Elisabeth Badinter

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Elisabeth Badinter (2015)

Élisabeth Badinter (born March 5, 1944 as Élisabeth Bleustein-Blanchet in Boulogne-Billancourt near Paris ) is a French philosopher and professor at the elite university École polytechnique in Paris.

biography

Badinter comes from a Jewish-French family from Paris and studied philosophy and sociology at the Sorbonne . She was qualified to teach philosophy at secondary schools in 1973. In addition to her professorship, Badinter has been on the supervisory board of the international communications company Publicis founded by her father Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet since 1987 , and since 1996 she has been president of the supervisory board. In 2004 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège / Université de Liège .
At the age of 22 she married the lawyer and politician Robert Badinter . She had three children within three and a half years during her final exams at the university. Very early on in her youth, she dealt with Beauvoir's feminism . She describes her parents' home as open, the equal, educated, active woman was a matter of course for the family. As feminism began to rise in France in the early 1970s, Élisabeth Badinter discovered the intricacies of domestic life as a mother.

Philosophy and socio-political views

In her numerous essays and books, Élisabeth Badinter deals with the history , philosophy and sociology of women in their historical context; Badinter's special passion is the Age of Enlightenment .

Badinter represents the line of feminism that emphasizes gender equality and universalism . Your attention is focused on the general validity of human rights for women and men and against the legal, economic and social disadvantage of women. The advocates of difference thinking underline a fundamental difference between the sexes. Women's rights need to be emphasized, because the universalist theory has always disadvantaged women by equating men with humans. According to this view, women need special protection and active struggle against their oppression. American feminists have been fighting violence against women since the 1980s and, in Badinter's view, fueled distrust of men.

She advocates abortion law and a law on equality between women and men in the work environment and in the family. In 1992 France passed the first law against sexual harassment . She regrets that it only punishes the abuse of power and thus reassigns women to a subordinate hierarchical position. At that time, many feminists and NGOs began a struggle for a broader scope, which also extends to harassment among colleagues or in public spaces. In Badinter's view, feminism split in those years - into an academic-theoretical branch, to which she also belongs, and into an active, militant direction. Badinter regrets the increasing influence of Anglo-Saxon radicalism in Europe and is of the opinion that hateful slogans are the wrong way ( Fausse Route , the French title).

Motherly love

Badinter became known in 1980 with her provocative book L'Amour en plus (German: Mutterliebe , 1981), in which she completely does away with the old idea of ​​the innate maternal instinct . From the moment they are born, women are by no means the loving, devoted mothers who forego their own lives in order to give the children a good life, but have in the course of history - specifically Badinter considered the period from the 17th century to the present day in France - cared very little for their offspring and pursued their own work or pleasure out of need or pleasure. The outstanding position of the child, which seems so self-evident today, and the social glorification of motherly love and breastfeeding are discourses of modern times. Mother's love is therefore not a natural, unalterable instinct , not a component of feminine nature, but a human feeling that may or may not be present in very different forms. Motherhood has a lot of design options, and the different ways people treat their children in different epochs and societies shows that there are many possible solutions for raising children.

Society without love

Badinter describes that before the 18th century, neither conjugal love nor love for children were social values. Family relationships were determined by fear , not tenderness. The Aristotelian legacy, Christian theology , political absolutism , they all contributed to this image of society in which the value of human life - especially that of the young, which was much more fragile then than it is today - was measured very little. Children were scary or a burden, especially on the poor. At best, these children were exposed to indifference. They did not appear in literature, nor did pediatric medicine exist before the end of the 19th century . The death of a child was not mourned, it was taken for granted. However, this attitude is not sufficient to explain that indifference, because many children would not have died if their mothers had cared for them more and breastfed them. Such cruelty is another aspect of motherhood that Badinter points out. The refusal to breastfeed, which at the time often led to the death of the baby, was the beginning of the rejection of the children. In the 17th century, breastfeeding was considered unrefined and not worthy of a lady of higher society; it was believed - and still believes today in some cases - that breastfeeding disfigured the breast and made participation in social life and married life impossible. The rejection of motherhood and marriage was the subject of the very first feminist movements of the Precious in Paris who longed for intellectual education and freedom for women. 85% of women and 79% of men in France were illiterate at the time . So little attention was paid to children in the 17th and 18th centuries that their common treatment corresponded to unconscious abortion or even killing. Immediately after the birth , the child was taken to a wet nurse in the countryside for a few years , where around two thirds of the children perished in inhumane conditions. Those who survived spent a few years at home before being sent to a monastery or boarding school. About 5% of the children were abandoned.

A new myth emerges: mother's love

Attitudes towards children only changed in France at the end of the 18th century: the myth of maternal instinct and the spontaneous love of every mother for her child emerged. Doctors, moralists and administrators tried, among other things, for economic reasons to maintain as large a number of state people as possible. With this, the woman was upgraded as a mother, the father as an authority became increasingly less important. The woman was primarily responsible for the well-being and prosperity of her children and was to be happily absorbed in this noble duty. Enlightenment philosophy replaced the theory of the natural and divine origins of paternal violence with the idea of ​​the limitation of that power by the needs of children and the idea of ​​equality between men and women in upbringing. Jean-Jacques Rousseau describes the new family in his social contract. Parents have a moral obligation to look after their children well and to raise them to be independent people who, after growing up, no longer have any obligations to their parents. During the French Revolution , the position of wives and mothers was also raised, and love marriages were common. Through the new pursuit of happiness and love in the family, the equality between men and women has increased significantly, at least in the family area. The woman was no longer subject to the authority of the man - on a par with the children - but, as the companion of the man, the basis for the happy family.

The 19th century was marked by calls to be a good mother; The bad mother was ruthlessly criticized. Slowly, the idea that mother's care and tenderness are essential to the baby's development and well-being seeped into the general consciousness of the French. Fewer and fewer children were given to wet nurses, and breastfeeding was strongly promoted. The now unimaginable tying of babies with the changing cushion was hardly used any more. The new physical freedom of the babies made more tender relationships with the mother possible, but this increased the workload for the mother considerably. With the new image of the caring mother, a sense of guilt crept into the mothers not to live up to this ideal - a pressure that weighs on women (and their relationships with their children) to this day.

The woman as the main person responsible for the happiness of children

The psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud made the woman to the most responsible for the happiness of her child, she wore her so a huge task, practically excludes the employment. The theory of natural female masochism stylizes the ideal mother as infinitely capable of suffering. The mother experiences the physical pain of giving birth and breastfeeding as pleasure and joy. She finds fulfillment in her children through self-sacrifice. Affectively disturbed children have a poor, incompetent mother who is herself unsuitable for motherhood due to mental disorders. Although it was not meant to be moralizing, it increased feelings of fear and guilt in the mothers.

Changeable motherhood

The feminist movements of the 1960s criticized the Freudian image of the mother and pointed to the large discrepancy between reality and the idea of ​​the normal, passive, masochistic woman. The myth of natural motherhood has been shattered. Mother's love is no longer a matter of course, maternal care is work that requires payment. Mothers' feelings depend on historical and social context, on education and income. Mother's love is a changeable feeling, not an instinct. The fathers take more interest in their children, they become more motherly, while the women become more masculine and adopt a distant view of motherhood.

Female ambition

In the 18th century, when women were still committed to the role of housewife and mother , when simple women worked hard and at most women of the aristocracy were looking for social diversion, the phenomenon of female ambition was viewed critically. Ambition challenged the social order and was seen as pure selfishness . While men had a variety of options in shaping their lives, women were destined to show tenderness and care. However, in the century of the Enlightenment, two different women, Émilie du Châtelet and Louise d'Épinay, made their way as scholars and writers and educators, even though women hardly received any education at the time. The two sought their luck in their work. As a woman, Émilie du Châtelet was severely disadvantaged in science, women were encouraged to pray and remain silent, and aestheticism had a bad reputation. Louise d'Epinay's endeavors to raise her children herself and to publish works on the pedagogy of happiness and the upbringing of girls in addition to her pseudo memoirs met with great resistance in a time of absolute indifference to children. The great innovations in her writings, in which she addresses mothers directly for the first time, are the spiritual equality of the sexes and the importance of learning for female happiness. She actively opposes Jean-Jacques Rousseau , who propagated female dependence and the coercion of the hearth and home by making women responsible for their happiness. The spiritual emancipation of women means that they cannot rely on men in their search for happiness. Émilie du Châtelet also found her salvation in study and education as the independent basis of happiness when she commented on Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica and translated it into French and wrote her own physical writings. Badinter sees the two women as forerunners of today's lifestyles, with the only difference that women today often want both: fulfilled motherhood and the realization of personal ambition and the need for recognition.

The male identity

In the early 1990s, Badinter studied the new image of man after the dissolution of the patriarchal order in the western world. ( XY. De l'identité masculine ; German: XY - The identity of the man, 1993). In the 19th and 20th centuries , the model of different, opposing sexes applied, with the man holding the more powerful position of this dualism . The Biologism fixed the traditional roles: mother, hearth and home versus policy, labor, professional, creative activity. Badinter traces the controversy of feminist approaches. The differentialists adhere to sociobiology and see the sex, behavior and nature of men as determined by biology. His position of domination is established through the man's natural aggressiveness . Badinter criticizes the fact that this limited view of nature leads to oppression and limited opportunities, because men and women are condemned to constantly play the same roles. The equality model emphasizes the diversity of life plans. Simone de Beauvoir's statement also applies to men: "You are not born a man, you become one". Masculinity is constructed , learned and can therefore be changed. Badinter tries to find the general characteristics of the masculine between these two poles.

The construction of masculinity

Masculinity begins within the first love relationship - in the symbiosis with the mother. Only when this phase is successful, i.e. when the right dose of motherly love is found between cold and clasps, can the male child distance himself sufficiently from the mother to be able to live his masculinity. At the beginning there is the demarcation from the feminine, the experience that masculinity must be developed in contrast to maternal femininity. Many cultures commit this separation from the loving mother with circumcision and other brutal initiation rites, which leave the boys traumatized but thereby accept them into the community of men. Through this radical change, the son belongs to the father and escapes dependence on the mother. The longer the symbiosis with the mother lasts, the more painful the initiation . Girls escape this artificial separation through the natural transition to women - menstrual bleeding - and possible identification with the mother. There is always one wish that remains with men, namely to be recognized as a man. In today's western society, athletic competitions take on the task of making men feel like tough, strong, real men, which used to be done in the strict boarding schools and military training of the 19th and 20th centuries. Men distinguish themselves in three ways to emphasize their masculinity: they are not a baby (separation from the mother), they are not a girl (separation from the female sex) and they are not homosexual (emphasis on their heterosexuality ). In Badinter's view, male identity finding is harder and more difficult than that of women.

Male ideals

The now common but unattainable male ideal of power, success, strength, and submission leads to great frustration if these goals are not achieved. Men feel imperfect and compensate for this with an exaggerated masculinity that includes violence, self-destruction and aggressiveness towards others. Badinter also has nothing to do with the model of the soft man of the 1970s and 80s, because in both models only one gender is assigned characteristics that are alien to the opposite sex. Badinter takes a firm stand against the traditional dualism of the sexes. She advocates the androgynous human being, who can be alternately female and male, depending on the requirements of the situation. It's about the addition of complementary elements instead of strict duality.

For Badinter, masculinity is already associated with femininity in many ways. Much more will change if the fathers take an active part in looking after their sons and daughters from birth onwards. Only then can men mutilated by patriarchy reconcile their maternal and paternal inheritance and become whole men. The contrasts between the sexes are less now than ever before, and gender equality is widely realized despite the undeniable differences.

I am you

In L'un est l'autre (1986) (German: I am you ) is about the androgynous people and revolutionized the relationship between men and women. Their inventory reads: The patriarchy is now finally over, there is no longer any gender segregation . The marriage has changed from a pension institution to a love affair. The number of marriages is going down. Women could be active and successful like men; Compared to earlier times, the world of work is less gender-specific. With the possibilities of contraception and abortion, women are free to choose whether to have children. And if there were children, the chances of having a loving, caring father were greater than ever before, because more and more men are also living out these sides. Badinter believes that the model of gender similarity is triggered by the ideal of equality in democratic societies. Due to the distant attitude of women towards motherhood, fewer differences between the sexes are viewed as naturally given (→ biologism ). Through equality of the sexes, the struggle between them ceases and gives way to mutual understanding and familiarity. This also changed the couple relationships . Today these are no longer tied to the institution of marriage, are freely chosen and are characterized by friendship and tenderness , less by passion . The self-sacrificing love has given way to an egalitarian relationship of give and take, the I come more into the foreground.

Badinter begins her historical remarks on the relationship between the sexes in the Paleolithic : In the society of that time, women and men were divided into specific spheres with certain tasks, but both sides had powers and were equal to each other. The power of the hunter symmetrically corresponded to the life-giving reproductive power of women. It was only in the warrior societies of the Bronze Age that the change to patriarchy took place, and then mainly supported by the religions, which exchanged the various goddesses for all-powerful father deities. The women have been degraded to weak childbearing women and the power to procreate has passed to the man, who has strictly watched over female sexuality.

A direct consequence of patriarchy is the separation of the sexes, dualism, the secret struggle and fear between women and men. But the woman reappears in the man's imagination, namely in the areas in which he is most defenseless and to which he has no access: birth and death.

The decline of the patriarchate was accompanied by the disempowerment of the absolutist rulers and the churches. The separation of church and state, which Badinter sees as the beginning of the French Revolution , only became a reality outside of France in the 20th century. Since women gained control over their fertility in the second half of the 20th century, they have not only become economically active, but have also given up the object status that they had as mothers and housewives. Men have lost control of reproduction and are now dependent on the decision of women for or against children.

The wrong way

In her book Fausse Route (2003, German: The rediscovery of equality. Weak women, dangerous men and other feminist errors , 2004) Badinter draws a "critical balance of feminism". She sees a paradigm shift looming in Western society in the 1990s. Women have achieved a great deal professionally and socially, but find that men continue to work less and bear the bulk of the household, care and children. In feminism this is expressed in the “ victimization ” of women, in the attribution of their victim role. Successful female fighters are no longer the role model, but the oppressed woman who is constantly exposed to violence and hatred. By leveling the differences between women in generalizations and analogies, all economic, cultural and social differences are lost. Groups of women, which in themselves have little in common, can be compared. The achievements of early feminism, such as free sexuality and independence from motherhood, are being softened again. Thinking about differences in strict black-and-white patterns sees women as the good, the morally superior, the peaceful victims. This dualistic contrast overlooks the complex reality. The idea of ​​humanity split into men and women soon leads back to the long outdated definition of female nature . Badinter is particularly disturbed by the collective condemnation of one gender - men. Using violence as an example , she demonstrates that crime is not a purely male matter. Most of the time, however, the violence committed by women is hushed up, legitimized as an answer to male violence or dismissed as an insignificant marginal phenomenon. The sexuality has changed in recent times and is lived in such variety that the definition of normality is no longer possible. Badinter criticizes common feminism for classifying sexuality as good only if it is based on innocent, voluntary and mutual desire. Many feminists strictly reject prostitution and pornography . Badinter takes a more liberal stance and wants to leave both of them free. The consensus theory in feminism demands complete transparency in every sexual relationship, which must be expressed verbally, even - as some demanded - contractually. Badinter objects that women should be able to express their opinion and regrets that the unconscious, the mysterious of sexuality, the entire eroticism is lost when a preliminary contract is drawn up. Of course, she rejects any kind of rape , but she does not classify the woman giving in as a result of persuasion without the woman having given her explicit consent.

American feminism

American feminists, especially Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, question male sexuality as a whole. This culturalist variant of feminism fights against every kind of sexual power of men. She accuses the common segregation of sex and rape of being pulled from the male point of view. In this way, every heterosexual act is stylized as a potential rape and the penis is seen as a deadly weapon. Rape has become a paradigm of heterosexuality. In contrast, according to Dworkin, only either a retreat into female homosexuality or the civilization, democratization and appeasing of masculinity helps. For Dworkin, sexuality is characterized by intimacy, tenderness, cooperation and feeling. Badinter sees things differently and sees it as a step backwards into a traditional model of femininity. The violence of the instincts is not exclusively male, the libido is very complex and cannot be reduced to the four simple imperatives of Dworkin.

Feminist fallacies

For Badinter, American feminism is going in the wrong direction because it demands equality, which cannot exist, precisely where the differences between the sexes cannot be eliminated and are important, namely in sexuality, and on the other hand in all other areas Life, where Badinter wants to see equality, represents a differentialism. She criticizes the fact that women are always seen as those who suffer, as particularly in need of protection and as fundamentally differentiated from men. Committed to universalism, Badinter defends himself against the relativistic exceptions to the general validity of the law. She advocates that the laws should apply to everyone without exception, regardless of gender or race differences. The withdrawal to the different nature of women and men, the reduction to the biological is dangerous for women who could lose the freedoms they had laboriously fought for 30 years ago, such as being able to decide for themselves whether and when a woman wants children, if and how long she would like to breastfeed it or whether she would like to be employed without being exposed to social constraints. Badinter particularly defends himself against the bad habit of leaning against all women indiscriminately, and emphasizes that the differences between women in different life situations and social classes are significantly greater than between women and men with a similar lifestyle. All of these feminist errors , Badinter fears, will worsen relationships between women and men.

Others

In October 2017, Badinter accused France's media and politics of hushing up the Islamic anti-Semitism that was rampant in the banlieues. Badinter's appeal appeared in the news magazine L'Express , the translation of which was published in the German magazine Emma .

Works (in German)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Paula E. Hyman: Elisabeth Badinter . In: Jewish Women's Archives
  2. ↑ German: The rediscovery of equality. Weak women, dangerous men, and other feminist fallacies, 2004
  3. ↑ The mother's love. The story of a feeling from the 17th century until today . Piper, Munich 1981
  4. ↑ Elisabeth Badinter: Emilie, Emilie ou l'ambition feminine au xviiie siecle (1984) (German: Emilie, Emilie. Female design in the 18th century , Piper 1984)
  5. ↑ Elfi Hartenstein: Origin woman. Elisabeth Badinter: "XY - The Identity of Man" , SPIEGEL SPECIAL 5/1993
  6. ↑ I am you. The New Relationship Between Man and Woman, or The Androgynous Revolution , Piper 1988
  7. ↑ Review note Perlentaucher
  8. ↑ Review by Margret Nitsche, querelles.net
  9. ^ Elisabeth Badinter: The rediscovery of equality. Weak women, dangerous men, and other feminist fallacies , 2004
  10. ↑ FAZ.net October 19, 2017 / Jürg Altwegg : The perpetrators do it like the Nazis
  11. ^ Elisabeth Badinter: That is why everyone is silent! . Emma on October 25, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Badinter, Elisabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Badinter, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Boulogne-Billancourt