Finally, what difference does it make in each case that a paradigm has been borrowed from another discipline? In both cases it reveals the limitations of a feminist theorizing that begins by already knowing what masculine and feminine mean rather than by investigating how those meanings are produced. On the one hand, feminist theory, even as it protests the status quo, protects it, by accepting male-female difference as the meaning of gender; on the other hand, by focusing on a system as ephemeral as fashion, differences within a single category (women's styles) become foregrounded in such a way that gender itself might disappear. Fore Hare-Mustin and Marecek the multiple meanings produced and sustained by a postmodernism that says truth is what we agree on, and for Silverman the refusal of the boundary between 'old' and 'new' represented by vintage clothing, offer a way out of reified binaries that prove insufficient for thinking about how masculine and feminine, as well as the humanities and social sciences, are contaminated by each other.
This comment about certain forms of feminism reaffirming certain gender norms echos to more current arguments about LGBTQ+ assimilation. Many of the campaigns for same-sex marriage rights (ex. HRC) promote the idea that same-sex marriages are basically identical to straight marriages. The argument against this framework says that it accepts definitions of love and marriage and couples and family, not challenging or changing our society’s understanding of these concepts. The organizations rely on the stereotypical images of marriage in order to progress for LGBTQ+ rights to marriage. Lots of early women activists like Mary Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Cady Stanton theorized around the assumption that women as a gender were specially domestic. Many of the English and American suffragettes altered their tactics, largely abandoning women of color in the struggle, to adopt a cult of motherhood and domestic femininity in order to argue for the rights of white women. The “separate but equal” mindset says that even though women and men are different, they are both valuable. So this type of thinking would say, while men can do heavy lifting, women are more compassionate. Women can teach children, and men can balance the finances. Each gender has its strong points, and both should be appreciated for what they can do to support society. Implicit in this thinking is that there are inherent differences between men and women, and it largely accepts what woman and man “mean,” as Herrmann and Stewart say. While recognizing women’s disadvantaged place in a patriarchal society and advocating for more women’s legal rights, they agree to the whole concept that men and women are inherently different, naturally, biologically, socially, etc. The focus in this line of thinking is often on “sex difference,” which has fallen out of favor with people who prefer theories about gender socialization, and gender and sex fluidity, in line with queer studies.
