Sorority: Why Solidarity Between Women Is So Important
Sisterhood is one of those words that should appear in any feminism dictionary. Both it and its derivatives (“greetings sórores”, “sororear”, etc.) speak to us about an idea: solidarity and cooperation between women. In other words, it is a term that is becoming increasingly popular because individualism among women is losing followers.
In this article we will see What exactly does sorority refer to? and why the word has appeared related to feminism and in general the currents of left-wing activism.
One of the aspects that causes the most controversy about feminism has to do with its tendency, with nuances, to give preferential treatment to the feminine, the experiences that only women live. From a non-feminist perspective, the concept of sorority reflects just that: a recently created word that draws attention for being, apparently, a way of avoiding the use of a term “fraternity”, because it is masculine and refers to the siblings.
But the interesting thing about this choice of words is that it has the power to make us question things. Instead of thinking that the term sorority is part of a strategy to avoid everything that refers to men, it can make us wonder why there are so few words with feminine connotations that apply to all human beings, men and women.
When we say sorority we are referring not only to solidarity between women, but we also take into account the context in which this solidarity occurs. And that context has to do with the discrimination and historical sexism that occur and have occurred for millennia through what in feminist theory is known as patriarchy.
The fact that “fraternal” comes from “brothers” and that it is used regardless of the gender of the people to whom it is applied can be considered a simple anecdote, something without the greatest political or social importance. In reality, right off the bat few people would bother to spend some time thinking about this.
However, it is still strange, if we think about it, that the default word is used interchangeably for male groups or for mixed groups, since this creates situations of ambiguity: when we say “brothers”, are they all men or are there also at least one woman in the group?
Simone de Beauvoir, one of the philosophers who laid the foundations of second-wave feminism, gave one of the keys to understanding this. She wrote that the meaning of the feminine and the concept of what it is to be a woman is, basically, what is left over when you equate the human and the masculine. That is to say, historically, due to a set of unequal power dynamics between men and women known as patriarchy humanity is assumed to be equivalent to masculinity, while the feminine is defined as the negation of what is not masculine and, therefore, not human.
Thus, for Beauvoir the reference figure is always a man, and the woman emerges by subtracting and adding qualities to this “mold.” It is what is not masculine, “the other.”
For example, some brands offer a line of products that are made up of the women’s version of their flagship product, and to do so they usually market it playing with the color pink. However, neither the original product can be considered the male version of the product, nor does the color it has make it evident that it is for men. Normally the feminine is a subsidiary of the masculine and sorority is one of the many initiatives that combat this principle to, through language, influence how we analyze social reality and inequalities between the sexes.
Of course, the idea that by modifying language it is possible to favor the establishment of dynamics of equality has been highly debated and criticized, especially from theoretical positions linked to philosophical materialism, such as Marxism. This is because it is viewed with skepticism, first, that changing the language significantly modifies ideas in the sense intended from the beginning, and second, that what is important is the change of ideas before a material change has occurred in the objective reality in which people live.
Starting from inequality
One of the ideas on which the concept of sorority is based is that women, by virtue of being so, are in a disadvantageous position. That is why they must cooperate to access rights and freedoms that have been historically denied to them.
Such a complicated task cannot be faced from individualism but it requires the joint action of many people, capable of breaking down old dynamics of submission: micro-machismo, unjust laws, work environments in which women have more difficulties to prosper, etc.
The equivalence between women
As we have seen, the concept of sisterhood is the idea that expresses the extent to which cooperation and solidarity between women and men is important. awareness of the dehumanization of women It is understood that, since women’s specific problems go beyond the individual, they must be faced not from individualism, but through solidarity between equals.
The word itself, sorority, emphasizes the fact that it only applies to people of the female gender, since “soror” is another way of saying “blood sister,” and at the same time reinforces the idea that Women are equal in their disadvantaged situation compared to men.
Thus, it is not that men are despised, but rather that it is understood that, since they are not subject to gender, it does not make sense to expect a similar structure of cooperation that is transversal among all men. Such a type of alliance would hardly have any objectives to achieve, given that they have already been achieved from the beginning.
