ELLEN LEWIN, a professor of feminist anthropology at the University of Iowa, responded to a civil e-mail from College Republicans by telling them to “eff-off.” This is the sort of elevated discourse one can expect from the ideological storm front of gender discourse.

Personally, I would not wish to participate in a correspondence with Ms. Lewin, who was educated at Stanford and the University of Chicago. These rarefied degrees, combined with the unadulterated insanity and evil of women’s studies, are likely to produce not-so-nice manners. Something tells me Ms. Lewin would beat up a housewife, or like to. Below is a description of her work on the university’s website. Ms. Lewin believes men can be mothers – no, she believes men, preferably homosexual men, should be mothers – and the moon is made of blue cheese. Everything she promotes would be remarkably funny. If only it was a joke. Her foremost ideal appears to be the “gay father.” I wonder how much Prof. Lewin is paid to spread these insanities and evils into the tender minds of the young. Surely, it’s in the six figures. 

From the departmental website:

Ellen Lewin’s major research interests center on motherhood, reproduction, and sexuality, particularly as these are played out in American cultures. Over the course of her career, she has completed studies that focus on low-income Latina immigrants in San Francisco, lesbian mothers, and lesbian and gay commitment ceremonies in the US. She is now writing a book on gay fathers-men who have fathered or adopted children either on their own or with male co-parents or who became parents during earlier heterosexual unions

As a scholar working at the juncture of feminist, cultural, and medical anthropology, Lewin’s work has long concerned the ways in which women make sense of the multiple identities they derive from ethnicity, race, and class, sexual orientation, and maternal status. In lesbian and gay studies her work has focused on the construction of community in American cultural contexts, and, in response to recent debates in feminist and queer theory, to devising more nuanced understandings of concepts of resistance and accommodation. Lewin’s work in both feminist anthropology and lesbian and gay studies has also led her to write about questions of ethnographic representation in relation to both gender and sexual orientation. She has also maintained an active interest in women’s experience in the health care system, particularly in terms of the ways in which patients and providers negotiate access to reproductive care.

Several of these concerns come together in her research. Definitions of motherhood and assumptions about its intersection with womanhood have been central to feminist theory in anthropology and in other fields. Often these ideas draw directly on notions of nature and culture, conflating particular components of motherhood with virtue and authenticity. Insofar as motherhood has been theorized by some thinkers as a set of practices, it might be argued that men who undertake basic child-rearing and care-taking activities are in some ways “mothers” rather than “fathers.” What are the implications of these social realities for enacting cultural notions of motherhood and fatherhood? If men can be mothers, then can the conventional, biologically-drawn boundaries of the basic gender categories—women and men—be defended? To the extent that gay male communities have normatively included only “adults,” how do gay fathers position themselves and create communities and systems of social support and how do they articulate their identities?

— Comments —

Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

Ellen Lewin’s official website tells us: “As a scholar working at the juncture of feminist, cultural, and medical anthropology, Lewin’s work has long concerned the ways in which women make sense of the multiple identities they derive from ethnicity, race, and class, sexual orientation, and maternal status. In lesbian and gay studies her work has focused on the construction of community in American cultural contexts, and, in response to recent debates in feminist and queer theory, to devising more nuanced understandings of concepts of resistance and accommodation. Lewin’s work in both feminist anthropology and lesbian and gay studies has also led her to write about questions of ethnographic representation in relation to both gender and sexual orientation. She has also maintained an active interest in women’s experience in the health care system, particularly in terms of the ways in which patients and providers negotiate access to reproductive care.” 

This is typical academic BS. Notice that the first sentence isn’t even grammatical. Apparently “Lewin’s work” is “a scholar working at the juncture of feminist, cultural and medical anthropology.” Not Lewin, mind you, but her work, er, works and is a scholar. The phrase “multiple identities” is practically mandatory, as are the phrase “the construction of __________ “ [fill in the blank] and the noun “resistance.” Also, there are no “debates” in “feminist and queer theory.” People like Lewin tour the endless academic society conferences reading their bad prose to one another, but there is never any disagreement – and that is because there is never any dissent. But the reason that there’s no dissent is that there’s no independent thinking; or rather, there’s no thinking.What is there? There’s the ceaseless recirculation of the empty jargon that constitutes (if that were the word) Lewin’s self-description. Lewin’s prose would not pass muster in an honest freshman composition course – and yet she is undoubtedly a tenured professor, with all the appurtenances thereof. And she undoubtedly thinks of herself as a paragon of intelligence and education.

Laura writes:

False ideas eventually adorn themselves in poor grammar and downright ugly language. Women’s studies prose hits the mind like a stun gun.  

Laura adds:

At Oz Conservative, Mark Richardson responded to this post. He writes:

I did a little search on Dr Lewin. It turns out that she is a very orthodox liberal. She has written a book titled Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in American Culture. The basic argument she runs in the book is that divorced single mothers and lesbian mothers have something significant in common: by raising children without husbands they both have achieved the good of motherhood without a loss of autonomy through dependency on men.

The message is that divorce can be good for heterosexual women because it liberates women to be autonomous.

I have to say that there’s a contradiction in Professor Lewin’s argument, but I’ll get to that a little later.

It’s interesting to see how liberal autonomy theory plays out in Professor Lewin’s book. For instance, she argues that there is a difference between being a good mother in a marriage and in a divorce. Being a good mother in a marriage is not so good because it is merely a “natural attribute” (not something self-determined). But if a mother gets custody in the courts, that is a “self-conscious achievement” and “evidence of skill” in “protecting the integrity” of her family:

Mothers who face actual or potential custody challenges use strategies of appeasement, support, and autonomy in the course of protecting the integrity of their families. The claim to being a “good mother,” a key element of feminine gender identity in American culture, is transformed from a natural attribute into the product of self-conscious achievement…

In this situation a competent mother is one who accedes to enough of her husband’s demands to discourage a custody challenge but not so much that her concessions can be turned against her. Being a “good mother” is thus transformed from a state of being, a natural attribute, into evidence of skill, rewarded by the father’s failure to gain custody or, better yet, by his failure to pursue it at all. [pp.177-178]

As for divorce being a step up for women, this is how Professor Lewin puts it:

These convergences between lesbian mothers’ coming-out stories and the divorce stories of both lesbians and heterosexual mothers point to a telling contradiction in American culture. Marriage is seen as a special kind of success for women, but it also imposes a loss of autonomy and personhood that threatens to compromise the individual’s quest for accomplishment and individuality. As observers of American culture have noted since Alexis de Tocqueville described his impressions in the mid-nineteenth century, individuality and the related concept of privacy are such core dimensions of American culture that conditions or behavior that might be interpreted as dependency seem questionable if not shameful…

… Both coming out and divorce shift women’s status downward in the eyes of the society as a whole, yet the women who experience them view them in many respects as steps up. At the core of both coming-out and divorce stories is the theme of increasing autonomy and competence, and both kinds of accounts tend to focus on discovery of one’s “true” self. In these respects, as Kath Weston has observed, they constitute odysseys of self-discovery; at the same time, they demonstrate a concern with achieving adulthood and autonomy which is a particular consequence of the infantilization that both marriage and heterosexuality can impose on women. [pp.43, 45]

The logic of the argument is that in a marriage women are dependent on a man, that this makes married heterosexual women infantile, so that divorce and/or lesbianism represent a step forward toward an adult, autonomous life.

The fact that the conclusion is so odd, that it suggests that being a lesbian or a divorced woman is more adult than being a married mother, should suggest to us that there is something wrong with the premises of the argument.

My own view is that the mistake is to think of autonomy as a single, overriding good. In practice, we don’t do this. We marry despite the fact that we thereby limit our autonomy, because there are other important goods associated with marriage, including those of marital love and parenthood.

As it happens, Professor Lewin finds it difficult to maintain the consistency of her argument. She argues for divorce and lesbianism in terms of autonomy, but when it comes to justifying motherhood she is at a loss – becoming a mother does not increase a woman’s autonomy, so it has to be justified on other grounds, but these same grounds could then just as easily justify a commitment to heterosexual marriage:

Lesbians who are not mothers share with other childless women a feeling of distance not only from the kinds of things “ordinary” women do but from the special relationship to the spiritual world women can derive from their connection to children. By becoming a mother, a woman can experience a moment of transcendent unity with mystical forces; by being a mother, she makes continuing contact with her inner goodness, a goodness that is activated by altruism and nurtured by participation in a child’s growth and development.

By becoming a mother, a lesbian can negotiate the formation of herself: she can bring something good into her life without having to sacrifice autonomy or control. Thus the intentional single mother (whether she is lesbian or heterosexual) can achieve a central personal goal – the goodness that comes from putting the needs of a dependent being first. By becoming a mother through her own agency, she avoids the central paradox that motherhood represents to married women – a loss of autonomy and therefore of basic personhood in a culture that valorizes individualism and autonomy. Like ending a marriage, having a baby on her own allows a woman to meet her basic personal goals, and she may see it as a critical part of establishing a satisfying identity in a culture that often blocks women’s efforts to be separate individuals. [p.73]

She is running with two very different sets of principles here. When it comes to motherhood, what matters to her is not autonomy but feeling connected and the good of altruistic care for another. The very close, dependent relationship of mother and child is seen as a good. But when it comes to heterosexual marriage, personhood is defined solely in terms of being a separate, autonomous individual.

She could just as easily have defined the good of marriage in the way she defined the good of motherhood: in terms of the closeness of the relationship, of finding inner goodness in the giving of oneself altruistically to one’s spouse, of the spiritual fulfilment of marital love, and of the completion of a feminine identity in being a wife.

I’ll finish with one more inconsistency in Professor Lewin’s position. She justifies motherhood in terms of participating in a child’s growth and development. But what if that child is a boy? What is that boy growing and developing toward?

If Professor Lewin had her way, that boy would not have much of a future role in society. He would grow up in a society in which women aimed either at intentional single motherhood or else at divorce as a pathway to autonomy, adulthood and self-discovery.

It’s not much for a boy to grow and develop toward. So what would be the point of a woman committing herself to participating in his development? What mothers need to justify their role are young women in society who are willing to make a life together with their sons. Professor Lewin doesn’t like the idea of this life together and so is no true friend of motherhood.

Laura writes:

These are excellent observations from Mr. Richardson.

Lewin describes divorce as an “odyssey of self-discovery.” She is correct that this is how divorce is perceived by many modern women, as not so much a flight from something bad as a movement toward something good: self-realization. Divorce offers romantic prospects even when a woman has no intention of remarrying. Behind the culture of divorce, there is utopian individualism.

 But self-realization is defined largely in material and emotional terms. In truth, divorce leads to a loss of autonomy too. Instead of becoming dependent on a husband, a woman becomes dependent on an employer, who has no sense, or an entirely different sense, of personal obligation. She becomes emotionally dependent on friends. Friendship also requires compromise , negotiation and some resignation of autonomy. In truth, divorce is not an “odyssey of self-discovery” any more than marriage. All roads lead to interdependence of some form.

 Lewin’s sentence:

Marriage is seen as a special kind of success for women, but it also imposes a loss of autonomy and personhood that threatens to compromise the individual’s quest for accomplishment and individuality,

could easily be rewritten to:

 Individual achievement in the work world is seen as a special kind of success for women, but it also imposes a loss of autonomy and personhood, particularly the autonomy and personhood that come from creating an independent family culture through the generations, that threatens to compromise the individual’s quest for accomplishment and individuality.

Lewin’s comments about the valor of women who succeed in wresting custody of their children from their husbands are shocking. She speaks of women seeking sole custody of their children as “protecting the integrity of their families.” A woman who actually stays with her husband and does protect the integrity of her family is not engaging in “self-conscious achievement.” She is, rather, displaying a “natural attribute,” or a child-like lack of direction and motivation.

Mr. Bertonneau writes: 

Lewin’s metaphor of an “odyssey of self-discovery” is woefully inappropriate in context. The Odyssey is the story of a man, Odysseus, who goes reluctantly to the war at Troy. On the day of his departure his bride Penelope has just given birth to their son. The war lasts ten years. Odysseus then spends another ten years struggling to return to Ithaca to be reunited with wife and son. In Ithaca, Penelope must be as courageous as her husband, awaiting in faith his reappearance. For Homer, marriage with offspring is the sign of a healthy society.

Howard Sutherland writes:

There is a lot to think about in what Lewin says about the nature of woman and of motherhood (all very strange from a traditional point of view), and in your and your correspondents’ comments. There is one aspect of what Lewin writes that struck me and that I don’t think any of you mentioned. It is contained in this quote from her ouevre: 

By becoming a mother, a lesbian can negotiate the formation of herself: she can bring something good into her life without having to sacrifice autonomy or control. Thus the intentional single mother (whether she is lesbian or heterosexual) can achieve a central personal goal – the goodness that comes from putting the needs of a dependent being first. (emphasis added) 

For Lewin, the value of motherhood ultimately has nothing to do with the child. The state of motherhood and the existence of the dependent child serve to meet the woman’s need for self-fulfillment. They are but instruments for the woman to pursue her goodness – goodness as defined by feminist theory, presumably. And since that is where Lewin’s definition must come from, I don’t really know what she means by all this, but I’ll hazard a guess. 

By throwing off the (Lewin might say oppressive; I say civilized) sexual mores of society, in the case of a woman who chooses to live as a homosexual, or the (again Lewin might say oppressive while I say civilized) sexual constraints of society as well as her husband, in the case of a wife who demands to be divorced, Woman achieves autonomy – supposedly. As you note, in Lewin’s eyes this newly self-liberated woman finally becomes truly grown-up, rather than merely a physically mature child manipulated by a man. Once having achieved that autonomy and free to follow her bliss, New Woman can use a child to “experience a moment of transcendent unity with mystical forces,” exploiting motherhood to make “continuing contact with her inner goodness.” (What Professor Lewin imagines those mystical forces might be I cannot imagine; I doubt very much that she has any Person of the Trinity in mind!) Mark Richardson says that Lewin sees motherhood as a good. He is right, but it is a good for Woman. Child is a tool for Woman’s self-betterment. Richardson also asks, in effect, what Lewin thinks this motherhood should accomplish for the child. That’s a good question, but for Lewin the wrong question. What ultimately happens to the child seems almost an afterthought, as long, I suppose, as the child is housed, clothed and fed while in Woman’s care. For the New Woman-mother Lewin endorses, ultimately it’s all about Her. In truth, though, the Lewinian New Woman’s “odyssey of self-discovery” is a flight from reality, one almost certain to end in tears or worse for mother and child alike.

Laura writes:

Yes, it is a flight from reality. Obviously a woman can’t achieve that “goodness that comes from putting the needs of a dependent being first” if she does not put the needs of a dependent being first. Lewin does not believe a father is one of those needs. She’s a philosopher of matriarchy. She’s an enemy of childhood.

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