Q&A: Feminism
Feminism
Question
With God’s help,
Does the Rabbi think that radical feminism (presumably the Rabbi would want a clearer definition than that; I mean the discourse about gender differences becoming blurred, in the army, in society, etc.) is a result of postmodernism, and why?
Thank you very much!
Answer
Whether it is a result or not is a difficult question. But at least certain shades of it are clear expressions of postmodernism. Postmodernism denies the existence of valid standards and judgments. Therefore, when someone says that a woman is more or less than a man, he is rejecting postmodernism. But even if he points to differences without judging them, postmodernism will recoil for two reasons: 1. Agenda — it will suspect that the next step will be to judge those differences (therefore it prefers to get ahead of that and erase the differences). 2. Even the claim that there is a difference is based on various assumptions and methods. Extreme postmodernism denies scientific standards as well.
Discussion on Answer
With God’s help,
The claim of postmodernism is social construction; how can such a claim deny scientific facts? (Or perhaps what the Rabbi means by “scientific standards” is something else?)
You’d be surprised, but it can. They can do anything. For some of them, facts are a tool for advancing agendas; for others this is said as criticism, but for them it is an ideology (you’ll probably ask how one can be so inconsistent? You’d be surprised, but it’s possible). See Gadi Taub’s book The Limp Revolt.
How can one deny scientific standards when the claims of postmodernism are about social construction, something that is a bit hard to say about scientific facts?