Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

66 WHO STOLE FEMINISM?tion of intelligence." 35Note the reference to a "colonial" rationality withits implication of deliberate subjugation. It is now common practice touse scare quotes to indicate the feminist suspicion of a "reality" peculiarto male ways of knowing. For example, the feminist philosopher JoyceTrebilcot speaks of "the apparatuses of 'truth,' 'knowledge,' 'science,' "that men use to "project their personalities as reality." 36The attack on traditional culture has thus escalated to an attack on therational standards and methods that have been the hallmark of scientificprogress. The New Jersey Project for reforming the public schools circulatesa document entitled "Feminist Scholarship Guidelines." The firstguideline is unexceptionable: "Feminist scholars seek to recover the lostwork and thought of women in all areas of human endeavor." 37But afterthat, the guidelines unravel: "Feminist scholarship begins with an awarenessthat much previous scholarship has offered a white, male, Eurocentric,heterosexist, and elite view of'reality.' "The guidelines elaborate on the attitude toward masculinist scholarshipand methods by quoting the feminist theorist Elizabeth Fee: "Knowledgewas created as an act of aggression—a passive nature had to be interrogated,unclothed, penetrated, and compelled by man to reveal her secrets."Fee's resentment and suspicion of male "ways of knowing" followsa path well trodden by such feminist thinkers as Mary Ellman, CatharineMacKinnon, and Sandra Harding, whose views of patriarchal knowledgeand science have quickly become central gender feminist doctrine. Playingon the biblical double meaning of knowing to refer both to intercourseand to cognition, Ellman and MacKinnon claim that men approach natureas rapists approach a woman, taking joy in violating "her," in "penetrating"her secrets. Feminists, says MacKinnon, have finally realized that formen, "to know has meant to fuck." 38In a similar mood, Sandra Hardingsuggests that Newton's Principles of Mechanics could just as aptly becalled "Newton's Rape Manual." 39The New Jersey Project is inspired by such insights. As a teacher ofphilosophy, I suppose I should be happy to see profound issues in metaphysicsand the theory of knowledge being discussed in governmentpamphlets on educational reform. But it is quite clear that this discussionis more political than philosophical. New Jersey gets its theory of knowledgefrom feminist activists like Paula Rothenberg and Catharine Stimpson.That the state should underwrite a condemnation of "phallocentric"conceptions of reality and scientific knowledge is far more a tribute to theenergy and political influence of the feminist transformationists than toNew Jersey's profound appreciation of contemporary epistemology.