The above arguments may sound absurd and contradictory--just how absurd and contradictory we will see shortly. But because radical feminists are almost the only women in the feminist movement discussing the implications of the new reproductive technologies, they enjoy tremendous influence over the terms of debate. At the university level, they often chair women's studies programs and occupy administrative positions. Radical feminists are also defining the terms of the reproductive debate outside the academy. The shelves of libraries and bookstores are stocked with radical feminist works from major publishers, all of which argue against new reproductive technologies. These include: Living Laboratories, by Robyn Rowland; The Mother Machine, by Gena Corea; The Politics of Reproduction, by Mary O'Brien; and such anthologies as Made to Order: The Myth of Reproductive and Genetic Progress; Man-Made Women: How the New Reproductive Technologies Affect Women; and Test Tube Women.
Radical feminists are even shaping the political process that will monitor and regulate access to and information about the new reproductive technologies, as well. Janice Raymond, for instance, testified against surrogacy contracts before the House Judiciary Committee of Michigan in 1987. The Sixth International Women's Health Congress, held in 1990, drafted a resolution opposing, among other things, the development of anti-pregnancy vaccines. In Canada, groups such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women have been preparing studies and statistics in hope of restricting fertility clinics.
The critics opposing the radical feminist position tend to be far removed from the world of "gender studies"; as a result, they are often dismissed as uninformed or irrelevant by radical feminists. For instance, John Robertson, professor of law at the University of Texas, has argued that, because the right to reproduce follows from the constitutional guarantees to privacy that underwrite Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut, access to the new reproductive technologies should be similarly protected. But since radical feminists dismiss the U.S. Constitution as a document written by and for white slave-owning males, they reject any appeal to privacy because it places reproductive rights beyond considerations of the "female" values of social justice and social ethics. "Privacy rights," say the radical feminists, are just another attempt to tie reproduction to the male-dominated tradition of property rights.
It is worthwhile, then, to examine and refute the radical feminist rejection of the new reproductive technologies on its own terms. By looking at the misinformation and the illogic of their attacks on science and individual--as opposed to group--rights, the implications of the radical feminist mindset become clear. It calls for nothing short of a "gender revolution" that will overturn individual rights, private property, and any other institution tainted by "patriarchy." "In order to stop...systematic abuses against [women]," writes Andrea Dworkin in her 1976 book Our Blood, "We must destroy the very structure of culture as we know it, its art, its churches, its laws."
And, of course, its science. The radical feminist objections to the technological aspects of the new reproductive technologies are actually a specific application of a larger anti-scientific argument. "Science" seeks "objective" knowledge; hence, it's the opposite of radical feminism, which seeks to articulate "subjective" voices. Where the scientific method stresses evidence and replicable results, feminists "privilege" personal experience. In a paper delivered at the 2nd Annual Women's Studies Association Conference in 1980, researcher Judith Dilorio described feminist methodology thusly: "Researchers will utilize first-hand, immediate and intimate contact with their subjects through direct observation and reflective analysis, drawing upon her or his own experiential observations of what others say and do in order to relate subjective and objective dimensions." This form of research, which has been called "experiential analysis," can be seen in feminism's approach to sexual harassment. A women's feelings about the alleged harassment (e.g., she felt threatened) are taken as proof it occurred.
For radical feminists, "scientific truth," like any other kind of truth, is nothing more than what scientists declare it to be. Science is just one more "discourse" among competing alternatives; its claim to rationality, disinterested inquiry, and predictive value are merely "male" rhetorical conceits designed to make it seem more authoritative. Contrary to the way science is usually discussed, say the radical feminists, science is not value-free. By seeking to analyze and control nature, it embodies the very ethos of patriarchy.
Since technology is an outgrowth--indeed, a handmaiden--of science it is by definition anti-woman, even when apparently providing women more options. Hence, in the essay "How the New Reproductive Technologies Will Affect All Women," journalist Gena Corea writes, "[T]he technologies will be used by physicians for seemingly benevolent purposes. These kindly looking physicians may even speak with a feminist or a liberal rhetoric, passionately defending a woman's right to choose these technologies and 'con- trol' her own body."
Elsewhere, Corea has stated, "The new reproductive technologies represent an escalation of violence against women, a violence camouflaged behind medical terms." Her derisive attitude is summed up by her comments on embryo flushing, a key procedure in artificial insemination by which an embryo is separated from the womb: "That's done in cows," she writes. The implication is clear--men view women and cows alike as domesticated animals.
Corea is hardly alone in linking technology to patriarchy. The ironically titled anthology Healing Technologies: Feminist Perspectives, for instance, dismisses electronic fetal monitors--which have been heralded as a lifesaver for mother and child alike--as the result of "males and male values" and of the merger of "business and health care systems...another male alliance."
Even birth control, once sacrosanct to feminists, is being redefined as oppression. In the essay "In His Image: Science and Technology," in the 1992 anthology Twist and Shout, Heather Menzies explains how female contraceptives are actually tools of patriarchy: "I didn't immediately see the pill or the IUD as sinister in themselves; I began to see them, though, in context, as part of a larger system...they are a part of a particular phrasing of the role of reproduction in society geared to production and consumption, and a particular phrasing of the problem of women's bondage to their own bodies."
As long as the "context" is patriarchy (and for radical feminists, the context is always patriarchy), reproductive technologies of any sort are inherently oppressive. What's more, they "marginalize" the role of women in the birth process. Through the "medicalization" of childbirth, women are said to be losing the monopoly of power they once enjoyed over giving life. (History, it should be noted, does not smile upon this interpretation. In 17th- and 18th-century Europe, for instance, when technological intervention in childbirth was virtually unknown, children had only a 50 percent chance of living until their first birthday. Women had a 10 percent chance of dying in labor and a 20 percent chance of being permanently injured by midwives, who commonly punctured the amniotic sac with dirty fingernails.)
But the radical feminist dismissal of science has seriously flawed foundations. Radical feminists invalidate science on the grounds that it, like all other forms of human knowledge, is necessarily selective and provisional. Which is to say, in order to process the vast amount of data bombarding us at every turn, individuals select out what they consider to be important. This, however, is not evidence of bias (patriarchal or otherwise), but merely a description of how the human brain functions. Actual bias occurs only when human beings refuse to reconsider or alter their conclusions in the light of reasonable doubt.
If anything, scientific research methods consciously acknowledge the limits of human knowledge: That's why theories are continually revised, updated, and changed to better account for countervailing phenomena. The search for truth is the process of selecting and integrating data and experience. Precisely what is distinctive about scientific discourse is its willingness to test its hypotheses in such a way that impartial observers can verify or refute results.
To invalidate an area of study because it selects and revises its knowledge--because it decides what data are relevant to its concerns--is to preclude the possibility of human beings ever achieving knowledge in any area, including feminism. It is curious to note, however, that despite their rejection of objectivity and the possibility of truth, radical feminists seem able to claim absolute knowledge when it comes to condemning patriarchy and technology. If they are not being consciously mendacious, the radical feminists are at least ensnared in a major contradiction: Their own position refutes their claim.
Radical feminists fall into a similar contradiction when it comes to discussing their second major objection to the new reproductive technologies: the legal context in which they will be selected. They must deal with the moral question wrapped up in the feminist ethos of "a woman's body, a woman's right." Specifically, they must deal with the issue of choice, the right of every woman to decide for herself what medical procedures she wishes to undergo.
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