a circumstance in which four conditions are satisfied: (1) persons suffer harm (understood descriptively as a decrease in their overall well-being) within social institutions or practices; (2) the harm is perpetrated through social institutions or practices on a social group whose identity exists apart from the harm; (3) there is another social group that benefits from the institutions and practices that cause the harm; and (4) the social group suffers the harm through unjustified coercion or force. This account of oppression surely needs defense, but I am not going to provide that here. What I want to make clear is that this view entails that individuals suffer the harm of oppression only as members of groups. If progress requires reducing oppression, then progress entails that these social groups are harmed less by social institutions, which, in turn, means that the individuals in them suffer fewer harms, at least on average, than they did before. Social progress, then, is a reduction in harm that comes about through the redesign of social institutions. But if progress requires a redesign of social institutions to reduce oppression, and if oppressive social institutions benefit some other social groups, then there will be some social groups whose interests are opposed to progress. Some social groups will be deprived of the advantages or privileges that existed under the previous set of social institutions. For example, the abolition of slavery deprived slave owners of property. This harmed slave owners in the real, material sense that they owned less after abolition than before. This was an entirely justified harm, because the ownership of slaves was unjustifiable. However, this fact, that progress harms some identifiable social group that previously enjoyed an unjustified advantage, sows the seeds of backlash.

Progress can be defined only in terms of contrast with an earlier period, and with respect to a particular social group or set of social groups. To say that social group g has progressed between time t1 and time t2 is to say that social group g is less oppressed at t2 than it was at t1.⁷

It is possible, then, to say that a progressive period for one group is regressive for another. I will say that a period of time is progressive simpliciter only if that period is progress compared to all previous periods and with respect to all social groups existing at that time.

I am now in a position to explain why the unclear cases I have mentioned are unclear in regard to progress. First, in each of these cases, the very structure of the social group could be seen as changing so markedly that there is no obvious group with which to make a clear comparison that would justify the judgment that some social group’s oppression has been lessened. In the gross cultural changes from hunting and gathering to agrarian societies, or from agrarian to industrial societies, the social groups themselves shift so radically as not to even be comparable (except gender groups, perhaps). However, not all social change entails such major shifts in social groupings. Blacks and whites were still blacks and whites before and after the Civil War; Jews were still Jews before and after the Second World War and the founding of Israel; women and men have not changed basic identity conditions since the 19th amendment or the failure of the ERA. Second, if justice requires, as Rawls and others have argued, both economic efficiency and some measure of equality, then there will be many situations in which these demands conflict. In each of the two unclear cases (technological innovation and the advent of capitalism), there is, arguably, an increase in efficiency but a decrease in equality. That is, the whole social product increased but the increases advantage some in greater proportion than others, so the greater share of the increase goes to the better-off groups. In these cases those persons who prioritize efficiency could see these changes as progressive while those who prioritize equality could see them as regressive.

III. Backlash

My strategy for defining backlash should now be obvious: it is to be defined in terms of progress or regress, which was defined in terms of oppression. Backlash is clearly in evidence when oppression is greater than in a previous period with respect to some social group and in that previous period the social group suffered less oppression in some still earlier period. Note that on this view it is not possible to say that a period of social progress with respect to some social group is at the same time a backlash against the social group whose interests are adversely affected by the increased equality. This is because the group that is adversely affected by increased equality or decreased oppression of another group is not thereby subjected to oppression. While they are harmed as a group, the harm is not unjustified. Their harm is justified precisely by the fact that their previous gains were unjustified and unjust. Thus, white men had no justified claim to being oppressed by affirmative action, and would not be justified in using the term "backlash" to describe any reinstitution of affirmative action after it was temporarily suspended.

It has been suggested to me that "backlash" connotes a mean-spirited, punitive attitude on the part of the backlasher. While I think that backlash can certainly come about through such attitudes, it can also come about as a result of completely unorganized, unconscious, perhaps even institutionalized, resistance to change. Surely the formation and actions of the Ku Klux Klan are examples of organized meanness. But the forces of oppression are often more institutional than personal. For example, a woman is denied tenure on the grounds that her work is not "high quality" or not "philosophical," as judged by the perceived quality and titles of the journals in which she publishes. It turns out that journals that her colleagues count as top-quality philosophical journals turn down (as insufficiently philosophical), without review by referees, any article that considers gender to be a significant category of philosophical analysis.⁸

At the same time, the journals that publish the kind of articles that the woman writes are considered out of the professional mainstream (e.g., they have "feminist" in their titles or subtitles), or not as important because they are new journals that publish such work along with mainstream articles. While there may be nothing mean-spirited (since this could be a case of unconscious sexism) in these kinds of editorial decisions, editors’ failure to recognize gender as a crucial social category and so worthy of analysis by social philosophers makes their journals unavailable to the woman as a publishing outlet. Likewise, this woman’s colleagues might not be mean-spirited but simply fail to see newer journals that do accept submissions in her field as good journals, and to see that what they consider the good journals are unavailable for the research that the woman does. This woman’s case illustrates how institutions and norms can exert an inertial force that resists progress without any individual consciously intending to do so.

Can a single event be said to be a backlash event? Since backlash is defined in terms of a period of change in the levels of oppression, then a completely isolated, unique, anomalous event could not be an instance of backlash. This is because a single event could not be an event of oppression absent any social structures of constraint. However, a single event might be identified as a backlash event when connected with other events that together constitute increasing inequality for a social group. An event can portend backlash if, were it not to be resisted successfully, it would together with similar events constitute regress for a social group.

This raises the serious epistemological problem of how to discern when we are confronted with a case of backlash or simple rudeness, misfortune, or meanness. How can we tell if a tenure denial is a part of backlash or a bunch of unconnected forces within an academic institution working against someone? Is it backlash or a mistake that might have happened to a member of a privileged social group; or is it a reasonable, if harsh, judgment of the merits of the case? Formally, this is like the problem of determining what the overall population looks like from a small sample. At the moment of the event, it may be difficult to tell whether it is an event that constitutes increasing oppression or backlash. But it would be naive to suggest that we don’t have any basis on which to judge in cases that are similar to past cases. As I argued, because of the fact that there is usually a social group that is harmed by progress, backlashes almost always follow progress. For every feminist movement there has been its antifeminist backlash. Therefore, when the savvy feminist is confronted with misfortune, she wisely bets on the backlash.⁹

IV. Conclusion

In conclusion, I want to argue that there is a backlash now to feminism in philosophy. The argument faces the objection that whatever problems or challenges feminists and women are facing now in academia, there is no backlash because the criterion that we be in a period of regress is not met.¹⁰

Women are represented in greater numbers at all levels in higher education, Women’s Studies programs are common and growing, and feminism is reaching into nearly every discipline. I believe that this objection has some merit; but the merit is limited and there is certainly a case to be made for the claim that we are seeing a backlash in academic philosophy, at least. While it is true that there are more women at the assistant and associate professor levels, growth at the full professor level has been very modest in most fields, and particularly in philosophy.¹¹

While there is now a feminist journal of philosophy, Hypatia, it is still difficult to get one’s male colleagues to accept it as equally valuable as, say, the Journal of Social Philosophy, which has about the same reported acceptance rate.¹² Still, this might just suggest slower-than-expected progress, not regress. Yet, I think that there is a case to be made that feminism is facing a reactionary response that is closing off opportunities to the top and mainstream of the profession of philosophy. Recall the quotations I cited from Silber and from McGinn. These remarks reveal a hostility and resentment that could surface only after some initial successes by feminists to challenge the discipline. For most liberals and progressives, feminism came initially as a kind of gestalt switch. They believed something like the following syllogism is sound: All men are worthy of equal dignity and respect. Equal dignity and respect requires equal opportunity in the academy. Therefore, all men are worthy of equal opportunity in the academy. Then, suddenly, it occurred to everyone (in the face of the Second Wave Women’s Movement), "oh, yeah, and women too." Making the logical substitution then implied that women deserved equal opportunity in the academy. So far so good. But as it turned out, women’s entrance into the profession of philosophy led inevitably (or so I would argue—but that’s another paper, too) to challenges to many traditional issues in philosophy. That meant that either the men in the profession have to carry on the discussion on new terms, set in some cases by women, or dismiss the terms as unworthy. This is a cost, a harm to the privileged position of men in the discipline. Given the economic and status rewards involved, (e.g., maintaining their own positions as arbiters of the mainstream, or securing employment for themselves or their students), there are incentives for those in positions of power in the profession to maintain their positions by taking the less honorable view that feminist readings are of less value than the orthodox ones.

Surely the motivations behind hostility to feminism in the academy are more complex than this brief analysis reveals, but this is at least a large part of the story. Now, it seems, there has been a hardening of the position that women (or racial minorities) are wanted in the profession, but only if they do not do feminism (or race theory). This amounts to conceptual regress from the initial liberalization of the profession, where there was little or no prejudice against feminism before (when its implications for fundamental change were unclear), or rather, no more than the general prejudice against women that existed then, and, I would argue, still does. Taken together with the slower-than-expected material progress of women in the profession, this conceptual regress indicates a backlash to feminism, which decent people should resist.

Notes

1. This paper was first presented to the Society for Analytical Feminism at the 1998 Eastern Division APA meetings, Washington, D.C., December 28, 1998. I thank the audience and especially my coconspirators on the panel, Julie Maybee and Anita Superson, for helpful comments. I thank also the anonymous reviewers for the Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy and Cressida Heyes for helpful suggestions.

2. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991).

3. Anita Superson, "Academic Gang Rape: Philosophical Reflections on the Backlash against Women in Tenure Decisions," and Julie Maybee, "Politicizing the Personal and Other Tales from the Front Lines," both presented at the 1998 APA Eastern Division Meetings, December 30, 1998.

4. Scott Allen, "For Philosophers, Criticism and a Call to Service," The Boston Globe, August 11, 1998, 1.

5. "Feminism Revisited: A Symposium," Times Literary Supplement, March 20, 1998, 13.

6. Mark J. Roe, "Backlash," Columbia Law Review 98 (1998): 217–41.

7. An account of how oppression is to be measured and compared is needed at this point, but lies beyond the scope of this paper.

8. That there are such journals, I know from personal experience. Quoting from a letter I received rejecting without review a paper of mine, an editor of Economics and Philosophy writes, "Economic gender inequality is an important social issue and the explanation model you use may well be helpful and illuminating. But the paper does not seem to us to be ‘philosophical’ enough. We do publish essays both on social philosophy and the conceptual foundations of game theory but your contribution does not belong to these categories."

9. One of the savviest is bell hooks, see "All quiet on the feminist front," Artforum 35 (1996): 39–41.

10. Virginia Valian raised this objection to me, citing her own book, Why So Slow? (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998) as evidence that women are making progress, slowly, in academia.

11. See Valian, op. cit.

12. Eric Hoffman, ed., Guidebook for Publishing Philosophy (Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1997): 88 and 133. The rates are 16 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

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APA Newsletters Fall 1999 Volume 99, Number 1

APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1