On Srinivasan, Firestone, and The Young

Now that I am a professor, I confess that some of these arguments don't grip me in the way they once did. Not because I think they are wrong -- I still think they are right -- but because I no longer feel them to be, in a sense, necessary. As a teacher, I see that my undergraduate students, and in some cases my graduate students, for all their maturity, intelligence and self-directedness, are, in an important sense, still children. I don't mean this as a claim about their legal or cognitive or moral status. They are perfectly capable of consent, and have the right to determine the course of their lives just as I have the right to determine the course of mine. I simply mean that my students are so very young. I didn't know, when I was in their place, how young I was, and how young I must have seemed even to those professors who were kind enough to treat me like the fully fledged intellectual I mistakenly thought I was. There are plenty of people my students' age, most of them not in university and will never be, who are adults in ways that  my students simply aren't. My students youthfulness has much to do with the sort of institutions at which I have taught, filled with the sort of young people who have been allowed, by virtue of their class and race, to remain young, even as many of their peers have been required to grow up too quickly.--Amia Srinivasan "On Not Sleeping With Your Students," in The Right to Sex, pp. 147-148.

The vagueness, even repetitive circularity of the passage -- what it is to be "young" or "youthful" is merely  gestured at -- is very uncharacteristic of Srinivasan (an incredibly clear writer). I think the last sentence suggests we're supposed to interpret such youth as innocence (recall 'still children') or privilege (to be contrasted by those who have to grow up too quickly). Part of the problem is that is the "maturity" these young have is meant to be a kind of intellectual sophistication that somehow does not give them what they need in the art of real living. And this is because, and I now I link it up to a broader theme hinted at in Srinivasan's essay, they have been failed by the educational institutions at which Srinivasan teaches. To be sure, being outside these institutions may be worse in other ways (notice that "too quickly.")

I read Srinivasan's Right to Sex just after my first encounter with Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex. [If you reader lack time/patience, please skip this paragraph and next the three until "at this point."] As it happens, Firestone comes off rather badly in The Right to Sex. (To be sure I don't think Srinivasan has a particular animus against Firestone--among philosophers a willingness to criticize is a sign of respect.) Firestone is treated as the exemplary white feminist who "facilitated the resurrection of the timeworn myth of the Black rapist" (p. 11, Srinivasan quoting Angela Davis approvingly.) The Dialectic of Sex "falters critically in its treatment of race and rape." (p.11)) In a different context and in a different essay/chapter, Srinivasan introduces Firestone as one of the Redstockings "pro-woman feminists," who are portrayed as racially insensitive (if not worse) and who had "on the whole little interest in defending the legitimacy of desires beyond the confines of heterosexuality." (78) 

As an extended aside, I think these charges against Firestone are rather uncharitable even if they also reveal something troubling about how she sets up some of her arguments and a pattern of oversights. For example, the passage from Dialectic of Sex, that Davis quotes as evidence (and quoted by Srinivasan) is explicitly about "the black man's feelings about white woman."  These are said to have "intense mixture of love and hate; but however he may choose to express this ambivalence, he is unable to control its intensity." (emphasis in Firestone. In my (2015) edition of Dialectic of Sex this is on p. 100 not p. 110 as Davis suggests.) In so far as black on white rape is being discussed in context it is treated primarily as a *fantasy* and the effect of their dependence. 

Of course, Firestone's chapter as a whole does discuss rather critically the misogyny and abuse by the leaders of Black Power (and other social movements) of women in their movement. And so seems to lack much interest in the historical roots and causes of black nationalism. But the idea that black men want white women 'to be on top of their women' (Dialectic of Sex, p. 96) she attributes to the liberal establishment! (I do not mean to deny that Firestone often presents an extremely reductive and schematic/stereotypical view of black men, but that's a feature of her social freudianism and is true of all groups portrayed.)

Echoing Davis closely on this point, Srinivasan claims that for Firestone "the rape of white women by black men is the result of a natural Oedipal urge to destroy the white father and take and subjugate what is his." As I suggest, I deny Firestone actually claims anything this reductive. But in so far as she makes any claims about such urges, it is in the context of the more important claim she understands racism in "terms of the power hierarchies of the family." And these hierarchies are by no means natural for Firestone. In fact, these hierarchies (and the family-structure  they sustain) must be completely destroyed according to Firestone. For Firestone race is important culturally "only due to unequal distribution of power" in the family and in wider society. 

At this point the reader may wonder what this has to do with the original passage from Srinivasan I quoted above.+ As it happens the chapter on racism in Dialectic of Sex, is preceded by the chapter on childhood. Firestone's key claim in this chapter is that in our culture (both relative to other cultures in history as well as absolutely), children's dependence and subordination is tremendously accentuated. Our culture has created a 'cult of childhood' that serves patriarchy and that harms children and their caregivers (mostly women). And rather than seeing childhood, say, as a kind of apprenticeship into adulthood,* kids today must be happy. And the means to make them happy is to make them safe and provide for fun activities, and so inevitably dependent on the wills and money of their parents. And this is especially so in the modern upper-middle class family.

On Firestone's view, bourgeois kids are kept young (in the sense I think conveyed by Srinivasan) by the shelter and enrichment provided by loving parents. And, in fact, Firestone (rather too romantically) thinks that only "children of the ghettos and the working-class" escape this forced immaturity of the modern family (which she calls the "myth of childhood"). These kids "living on the street" escape. And while Firestone recognizes this escape is very partial (because they are still dependent and "oppressed as an economic class" oddly no mention of race). Given the reality of modern racialized policing and the carceral state (Srinivasan is excellent on this), Firestone undoubtedly was too optimistic (and probably shouldn't have tried to illuminate her theory by appealing to stereotypes and generic statements).

But the point here is about the youthfulness of our students. And here, Firestone is on firmer ground in chapter 4 of The Dialectic of Sex. One way kids are kept young, according to Firestone, is through the education system. In schools, kids are segregated by age from each other as well as the rest of society, and nearly constantly dependent on the approval and evaluation of an adult (or the age-specific peers). Learning is outer-directed (the age-specific curriculum) and "approval conscious." 

In reading Firestone, I was reminded of my son's intense dislike for some of his teachers (who ruined his interest in some topics). This is ordinarily invisible to me, but due to covid and home-schooling, some of his life is more accessible. When I enquired why this was so, he would report that the teachers were patronizing. And this was not just a matter of tone (using the kids-specific-voice), but also the great many arbitrary seeming rules that govern the in-class-room behavior and choice of topics. 

And much to my puzzlement (remembering my neighborhood adventures at age 11), playing with friends on the streets is not-done in his/our London bourgeois environment even when lockdown ended. Playdates happen, if they happen at all, at home under supervision of a parent (mostly mum) or a nanny. (The gendered workforce is alive and kicking.) Outside, on the streets, there is apparently a non-specific threat. (Perhaps life in the the suburbs are really different.) No wonder the multi-player, violent online game is where all the excitement is for him. (Firestone's chapter is very good on what we now call helicopter or protective parenting may generate violent fantasies.) 

In fact, many of the class-room rules that my son finds arbitrary clearly exists in order to control restless boys. (He goes to an all-boys school.) So, they accentuate the dependence felt. The best moment of his year was when he was given some responsibility as a camp councilor. 

As it happens the malicious, insufferable effects of dependence is the great theme of The Dialectic of Sex. For Firestone, the purportedly modern happy childhood, is one never ending humiliation (and shame) of their "dependence, economic and otherwise." (And in this respect structurally resembles women's subordination in the family, and is also structured by it.)  

And, going beyond Firestone, as contemporary colleges (more the ones I teach in, perhaps, than Srinivasan's) become more like giant high schools (often in the name of efficiency or bureaucratic impartiality and fairness) with frequent testing and exams as the main mechanism toward advancement (alongside many rules about how one ought to behave), this dependence, this enforced tutelage continues. (It is also welcomed by the majority of our students, who like the predictability of it.)

Given that Srinivasan also models her account of student-teacher dependence in part on the dependence of the patient on the psycho-analysist (which is structured by a code of ethics in a way that teachers tend to resist), I suspect Srinivasan agrees with Firestone that those kids that excel in our educational students are simultaneously infantilized in some important respects despite the opportunities our (elite) institutions provide them with. 

For Firestone, writing in 1970, this structural dependency was altogether disqualifying of the institution, which together with the other institutions that promote subordination and hierarchy should be abolished. (After the revolution very different kinds of educational institutions are required.) Since those days what she calls the "cult of childhood" has only intensified despite the fact that women's participation in the workforce and income inequality among the sexes has diminished. But she wouldn't be mystified by this because income inequality has increased dramatically, such that our society can be best characterized as oligarchic.

And even though I have a liberal's abhorrence of revolution, Firestone's criticism of the effects of dependency is persuasive (despite being colored by her struggle with Freudianism). As Firestone recognizes, educators are functionaries of extremely hierarchical institutions that for good and bad also extend the (ahh) immaturity of students (even though that is disguised by language that treats them as consumers). Some other time, I hope to return to Firestone's program to abolish the conditions of such dependency (e.g., basic income, abolition of the family, separating child-birthing from biology, using technology to replace drudgery, etc.) and reinterpret them as a liberal project. 

While in some of her writings Srinivasan is receptive to revolution (recall Srinivasan on Stanley here; Srinivasan on Nussbaum here), when confronting the effects of the extended dependency of our students in The Right to Sex, and their teachers' tendency to "assimilate themselves to their students," she does not promote revolution, but advocates self-command, "one must stand back, step away and leave them to get on with it." (148)** 

I have to admit that while I endorse Srinivasan's stance (how could I not, given my own version of it here?), I find Srinivasan's position baffling (unless her previous flirtation with revolution is now reinterpreted as a symptom of her then youthfulness). In other places in The Right to Sex  Srinivasan castigates individualist, liberal responses to feminist criticism that leave the structures and preconditions of subordination intact.  But here, when it comes to our own vocation as teachers it seems Srinivasan recoils from revolution altogether. And, in fact, she even hesitates for many wise and judicious reasons about using the law to "guide culture." (146) 

Now, in re-reading Srinivasan's essay (before publishing this response), it occurs to me that it's possible I missed an important clue. Rather than writing as a revolutionary feminist, in this essay she is appealing to the enlightened self-interest of the professoriate. For given the "trend towards increased regulation of sex on campus," there is an "opportunity for professors, as a group, to think about the aims of pedagogical practice, and the norms of conduct appropriate to achieving them." (142) And in fact, as she reminds us "professors have a strong incentive to take these things serious." So, while still feminist, she is writing conditioned on or presupposing the continued functioning of the very institution (she is writing about and works in).

This, then, and now I am wrapping up, is very much an ameliorative feminism, one -- and now I am quoting the near final lines of the book -- that recognizes a feminism that "need not abjure power" and recognizes its "own entanglement with violence." (178) And while in context of this last essay, Srinivasan is talking about (socialist) proposals to displace the carceral state, we get a glimpse in these essays of an intersectional feminism that already assumes if not its own partial victory then at least its recognized "ethical authority." (178)

 

 

*Firestone is discussing the middle-ages (and echoing Plato).

+Perhaps, some other time I'll discuss Firestone's views on sexuality, which I read as an all out attack on heteronormativity. But since what she advocates is easily ridiculed and even criminal in some settings, I want to treat it separately.

**Strikingly, in addition to the many duties we have as teachers qua teachers, one of the grounds to do so is a kind respect for "our own past selves which are part of what it is to teach." Srinivasan's idea that there is a higher form of self-respect that grounds our duties is reminiscent of Adam Smith.

Comments

[Kevin]

Great post, but how did you get an advanced copy of this book? I'm super interested in reading it.

[Eric Schliesser]

It's available in England

[Matt]

"And rather than seeing childhood, say, as a kind of apprenticeship into adulthood,* kids today must be happy. And the means to make them happy is to make them safe and provide for fun activities,"

A very interesting post over-all, but I could hardly think of a better way to describe how administrators at the university where I work think of the students than this bit. It's bad for them, in so many ways.