Feminist Ethics/the Ethics of GenderThe Ethics of GenderMary Wollstonecraft (the woman who was the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (the author of Frankenstein)) wrote on the rights of women in the late 1700s. Hers was probably the first full statement of women's rights and ethics in Western thought. Below are some notes of mine from that work, and here is a link to the text if you would like to read the whole thing: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wollstonecraft-mary/1792/vindication-rights-woman/introduction.htm and the audiobook ishttp://librivox.org/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman-by-mary-wollstonecraft/ . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes on Mary Wollstonecraft, from Vindication of the Rights of Woman Wollstonecraft states that women are generally kept in a state of perpetual childhood. But the most important thing is the development of character because "elegance is inferior to virtue." Women have always been "either a slave or a despot, . . . and each of these situations equally retards the progress of reason." There is an odd view of "respect for women" - men expect women to be weak. Men pride themselves on paying "this arbitrary insolent respect to the sex, with the most scrupulous exactness, and are most inclined to tyrannize over, and despise, the very weakness they cherish." Men bow to women - and isn't this odd? If women are inferior to men, isn't it "condescension to bow to an inferior"? "So ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that I scarcely am able to govern my muscles when I see a man start with eager and serious solicitude to life a handkerchief or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two." Novels, music, poetry - these things tend to make women creatures of sensation. This "relaxes" the powersof the mind and "prevents intellect from attaining that sovereignty which it ought to attain to render a rational creature useful to others and content with its own station. . . ." Women are assumed not only to want to remain innocent and fragile, they are also expected to do so. To remain innocent is to remain in a state of childhood; to remain fragile is to be forced to look up to a man for every comfort. They can't handle trifling dangers (a mouse or a rat would be terribly scary). "In the name of reason, and even common sense, what can save such beings from contempt, even though they be soft and fair? . . ." Strength of body and mind are reuqired of men and of women. Inferior reason will not enable a woman to perform any duty properly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are some serious misconceptions concerning what feminist ethics is and is not. Here are some facts: Feminist theory and ethics is not:
Hinman points out in the text that there are some oddities that characterize traditional ethical theories. Among them are:
Below are some of my notes on Annette Baier's article, "What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory," that may clarify some of the oddities or peculiarities of traditional theories. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Baier refers to the work of Gilligan on different moral voices (as discussed in the text for the course on pp. 299-305). Baier suggests that if there were a distinctive moral theory of women, it would be an ethic of love. "Women moral theorists, if any, will have this very great advantage over themen whose theories theirs supplant, that they can stand on the shoulders of men moral theorists, as no man has yet been able to stand on the shoulders of any woman moral theorist. There can be advantages, as well as handicaps, in being latecomers. So women theorists will need to connect their ethics of love with what has been the men theorists' preoccupation, namely obligation." But trust brings obligation and love together. She also points out that "trusting enforcers with the use of force is the most problematic form of trust involved." She notes that: "Undoubtedly some important part of morality does depend in part on a system of threats and bribes, at least for its survival in difficult conditions when normal goodwill and normally virtuous dispositions may be insufficient to motivate the conduct required for the preservation and justice of the moral network of relationships. But equally undoubtedly life will be nasty, emotionally poor, and worse than brutish (even if longer), if that is all morality is, or even if that coercive strucdture of morality is regarded as the backbone, rather than as an available crutch, should the main support fail." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Further, the philosopher Virginia Held, in her article, "Feminism and Moral Theory," makes some of the following claims: Nurturing relationships may be the paradigm of all human association. Perhaps it is not the case that the contractual model of many traditional view of ethical theory are pradigmatic at all. Held also points out a distinction that is made in traditional theories between:
The private domain has traditionally been considered the realm of women, and the household, for example, has not traditionally been the subject of any of traditional moral theory. The public domain, however, as in politics, has been associated with reason, with male strength and active, determinate form. In contrast, the private domain has been associated with emotion, with female weakness, and considered passive and inferior. In addition to this, the private and public distinction includes notions such as that:
Here it is important also to note that Aristotle's view of the family and the household has been very influential in the traditional views such that women are naturally inferior to men, and that men are natural leaders and rulers while women are natural followers. Further, Rousseau (18th century) claimed that women's education ought to be primarily to teach women how to please men and how to submit. Further, Immanuel Kant claimed that women are incapable of full morality and "lose their charm" when they exhibit rationality. He even went so far to say that a woman becomes so unattractive when she enters into the realm of men and tries to think and speak philosophically that she may as well grow a beard. Held notes that for anyone to claim simply that we are all rational because we are all human will not fix the problems inherent in traditional moral theories. Her claim is that "the promptings of the heart" are moral, too. To clarify, note that human beings become social beings through their experience with nurturers. Nurturing behavior creates human culture, it is not antithetical to it. But the traditional view of female behavior and moral action is that mothering is simply a matter of reproducing human beings. But Held contends that it is not simply that -- mothering CREATES human beings in the fullest sense of what it is to be human. Further, many traditional theories are built on the notion of a "rational economic man," but connections between people then become nothing more than instrumental relationships of using and being used. In addition, many of the problems of ethics are presented as problems of "self and other" - as competitive relationships. But this ignores family and friendship relationships that are A CENTRAL ELEMENT OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE. When we see the economic model in traditional theories, themodel of morality that pits one person against another, we see that "when the relationship between 'mother' and child is as it should be, the caretaker does not care for the child (nor the child for the caretaker) because of universal moral rules. The love and concern one feels for the child already motivate much of what one does." Held says that "the call for an ethic of care may be a call, which I share, for a more pluralistic view of ethics, recognizing that we need a division of moral labor employin different moral approaches for different domains, at least for the time being." And, "to the extent that moral theory takes natural male tendencies into account, it would at least be reasonable to take natural female tendencies into account." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes from the text (Hinman, if relevant to your course): Kohlberg identified 6 states of moral development.
Even though Kohlberg's work is psychological and descriptive, there is a sense in which it is normative in that he claims that the two stages in the post-conventional level are preferable to, and indicate a higher moral understanding, than the others. Carol Gilligan noted, however, that women's moral reasoning seems to be different. She notes that there appear to be "moral voices" such that:
Hinman notes a very important point that when one asks you to state your moral theory, the situation is much different from describing your moral voice. Theory is impersonal and general while voice is specific and personal. Note, too, that an ethic of care vs. an ethic of justice is characterized by these kinds of sets of distinctions:
Gilligan identifes three stages of development:
There are problems with Gilligan's view, among them being:
A solution (at least partial) might be an integrationist thesis such that:
or a diversity thesis such that there is both external diversity among separate individuals as well as an internal diversity within individuals that would recognize and be similar to the pluralist approach. Hinman claims that the ethics of care is like act Utilitarianism in that they are both consequentialist. But the ethics of care would focus on two kinds of consequences: hurt and a sense of connectedness. Notice, too, that there is a distinction between feminine ethics and feminist ethics. Feminine ethics tends toward an emphasis on women's moral voices while feminist ethics focuses on an awareness of women's oppression and ways to solve the problem of past (and present) injustices between the sexes. A very good resource on the distinction between feminine and feminist ethics by Rosemarie Tong appears at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-ethics/. |