The Varying Degrees of Feminist Culture

There are certainly varying degrees of feminist culture, and this obviously renders varying notions of love from the feminist point of view in general. It is true that in most cases love and the ideologies surrounding it are in support of the main arguments in any feminist theory. When we think of love we don’t necessarily think of the negative side of the token, though many feminists might argue in a critical manner that, “Love, perhaps even more than child bearing is the pivot of women’s oppression today.” (Firestone, 43). In fact, many fronts of the feminist movements argue that love can be seen as the core oppressor in the heterosexual relationship.

The notion of love can be critiqued by a feminist as being something that preoccupies her. She ‘pours’ her energy into giving herself and her love, and in this sense it can be thought that instead of contributing as males contribute to culture, this is the female contribution. That all men’s accomplishments in thinking and creating were products of the woman’s love. This way what woman’s strives her entire life to provide sees product in the male achievement; which can model the clich behind every good man is a good woman. So woman provide the backbone, or real substance of the work of men and this is what Firestone refers to as the ‘parasitical relation between the female and male class; both of whom are surviving off of what the other is providing.

The process of love itself is seen as the pinnacle of selfishness. The final stages of love involve complete openness physically and emotionally by demonstrating how you want to be treated. The selfishness in this sense is the attempts to improve one’s self by means of another. In fact, this is not necessarily seen as a problem most of the time. This so called ‘healthy selfishness’ in which two feed off the enriching interactions of the other can in fact be qualities found in the most successful relationships.

The ideals of falling ‘in’ love are criticized as filled with deception, but a system of deception that seems to fixate in a justified way. It is thought that when a man falls in love he needs to idealize this woman. This way he justifies to himself accepting or settling. But on the other hand this idealism isn’t thought to come from the woman’s falling in love. For a woman to love this ‘false’ love which she is aware of she first needs proof that it is genuine. In a sense the entire process of this falling in love is called, by Firestone an “alteration of the male vision.” Aware of the lie, woman sees love as her only bondage. Her identity depends on her love life as she loves herself only once a man finds her deserving of that.

Whatever the outlook of love and falling in love, the relations between male and female will never cease to exist as they’ve done throughout time. The context in which we see the roles of love in these relationships can never be fully analyzed or understood through any finite number of generalizations. The only sure notion is that of their existence now and far into the future.

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