Insight 1.

5
ain’t i a rational being?

Katerina Sergidou is a feminist activist

and PhD candidate in Feminist and
Gender Studies and Social
Anthropology at the University of the
Basque Country (UPV-EHU) and
Panteion University of Social and
Political Sciences in Athens, Greece. She
is a recipient of the State Scholarship
Foundation (IKY) of Greece, and her
dissertation focuses on women's
participation in the Carnival of Cadiz
(Andalusia) from a feminist
anthropological perspective. She holds a
first degree in history from the National
and Kapodistrian University of Athens,
and is currently engaged in Oral History
research at Panteion University.
 For the past few weeks, on the Greek press and media, there have been
numerous calls on Greek feminists to engage in “calm” and “reasoned” dialogue
without “arguing loudly.” The feminists’ “loud” and “unreasonable” voices are being
raised against a new law passed by the Greek parliament that enforces obligatory joint
custody of children even in cases where divorce has been granted on the basis of violent
and cruel behavior of parents towards each other. As these calls to feminists to engage
in "rational dialogue" instead of "quarreling" were being made, three historical feminist
texts have been on my mind. I see no point in arguing about their essentialist features,
or making the kind of criticisms we might have made had they been written today; they
need to be approached in tandem with the era in which they were written. But it does
make sense to retrieve what keeps them fiery and alive to this day. It is worth looking at
the threads that connect us to the women who wrote them and identify the political
affinities of those who accuse us of engaging in irrational dialogues, whether in the past
or today.

Two-hundred twenty years ago

The first text is Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of The Rights of Woman that
was written in 1792. In her essay, following contemporary rules of debate, this English
writer, responding to the established arguments of the time that women are incapable
not only of rational discussion but, also, of rational decision-making, and arguing
against the injunction that disallowed women’s right to education, attempted to prove
that women are capable of rational thought and discussion. In some places,
Wollstonecraft even defends (what she calls) "masculine" qualities in order to prove that
they are not just masculine virtues. Thus, she writes, “Many individuals have more
sense than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant
struggle for an equilibrium, without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern
their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern”
(Wollstonecraft, M., 2014 [1792]: 33) and elsewhere she comments, “My own sex, I
hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their
fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood,
unable to stand alone.”(Wollstonecraft, 2014 [1792]: 31)
Wollstonecraft calmly and methodically claims space for her gender, using the
reasoning proper to her era. Nowadays we would not use those arguments. We would
defend emotions, say that there is no such thing as absolute truth, or, in any case, we
would defend our vulnerability. Even better, we would respect the different ways we
would express our feminist ideas. But this 1792 text is not only feminist in content, but
also it is Wollstonecraft's bold expression of opinion, taking on gods and demons, all
the while staring Rousseau in the eye. We can almost hear her say something like, We
will sit at the table, like it or not, on our own terms. So, in 1792 Wollstonecraft claims a seat
at the table by focusing on the commonalities between women and men, rather than on
their differences.

One-hundred seventy years ago

The second text is the intervention of the Black freed slave Sojourner Truth,
which she delivered in 1851 at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, entitled
“Ain't I a Woman?” Truth was the only Black woman at the Convention, where, during
her ex tempore intervention, and among other things, she pointed out,

"Den dey talks 'bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it?" ("Intellect,"
whispered some one near.) "Dat's it, honey. What's dat got to do wid
women's rights or nigger's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and
yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-
measure full?" And she pointed her significant finger, and sent a keen
glance at the minister who had made the argument. The cheering was
long and loud." Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have
as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wan't a woman! Whar did your
Christ come from?" Rolling thunder couldn't have stilled that crowd, as
did those deep, wonderful tones, as she stood there with outstretched
arms and eyes of fire. Raising her voice still louder, she repeated, "Whar
did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to
do wid Him." .(Truth, S., 1875 [1851] 134-135)

The Sojourner Truth argument seeps from every pore of the Βlack slave's body.
She asks her white sisters: “Ain’t I a woman?” In her world, there are only gods and
women. She develops a logical argument founded on a Christian myth: Where did your
Christ come from? From God and a woman! We can imagine her saying something like
I have a right to sit at the table too. I am also a woman as she addresses her sisters, to whom
she shows her Black female body and wonders how it differs from the white bodies of
the women in the room.

Thirty-one years ago

The third text is a relatively modern one. I like to call it "when Nancy Fraser gets
on a tractor and flattens Habermas." It is the delightful “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A
Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” The essay was published a
few months after the 1990 revised edition of Habermas' book The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere, which contains the well-known new preface to the
German edition, where Habermas attempts to correct his conception of the public arena
by conceding, for example, that the exclusion of women was a constitutive element in
the ideal bourgeois political public sphere that he had described. Habermas, of course,
maintains the core of the logic on which he based his original argument of 1962, when
the book was first published, namely an idealistic conception of the bourgeois public
sphere and a belief in the efficacy of rational dialogue that can lead to consensus, even
between unequal people.
In her article, Nancy Fraser urges us to rethink the concept of the public sphere.
Drawing on the work of Joan Landes, Mary Ryan, and Geof Eley, Fraser argues that
Habermas glosses over the liberal sphere and obscures the multiple exclusions on
which it is founded. Using the example of women in order to show that the urban
public sphere is constituted of exclusions, Fraser goes on to highlight other exclusions
based on race, educational level, and class. She refutes Habermas´s claim that "it is
possible for interlocutors in a public sphere to bracket status differentials and to
deliberate ‘as if’ they were social equals; the assumption, therefore, that societal equality
is not a necessary condition for political democracy.” (Fraser, N., 1990:62) Fraser writes
with the first and second waves of feminism behind her. A lot of water has flown under
the bridge since Wollstonecraft and Truth claimed their seats as equals at the debating
table. Fraser points out that we cannot speak "as if we were equal." We can take this
literally and metaphorically, namely that the poor, the illiterate, and other social
marginalized groups are often muted in the face of the words of the powerful, even
when they theoretically have the opportunity to sit down at the table together and
conduct a “rational” dialogue. In short, the question is not even whether a reasonable
dialogue can take place, but whether there is even the possibility for them to speak in
the first place.
So, then, we must ask ourselves: what exactly does “reasonable dialogue” mean?
Does it mean one without tension? Does it mean using arguments that are free of
violence? Does it mean restraining passion to a permissible low key? Is there only one
way to be "rational" and no other? Is there no room in a conversation for anger, grief, a
sense of injustice or for feelings of solidarity? Should oppressed and exploited groups
“watch their mouth” and sit quietly and dutifully at the corner of the debating table?
Under conditions of inequality, there can, by no means, exist free zones of non-violent
speech.
Three women, feminists in different ways, from different positions, in different
times. Mary Wollstonecraft, Sojourner Truth and Nancy Fraser write and speak out
boldly, unruly, with "rational" yet passionate arguments that cause a stir in the room as
they are being written. Nonetheless, the argument remains the same, it sits like a curse
upon our heads: "You're too angry, you're extreme, you're not rational."
Héléne Cixous, in "The Laugh of the Medusa, " proposes an alternative. She
enters the room loaded with ammunition words and says: “Nearly the entire history of
writing is confounded with the history of reason, of which it is at once the effect, the
support, and one of the privileged alibis. It has been one with the phallocentric
tradition. It is indeed that same self-admiring, self-stimulating, self-congratulatory
phallocentrism,” (Cixous, H., 1976: 879) to continue elsewhere “Listen to a woman
speak at a public gathering (if she hasn't painfully lost her wind). She doesn't "speak,"
she throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes
into her voice, and it's with her body that she vitally supports the "logic" of her speech.”
(Cixous, H., 1976: 881)
When all is said and done each of us can choose the manner, place, and time of
her writing and speaking. She can respond, argue, or even remain silent. She will
certainly have her ir-rationalities (παρα-λόγους).

Note

The original version of this article was published in Greek on social media, in April
2021. I am grateful to Neni Panourgia for reading it and soliciting it for Insight. I am
also grateful to my thesis supervisor, anthropologist Margaret Bullen for editing this
text in English.

REFERENCES
Cixous, Hélène. 1976. "The Laugh of the Medusa." Signs. Vol.1, No. 4 (Summer), 875-
893.
Fraser, Nancy. 1990. "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of
Actually Existing Democracy." Social Text. (25/26): 56-80
Habermas, Jürgen. 1990. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp.
Truth, Sojourner, Narrative and book of life. 1875 [1851]. Boston:
Published for the author.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, and Eileen Hunt Botting.2014 [1792]. Vindication of the Rights
of Woman. New Haven &London :Yale University Press books