Credit-taking feminism

The more I think on it, the more I find myself really liking Megan McArdle's post this morning on movement feminism's agency problem (much more so than the fellow commentor she quotes, so I recommend scrolling past that lengthy gray quote box).

And I actually attach to it even more as a critique of liberalism in general. Obviously I find her thoughts appealing because they're caveated with a long concession to the liberal case against bootstraps thinking, but even more so, I think it isolates a clear problem with the "we are all products of our society" argument without devolving into conservative blather about self-reliance.

In her words:

"I think that conservatives tend to give themselves too much credit for doing things that were enabled by a solid middle-class upbringing. As I wrote a number of years ago, it's easy and true to point out that poor teenagers wouldn't stay poor if they finished school, didn't have babies out of wedlock, and eschewed criminal activity--but how many of us had the courage to defy our parents and peers, drop out of high school, and sell drugs? Every time I think about how much my parents did for me just by choosing a peer group that valued college, I close my eyes and thank my lucky stars.

The problem of poverty is not that it's impossible to get out of -- lots of people do. It isn't even that you need to be some sort of superhero. The problem is that poor kids have no margin for error. I got to be a screw up who nearly flunked out of college, and thanks to parents and schools that cared desperately about my fate, nonetheless turn it all around, pull a 4.0 in my major, and graduate on time. The first time a poor kid pulls that kind of crap, he's back at home looking for minimum wage work.

But if the right goes too far in congratulating people for pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, I think the left often goes too far in crediting nebulous social forces over individual agency. It's not only incorrect, but also, it seems dangerously passive....

... it seems to me that celebrating your courage and hard work is a fundamentally feminist action. You don't need to deny the concept of privilege to recognize that we are not only products of society--that, in the words of Scout Finch, virtuous people are those who do the most, but those who do the best they can with what they have. When you say I did this, you send the most important feminist message at all--that women have the power, and the right, to improve their lives."