On the drive down to Red State, hubby and I had an interesting discussion -- as usual (we are infamous for arguing about Rawls for the length of Nebraksa... ).
We got on the topic of topics feminists have decided are closed for debate.... among them: The sex/gender distinction, whether or not abortion should be limited, the experience of girls in education, studies like the one Larry Summers proposed and women doing domestic violence to men... It does seem that the feminist position on all of these stems from the distinction between sex and gender.
In essence, these topics are taboo -- i.e. an acceptable opposition to the feminist position is impossible...
Taboos are signaled by the need to qualify and justify the taboo violating statements -- and the reaction of feminists to the statements themselves.
Taboos seem to rest on moral and epistemic claims of truth. The quesiton then is about the justification for the basis of these claims. Do these claims stem from a separate feminist epistemological process? If there is an alternate feminist epistemolgy, is it sufficient to support the claims it seems to be supporting in terms of taboos? How does this epiestemology mesh or conflict with whatever it is different than?
So -- what do you think about the list of taboos??? Too much, am I missing any?
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It strikes me that this very much depends on how you define feminism. If you allow that anyone who self-identifies as feminist is feminist, then I think you will find some who don't see these topics as taboo or closed for debate. And if you exclude some self-identifying feminists, then how _do_ you define feminism? You can't define it with reference to what people believe about any of these topics, since that would be circular...
As for possible other topics to include, what about porn? In certain feminist circles, at least, there is only one way to think about porn and even bringing the topic up in some feminist blog comment threads will get you flamed if you don't make it clear that you take the party line. But then again I know plenty of self-identified feminists who believe there is nothing wrong with at least some porn, so it comes back to a definition of feminism.
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