Yesterday several of us were drinking and talking about feminism. One of my friend N insisted that feminism is that women can freely choose what they want to be, whether house wife or teacher or entrepreneur. Another friend F disagreed the existence of free decision, explaining that all decisions are affected by social construction thus not free in nature. Gender roles that feminist always challenge, are social constructions, too. Clearly that nobody can live in a vacuum without social construction. Seems that our friend F doesn't only want to remind us that decisions and gender roles are socially constructed and the inevitability of social construction, but also encourage us to accept the existing social construction like gender roles, the latter of which I cannot agree.
I totally agree the starting part of his argument, that gender roles are socially constructed. What I want to point out is, the ideology of 'free decision of women', is also socially constructed. Social construction is ubiquitous, and also multi-faceted. The ideology of 'free decision of women' is certainly one alternative of the ideology of 'stick to existing gender roles'. What's more, social construction is fluid. Every social change has come with social reconstruction, i.e. falling of old ideology and rising of new ones. We can see that in today's world, there's a tremendous tendency to pursue the 'free decision of women', which manifests the reconstruction that is going on.
As I have said the ideology of 'free decision for women' is socially constructed, and I agree that absolute freedom doesn't exist, then what does 'free decision' in this ideology mean? It can be that women's decisions should be free from existing gender roles which 'men have taken privilege from', according to my friend N(which doesn't necessarily mean that decisions can be free from other intersectional variables, like class, wealth). Does it sound more valid than 'sticking to existing gender roles'? Well, since I cannot see convincing validity of gender roles(which can be another point that worth arguing), I would say, Yes.
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