Are Women Human? by Dorothy L. Sayers

Are Women Human? collects two essays by Dorothy Sayers on gender and women’s roles in society: the first, self-titled, was an address given to a Women’s Society in 1938; the second, “The Human-Not-Quite-Human”, deals with women’s rights within the Catholic church. The question the title of this collection asks is and yet is not tongue-in-cheek. Naturally everybody “knows” that women are human. But, as Sayers points out, in countless ways the world is still structured as if they weren’t. Sadly, a lot of what she describes hasn’t really changed in over seven decades. These essays are still as relevant today as they were in 1938.

Sayers begins the first essay by rejecting the term “feminism” – this didn’t surprise me (Virginia Woolf did the same, after all), nor did it lessen my appreciation for what she had to say. But it was interesting to notice that the reasons she gives for not being a feminist are the very same reasons why I do call myself one. Her problem with the term “feminism” has to do with the fact that she thinks it overemphasises the differences between the sexes instead of questioning them. She believes that we are first and foremost human beings, that men and women are a lot more alike than they are different, and that our different achievements have merely to do with different opportunities and forms of socialisation, rather than with different abilities. Therefore, she’s wary of anything that strengths or tries to naturalise these supposed differences.

This is a common misconception about feminism even today – in fact, my teenage self felt the same as Sayers. I don’t know whether it was any more accurate in the 1930’s than it is now, but I do know that in our days this line of thinking certainly does not describe the majority of those who call themselves feminists. Feminism is obviously not a monolith, and I have indeed seen the term be used to describe theories that are only thinly disguised versions of the ancient belief that boys-are-from-Mars-and-girls-are-from-Venus (hello, Carol Gilligan). But if I were to throw away a word every time it was used to express something different from what I mean by it, I’d have to revise the whole dictionary every few weeks.

Regardless of whether or not Dorothy Sayers called herself a feminist, these essays perfectly sum up my own thoughts on gender issues. With humour and insight, Sayers dares to question the gender binary altogether, as well as the majority of the world’s insistence on treating women as an amorphous category; as members of an alien class rather than has individual human beings. She says, for example, that it irritates her to be asked to give a “feminine perspective” on writing detective fiction. The distinction between knowledge and ability, she says, is an important one to keep in mind. Because historically women have been known to perform certain tasks (such as, say, looking after children) more often than men, as a general rule they have more knowledge of how these tasks are performed. But this doesn’t mean they have more of a natural inclination of a better ability to perform them. Likewise, when women enter jobs that have been traditionally assigned to men, such as writing, they don’t do it from a specifically “feminine” angle, nor are they magically able to tell you how all women would approach them. Because they’re simply human beings, their perspective on writing is really only that of a human being – unique, of course, but not necessarily any more different from a man’s than any given man’s is from another’s.

She also shares an anecdote about a man who asked her if she had grown up in a large house surrounded by brothers and male cousins – he thought that this was the only possible explanation for the fact that the dialogue between male characters in her Lord Peter Wimsey novels actually rang true. Sayers answered that actually, she was an only child and didn’t have any male friends until the age of twenty-five. The reason why her dialogue between men was accurate, she told him, was because she wrote it as the dialogue of any two human beings talking to each other. Oh Dorothy, I love you so. This actually touches on a huge pet peeve of mine, which is seeing people remark on how amazing it is that this or that novelist wrote a believable character of the opposite gender. To find this remarkable enough that it almost defies belief is to implicitly accept that the minds of men and women work so differently that it’s nearly impossible for a member of one gender to divine how the other thinks. We do often behave differently, of course, because we are expected to behave differently. But it’s not difficult for any perceptive and insightful observer to get these differences right. And anyway, I fully believe that the similarities largely surpass them.

There was nothing in Are Women Human? that I hadn’t guessed from reading Sayers’ novels, but it was wonderful to see her actually express her thoughts on gender. The only thing that I found slightly disappointing was that she seems to oppose violent protest of any kind when it comes to the fight for women’s rights. I don’t know what exactly she means by “violent” – naturally I’m not for bombing the houses of those who disagree with me, but I suspect that she used it to simply mean “loud”. Although I’m quiet and mild by nature, I hate to dismiss loudness and anger. Sometimes they’re more than called for, and I do appreciate those who express themselves in ways different than my own. But this is really just a side note. Overall, I loved these essays, and I’ll be pointing those who ask me what exactly I mean when I say I’m a feminist towards them.

Favourite passages:

In reaction against the age-old slogan, ‘woman is the weaker vessel,’ or the still more offensive, ‘woman is a divine creature,’ we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that ‘a woman is as good as a man’ without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape our attention altogether, viz: not that every woman is, in virtue of her sex, as strong, clever, artistic, level-headed, industrious and so forth as any man that can be mentioned; but, that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual.

Now, it is frequently asserted that, with women, the job does not come first. What (people cry) are women doing with this liberty of theirs? What woman really prefers a job to a home and family? Very few, I admit. It is unfortunate that they should so often have to make the choice. A man does not, as a rule, have to choose. He gets both. (…) I have admitted that there are very few women who would put their jobs before every earthly consideration. I will go further and assert that there are very few men who would do it either. In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job’s sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak.

We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting that a category only exists for its special purpose and must be forgotten as soon as that purpose is served. There is a fundamental difference between men and women, but it is not the only fundamental difference in the world. (…) A difference of age is as fundamental as a difference of sex; and so is a difference of nationality. All categories, if they are insisted upon beyond the immediate purpose which they serve, breed class antagonism and disruption in the state, and that is why they are dangerous.

We are different, yes, but first and foremost we are all human beings. It really is as simple and as seemingly impossible to grasp as that.

Reviewed at:
Grasping for the Wind
Devourer of Books

(Let me know if I missed yours.)