Compulsory Heterosexuality and Iris Young’s Feminist Theory of Structure

• In Event: Feminism and Politics

Abstract

Young has a theory of structure, and it is a feminist theory of structure. These two points are worth emphasizing because in her posthumously published books where readers typically encounter her most extensive discussions of structure, Global Challenges and Responsibility for Justice, Young writes in a way that obscures the feminist roots of her thinking about structure, removes her theory of structure from a feminist tradition of theory and politics, and submerges her own distinctive and critical voice. In its place, she repeatedly cites a cluster of white male thinkers as her major influences: Peter Blau, Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Yet in her earlier writing on structure, she regularly acknowledged that her thinking was deeply shaped by feminist theory and practice, and she explicitly criticized some of these same men for the masculinist limits of their thinking, thereby staking a claim to her distinctively feminist approach to theorizing structure.

Why did she come to disavow this feminist influence on her theory of structure in her later works? It is particularly remarkable that Young veiled the feminism in her thinking precisely at the point in her career when she could be said to have arrived at the center of the field: when she was a full professor at the University of Chicago. By applying Young’s method of structural analysis to her own work, I argue that her gradual occlusion of her feminism evidences both the increasing pressures on feminist political theorists to obscure their feminism as they rise through academic ranks, as well as their deep desire to be included in the field, even if it this sometimes comes at the expense of their feminism. I call these structural pressures on feminist political theorists ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s (2017) repurposing of Adrienne Rich’s (2003) concept, which Rich had developed in part by reworking Kathleen Gough’s (1975) characterization of male power. Ahmed describes compulsory heterosexuality in academia as “a requirement to live a life by citing men” (2017, 216). Examining Young’s writings on structure over time reveals the increasing pressure on her (and other feminist scholars) to comply with this requirement.

Why does this matter? I argue that writing in a way that obscures the influence of feminism has three important consequences for the reception of feminist work. (1) It leads to misunderstandings of feminists’ scholarship. I show how Young’s concept of structure has been frequently misunderstood to be only about materiality and formal institutions. Her much more capacious, feminist theory of structure (which also includes norms, practices, and embodied experiences) is not clearly communicated to readers who only engage her last publications, nor is her method of identifying structures through the use of feminist consciousness-raising techniques. (2) When feminists veil their feminism, they inadvertently encourage nonfeminist scholars to treat them as what I provocatively call FINOs (Feminists In Name Only), while ignoring the feminist content of their thinking. I argue that feminists should refuse the temptation to obscure our feminism, and instead write in a way that demands that our readers engage with it directly. (3) When feminists do not cite or self-cite feminist scholarship, they fail to leave behind a trail for curious readers to follow that would help them to learn about and engage with a rich tradition of feminist thinking. I argue that refusing to comply with the citational norms of compulsory heterosexuality will help expose readers to feminist theory, thereby keeping alive a vibrant tradition of feminist thinking.

Author

• Michaele L. Ferguson, University of Colorado, Boulder