| Since the mid-1800s many women, having self-identified as feminists, have worked to provide women with more access to and legitimation in the public sphere. Curiously, other women have, simultaneously, argued against their own emancipation, opposing everything from suffrage to passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, and today encouraging women to abandon workplace gains in favor of motherhood. Although some research has attended to this anti-feminist discourse, the rhetorical strategies of opposition have not been fully assessed. Since even today some women have found a following for gender traditionalism by arguing for the determining power of biology, such oppositional discourse warrants careful scrutiny. A textual analysis of oppositional rhetoric in each of feminism's main waves reveals a recurring dependence on several rhetorical strategies, including repetitive use of appeals to biological destiny. Analysis of these rhetorical tactics reveals that despite a fair amount of consistency, oppositional rhetoric has slowly co-opted some of the major tenets of feminism, so that each wave of opposition appears less conservative than the one before. A close inspection of the major themes of oppositional discourse reveals that, as feminism continues to transform the rhetorical scene, advocates of gender traditionalism have increasingly relied on nostalgic appeals to make their conservatism seem less threatening in the public sphere. Meanwhile, in other respects, oppositional discourse continues to rely on older arguments which presume women are naturally nurturing, morally superior, and rightly limited to the presumed pleasures of motherhood. Thus the rhetorical supposition stipulating that "biology is destiny" remains an effective oppositional strategy requiring further analysis if the gains achieved by women are to be preserved and expanded. |
