A COME-BACK OF ONE OF THE BASIC QUESTIONS
I take the fact of my being a woman as obvious and unchangeable. It was decided without my interference and came out by my birth, which happened back in the epoch before prenatal diagnoses. That’s probably the reason for my accepting all conditions, especially limitations, connected with the structure of female body and mind.
Apparently obvious division of the human genus into two sexes was publicly presented as doubtful or even questioned by many culture observers. Those who hide their heads in the send are going through hard times currently and quoting Janusz Kofta’s lyrics: “Naprawdę jaka jesteś, nie wie nikt, / To prawda niepotrzebna wcale mi…” (Eng. What you truly are nobody knows / This is a truth I don’t need at all..) is not of much help. The current issue of “Cywilizacja” (21/2007) is devoted to the different faces of femininity with a hope to persuade the doubting that the popular opinion from the song is loaded with a double error: firstly, understanding of the current social and family life strongly influences our understanding of the femininity phenomenon; secondly, the fact of “being a woman” easily undergoes philosophical, sociological, anthropological and theological interpretation.
It seems to me that the greatest controversy is brought about by the feminist treatment of sex as a product of culture, not nature. Barbara Kiereś has given the problem a label of ‘the problem of woman’s identity’ (Tożsamość kobiety: pomiędzy naturą a kulturą. Refleksja na kanwie myśli Edyty Stein / A woman’s identity: between nature and culture. Based on Edith Stein’s thoughts). According to Kiereś, a human being always participates in social life and develops relationships with other people as a sexual being, i.e. as a man – male or a man – female. That’s why it is difficult to underestimate the necessity to read sexuality correctly. The reading is easier if one reaches to the anthropological roots, especially to a so-called adequate anthropology as well as to the classical tradition and its key concept of human nature as a kind of stable and unchangeable structure present in every human: a biological and spiritual being. Going deeper into the topic we will also come across the concept of a human being as a creature experiencing itself as a bodily-and-spiritual subject of its own actions (personalism) or across the Christian theology of a human body, brilliantly explained by Karol Wojtyła, according to which a man finds his identity in the relation to God and is always a man of a specified sex.
Barbara Kiereś’s article was complemented by a presentation of the philosophy of Edith Stein’s (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), who used a concept of species – a core of the soul, i.e. bodily and spiritual structure enabling to undertake appropriate action, profession or vocation. The philosopher expressed the peculiarity of womanhood as a divine vocation for every woman and as a task imposed by nature involving caring for others and upbringing children, to which women are predisposed by their ability to be empathic and bear children or their spiritual and more aware experiencing of the body.
Professor Mieczysław A. Krąpiec OP refers to Edith Stein in the interview Zrozumieć kobiecość (Understanding womanhood). Stein stressed characteristically female ways of perceiving the reality, i.e. paying attention to details and intuition (contrary to the male need for deduction and reasoning). In social life, these natural predispositions ascribed to women bear the fruit of family stability and productivity, with family always based on womanhood. “To be a woman is to be a person as a co-creator of humanity and human culture” says Krąpiec and immediately stresses that self-realization through femininity and masculinity has a point only if we consider the difference in the vegetative structure between them. A completely separate issue is the one of personal characteristics: intellectual cognition, love, freedom, which all show human transcendence and dignity in relation to nature. Another important issue are personality traits, which are revealed in relation to people, or subjectivity of law, absoluteness and dignity. Both groups of characteristics don’t fall under sexual conditioning. If I understand correctly, human nature of a woman or a man depends on the unquestionable philosophical legacy of humanity, to which too much interference comes currently from the exaggerated importance of sociology, which digs out the issues solved by philosophical anthropology a long time ago. As the philosopher remarks, the current evolution in the understanding of woman’s role does not apply to “biology only, but rather to social status; but does it mean developing the human part, the human nature of womanhood? By changing one’s ways (e.g. having women take over male functions in social, political, legal and professional life) the essence does not change.”
Even if we accept the primacy of human nature over womanhood (or the complementary nature of the two), it is difficult to deny some point to those who stress the meaning of women’s role models and conducts changing at the different stages of the Polish history. Dorota Pauluk’s article (Modele kobiecości dawniej i dziś / Womanhood’s models – in the past and today) shows the wide range of possibilities, starting with the roles of mothers, wives, which are strongly respected according to researchers. These roles are strengthened by the Christian tradition and the cult of the Virgin Mary in Poland, and had they peak at the turn of the 19th century. Its continuation to present time is represented by the ideal of matka-Polka [mother-Pole] that unites patriotic and religious elements and always comes to the fore in the face of some threat. This ideal may offer some explanation as for why the West admires the resourcefulness and organisational skills of the Polish women, these characteristics making them a mass import product as house-keeping ladies for the European and American middle class.
Later in the article, the author elaborates on women as cultural leaders in the Polish class society and unofficial but significant influence exerted by them on politics. This model from the Romantic era was embodied by a female patriot fighting for independence (just remember Emilia Plater). Then Marxism made a woman undergo intensive indoctrination and masculinisation, evoking a healthy reaction in many families, who turned to the protection of traditional values, i.e. a common table, home upbringing and family celebration.
Up to this point the methodology of the author’s research, supported by the quotes from the literature on the subject, is unobjectionable for me. Unfortunately, when characterizing the modern roles of women, Dorota Pauluk follows the well bitten track, using material from the mass media, which, according to her, promote liberalism, moral relativism and feminism. I find it difficult to accept this top-down approach, which is not supported by strong arguments or convincing examples and still concerns the important issue of the current concept of a human being that make social structures dominate over morality. I would rather expect the author to provide a deep analysis stemming from careful observation of the not-mediated reality, which would made it possible to escape well-known simplifications and copying interpretational schemata.
I cannot promise that after reading “Cywilizacja” we will get closer to answering the question of the value of womanhood in the modern world. The topic is interesting for too many people to ignore it, which for all of us means a great come back to the basic questions.
Beata Pieńkowska
Translated by Anna Skrajna