Hypatia v.2 n.2

SUMMER 1987Hypatia FA JOU RNAI OF Fe m h t PIiboy " ·I :· · 1 .u · · . · ·· ·' · ·· · · · · --······- · ·- ··· · -··.r·· .·. :·. · ··~.·; '·' ·; 'j ' Hypatia A JOURNAL OF Fe m it Ptil o by Sum m e r 1987 Vol um e 2, Num be r 2 Hypatia(Hy-pay-sh a) was an Egyptian wom an ph il osoph e r, m ath e m atician, and astronom e r wh o l ive d in Al e xandria from h e r birth in about370 A.D. until h e r de ath in 415. Sh e was th e l e ade r of th e Ne opl atonic Sch ool in Al e xandria and was fam ous as an e l oque nt and inspiring te ach e r. Th e journal Hypatia is nam e d in h onor of th is fore siste r. He r nam e re m inds us th at al th ough m any of us are th e first wom e n ph il osoph e rs in our sch ool s, we are not, afte r al l , th e firstin h istory. Hypatia h as its roots in th e Socie ty for Wom e n in Ph il osoph y, m any of wh ose m e m be rs h ave for ye ars e nvi- sione d a re gul ar publ ication de vote d to fe m inist ph il osoph y. Hypatia is th e re al ization of th at vision; itis inte nde d to e ncourage and com m unicate m any diffe re ntkinds of fe m inist ph il osoph izing. Hypatia(ISSN 0887-5367) is publ ish e d byHypatia, Inc., atax e xe m ptcorporation, wh ich assum e s no re sponsibil ity for state m e nts e xpre sse d by auth ors. Hypatia wil l publ ish two issue s in 1986, and th re e issue s in e ach succe ssive ye ar. Subscription rate s for 1986-87 are : Institutions, $40/ye ar; Individual s, $20/ye ar. Fore ign orde rs add postage : $5/ye ar to Canada, Me xico and ove rse as surface ; $10/ye ar to ove rse as airm ail . Singl e copie s wil l be sol d for $20 (institutions) and $10 (individual s). A 40% discountis avail abl e on bul k orde rs for cl assroom use or bookstore sal e s. Life -tim e subscriptions are avail abl e to donor subscribe rs for $400. 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Ayyar Th oraya Hal h oul Copy Editor Tam e ra Bryant Editorial Assistant Fl ore nce Gil l ig Book Re vie w Editor Je ffne r Al l e n, Easte rn Montana Col l e ge Th e Forum Editor Maria Lugone s, Carl e ton Col l e ge Associate Editors Azizah al -Hibri (Editor 1982-84), Ne w York Sandra Bartky, Unive rsityof Il l inois, Ch icago Ann Garry, Cal ifornia State Unive rsity, Los Ange l e s Sandra Harding, Unive rsityof De l aware He l e n Longino, Mil l s Col l e ge Donna Se rniak-Catudal , Randol ph -Macon Col l e ge Joyce Tre bil cot, Wash ington Unive rsity, St. Louis Advisory Board El izabe th Be ardsl e y, Te m pl e Unive rsity Sim one de Be auvoir, France (1908-1986) Ge rtrude Ezorsky, Brookl yn Col l e ge of CityUnive rsityof Ne w York El izabe th Fl owe r, Unive rsityof Pe nnsyl vania VirginiaHe l d, Graduate Ce nte r of CityUnive rsityof Ne w York Gracie l l a Hie rro, Me xico Judith Jarvis Th om pson, Massach use tts Institute of Te ch nol ogy MaryMoth e rsil l , Barnard Col l e ge Me rril e e Sal m on, Unive rsityof Pittsburgh Anita Sil ve rs, San Francisco State Unive rsity Editorial Board Kath ryn Pyne Adde l son, Sm ith Col l e ge Jacque l ine Ande rson, Ol ive Harve yCol l e ge , Ch icago Asoka Bandarage , Brande is Unive rsity Sh aron Bish op, Cal ifornia State Unive rsity, Los Ange l e s Lorraine Code , York Unive rsity Bl anch e Curry, Sh aw Col l e ge El izabe th Eam e s, South e rn Il l inois Unive rsity atCarbondal e Susan Fe ath e rs, Unive rsityof Pe nnsyl vania Ann Fe rguson, Unive rsityof Massach use tts, Am h e rst Jane Fl ax, Howard Unive rsity NancyFrase r, North we ste rn Unive rsity Carol Goul d, Ste ve n's Institute of Te ch nol ogy Susan Griffin, Be rke l e y, Cal ifornia Donna Haraway, Unive rsityof Cal ifornia, SantaCruz NancyHartsock, Unive rsityof Wash ington Hil da He in, Col l e ge of th e Hol y Cross Sarah Lucia Hoagl and, North e aste rn Il l inois Unive rsity Al ison Jaggar, Unive rsityof Cincinnati El izabe th Jane way, Ne w York Eve l yn Fox Ke l l e r, North e aste rn Unive rsity Rh oda Kotzin, Mich igan State Unive rsity LyndaLange , Unive rsityof Al be rta Linda Lope z McAl iste r, Unive rsityof South Fl orida Patricia Mann, CityCol l e ge of Ne w York Kath ryn Morgan, Unive rsityof Toronto Janice Moul ton, Sm ith Col l e ge Andre e Nich ol a-McLaugh l in, Me dgar Evars Col l e ge Linda Nich ol son, State Unive rsityof Ne w York, Al bany Susan RayPe te rson, Ne w York Connie Crank Price , Tuske ge e Institute Sara Ruddick, Ne w Sch ool of Social Re se arch Be ttySafford, Cal ifornia State Unive rsity, Ful l e rton Naom i Sch e m an, Unive rsityof Minne sota Ruth Sch warz, Unive rsityof Pe nnsyl vania El izabe th V. Spe l m an, Sm ith Col l e ge Jacque l ine M. Th om ason, Los Ange l e s NancyTuana, Unive rsityof Te xas atDal l as Carol ine Wh itbe ck, Massach use tts Institute of Te ch nol ogy Iris Young, Worce ste r Pol yte ch nic Institute Jacque l ine Zita, Unive rsityof Minne sota Sum m e r, 1987 Vol um e 2, Num be r 2 Maria Lugone s Mary B. Mah owal d Judith M. Hil l VictoriaDavion Susan We nde l l Andre a Nye Jul ie n S. Murph y H. E. Babe r LuisaMuraro Mary Libe rtin Harry Brod Candace Watson Editorial Pl ayful ne ss, " Worl d " -Trave l l ing, and Loving Pe rce ption Se x-Rol e Ste re otype s in Me dicine Pornograph y and De gradation Do Good Fe m inists Com pe te ? A (Qual ifie d) De fe nse Of Libe ral ism Th e Unityof Language Th e Look in Sartre and Rich How Bad is Rape ? COMMENT/REPLY On Confl icts and Diffe re nce s Am ong Wom e n Th e Pol itics of Wom e n's Studie s and Me n's Studie s Doe s Manning Me n 's Studie s Em ascul ate Wom e n's Studie s? THE FORUM Ce l ibacy and Its Im pl ications For Autonom y Note s On Contributors Announce m e nts Subm ission Guide l ine s conte nts 1 3 21 39 55 65 95 113 125 139 143 153 157 159 161 165 editorial Readying this issue for the printer and, at the same time, preparing our display for the National Women's Studies Association conference in Atlanta, whose theme this year is "Weaving Women's Colors: A Decade of Empowerment," has highlighted for me the centrality of the feminist struggle around differences, both in the NWSA and in feminist philosophy. Maria Lugones' paper, which is "about cross- cultural and cross-racial loving," beautifully expresses this theme. She describes the "weaving together" of two aspects of her life, as a daughter and as a woman-of-color, a weaving that reveals "the possibility and complexity of a pluralistic feminism." Difference is a theme running throughout this issue of Hypatia. Andrea Nye analyzes the "refusal to hear others" that underlies the traditional search by male philosophers for the unity of language. Her critique of the search for unity as authoritarian echoes Lugones, whose concept of "world-travelling" offers an epistemological alternative. Julien Murphy, like Lugones, draws on Marilyn Frye's concept of "ar- rogant perception," in "The Look in Sartre and Rich," where she develops an existential theory of oppression and liberation. Several authors in this issue take controversial stances within feminism. Victoria Davion argues, against the "view widely held among feminists that nurturing and competition are incompatible," that cer- tain kinds of competition can help women recognize their differences while maintaining a sense of connection. Mary Mahowald develops an egalitarian model (parentalism) for the physician-other relationship to argue for the compatibility between feminist and medicine. H.E. Baber, in her paper, "How Bad is Rape?," makes the argument that "the work that most women employed outside the home are compelled to do is more seriously harmful" than rape. Susan Wendell, in "A (Qualified) Defense of Liberal Feminism," challenges the characterizations by feminist philosophers of feminism liberalism. Judith Hill proposes an alternative philosophical basis for a feminist attack on victim pornography. In the spirit of feminist controversy, Hypatia devotes space in each general issue to comments on previously published articles, with replies invited from authors. As the current issue illustrates, this section of the journal is alive and well. This issue also contains the first publica- tion of The Forum, a section, edited by Maria Lugones, that is designed to encourage philosophical dialogue on a single topic. To further that dialogue, The Forum editor will announce a new topic for The Forum for each general issue, and continue to invite contributions on topics on which we have already published short papers. The next topic will 1 hypatia be Women and Poverty. Additional papers on the current topic of Celibacy are invited. Papers are also invited for the Special Issue on the History of Women in Philosophy, edited by Linda Lopez McAlister. The Special Issue on Feminist Perspectives on Science, edited by Nancy Tuana, has been expanded to two issues, and will appear as the Fall 1987, and Spring 1988 issues. For details on contributing papers for The Forum, for the Special Issue on the History of Women in Philosophy, or for general submission, please consult the Submission Guidelines. We wish to thank all those readers who have subscribed to Hypatia in 1987. We also wish to acknowledge those readers who included a contribution with their subscription check. The expenses in beginning autonomous publication last year were considerable. They continue to grow as we begin publishing three issues this year. We urge those readers who have not yet subscribed for 1987 to do so as soon as possible. Subscribing to Hypatia is the best way to follow developments in feminist philosophy, join in our dialogue, and receive our Special Issues immediately upon publication. Editors from other, long-established journals report that it takes an average of four renewal notices before a subscriber renews a subscription. We can ill afford the time and ex- pense required to run such a renewal campaign. Please take this op- portunity to subscribe using the attached subscription card. Thank you again for your support for Hypatia. M.A.S. 2 maria lugones Playfulness, "World"-Travelling, and Loving Perception A paper about cross-cultural and cross-racial loving that emphasizes the need to understand and affirm the plurality in and among women as central to feminist ontology and epistemology. Love is seen not as fusion and erasure of difference but as incompatible with them. Love reveals plurality. Unity-not to be confused with solidarity-is under- stood as conceptually tied to domination. This paper weaves two aspects of life together. My coming to consciousness as a daughter and my coming to consciousness as a woman of color have made this weaving possible. This weaving reveals the possibility and complexity of a pluralistic feminism, a feminism that affirms the plurality in each of us and among us as richness and as central to feminist ontology and epistemology. The paper describes the experience of 'outsiders' to the mainstream of, for example, White/Anglo organization of life in the U.S. and stresses a particular feature of the outsider's existence: the outsider has necessarily acquired flexibility in shifting from the mainstream construc- tion of life where she is constructed as an outsider to other construc- tions of life where she is more or less 'at home.' This flexibility is necessary for the outsider but it can also be willfully exercised by the outsider or by those who are at ease in the mainstream. I recommend this willful exercise which I call "world"-travelling and I also recom- mend that the willful exercise be animated by an attitude that I describe as playful. As outsiders to the mainstream, women of color in the U.S. practice "world"-travelling, mostly out of necessity. I affirm this practice as a skillful, creative, rich, enriching and, given certain circumstances, as a loving way of being and living. I recognize that much of our travell- ing is done unwillfully to hostile White/Anglo "worlds." The hostility of these "worlds" and the compulsory nature of the "travelling" have obscured for us the enormous value of this aspect of our living and its connection to loving. Racism has a vested interest in obscuring and devaluing the complex skills involved in it. I recommend that we af- firm this travelling across "worlds" as partly constitutive of cross- Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © By Maria Lugones. 3 hypatla cultural and cross-racial loving. Thus I recommend to women of color in the U.S. that we learn to love each other by learning to travel to each other's "worlds." On the other hand, the paper makes a connection between what Marilyn Frye has named "arrogant perception" and the failure to iden- tify with persons that one views arrogantly or has come to see as the products of arrogant perception. A further connection is made between this failure of identification and a failure of love, and thus between loving and identifying with another person. The sense of love is not the one Frye has identified as both consistent with arrogant perception and as promoting unconditional servitude. "We can be taken in by this equation of servitude with love," Frye (1983, 73) says, "because we make two mistakes at once: we think, of both servitude and love that they are selfless or unselfish." Rather, the identification of which I speak is constituted by what I come to characterize as playful "world"- travelling. To the extent that we learn to perceive others arrogantly or come to see them only as products of arrogant perception and continue to perceive them that way, we fail to identify with them-fail to love them-in this particularly deep way. Identification and Love As a child, I was taught to perceive arrogantly. I have also been the object of arrogant perception. Though I am not a White/Anglo woman, it is clear to me that I can understand both my childhood training as an arrogant perceiver and my having been the object of arrogant percep- tion without any reference to White/Anglo men, which is some indica- tion that the concept of arrogant perception can be used cross-culturally and that White/Anglo men are not the only arrogant perceivers. I was brought up in Argentina watching men and women of moderate and of considerable means graft the substance' of their servants to themselves. I also learned to graft my mother's substance to my own. It was clear to me that both men and women were the victims of ar- rogant perception and that arrogant perception was systematically organized to break the spirit of all women and of most men. I valued my rural 'gaucho' ancestry because its ethos has always been one of independence in poverty through enormous loneliness, courage and self- reliance. I found inspiration in this ethos and committed myself never to be broken by arrogant perception. I can say all of this in this way only because I have learned from Frye's "In and Out of Harm's Way: Arrogance and Love." She has given me a way of understanding and articulating something important in my own life. Frye is not particularly concerned with women as arrogant perceivers 4 maria lugones but as the objects of arrogant perception. Her concern is, in part, to enhance our understanding of women "untouched by phallocratic machinations" (Frye 1983, 53), by understanding the harm done to women through such machinations. In this case she proposes that we could understand women untouched by arrogant perception through an understanding of what arrogant perception does to women. She also proposes an understanding of what it is to love women that is inspired by a vision of women unharmed by arrogant perception. To love women is, at least in part, to perceive them with loving eyes. "The loving eye is a contrary of the arrogant eye" (Frye 1983, 75). I am concerned with women as arrogant perceivers because I want to explore further what it is to love women. I want to explore two failures of love: my failure to love my mother and White/Anglo women's failure to love women across racial and cultural boundaries in the U.S. As a consequence of exploring these failures I will offer a loving solution to them. My solution modifies Frye's account of lov- ing perception by adding what I call playful "world"-travel. It is clear to me that at least in the U.S. and Argentina women are taught to perceive many other women arrogantly. Being taught to perceive arrogantly is part of being taught to be a woman of a certain class in both the U.S. and Argentina, it is part of being taught to be a White/Anglo woman in the U.S. and it is part of being taught to be a woman in both places: to be both the agent and the object of ar- rogant perception. My love for my mother seemed to me thoroughly imperfect as I was growing up because I was unwilling to become what I had been taught to see my mother as being. I thought that to love her was consistent with my abusing her (using, taking for granted, and demanding her services in a far reaching way that, since four other peo- ple engaged in the same grafting of her substance onto themselves, left her little of herself to herself) and was to be in part constituted by my identifying with her, my seeing myself in her: to love her was supposed to be of a piece with both my abusing her and with my being open to being abused. It is clear to me that I was not supposed to love servants: I could abuse them without identifying with them, without seeing myself in them. When I came to the U.S. I learned that part of racism is the internalization of the propriety of abuse without identification: I learned that I could be seen as a being to be used by White/Anglo men and women without the possibility of identification, i.e. without their act of attempting to graft my substance onto theirs, rubbing off on them at all. They could remain untouched, without any sense of loss. So, women who are perceived arrogantly can perceive other women arrogantly in their turn. To what extent those women are responsible for their arrogant perceptions of other women is certainly open to ques- 5 hypatia tion, but I do not have any doubt that many women have been taught to abuse women in this particular way. I am not interested in assigning responsibility. I am interested in understanding the phenomenon so as to understand a loving way out of it. There is something obviously wrong with the love that I was taught and something right with my failure to love my mother in this way. But I do not think that what is wrong is my profound desire to identify with her, to see myself in her; what is wrong is that I was taught to identify with a victim of enslavement. What is wrong is that I was taught to practice enslavement of my mother and to learn to become a slave through this practice. There is something obviously wrong with my hav- ing been taught that love is consistent with abuse, consistent with ar- rogant perception. Notice that the love I was taught is the love that Frye (1983, 73) speaks of when she says "We can be taken in by this equation of servitude with love." Even though I could both abuse and love my mother, I was not supposed to love servants. This is because in the case of servants one is and is supposed to be clear about their servitude and the "equation of servitude with love" is never to be thought clearly in those terms. So, I was not supposed to love and could not love servants. But I could love my mother because deception (in particular, self-deception) is part of this "loving." Servitude is called abnegation and abnegation is not analyzed any further. Abnegation is not instilled in us through an analysis of its nature but rather through a heralding of it as beautiful and noble. We are coaxed, seduced into abnegation not through analysis but through emotive persuasion. Frye makes the connection between deception and this sense of "loving" clear. When I say that there is something obviously wrong with the lov- ing that I was taught, I do not mean to say that the connection bet- ween this loving and abuse is obvious. Rather I mean that once the connection between this loving and abuse has been unveiled, there is something obviously wrong with the loving given that it is obvious that it is wrong to abuse others. I am glad that I did not learn my lessons well, but it is clear that part of the mechanism that permitted my not learning well involved a separation from my mother: I saw us as beings of quite a different sort. It involved an abandoning of my mother while I longed not to abandon her. I wanted to love my mother, though, given what I was taught, "love" could not be the right word for what I longed for. I was disturbed by my not wanting to be what she was. I had a sense of not being quite integrated, my self was missing because I could not identify with her, I could not see myself in her, I could not welcome her world. I saw myself as separate from her, a different sort of being, not quite of the same species. This separation, this lack of love, I saw, 6 maria lugones and I think that I saw correctly as a lack in myself (not a fault, but a lack). I also see that if this was a lack of love, love cannot be what I was taught. Love has to be rethought, made anew. There is something in common between the relation between myself and my mother as someone I did not use to be able to love and the relation between myself or other women of color in the U.S. and White/Anglo women: there is a failure of love. I want to suggest here that Frye has helped me understand one of the aspects of this failure, the directly abusive aspect. But I also think that there is a complex failure of love in the failure to identify with another woman, the failure to see oneself in other women who are quite different from oneself. I want to begin to analyze this complex failure. Notice that Frye's emphasis on independence in her analysis of loving perception is not particularly helpful in explaining this failure. She says that in loving perception, "the object of the seeing is another being whose existence and character are logically independent of the seer and who may be practically or empirically independent in any particular respect at any particular time" (Frye 1983, 77). But this is not helpful in allowing me to understand how my failure of love toward my mother (when I ceased to be her parasite) left me not quite whole. It is not helpful since I saw her as logically independent from me. It also does not help me to understand why the racist or ethnocentric failure of love of White/Anglo women-in particular of those White/Anglo women who are not pained by their failure-should leave me not quite substan- tive among them. Here I am not particularly interested in cases of White women's parasitism onto women of color but more pointedly in cases where the failure of identification is the manifestation of the "rela- tion." I am particularly interested here in those many cases in which White/Anglo women do one or more of the following to women of color: they ignore us, ostracize us, render us invisible, stereotype us, leave us completely alone, interpret us as crazy. All of this while we are in their midst. The more independent I am, the more independent I am left to be. Their world and their integrity do not require me at all. There is no sense of self-loss in them for my own lack of solidity. But they rob me of my solidity through indifference, an indifference they can afford and which seems sometimes studied. (All of this points of course toward separatism in communities where our substance is seen and celebrated, where we become substantive through this celebration. But many of us have to work among White/Anglo folk and our best shot at recognition has seemed to be among White/Anglo women be- cause many of them have expressed a general sense of being pained at their failure of love.) Many times White/Anglo women want us out of their field of vision. 7 hypatia Their lack of concern is a harmful failure of love that leaves me in- dependent from them in a way similar to the way in which, once I ceased to be my mother's parasite, she became, though not independent from all others, certainly independent from me. But of course, because my mother and I wanted to love each other well, we were not whole in this independence. White/Anglo women are independent from me, I am independent from them, I am independent from my mother, she is independent from me, and none of us loves each other in this independence. I am incomplete and unreal without other women. I am profoundly dependent on others without having to be their subordinate, their slave, their servant. Frye (1983, 75) also says that the loving eye is "the eye of one who knows that to know the seen, one must consult something other than one's own will and interests and fears and imagination." This is much more helpful to me so long as I do not understand Frye to mean that I should not consult my own interests nor that I should exclude the possibility that my self and the self of the one I love may be important- ly tied to each other in many complicated ways. Since I am emphasizing here that the failure of love lies in part in the failure to identify and since I agree with Frye that one "must consult something other than one's own will and interests and fears and imagination," I will pro- ceed to try to explain what I think needs to be consulted. To love my mother was not possible for me while I retained a sense that it was fine for me and others to see her arrogantly. Loving my mother also re- quired that I see with her eyes, that I go into my mother's world, that I see both of us as we are constructed in her world, that I witness her own sense of herself from within her world. Only through this travelling to her "world" could I identify with her because only then could I cease to ignore her and to be excluded and separate from her. Only then could I see her as a subject even if one subjected and only then could I see at all how meaning could arise fully between us. We are fully depen- dent on each other for the possibility of being understood and without this understanding we are not intelligible, we do not make sense, we are not solid, visible, integrated; we are lacking. So travelling to each other's "worlds" would enable us to be through loving each other. Hopefully the sense of identification I have in mind is becoming clear. But if it is to become clearer, I need to explain what I mean by a "world" and by "travelling" to another "world." In explaining what I mean by a "world" I will not appeal to travell- ing to other women's worlds. Rather I will lead you to see what I mean by a "world" the way I came to propose the concept to myself: through the kind of ontological confusion about myself that we, women of color, 8 maria lugones refer to half-jokingly as "schizophrenia" (we feel schizophrenic in our goings back and forth between different "communities") and through my effort to make some sense of this ontological confusion. "Worlds" and "world" travelling Some time ago I came to be in a state of profound confusion as I experienced myself as both having and not having a particular attribute. I was sure I had the attribute in question and, on the other hand, I was sure that I did not have it. I remain convinced that I both have and do not have this attribute. The attribute is playfulness. I am sure that I am a playful person. On the other hand, I can say, painfully, that I am not a playful person. I am not a playful person in certain worlds. One of the things I did as I became confused was to call my friends, far away people who knew me well, to see whether or not I was playful. Maybe they could help me out of my confusion. They said to me, "Of course you are playful" and they said it with the same con- viction that I had about it. Of course I am playful. Those people who were around me said to me, "No, you are not playful. You are a serious woman. You just take everything seriously." They were just as sure about what they said to me and could offer me every bit of evidence that one could need to conclude that they were right. So I said to myself: "Okay, maybe what's happening here is that there is an attribute that I do have but there are certain worlds in which I am not at ease and it is because I'm not at ease in those worlds that I don't have that at- tribute in those worlds. But what does that mean?" I was worried both about what I meant by "worlds" when I said "in some worlds I do not have the attribute" and what I meant by saying that lack of ease was what led me not to be playful in those worlds. Because you see, if it was just a matter of lack of ease, I could work on it. I can explain some of what I mean by a "world." I do not want the fixity of a definition at this point, because I think the term is suggestive and I do not want to close the suggestiveness of it too soon. I can offer some characteristics that serve to distinguish between a "world," a utopia, a possible world in the philosophical sense, and a world view. By a "world" I do not mean a utopia at all. A utopia does not count as a world in my sense. The "worlds" that I am talking about are possi- ble. But a possible world is not what I mean by a "world" and I do not mean a world-view, though something like a world-view is involved here. For something to be a "world" in my sense it has to be inhabited at present by some flesh and blood people. That is why it cannot be a utopia. It may also be inhabited by some imaginary people. It may 9 hypatla be inhabited by people who are dead or people that the inhabitants of this "world" met in some other "world" and now have in this "world" in imagination. A "world" in my sense may be an actual society given its dominant culture's description and construction of life, including a construction of the relationships of production, of gender, race, etc. But a "world" can also be such a society given a non-dominant construction, or it can be such a society or a society given an idiosyncratic construction. As we will see it is problematic to say that these are all constructions of the same society. But they are different "worlds." A "world" need not be a construction of a whole society. It may be a construction of a tiny portion of a particular society. It may be inhabited by just a few people. Some "worlds" are bigger than others. A "world" may be incomplete in that things in it may not be altogether constructed or some things may be constructed negatively (they are not what 'they' are in some other "world.") Or the "world" may be incomplete because it may have references to things that do not quite exist in it, references to things like Brazil, where Brazil is not quite part of that "world." Given lesbian feminism, the construction of 'lesbian' is purposefully and healthily still up in the air, in the pro- cess of becoming. What it is to be a Hispanic in this country is, in a dominant Anglo construction purposefully incomplete. Thus one can- not really answer questions of the sort "What is a Hispanic?", "Who counts as a Hispanic?", "Are Latinos, Chicanos, Hispanos, black dominicans, white cubans, korean-colombians, italian-argentinians hispanic?" What it is to be a 'hispanic' in the varied so-called hispanic communities in the U.S. is also yet up in the air. We have not yet decided whether there is something like a 'hispanic' in our varied "worlds." So, a "world" may be an incomplete visionary non-utopian construc- tion of life or it may be a traditional construction of life. A traditional Hispano construction of Northern New Mexican life is a "world." Such a traditional construction, in the face of a racist, ethnocentrist, money- centered anglo construction of Northern New Mexican life is highly unstable because Anglos have the means for imperialist destruction of traditional Hispano "worlds." In a "world" some of the inhabitants may not understand or hold the particular construction of them that constructs them in that "world." So, there may be "worlds" that construct me in ways that I do not even understand. Or it may be that I understand the construc- tion, but do not hold it of myself. I may not accept it as an account of myself, a construction of myself. And yet, I may be animating such a construction. One can "travel" between these "worlds" and one can inhabit more 10 maria lugones than one of these "worlds" at the very same time. I think that most of us who are outside the mainstream of, for example, the U.S. domi- nant construction or organization of life are "world travellers" as a matter of necessity and of survival. It seems to me that inhabiting more than one "world" at the same time and "travelling" between "worlds" is part and parcel of our experience and our situation. One can be at the same time in a "world" that constructs one as stereotypically latin, for example, and in a "world" that constructs one as latin. Being stereo- typically latin and being simply latin are different simultaneous con- structions of persons that are part of different "worlds." One animates one or the other or both at the same time without necessarily confus- ing them, though simultaneous enactment can be confusing if one is not on one's guard. In describing my sense of a "world," I mean to be offering a descrip- tion of experience, something that is true to experience even if it is on- tologically problematic. Though I would think that any account of iden- tity that could not be true to this experience of outsiders to the mainstream would be faulty even if ontologically unproblematic. Its ease would constrain, erase, or deem aberrant experience that has within it significant insights into non-imperialistic understanding between people. Those of us who are "world"-travellers have the distinct experience of being different in different "worlds" and of having the capacity to remember other "worlds" and ourselves in them. We can say "That is me there, and I am happy in that "world." So, the experience is of being a different person in different "worlds" and yet of having memory of oneself as different without quite having the sense of there being any underlying "I." So I can say "that is me there and I am so playful in that "world." I say "That is me in that "world" not because I recognize myself in that person, rather the first person statement is non-inferential. I may well recognize that that person has abilities that I do not have and yet the having or not having of the abilities is always an "I have ..." and "I do not have . .. ", i.e. it is always experienc- ed in the first person. The shift from being one person to being a different person is what I call "travel." This shift may not be willful or even conscious, and one may be completely unaware of being different than one is in a dif- ferent "world," and may not recognize that one is in a different "world." Even though the shift can be done willfully, it is not a matter of acting. One does not pose as someone else, one does not pretend to be, for example, someone of a different personality or character or someone who uses space or language differently than the other per- son. Rather one is someone who has that personality or character or 11 hypatia uses space and language in that particular way. The "one" here does not refer to some underlying "I." One does not experience any underly- ing "I." Being at ease in a "world" In investigating what I mean by "being at ease in a "world"," I will describe different ways of being at ease. One may be at ease in one or in all of these ways. There is a maximal way of being at ease, viz. being at ease in all of these ways. I take this maximal way of being at ease to be somewhat dangerous because it tends to produce people who have no inclination to travel across "worlds" or have no experience of "world" travelling. The first way of being at ease in a particular "world" is by being a fluent speaker in that "world." I know all the norms that there are to be followed, I know all the words that there are to be spoken. I know all the moves. I am confident. Another way of being at ease is by being normatively happy. I agree with all the norms, I could not love any norms better. I am asked to do just what I want to do or what I think I should do. At ease. Another way of being at ease in a "world" is by being humanly bond- ed. I am with those I love and they love me too. It should be noticed that I may be with those I love and be at ease because of them in a "world" that is otherwise as hostile to me as "worlds" get. Finally one may be at ease because one has a history with others that is shared, especially daily history, the kind of shared history that one sees exemplified by the response to the "Do you remember poodle skirts?" question. There you are, with people you do not know at all. The question is posed and then they all begin talking about their poodle skirt stories. I have been in such situations without knowing what poo- dle skirts, for example, were and I felt so ill at ease because it was not my history. The other people did not particularly know each other. It is not that they were humanly bonded. Probably they did not have much politically in common either. But poodle skirts were in their shared history. One may be at ease in one of these ways or in all of them. Notice that when one says meaningfully "This is my world," one may not be at ease in it. Or one may be at ease in it only in some of these respects and not in others. To say of some "world" that it is "my world" is to make an evaluation. One may privilege one or more "worlds" in this way for a variety of reasons: for example because one experiences oneself as an agent in a fuller sense than one experiences "oneself" in other "worlds." One may disown a "world" because one has first 12 maria lugones person memories of a person who is so thoroughly dominated that she has no sense of exercising her own will or has a sense of having serious difficulties in performing actions that are willed by herself and no dif- ficulty in performing actions willed by others. One may say of a "world" that it is "my world" because one is at ease in it, i.e. being at ease in a "world" may be the basis for the evaluation. Given the clarification of what I mean by a "world," "world"-travel, and being at ease in a "world," we are in a position to return to my problematic attribute, playfulness. It may be that in this "world" in which I am so unplayful, I am a different person than in the "world" in which I am playful. Or it may be that the "world" in which I am unplayful is constructed in such a way that I could be playful in it. I could practice, even though that "world" is constructed in such a way that my being playful in it is kind of hard. In describing what I take a "world" to be, I emphasized the first possibility as both the one that is truest to the experience of "outsiders" to the mainstream and as ontologically problematic because the "I" is identified in some sense as one and in some sense as a plurality. I identify myself as myself through memory and I retain myself as different in memory. When I travel from one "world" to another, I have this image, this memory of myself as playful in this other "world." I can then be in a particular "world" and have a double image of myself as, for example, playful and as not playful. But this is a very familiar and recognizable phenomenon to the outsider to the mainstream in some central cases: when in one "world" I animate, for example, that "world's" caricature of the person I am in the other "world." I can have both images of myself and to the extent that I can materialize or animate both images at the same time I become an ambiguous being. This is very much a part of trickery and foolery. It is worth remembering that the trickster and the fool are significant characters in many non-dominant or out- sider cultures. One then sees any particular "world" with these double edges and sees absurdity in them and so inhabits oneself differently. Given that latins are constructed in Anglo "worlds" as stereotypically intense-intensity being a central characteristic of at least one of the anglo stereotypes of latins-and given that many latins, myself includ- ed, are genuinely intense, I can say to myself "I am intense" and take a hold of the double meaning. And furthermore, I can be stereotypically intense or be the real thing and, if you are Anglo, you do not know when I am which because I am Latin-American. As Latin-American I am an ambiguous being, a two-imaged self: I can see that gringos see me as stereotypically intense because I am, as a Latin-American, constructed that way but I may or may not intentionally animate the stereotype or the real thing knowing that you may not see it in anything 13 hypatia other than in the stereotypical construction. This ambiguity is funny and is not just funny, it is survival-rich. We can also make the picture of those who dominate us funny precisely because we can see the dou- ble edge, we can see them doubly constructed, we can see the plurality in them. So we know truths that only the fool can speak and only the trickster can play out without harm. We inhabit "worlds" and travel across them and keep all the memories. Sometimes the "world"-traveller has a double image of herself and each self includes as important ingredients of itself one or more at- tributes that are incompatible with one or more of the attributes of the other self: for example being playful and being unplayful. To the ex- tent that the attribute is an important ingredient of the self she is in that "world," i.e., to the extent that there is a particularly good fit between that "world" and her having that attribute in it and to the extent that the attribute is personality or character central, that "world" would have to be changed if she is to be playful in it. It is not the case that if she could come to be at ease in it, she would be her own playful self. Because the attribute is personality or character central and there is such a good fit between that "world" and her being constructed with that attribute as central, she cannot become playful, she is unplayful. To become playful would be for her to become a contradictory being. So I am suggesting that the lack of ease solution cannot be a solution to my problematic case. My problem is not one of lack of ease. I am suggesting that I can understand my confusion about whether I am or am not playful by saying that I am both and that I am different per- sons in different "worlds" and can remember myself in both as I am in the other. I am a plurality of selves. This is to understand my confu- sion because it is to come to see it as a piece with much of the rest of my experience as an outsider in some of the "worlds" that I inhabit and of a piece with significant aspects of the experience of non-dominant people in the "worlds" of their dominators. So, though I may not be at ease in the "worlds" in which I am not constructed playful, it is not that I am not playful because I am not at ease. The two are compatible. But lack of playfulness is not caused by lack of ease. Lack of playfulness is not symptomatic of lack of ease but of lack of health. I am not a healthy being in the "worlds" that construct me unplayful. Playfulness I had a very personal stake in investigating this topic. Playfulness is not only the attribute that was the source of my confusion and the attitude that I recommend as the loving attitude in travelling across 14 maria lugones "worlds," I am also scared of ending up a serious human being, some- one with no multi-dimensionality, with no fun in life, someone who is just someone who has had the fun constructed out of her. I am seriously scared of getting stuck in a "world" that constructs me that way. A world that I have no escape from and in which I cannot be playful. I thought about what it is to be playful and what it is to play and I did this thinking in a "world" in which I only remember myself as playful and in which all of those who know me as playful are imaginary beings. A "world" in which I am scared of losing my memories of myself as playful or have them erased from me. Because I live in such a "world," after I formulated my own sense of what it is to be playful and to play I decided that I needed to "go to the literature." I read two classics on the subject: Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens and Hans- Georg Gadamer's chapter on the concept of play in his Truth and Method. I discovered, to my amazement, that what I thought about play and playfulness, if they were right, was absolutely wrong. Though I will not provide the arguments for this interpretation of Gadamer and Huizinga here, I understood that both of them have an agonistic sense of 'play.' Play and playfulness have, ultimately, to do with con- test, with winning, losing, battling. The sense of playfulness that I have in mind has nothing to do with those things. So, I tried to elucidate both senses of play and playfulness by contrasting them to each other. The contrast helped me see the attitude that I have in mind as the lov- ing attitude in travelling across "worlds" more clearly. An agonistic sense of playfulness is one in which competence is supreme. You better know the rules of the game. In agonistic play there is risk, there is uncertainty, but the uncertainty is about who is going to win and who is going to lose. There are rules that inspire hostility. The attitude of playfulness is conceived as secondary to or derivative from play. Since play is agon, then the only conceivable playful attitude is an agonistic one (the attitude does not turn an activity into play, but rather presupposes an activity that is play). One of the paradigmatic ways of playing for both Gadamer and Huizinga is role-playing. In role- playing, the person who is a participant in the game has a fixed con- ception of him or herself. I also think that the players are imbued with self-importance in agonistic play since they are so keen on winning given their own merits, their very own competence. When considering the value of "world"-travelling and whether playfulness is the loving attitude to have while travelling, I recognized the agonistic attitude as inimical to travelling across "worlds." The agonistic traveller is a conqueror, an imperialist. Huizinga, in his classsic book on play, interprets Western civilization as play. That is an in- 15 hypatia teresting thing for Third World people to think about. Western civiliza- tion has been interpreted by a white western man as play in the agonistic sense of play. Huizinga reviews western law, art, and many other aspects of western culture and sees agon in all of them. Agonistic playfulness leads those who attempt to travel to another "world" with this attitude to failure. Agonistic travellers fail consistently in their attempt to travel because what they do is to try to conquer the other "world." The at- tempt is not an attempt to try to erase the other "world." That is what assimilation is all about. Assimilation is the destruction of other peo- ple's "worlds." So, the agonistic attitude, the playful attitude given western man's construction of playfulness, is not a healthy, loving at- titude to have in travelling across "worlds." Notice that given the agonistic attitude one cannot travel across "worlds," though one can kill other "worlds" with it. So for people who are interested in cross- ing racial and ethnic boundaries, an arrogant western man's construc- tion of playfulness is deadly. One cannot cross the boundaries with it. One needs to give up such an attitude if one wants to travel. So then, what is the loving playfulness that I have in mind? Let me begin with one example: We are by the river bank. The river is very, very low. Almost dry. Bits of water here and there. Little pools with a few trout hiding under the rocks. But mostly is wet stones, grey on the outside. We walk on the stones for awhile. You pick up a stone and crash it onto the others. As it breaks, it is quite wet inside and it is very colorful, very pretty. I pick up a stone and break it and run toward the pieces to see the colors. They are beautiful. I laugh and bring the pieces back to you and you are doing the same with your pieces. We keep on crashing stones for hours, anxious to see the beautiful new colors. We are playing. The playfulness of our activity does not presup- pose that there is something like "crashing stones" that is a particular form of play with its own rules. Rather the attitude that carries us through the activity, a playful attitude, turns the activity into play. Our activity has no rules, though it is certainly intentional activity and we both understand what we are doing. The playfulness that gives mean- ing to our activity includes uncertainty, but in this case the uncertainty is an openness to surprise. This is a particular metaphysical attitude that does not expect the world to be neatly packaged, ruly. Rules may fail to explain what we are doing. We are not self-important, we are not fixed in particular constructions of ourselves, which is part of say- ing that we are open to self-construction. We may not have rules, and when we do have rules, there are no rules that are to us sacred. We are not worried about competence. We are not wedded to a particular way of doing things. While playful we have not abandoned ourselves to, nor are we stuck in, any particular "world." We are there creatively. 16 maria lugones We are not passive. Playfulness is, in part, an openness to being a fool, which is a com- bination of not worrying about competence, not being self-important, not taking norms as sacred and finding ambiguity and double edges a source of wisdom and delight. So, positively, the playful attitude involves openness to surprise, openness to being a fool, openness to self-construction or reconstruc- tion and to construction or reconstruction of the "worlds" we inhabit playfully. Negatively, playfulness is characterized by uncertainty, lack of self-importance, absence of rules or a not taking rules as sacred, a not worrying about competence and a lack of abandonment to a par- ticular construction of oneself, others and one's relation to them. In attempting to take a hold of oneself and of one's relation to others in a particular "world," one may study, examine and come to under- stand oneself. One may then see what the possibilities for play are for the being one is in that "world." One may even decide to inhabit that self fully in order to understand it better and find its creative possibilities. All of this is just self-reflection and it is quite different from resigning or abandoning oneself to the particular construction of oneself that one is attempting to take a hold of. Conclusion There are "worlds" we enter at our own risk, "worlds" that have agon, conquest, and arrogance as the main ingredients in their ethos. These are "worlds" that we enter out of necessity and which would be foolish to enter playfully in either the agonistic sense or in my sense. In such "worlds" we are not playful. But there are "worlds" that we can travel to lovingly and travelling to them is part of loving at least some of their inhabitants. The reason why I think that travelling to someone's "world" is a way of identify- ing with them is because by travelling to their "world" we can under- stand what it is to be them and what it is to be ourselves in their eyes. Only when we have travelled to each other's "worlds" are we fully sub- jects to each other (I agree with Hegel that self-recognition requires other subjects, but I disagree with his claim that it requires tension or hostility). Knowing other women's "worlds" is part of knowing them and knowing them is part of loving them. Notice that the knowing can be done in greater or lesser depth, as can the loving. Also notice that travell- ing to another's "world" is not the same as becoming intimate with them. Intimacy is constituted in part by a very deep knowledge of the other self and "world" travelling is only part of having this knowledge. 17 hypatia Also notice that some people, in particular those who are outsiders to the mainstream, can be known only to the extent that they are known in several "worlds" and as "world"-travellers. Without knowing the other's "world," one does not know the other, and without knowing the other one is really alone in the other's presence because the other is only dimly present to one. Through travelling to other people's "worlds" we discover that there are "worlds" in which those who are the victims of arrogant percep- tion are really subjects, lively beings, resistors, constructors of visions even though in the mainstream construction they are animated only by the arrogant perceiver and are pliable, foldable, file-awayable, classifiable. I always imagine the Aristotelian slave as pliable and foldable at night or after he or she cannot work anymore (when he or she dies as a tool). Aristotle tells us nothing about the slave apart from the master. We know the slave only through the master. The slave is a tool of the master. After working hours he or she is folded and placed in a drawer till the next morning. My mother was apparent to me mostly as a victim of arrogant perception. I was loyal to the arrogant perceiver's construction of her and thus disloyal to her in assuming that she was exhausted by that construction. I was unwilling to be like her and thought that identifying with her, seeing myself in her necessitated that I become like her. I was wrong both in assuming that she was exhausted by the arrogant perceiver's construction of her and in my understand- ing of identification, though I was not wrong in thinking that iden- tification was part of loving and that it involved in part my seeing myself in her. I came to realize through travelling to her "world" that she is not foldable and pliable, that she is not exhausted by the mainstream argentinian patriarchal construction of her. I came to realize that there are "worlds" in which she shines as a creative being. Seeing myself in her through travelling to her "world" has meant seeing how dif- ferent from her I am in her "world." So, in recommending "world"-travelling and identification through "world"-travelling as part of loving other women, I am suggesting disloyalty to arrogant perceivers, including the arrogant perceiver in ourselves, and to their constructions of women. In revealing agonistic playfulness as incompatible with "world"-travelling, I am revealing both its affinity with imperialism and arrogant perception and its in- compatibility with loving and loving perception. 18 maria lugones notes 1. Grafting the substance of another to oneself is partly constitutive of arrogant perception. See M. Frye (1983, 66). references Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press. Gadamer, Hans-George. 1975. Truth and method. New York: Seabury Press. Huizinga, Johan. 1968. Homo ludens. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Emece Editores. 19 Hypatia (Hy-pay-sha) was an Egyptian woman philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer who lived in Alexandria from her birth in about 370 A.D. until her death in 415. She was the leader of the Neoplatonic School in Alexandria and was famous as an eloquent and inspiring teacher. The journal Hypatia is named in honor of this foresister. Her name reminds us that although many of us are the first women philosophers in our schools, we are not, after all, the first in history. Hypatia has its roots in the Society for Women in Philosophy, many of whose members have for years envi- sioned a regular publication devoted to feminist philosophy. Hypatia is the realization of that vision; it is intended to encourage and communicate many different kinds of feminist philosophizing. Hypatia (ISSN 0887-5367) is published by Hypatia, Inc., a tax exempt corporation, which assumes no responsibility for statements expressed by authors. Hypatia will publish two issues in 1986, and three issues in each successive year. Subscription rates for 1986-87 are: Institutions, $40/year; Individuals, $20/year. Foreign orders add postage: $5/year to Canada, Mexico and overseas surface; $10/year to overseas airmail. Single copies will be sold for $20 (institutions) and $10 (individuals). A 40% discount is available on bulk orders for classroom use or bookstore sales. Life-time subscriptions are available to donor subscribers for $400. Address all editorial and business correspondence to the Editor, Hypatia, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL 62026-1437. Notice of nonreceipt of an issue must be sent within four weeks after receipt of subsequent issue. Please notify us of any change of address; the Post Office does not forward third class mail. Copyright © 1987 by Hypatia, Inc. All rights reserved. Hypatia was first published in 1983 as a Special Issue of Women's Studies International Forum, by Pergamon Press. The first three issues of Hypatia appeared respectively as vol. 6, no. 6; vol. 7, no. 5; and vol. 8, no. 3 of Women's Studies International Forum. They are available as back issues from Pergamon Press, Maxwell House, Fairview Park, Elmsford, NY 10523. mary b. mahowald Sex-Role Stereotypes in Medicine I argue for compatibility between feminism and medicine by develop- ing a model of the physician-other relationship which is essentially egalitarian. This entails rejection of (a) a paternalistic model which rein- forces sex-role stereotypes, (b) a maternalistic model which exclusively emphasizes patient autonomy, and (c) a model which focuses on the physician's conscience. The model I propose (parentalism) captures the complexity and dynamism of the physician-other relationship, by stress- ing mutuality in respect for autonomy and regard for each other's interests. Feminism and medicine are often seen as incompatible. On the one hand, feminism is a movement to promote equality between women and men; on the other, medicine is a profession which epitomizes an inegalitarian relationship between doctors, who are still mainly men, and patients, who are mainly women (Bidese and Danais 1982, 14, 15).' By "inegalitarian" I mean a relationship in which one party is regard- ed as, and/or is superior to the other, who has no similar claim to superiority. Such a situation may be viewed as temporary inequality, as in the parent-child relationship; or as permanent inequality, as in racism or sexism. The difference between these is important. In tem- porarily inegalitarian relationships, the goal may be to reduce the disparity between the parties. The parent, for example, attempts to facilitate the child's progress towards independent adulthood. Perma- nent inequality is based on unchanging differences such as sexual iden- tity or skin color, and therefore the goal may be to maintain in- egalitarian relationships based on irrelevant differences. On either of these views, the relationship of inequality is not merely one of dissimilarity between (among) the parties; it essentially involves a rank- ing based on differences. Lest we infer from the fact that most patients are women, that this itself constitutes grounds for averring their inferiority to men, we need to recognize significant reasons why this is so. More patients are women not because they are less healthy than men, but for reasons which sug- gest the opposite: (1) they can do something that men cannot do, i.e., bear and nurse children, and (2) they tend to live longer than men, by Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © By Mary B. Mahowald. 21 hypatla an average of eight years (U.S. Department of Health and Human Ser- vices 1982, Table #10).2 Many reasons (valid and invalid) have been cited to explain why most physicians are male-e.g., women have less aptitude for the skills of mind and hand required of the doctor, while they also have a naturally greater aptitude for skills of the heart such as those required of the nurse (Aroskar 1980, 20). Foremost among the reasons, however, is one which well illustrates sex-role expectations of women in general- the incompatibility between the professional demands of medicine, and the role of wife and mother which most women fulfill (Heins et al. 1976, 1961-64; 1977, 2514-17; 1983, 209-10). No similar incompatibility arises when stereotypic sex-role expectations are applied to men. A further explanation for the apparent contradiction between feminism and medicine is evident in the contrast between feminist arguments for reproductive freedom, and the control of others' bodies which medical practice entails. Reproductive freedom implies the right of women to control their own bodies. While the physician exercises power in behalf of the patient, such control may simultaneously cir- cumvent the expressed wishes of the patient. In addition to the inegalitarian relationship generally sustained be- tween physicians and patients, a similar inequality prevails between physicians and other health professionals, who are mainly women (Handler 1975, 3).3 For example, where the role of the nurse is to care, that of the doctor is to cure (Bates 1970, 129; Ashley 1976, 17). Often the latter is seen as the more important contribution to the patient, and rewarded accordingly in terms of income and prestige (Navarro 1975, 398-402; Weaver 1978, 677-700). If the marked increase of women entering medicine continues, possibly their influence will reduce the impact of sex-role stereotypes on the physician's relationship to patients and to other health profes- sionals (Dimond 1983, 207). Why this may not be the case will be ex- plained subsequently, but the point is not crucial to this essay. My plan here is to examine some of the essential features of gender or sex-role stereotypes and compare these with alternative models of the physi- cian/other relationship. On the basis of that comparison, and different versions of feminism, I will propose a model of the physician/other relationship and a version of feminism that are compatible, and preferable to the alternatives. My limited defense of this position hinges on the principle of justice as applied to the clinical social situation. Common stereotypic features During the past five years I have had bimonthly classes with third 22 mary b. mahowald and fourth year medical students who are spending a two month clinical rotation in the obstetric/gynecological service of a women's hospital. The proportion of women in these groups of students is rather high, since our average enrollment of female students approaches 50%. Typically, I begin a session by soliciting from students their sense of what is unique about this specialty as compared with others. The features noted are obvious but significant: most patients are healthy, and an additional healthy patient, the newborn, is the usual result of obstetric care. Another feature consistently mentioned is that all the patients are women, while most doctors (still) are men. Once this feature of the specialty is introduced, I ask students to indicate qualities which are frequently stereotypically attributed to women or men distinctively (allowing that the attribution is often inaccurate for real individuals of either sex). The traits suggested are predictable: men are aggressive, women are passive; men are strong, women are weak; women are depen- dent, men are independent; women are emotional, men are rational. I then ask the students to outline the traits stereotypically attributed to physicians and patients. Not surprisingly, these correspond with those assigned to men and women. Advertence to the stereotypic traits proposed by my medical students is preliminary to their recognition that these are commonly viewed not only as opposite to, but also as excluding, the corresponding trait in the other partner of the relationship. Thus, to the extent that a woman is (perceived as) affective or emotional, she is (perceived as) lacking rationality; and to the extent that a man is (perceived) aggressive, he is (perceived as) not passive or receptive. Yet all of these features may be used to describe the same personality, man or woman. A specific individual may be passive or vulnerable in certain respects, but strong and aggressive in others. For example, I cannot lift 200 pounds, but I have been told that I have a considerably high pain threshold-which makes me strong while weak. Women traditionally have been imputed to be more emotionally dependent than men, yet a number of studies have disclosed the opposite-e.g., the loss of a spouse is much more devastating to a man than to a woman (Jacobs and Ostfield 1977, 344-357). Clearly women are fully capable of exercising intellectual rigor concurrently with their affectivity. Depending on their type and degree of illness, patients possess a similar capability. In her cross-cultural study of sex roles, Jean Humphrey Bloch (1973) describes another difference which may be stereotypically attributed to men or women: men are "agentic," and women are "communal." To be agentic is to promote one's own interests, e.g., through self- protection, self-assertion, and self-expansion; to be communal is to pro- mote the interests of others, even at times at the expense of one's own. 23 hypatia The inadequacy of this pair of stereotypes is fairly obvious, both in its application to men and women, and in an extended application to physicians and their patients. Traditionally, women are perceived as more interested in home and family than in themselves as individuals, or than in the wider community or society; men are perceived as acting in the interests of the public or the wider society. In both cases, however, the orientation may be interpreted as communal rather than agentic, or possibly as agentic on behalf of the community. Insofar as the com- munal interests of women are narrowly defined as embodied in the fami- ly, they may be defined as acting "agentically" more than men. Similar- ly, the traditional image of the physician is communal in that it represents an altruistic commitment to the welfare of others. Nonetheless, as Paul Starr (1982) has recently pointed out, the American public has become increasingly persuaded that medicine is more self- serving than other-serving. Patients too may be either agentic or com- munal in their orientation. With good reason, many are exclusively con- cerned about their own welfare, but many apparently worry most about the impact of their condition on those they love (Gilligan 1982). The recent controversy over models of moral reasoning, drawn from the writings of Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan, is illuminating with regard to agentic or communal traits in individuals. Kohlberg (1971) has proposed three levels of moral reasoning, each comprised of two stages, and proceeding from pre-moral to mature moral reason- ing. The mature level is illustrated by deontological argument, i.e., an appeal to universal moral rules which govern the exercise of individual rights. Gilligan has criticized Kohlberg's research as based exclusively on the experience of males. Through her research on female subjects, Gilligan (1982) has developed a counter model of responsibility or rela- tionship rather than individual rights. My own concern about these models is that either or both may be stereotypic. Prior to this critique, Kohlberg's categories had become standardly invoked in some circles, as applicable to all individuals (Rest et al. 1974, 491-501). Gilligan has already been interpreted somewhat stereotypically, and probably inac- curately, as maintaining the superiority of the female model (Saxton 1981, 63-6). From an ethical standpoint, what seems needed is recogni- tion that both models yield valid insights in moral reasoning, but neither model can be as adequate (or less inadequate) as both. Models of the physician/other relationship On the basis of traits stereotypically assigned to women, men, pa- tients and doctors, certain models of the relationships emerge. In assess- ing these models, however, an important difference should be noted, 24 mary b. mahowald namely, that one is temporary while the other is permanent. Temporary inequality may be defended in the health care situation as a means to promoting permanent equality. The goal of medical practice may in fact be defined as that of making itself unnecessary through improve- ment of the patient's status: illness, as the source of inequality, is to be eradicated. A similar argument is obviously inapplicable to the woman-man relationship. If being a woman and being a man are per- manent conditions, an assumption of inequality between the two necessarily implies that one is permanently inferior to the other. Another construal of the woman-man relationship which is applicable to the physician-other relationship is that of complementarity. A man may be viewed (or view himself) as needing a woman in order to prove his virility; a doctor clearly needs a patient in order to be a doctor, and vice versa. But the woman or the patient is essentially a receptor of the other's strength or expertise or sexual drive. Accordingly, "com- plementarity" describes a fundamentally inegalitarian relationship: woman and patient are similarly passive and vulnerable. "Paternalism" is a term often used to describe the relationship be- tween physician and patient. The meaning of this term is commonly associated with its etymological root (from the Latin pater or "father"): a principle or system of behavior towards others which resembles that of a father towards his child (Webster 1984). The specific role of the father is further defined as that of a protector, one who takes respon- sibility for another (Webster 1984). While the father figure is indepen- dent, the "child" depends on him. On such an account, paternalistic medical interventions are those which impute to the practitioner total responsibility for what is done or not done to patients. Where the pa- tient's own wishes are overridden through these interventions, the prin- ciple that is usually invoked to justify violation of the patient's autonomy is that of beneficence, or at least, non-maleficence. Tradi- tionally, this principle is embodied in the Hippocratic code, which stipulates that physicians ought above all "to help, or at least, to do no harm," (Reiser et al. 1977, 7). The serious limitation of beneficence as an ethical principle is that it may be invoked to justify horrendous intrusions on a patient's autonomy. Where this occurs, it may reduce the roles played by physi- cian and patient to the stereotypic extremes of aggressivity and passivity. Appeal to beneficence under the guise of commitment to the patient's best interests may also reinforce emphasis on the physician's rationali- ty and expertise as opposed to the patient's emotional vulnerability and medical ignorance; and the physician's role as an independent agent, while the patient is essentially but dependently communal. In short, the paternalistic model of the physician/other relation expresses all of 25 hypatia the inegalitarian aspects of sex-role stereotypes regardless of the sex- ual identity of the physician or patient. The fact that most doctors are men and most patients women strengthens this paternalistic approach to the relationship. In the past several decades the Hippocratic paternalistic model of the physician/other relationship has been increasingly criticized and re- jected in favor of a patient autonomy model (Veatch 1981). The key but controversial concept here is of course "informed consent." That concept clearly conflicts with sex-role stereotypic qualities because it imputes to patients both rationality and agency. However, an emphasis on informed or proxy consent4 may be so exclusive as to ignore the broader principle of autonomy which is applicable to others involved in health care decisions-e.g., physicians and other professionals. Logically, if one interprets informed consent as indispensable to medical interventions (Ramsey 1970), this implies an instrumental role for the physician, which reverses the assigned sex-role traits. The patient is then in the position of agent, and the physician is dependent on the patient in order to practice the art of physicianship. On such an account, the patient is viewed as one who knows better than the doctor what should be done in her or his behalf. If we wanted to choose a label comparable to paternalism to describe the relationship between doctor and patient where patient autonomy is thus championed, we might call it maternalism. Admittedly this term may be applied to a woman who practices paternalism in the sense de- fined above. It has also been used to describe a feminist theory which points to biological differences between the sexes as the basis for affir- ming that women are equal, or superior to men (Lerner 1986, 26). However, if we use the term in accordance with its etymological mean- ing (from the Latin mater or mother), it means the opposite of pater- nalism. To mother is to give birth, and/or to nurture another individual. Giving birth essentially entails letting go of what has been a part of oneself. Nurturance means helping another to be whoever he or she is, independently of oneself. To be maternalistic, therefore, implies respect for the other's (e.g., child's or patient's) autonomy, even at the expense of the nurturer's autonomy, and even at some risk to the other (cf. the newborn who must immediately breathe on her own). The very term "patient" seems inappropriate for this context: "client" may be better, or possibly "consumer" (of health services). Difficulties inherent in this model are probably as obvious as those inherent in that of paternalism, and criticisms of both have been well- developed elsewhere (Thomasma 1983; Mahowald 1980; Kleinig 1983; Childress 1983). Basically, the paternalistic model is criticized for its neglect or violation of patient autonomy. A maternalistic model (as 26 mary b. mahowald I have defined it) is criticized for neglect or violation of beneficence, i.e., the traditional medical obligation of doing good and avoiding harm to the patient. However, an exclusive emphasis on informed or proxy consent fails to uphold the principle of autonomy in its entirety. To treat health professionals only as instruments is surely to deny or at least ignore their right and responsibility to exercise their own moral autonomy in professional decisions. A more recent model of the doctor/other relation has been propos- ed by David Thomasma (1983, 243-248) in an effort to overcome the problems inherent in paternalistic or maternalistic (patient autonomy) models. Thomasma argues that the physician ought to base decisions regarding patients on prudential judgment, i.e., one informed by her or his (the physician's own) conscience. Similarly, although he does not elaborate on what it would entail, Thomasma suggests that the pa- tient ought to base assent or dissent to decisions made in a medical set- ting on her or his (the patient's own) conscience. The elements to be considered in the physician's formulation of a conscientious decision are complex and demanding. Although the model is largely based on beneficence, Thomasma also insists on paying due regard to "the ex- istential condition" of the patient, including her or his autonomy. Each patient, he says, "must be handled individually," with a consensus developed through participation of other members of the health care team. As many as possible of the different values at stake are to be preserved, through adherence to the following moral rules: 1. Both doctor and patient must be free to make informed decisions. 2. Physicians are morally required to pay increased attention to pa- tient vulnerability. 3. Physicians must use their power responsibly to care for the patient. 4. Physicians must have integrity. 5. Physicians must have a healthy regard for moral ambiguity. Actual- ly, Thomasma's use of the term "conscience" in describing this model is misleading because it suggests a subjectivism which his fuller elabora- tion does not support. Moreover, since he would allow for a patient- conscience model to complement this elaboration, we cannot really have a picture of the doctor/other relationship in its entirety until we at least view the matter from that perspective also. What happens if conscience judgments of different physicians, and/or of physician and patient con- flict? This question cannot be answered on the basis of the physician- conscience model only. My main complaint with Thomasma's model, then, is a point that he himself admits: the model reflects solely the perspective of the con- cientious physician. Since it does not purport to reflect the perspective of the conscientious patient, it can hardly be said to describe the 27 hypatla physician/other relationship, i.e., a set of interactions or behaviors transpiring between two individuals. Even though they may both be concientious and in fact concur in decisions regarding health care, the physician and patient inevitably have different perspectives. Their rela- tionship is thus not observable from either standpoint exclusively, but it is describable from a more distanced and critical perspective that regards those differences. Insofar as Thomasma focuses on physician conscience as the source of judgment, he invokes a framework by which the physician may move beyond a stereotypic construal of her/his role to view the physi- cian/other relationship more critically. Although "conscience" suggests a purely subjective basis for decision-making, an enlightened or inform- ed conscience is probably indispensable to practical avoidance of the sexist or reverse sexist tendencies of paternalist or maternalist models. In the concrete clinical situation, after all, what counts as paternalistic or maternalistic is bound to vary. What is called for is a view of the physician/other relationship that represents both needs and respon- sibilities, defined as conscientiously and objectively as possible, and applicable simultaneously to unique individuals of either sex. Since such a model would be free of the stereotypes inherent in either paternalist or maternalist models, an appropriate label for it would be "paren- talism." A parentalist model The term parentalism has been proposed in some quarters as a non- sexist substitute for paternalism (Benjamin and Curtis 1981, 48-58). It then raises the same ethical questions as paternalism regarding respect for autonomy. Others have argued that use of the term "parenting" for behaviors usually attributed to mothers or fathers fails to overcome the sexist implications of paternal and maternal roles. In fact, accord- ing to Susan Rae Peterson (1983), the term "parenting" dangerously masks "the motives and goals of those opposed to feminist values," namely, to ignore the real contributions of women as women, ir- replaceable by men. While I share Peterson's concerns, my proposal of the term paren- talism is partly motivated by a desire to avoid sexist assumptions and implications of either "maternalism" or "paternalism" (I shall discuss this subsequently), and partly by a desire to critique the narrow notion of "parenting" and "family" relationships that prevail in today's soci- ety. That narrow notion is one which views parenting as maternally or paternally accomplished by individuals, as taking place merely dur- ing the period in which children are chronologically quite young, and 28 mary b. mahowald as normally only occurring in a relationship that is biologically paren- tal or legally adoptive. Real parenting, and so parentalism, is practic- ed by many who are not biological parents, and in some instances is not practiced by those who are. It is a behavior and an attitude that entails both nurturance and protection across the entire span of life, promoting the autonomy of the other even beyond the point where the nurturer's interventions are needed or desirable. Parenting thus construed is both life begetting and life sustaining, with an understanding of life as unfolding and developing towards fulfillment of each individual's unique potential. On this account, paren- talism is a model for all of our human relationships, no matter what our age, or biological or legal tie to one another. Just as my mother parented me when I was small by doing for me what I could not do for myself (feeding, clothing, etc.), she continued to parent me by en- couraging my independence of her through most of my life. In her ad- vanced age I parented her by doing for her what she could not do for herself (feeding, clothing, etc.), and also by respecting and encourag- ing her independence as much as possible. Are we not all similarly bound to protect others from harms and to do for them what they cannot do for themselves, while respecting and encouraging their autonomy? Ob- viously, we have different degrees of obligations to different individuals, depending on our relationship and commitment to them, their need, and our capacity to respond. Moreover, conflicts inevitably arise bet- ween our obligations to different individuals. Nonetheless, the paren- talist model is useful as a moral ideal or paradigm for addressing the changing needs and capacities of unique individuals with unique rela- tionships to one another. A clear advantage of this model for the physician-other relationship is its applicability to a variety of disparate medical situations. Consider, for example, the types of disease which Jonsen, Siegler and Winslade have categorized through the acronyms ACURE, CARE and COPE (1982, 16-46). ACURE refers to diseases that are acute, critical, unex- pected, responsive to treatment, and easily diagnosed; e.g., the other- wise healthy individual who contracts bacterial meningitis. CARE refers to diseases that are critical, active, recalcitrant, and eventually fatal; e.g., a patient with cancer in its terminal stages. And COPE refers to diseases that are chronic, treated on an outpatient basis, with palliative and efficacious therapies; e.g., a patient with diabetes mellitus or rheumatoid arthritis. In the ACURE situation, there may scarcely be time, possibility or need to check on the patient's wishes before acting beneficently in her or his behalf, just as one would attempt to rescue a friend from sud- den danger. Such actions are sometimes considered justifiably pater- 29 hypatia nalistic. (I agree that they are justifiable, but not that they are pater- nalistic, so long as the intervention is assumed to accord with the pa- tient's or friend's own wishes.) In the CARE situation, there is a per- suasive case for respecting the patient's wishes over those of others, including clinicians. To the extent that this overrides what the physi- cian considers best for the patient, such an intervention may be con- strued as maternalistic. The American legal system generally supports this approach through its insistence that no competent patient shall be coerced to undergo treatment (except for the sake of dependent minors). In the COPE situation the challenge to both physician and patient, like that which parents and children typically face, is to act both beneficently and autonomously towards one another, or in cases of conflict, to violate either principle as little as possible. A parentalistic model of the physician-other relationship is applicable to all three kinds of situations because it entails ascertaining the degree of protective (paternal) influence that is necessary, while also attemp- ting to maximize expression of autonomy on the part of all those con- cerned. Indeed this model is applicable more broadly than to the physician-other relationship, to relationships that occur between physi- cians and nurses, patients and nurses, etc., and beyond the health care setting to the full spectrum of human interactions. As already suggested, another advantage of the parentalist model, whether applied in the clinical setting or more broadly, is that it avoids the stereotyping that either maternalist or paternalist models reinforce. It does this by rejecting the idea that the physician is solely the instru- ment of the patient, or that s/he is totally superior to the patient. Clear- ly, for most of their life span, parents and their children are adults. Throughout their lives, just as parents learn from one another, so physi- cians who subscribe to this model really do learn from their patients, whose rationality is not necessarily distorted but may even be sharpen- ed by the time for reflection which sickness and hospitalization sometimes affords. Moreover, such physicians feel no need to cut off their emotional life when they put on their white coats and wear their stethoscopes around their necks; they may also construe their role not as independent agents but as collaborators with other health profes- sionals as well as with their patients. In other words, parentalist physi- cians as well as their patients may manifest passivity and aggressivity, emotion and reason, community and agency-all of the attributes stereotypically assigned only to one sex or the other. Feminist ideologies and criticisms Such a model of the physician-other relationship necessarily entails 30 mary b. mahowald rejection of sex-role stereotypes. It is thus compatible with feminism, but not all varieties of feminism. Unfortunately, a large number of peo- ple interpret feminism stereotypically, and it is that sterotype which is at odds with the traditional image of the physician. I would like to conclude by briefly delineating different feminist ideologies, and relating these to alternative models of the physician-patient relationship. Preliminarily, however, we need to acknowledge that feminists, whatever their political ideology, share the views that (1) women general- ly occupy a subordinate position to most men in contemporary socie- ty, and (2) this is not the way society should operate (Jaggar 1974). The first point is well documented in the comparative data on economic distribution, and by laws and statutes illustrating sex discrimination throughout history and continuing through our own day (Illich 1982, 24; Ratner 1978, 20-23). The second point is more con- troversial. In general, however, women as well as men who enter medicine tend to support either view less often or less strongly than others support them (Ginzberg and Brann 1980; Lesserman 1978). If we were able to speculate on reasons for that reticence, and in some cases, disagreement with basic feminist positions, several possible ex- planations are apparent. One is that the very accomplishment of women who enter medicine is enhanced by the fact that so few succeed. Another is that their success has been achieved by and may yet be dependent on male-defined criteria of accomplishment. A third reason is that solidarity with other women is a difficult attitude to develop or main- tain for individuals who have been socialized to view women as generally inferior to men, and in that context to view themselves as exceptional. A fourth reason is that individual differences are greater than those between the sexes (Beauvoir 1952). Since male and female medical students are more similar to one another than female medical students are to other women, it is less likely that they would see themselves as subordinate or inferior to their male counterparts (Heins 1977, 421-7). As I have already suggested, physician resistance to feminist arguments might be reduced through recognition that feminism has several forms. These may be classified as liberal, socialist or marxist, and radical (Mahowald 1976, 219-28). Jaggar has carefully delineated and assessed these ideologies in her Feminist Politics and Human Nature (1983), distinguishing clearly between socialist feminism and classical marxism as different feminist theories. My purpose here, however, is not to embark on an extended discussion of these, but simply to use the labels as illustrative of different approaches that may be used by individuals who concur in their rejection of sexism. In that light, a liberal feminism may be characterized as one which emphasizes individual liber- ty, and thus supports the fundamental structure of American society, 31 hypatla with its essential individualism. That same emphasis entails a reformist critique of sexual discrimination as impeding the rights of individual women to achieve their full potential. The potential of women, it is claimed, cannot justifiably be confined by legislation based on sex-role stereotypes. Applying that critique to the physician-other relationship, the liberal feminist would clearly reject medical paternalism, as reflecting the legally reinforced social paternalism which has kept women "in their place" (i.e., at home raising children, dependent on a man), and so stifled their potential throughout most of history. Where physicians are allowed to violate the autonomy of their patients (whether women or men), even though defended on grounds that they thus promote the patient's good, the philosophy of liberal feminism is flatly contradicted. But if such a feminist is consistent in her or his liberal position, a pa- tient autonomy model is not acceptable either, because exclusive em- phasis on patient autonomy might conflict with the liberal's insistence on respect for the autonomy of physicians, a growing number of whom are women. I would define radical feminism as a reversal of the traditional sex- role relationship. In critiquing the male supremacist model, it argues for the superiority of feminine values, and the importance of main- taining those values through women's clear support for one another. Radical feminism thus issues a clear challenge to the medical profes- sion's dominance over women's lives, particularly with regard to their reproductive health. Although the critique extends to all aspects of medicine as embodying a kind of "patriarchal religion" (Raymond 1982), it specifically advocates efforts to place the care of women's health entirely in the hands of women themselves. The model thus frank- ly invoked is maternalism, but a maternalism of which only women are deemed capable. Insofar as feminine values replace masculine values in a hierarchical system, medicine may then be matriarchal. From the standpoint of radical feminism, health caretakers ought primarily to nurture women's interests, and women's interests are best known by themselves. Male participation in medical care must therefore be subordinated to women's dominance in roles of both patient and physician, since they possess greater experience and expertise than men with regard to healing. One of the most serious threats to women's status in this regard (also at odds with a liberal feminist approach) is an in- creasing incidence of court ordered deliveries by cesarean section for women who had declined to undergo surgery recommended for the sake of the fetus (Annas 1982, 16-7, 45). Clearly many physicians agree with feminist criticism of such court orders; as one (male) obstetrician remarked to me, surgery under such circumstances constitutes assault upon the pregnant woman. To the extent that the medical profession 32 mary b. mahowald supports the right of women to terminate their pregnancies and to refuse medical procedures, it invokes a patient autonomy model which is con- genial to radical feminism. To be consistent, however, radical feminists would also have to support the autonomy model for female physicians, and this provides no help at all in dealing with physician-other con- flicts in which both parties are female. Two other interpretations of feminism are associated with a critique of the socio-economic structure in which we find ourselves, namely, capitalism or individualism. While both of these are related to the marx- ist tradition, the "classical marxist" approach maintains that the op- pression of women is secondary to universal economic oppression; in constrast, a socialist feminist theory affirms that the liberation of women is indispensable to economic equality. Either of these views represents a challenge to the inequality signified by paternalist or mater- nalist models of the physician-other relationship. Both are also consis- tent with parentalism. Marx's motto at the end of the Critique of the Gotha Programa exemplifies the parentalist attempt to balance response to individual needs with social contributions proportionate to the dif- fering talents of individuals: "From each according to ability, to each according to need" (Tucker 1972, 388). However, this orientation is obviously opposed to the individualist economic orientation often at- tributed to the American medical establishment. Consequently, to the extent that physicians subscribe to that orientation, whether they hap- pen to be women or men, endorsement of either socialist or traditionalist marxist feminism is improbable. It is possible, however, for physicians to join a critique of economic or other kinds of individualism as occasioning disparities and inequities among groups of people requiring health care. Where they do so, a corresponding version of feminism is compatible with their view of the physician-other relationship. That version of feminism would take ac- count of the different needs, preferences and abilities of individual women and men, thus relying on the principles of beneficence and autonomy. It would also have to take account of a principle I have only indirectly discussed through references to equality and inequali- ty, namely, justice. The balancing of the principles of beneficence and autonomy which is necessary in situations of conflict would be ac- complished through appeal to justice, particularly distributive justice, as the principle on which equitable or fair distribution of goods and services may be determined. In the interest of fairness, the degree to which one is obligated to practice beneficence towards a specific individual, as contrasted with another, should be calculated on the basis of the harms thus avoided and the benefits thus promoted among all of those affected. The degree 33 hypatia to which one is obligated to respect autonomy of one individual as op- posed to another should be determined on the basis of the preferences thus fulfilled or denied. In situations of conflict our priority for respec- ting autonomy and promoting others' welfare rests with those who are most affected by our decisions. This of course is why the decision of a pregnant woman should override that of others regarding continua- tion or discontinuation of her pregnancy (Jaggar 1976). The importance of considerations of distributive justice to the paren- talist model of the physician-other relationship is apparent when we recognize that most parents have more than one child, and most physi- cians many more than one patient. Since time, expertise, and material resources are surely limited (and probably our psychological or im- material resources are limited as well), parents and physicians have to monitor their distribution of resources so as to treat all of their children or patients fairly or justly. As never before, through government cur- tailment of reimbursement for services, and through escalation of costs of new and old services, physicians are forced to confront the ethical dilemmas arising from problems of limited resources. Some interpreta- tion of distributive justice is inevitably applied to these situations. The challenge is to choose among alternative interpretations the one most defensible from a moral point of view, and feasible for statutes and clinical practice. I cannot here launch into an analysis of different conceptions of distributive justice, with arguments pro and con concerning each. Anyway, others have done this quite extensively and critically (Rawls 1971; Nozick 1974; Walzer 1983). I would conclude then by simply specifying the conception of justice that underlies my view that socialist or marxist feminism, and a parentalist model of the physician-other relationship are compatible, and preferable to the alternatives. Basically, these models entail an emphasis on equality which permits some limita- tion to the liberty of those who are more advantaged. John Rawls has well elaborated the essential components of my notion in his Theory of Justice (1971, 302,3). Paraphrasing Rawls, the crucial factors are (a) equal liberty for all, and (b) no increase of advantages for the already advantaged, except in cases where the disadvantaged thus become bet- ter off. Although Rawls treats the first of these as a priority principle, I am unwilling to give greater weight to liberty over equality, and so insist on maintaining maximal liberty and equality simultaneously. It may be impossible to achieve this in extreme dilemmas, and I would probably need an account similar to Ross's (1930) prima facie duties to defend my claim that liberty and equality should both be upheld. Nonetheless, if one subscribes to both principles, the other options men- tioned here regarding feminism and the physician-other relationship are 34 mary b. mahowald neither logically nor existentially acceptable. If one does subscribe to them, one is both feminist and parentalist. Finally, then, I appeal to the principle of justice or fairness as the basis for overcoming the frustrating influence of sex-role stereotypes and stereotypic images of the physician, the patient, and the relation- ship between them. Where justice is the basis for defining or redefin- ing the physician-other relationship, compatibility between medical practice and any ultimately justifiable version of feminism is clear enough. While liberal feminism appears compatible with the patient autonomy model, it only really is so if we limit the autonomy of the physician, and thus violate the view of justice on which a liberal philosophy is based, namely, equal liberty for men as well as women. Radical feminism is compatible with the patient autonomy model also (if we ignore the problem of women physicians), but it manifestly con- tradicts the principle of justice by imputing to all men a secondary status to all women: in other words, it embodies the injustice of sex-role stereotyping, even as does paternalism. This leaves us with a marxist or socialist feminism, which is, as I have already suggested, compati- ble with the parentalist model of the physician-other relationship. However, the interpretation on which this version of feminism rests is one which gives due weight to both beneficence and autonomy. So construed, justice is a critical, mediating principle for addressing con- flicts between feminism and medicine. notes 1. The total number of physicians in the U.S. as of Dec. 31, 1980, included 408,780 men and 52,509 women, cf. Catherine M. Bidese and Donald G. Danais (1982, 14, 15). Regarding women as patients of a study of physician visits (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1983, 20): Although the rates did not differ much for males and females in the youngest and oldest age groups, for the age span from about 15 years of age to 64 years of age, females had a higher rate of physician visits than males did. A portion of this difference is related to visits concerning childhood and pregnancy, par- ticularly in the 15-44 year age bracket. 2. E.g., for the year 1979 life expectancy at birth for women was 77.6 years, for men 69.9 years. Cf. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1982, Table #10). 3. Cf. Aaron Handler (1975, 3): 2.2 million females employed in the 28 health oc- cupational categories comprise 71 % of all persons in these categories; 37% are registered nurses, 28% nursing aides, 10% practical nurses, 9% physicians. (Data for the last decade have not yet been published.) 4. 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New York: Basic Books. 38 judith m. hill Pornography and Degradation I have taken a Kantian approach to the issue of pornography and degrada- tion. My thesis is that by perpetuating derogatory myths about womankind, for the sake of financial gain, the pornography industry treats the class of women as a means only, and not as composed of individuals who are ends in themselves. It thus de-grades all women, as members of this class, imputing to them less than full human status. The issue of pornography has often been approached from a Utilitarian point of view, with the discussion focusing on what the con- sequences of pornography might be. There is a great deal of literature concerning whether or not the availability of pornographic material is responsible for violence against women, or for promoting a de- personalized attitude toward sexual relationships. There is not a great deal of agreement on these empirical questions (Berger, 1977). Recently, there have been several attempts to introduce city or county ordinances banning the sale of pornography, in Minneapolis, In- dianapolis, Los Angeles, and Suffolk, New York. The proponents of these ordinances have argued that pornography violates the civil rights of women, apparently a non-Utilitarian argument. However, their argu- ment turns on the premise that the effect of pornography is to deny equal opportunities to women. Thus far, the courts have rejected this line of reasoning, and the constitutionality of the proposed statutes, largely because they are not convinced that the consequences of por- nogrpahy are such as to warrant restrictions of First Amendment rights. I am interested in presenting an argument that does not appeal to the consequences of pornography, a strictly non-Utilitarian argument that rests on the hypothesis that pornography degrades women. I believe that pornography does degrade women. However, the concept of degradation is a slippery one, which, like other concepts of oppression, has not been examined as carefully as it must be if we are going to discuss oppression illuminatingly. In the first part of this article, therefore, I will offer an analysis of the concept of degradation. In the second part, I will show why and how pornography degrades women. Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © by Judith M. Hill. 39 hypatla I I propose that we begin with the assumption that degradation in- volves, literally, a de-grading. This proposition is, I realize, both vague and ambiguous. It is ambiguous because "de-grade" may suggest either (1) to down-grade, to lower the worth of, to de-value, or (2) to assign a lower grade to, to give a lower evaluation, to characterize as of lesser worth. In other words, de-gradation may be thought to entail either a real loss of worth, or an imputed loss of worth. In either case, the proposal is vague, because it gives no indication of the kind of value that must be lost, or imputed to be lost, in order for degradation to take place. The following examples suggest a direction we might take in firming up this proposal. In William Styron's novel, Sophie's Choice, Sophie mentions that although the Nazis routinely shaved the heads of all inmates at Auschwitz, those inmates who occupied positions of favor were per- mitted to wear headscarves in order to hide their "degrading baldness." In Emma Goldman's autobiography, recounting a period of time spent in prison, she describes as "degrading" the prisoners being forc- ed to march in lockstep while carrying buckets of excrement from their cells to the river. In both these cases, the writers are describing environments in which severe physical abuse was a commonplace. The horrors of the Nazi death camps are well-known. The plight of working class women in prisons in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was also ap- palling: forced labor under sweatshop conditions, with inadequate food, crowded living quarters, and no medical facilities. Given the context of physical abuse in both cases, it is significant that what Goldman and Styron's Sophie focus on as degrading is not any physical abuse or deprivation at all, but on practices the importance of which (to both practitioner and victim) is largely symbolic. In both cases, it is a kind of public display of low status which is described as degrading. Extrapolating from Styron and Goldman, I would suggest that the de-grading involved in degradation is a lowering of moral status. A person is not degraded merely by losing status as president of the com- pany or as most valuable player or as woman of the year. Degradation is not to be confused with decline or defeat. It is not a matter of losing power or prestige or privilege, but of losing something considerably more central to one's personhood. To give this account a Kantian in- terpretation: degradation involves being treated as though one were a means only, as though one were not an end in herself, as though one were something less than a person. 40 judith m. hill However, degradation is not simply a matter of being treated as something less than a person. If this were true, then shaved heads and forced marches would be the least of the degradations inflicted upon Sophie and Goldman, for in much of the physical and mental abuse they suffered they were treated as less than persons. It is not a suffi- cient condition of degradation that a person be treated as something less than a person. I am inclined to say that it is a necessary condition of degradation that a person be perceived-by herself or by others-as being treated as something less than a person. Degradation occurs with the creation of a public impression that a person is being treated as something less than a person. Thus, baldness was degrading within the context of Auschwitz because it marked one as a member of the class that was being treated as sub-human. Forced marches for prisoners doing housekeeping chores were degrading because their sole purpose was to exhibit-for the benefit of the prisoners and the guards, at least-the complete submissiveness and obedience of the prisoners and the com- plete control of the guards; forced marches served as a demonstration that the prisoners could be treated in whatever manner, however in- human, that the guards desired. In short, degradation is a public phenomenon. If there is no percep- tion of a person being treated as though she were a means only, then she is not degraded, although she may be exploited or cheated or abus- ed. For example, consider the difference between an employer who underpays employees while expressing contempt for them, and an employer who underpays employees while cultivating an image of benevolent concern. The former degrades her employees; the latter "merely" cheats them. Or, consider the difference between a man who publicly treats his wife as a servant, and a man who treats his wife as a means only while expressing love and affection for her. Again, the former degrades his wife; the latter "merely" takes advantage of her. Although degradation requires a public perception of someone be- ing treated as a means only, this perception need not be widely shared: it is often enough that the victim perceives it, i.e., that it be public in principle only. On the other hand, it may be true that the degradation is more severe if the perception is more widespread. To be actually observed in public being treated as less than a person is more degrading than being subjected to the same treatment in private. This suggests, to return to a question raised above, that degradation involves a de-grading in the sense of imputing a lesser value to, rather than in the sense of lessening the value of. Covert treatment of a per- son as a means only-a matter of exploitation or abuse rather than of degradation, if my analysis is correct-implies no conviction on the 41 hypatia agent's part that his action is morally justifiable, that the other deserves to be treated as a means only. Such actions do not, therefore, impute a lesser moral worth to the victim. However, an agent who lets his vic- tim know that he is intentionally treating her as a means only, exhibits a certain contempt for her, demonstrates a certain conviction that his action is justifiable, that she deserves to be treated as less than a per- son. Finally, an agent who treats his victim as something less than a person in public places, for the whole world to observe, demonstrates a conviction that her worthlessness is so extreme that all the world can be counted upon to regard him as justified in treating her accordingly. In short, the more public the display of contempt, the stronger is the imputation of moral worthlessness. It may sometimes be thought that degradation de-grades not only in the sense of imputing lesser moral worth to a person, but also in the sense of actively lessening the moral worth of a person. In particular, I suspect that people who degrade others often vaguely think of this as a kind of challenge or as a test. One meets the challenge, passes the test, by insisting (presumably at whatever cost) on being treated with respect. One fails the test by acquiescing; and the penalty for failure is the loss of one's right to be treated with respect. Thus, degradation carries with it its own justification: people who allow themselves to be treated as less than persons deserve to be treated as less than persons. This is a mistake. A person does not have to earn the right to be treated as an end in herself, to be treated with fairness and considera- tion; and a person does not forfeit these rights by failing to insist that they be respected. These are rights a person has simply in virtue of be- ing a person, in virtue of having the potential (in theory, at least) for certain kinds of behavior. Consequently, degradation is always moral- ly wrong. It does not become less wrong because the degraded person acquiesces. On the other hand, Thomas Hill (1973) has argued, correctly I think, that although one does not forfeit moral rights by acquiescing to degradation, such acquiescence is not always morally neutral. Hill's argument proceeds in terms of a moral duty of self respect. There are, he allows, circumstances under which even a self-respecting person could not reasonably be expected to object to degrading treatment-e.g., when she does not understand that her rights are being violated, or that she has a right to object, or when it might be dangerous or in some way disastrous for her to object; and certainly no moral blame attaches to a failure to insist on being treated with respect under such circumstances. However, when a person is aware that her rights are being violated, and the cost of objecting to such treatment would not be excessive, then a person fails in her moral duty to herself if she fails to insist on her 42 judith m. hill rights. Although I agree with the spirit of Hill's argument, I would be more comfortable making the point in terms of moral courage than in terms of a duty of self-respect. Moral courage, like physical courage, is a trait one develops by exercising it. When a person acts in a cowardly man- ner, in a situation in which courage is called for, she takes a step in the formation of her own character. Obviously, no single act of moral cowardice will make one a moral coward. However, it becomes more and more difficult to insist on one's rights each time one fails to do so. If a person habitually acquiesces to degrading treatment while understanding that she has a right to object, and under circumstances in which there is no reason to expect severe reprisals for objecting, she cultivates moral cowardice, a weak character. Thus, degradation does not merely impute a lesser value to the degraded person. A person who acquiesces habitually and unnecessarily to degradation becomes a lesser person, in the sense that she will have a lesser capacity to act in a moral manner. It does not by any means follow that such a person deserves to be treated as less than a person. As I have said, a person does not have to earn the right to be treated as an end in herself. It does follow that degradation should be taken very seriously. A person who tolerates degrading treatment because it would be embarrassing to object, or because it would result in some financial loss, is risking her moral character. To summarize: a person is degraded when she is publicly, or at least overtly, treated as a means only, as something less than a person. Degradation involves a de-grading at least in the sense that it entails a (false) imputation of a lower moral status than persons, as such, are ordinarily accorded; and sometimes also in the sense that it involves a diminution of the moral courage of the person degraded. II Now we may turn to the question of whether or not pornography degrades women. Obviously, the answer to this question will depend in part on what we identify as pornography. The Indianapolis and Minneapolis city or- dinances, which were framed primarily by Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, defined pornography as "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women, whether in pictures or in words." The proposed ordinances listed six conditions, at least one of which would have to be present in order to qualify a work as pornographic. Among these conditions were: (1) presenting women as sexual objects "who enjoy pain and humiliation"; (2) presenting women as "experiencing 43 hypatia pleasure in being raped"; (3) presenting women as objects for "domina- tion, conquest, violation, exploitation, possession or use." (Shipp 1984) It should be noted that Andrea Dworkin is of the opinion that, in fact, virtually all of what passes for "adult entertainment" falls into one or more of these categories. She points out that, etymologically, pornography is "the depiction of vile whores"; and that after exten- sive research on the content and nature of contemporary "adult enter- tainment," she has concluded that it is still best described as the depic- tion of vile whores. "The fact that pornography is widely believed to be 'sexual representation' or 'depictions of sex' emphasizes only that the valuation of women as low whores is widespread and that the sex- uality of women is perceived as low and whorish in itself" (Dworkin 1981, 201). In short, although Dworkin's proposed ordinances do not mandate censorship of sexually explicit, or obscene, material, as such, it is probably fair to say that she expects them to have the effect of eliminating most of what is commonly regarded as pornography. Perhaps for this reason, some critics of the Minneapolis and In- dianapolis ordinances have drawn the conclusion that these ordinances threaten all sexually explicit material. Civil libertarian Nat Hentoff (1984), for example, decried the ordinances as endangering "such works as...Dr. Zhivago,...Lolita, and of course, bountiful sections of the Old Testament." As I understand the proposed ordinances, they would not ban such works; and it is not my intention in this paper to object to such works as these. Therefore, in order to avoid this sort of misunderstanding, I will elaborate a bit on the Dworkin/MacKinnon definition of pornography, narrowing in on a genre I shall call Victim Pornography. Victim pornography is the graphic depiction of situations in which women are degraded by sexual activity, viz., (a) situations in which a woman is treated by a man (or by another woman) as a means of ob- taining sexual pleasure, while he shows no consideration for her pleasure or desires or well-being, and (b) situations in which a woman is not only subjected to such treatment, but suggests it to the man in the first place. Furthermore, Victim Pornography presents such activity as enter- taining. There is no suggestion that women should not be treated as less than persons; and often there is no hint that a woman might dislike such treatment.' I believe that Victim Pornography does comprise at least a very large part of what passes today for adult entertainment. Dworkin is right in maintaining that much of what is commonly regarded as pornography is a celebration of violence and exploitation. However, I want to em- phasize that the issue I am addressing is not the morality of what is commonly regarded as pornography: I am not concerned here with 44 judith m. hill material that is sexually explicit, or obscene, as such. The focus of my discussion is neither Lady Chatterly's Lover nor Playboy's "Ten Coeds At Home," but Victim Pornography: depictions of women being bound, beaten, raped, mutilated, and, as often as not, begging for more. It will be my contention that Victim Pornography does degrade all women. The truth of this thesis is not immediately obvious. The fact that much of pornography depicts women begin treated as means only, does not entail that pornographic material itself treats women as means only. Consequently, since it is degradation, and not depictions of degrada- tion that we have found to be morally reprehensible, the fact that some pornographic material depicts situations in which women are degrad- ed does not entail that this material is morally reprehensible, nor therefore, that it ought to be censored or eliminated. To repeat the conclusion drawn in Part I: In order for degradation to take place, some person must be treated as a means only. It will not suffice that a fictional person be treated as a means only. Therefore, we should be looking for ways in which pornography might be respon- sible for real people being treated as means only. There is some initial plausibility to the claim that the women who serve as models for Victim Pornography-women who act in por- nographic films or pose for pornographic magazines-are treated as means only, by the producers and/or the consumers of pornographic material. One can imagine that the experience of being bound, beaten, and raped in front of camera crews or photographers must be humiliating at best. Women are subjected to this humiliation so that the producers of pornography can make a profit, and so that the patrons of pornography can have a sexual thrill. In short, the producers of por- nography treat their models as instruments for making money; patrons of pornography treat them as instruments for sexual pleasure. However, before concluding that the women who are filmed and photographed for Victim Pornography are necessarily treated as means only, we should consider the distinction between (a) treating a person (only) as a means, and (b) treating a person as a means only. There are many people with whom one has quite limited relation- ships, e.g., one's teachers, one's political representatives, the proprietors of businesses one frequents. If one's relationship with such people has not developed beyond the point where one avails oneself of the ser- vices or goods provided by the other, it may be said that one treats the other (only) as a means to one's own ends. This does not, of course, preclude the possibility that the user treats the provider with respect, politeness, cordiality. Clearly it is not relationships such as these that Kant meant to proscribe. As with any human relationship, business rela- 45 hypatia tionships are subject to abuse; it does not follow that there is anything morally reprehensible about business relationships as such. On the other hand, there may be people whom one treats as though their desires, feelings, interests, are unimportant, insignificant. One may have relationships in which one actively avoids dealing with any aspect of a person other than the service this person provides for one. In such cases, one treats a person as though she were not an end in herself, but a means only. This sort of relationship differs from that described above in that the first sort does not involve treating a person as though she were not an end in herself, but only not treating a person as though she were an end in herself, while the second sort of relationship involves both. It is only the second sort of relationship that violates Kant's Im- perative; and it is only the second sort of relationship, therefore, that can be degrading. In other words, we do not degrade people by treating them (only) as means to our ends, as limited business contacts. We degrade people by treating them as means only, as though they were not ends in themselves, as though they were less than persons. With this distinction in mind, let us return to the treatment of women who are filmed or photographed for Victim Pornography. One can imagine the producers of Victim Pornography treating their models as though they were means only: as though they were not per- sons deserving of respect and consideration, as though their pain and humiliation were amusing or boring. Indeed, it is probably true that most producers of Victim Pornography do treat their models in this way. However, this is not a necessary feature of the production of por- nography, even of Victim Pornography. Although it would be naive to suppose that the producers of pornography typically show respect and consideration for their models, we can at least imagine a producer of pornography taking time to ensure that the model's job is no more painful than necessary; treating unpleasant aspects of her job as unpleas- ant aspects, rather than as opportunities for leering; treating the models as people doing a job for pay, rather than as so much meat. A pro- ducer of pornography who behaves in this way still treats the model as a means to making profits, and perhaps only as a means to making profits (and not as an artist, or as a friend, for example); but does not treat her as a means only, as though she were not an end in herself, as less than a person. In other words, it is not a necessary feature of the production of Vic- tim Pornography that the models be degraded. Certainly it may hap- pen, and often does happen; and certainly it is morally reprehensible when it happens. But pornography, even Victim Pornography, can sure- ly be produced without degradation to the models2; and therefore the potential for degradation to models is not a reason to end the produc- 46 Judith m. hill tion of pornography. After all, pornography is not the only industry in which there is potential for degradation. Any employer may degrade employees, treating them as though they were not deserving of con- sideration or respect. It is easiest to do this when the work is menial and the employee has no real alternatives-e.g., to waitresses and porters. But in any industry it is possible for a certain sort of person to abuse a position of authority by treating subordinates as means on- ly. Even a superficial look around the working world will reveal junior executives and adjunct college faculty being treated as less than per- sons by supervisors who make themselves feel superior by the contrast. The point is that as long as the degradation of subordinates is not a necessary feature of an industry, but contingent upon a certain kind of person being in a position of authority, it is not a reason to abolish, nor even to deplore, the industry itself. The hypothesis that the women who act in pornographic films and pose for pornographic magazines are necessarily treated as means only by the patrons of pornography, is even less plausible than the hypothesis that they are necessarily treated as means only by the producers of pornography. It is doubtlessly the case that many people use pornography as a means of obtaining pleasure. The women who act in pornographic films and pose for pornographic magazines are, therefore, indirectly, in- struments of pleasure for patrons of pornography. However, although it may follow that the patrons of pornography treat the models in por- nographic material only as means to their own ends, it does not follow that they treat them as means only, as though they were not ends in themselves. The relationship between the patrons and the women who model for pornography is not, as such, sufficiently personal-they do not actually interact-to allow of this description. In short, it is not true that women who serve as models for por- nography are treated as means only, as less than persons, by consumers of pornography. On the other hand, although it may be true that these women are only treated as means, this is not in itself degrading to them. It becomes apparent that any sort of degradation attaching to por- nography will not occur on the personal level suggested by the hypotheses we have just considered. However, we have not yet con- sidered the hypothesis that the pornography industry degrades women as a class rather than this or that individual woman. The pornography industry regularly publishes material which, speak- ing conservatively, tends to contribute to the perpetuation of derogatory beliefs about womankind. Victim Pornography, in particular, depicts women not simply as ill treated, but as eager to be used and abused, totally lacking in human dignity: as more or less worthless for any pur- 47 hypatia pose other than casual sexual intercourse. Many pieces of pornography depict all female characters in such negative ways. Of course pornography is fiction, and does not purport to be anything other than fiction. However, fiction is not supposed to be devoid of all factual truth; indeed, fiction should contain truths about human nature, about motivation, about power, and so on. Consequently, although pornographic material may make no claim to be describing actual states of affairs, we might say that it offers a perspective on the actual nature of womankind. The perspective offered by Victim Por- nography is that, in general, women are narcissistic, masochistic, and not fully persons in the moral sense. I would not suggest that it is the intention of pornographers to con- vey the message that all women may be, or should be, or like to be treated as less than persons. This is almost surely false. Most por- nographers are not at all interested in influencing behavior, or in con- veying universal truths; their intention is to titillate. Nevertheless, because pornography trades in stereotypes, shunning any careful or serious character development (by its very nature; this is what makes it bad literature), and because the stereotypes that titillate (at least, that titillate the patrons of Victim Pornography) are derogatory ones-the nymphomaniac, the masochist, the mindless playmate-much of Vic- tim Pornography supports the idea that all women fall into one or another of these categories, whether or not this is its intention. The genre of Victim Pornography, taken as a whole, implies that most women are mindless, masochistic nymphomaniacs. That is to say, this would be the logical conclusion to draw on the basis of the characteriza- tion offered in Victim Pornography.3 The point I want to make here is not that Victim Pornography is responsible for negative attitudes and/or violent behavior toward women. If pornography were eliminated from the culture, there would probably be no discernible change in beliefs about, or attitudes towards women, unless many of its spiritual cognates were eliminated simultaneously. Conversely, if all aspects of the tradition of treating women as less than persons except pornography were eliminated, por- nography would become more or less innocuous, would be difficult to take seriously. In other words, I am inclined to be quite conservative in estimating the degree of potential pornography has, in and of itself, to actually plant the seeds of derogatory beliefs about, and subsequent violent behavior toward, womankind. Pornography only contributes to the nurture of the plant. Again, the point is not that Victim Pornography has negative conse- quences for women. The point is that Victim Pornography contains implications that defame womankind. The perspective on women of- 48 judith m. hill fered by Victim Pornography is not only derogatory, it is false. Most women are not mindless, masochistic nymphomaniacs. Most women do not enjoy being beaten and raped. Most women do not want, or expect, to be treated as less than persons by their sexual partners. (This may seem so obvious that it should not have to be said. Indeed, it should not have to be said. However, a look at what goes on at rape trials will show that it is not, unfortunately, obvious.) Nevertheless, the pornography industry routinely publishes material that supports this view of womankind. The pornography industry does not care that this view is false. This is what sells, to the tune of $7 billion a year. In short, the pornography industry is quite willing to defame womankind for the sake of making a profit. In so doing, the pornography industry degrades womankind. It treats the class of women as nothing more than a means to its own financial ends. It treats the class of women as though such a smearing of its reputation is unimportant, trivial. In other words, pornography degrades women because it treats them as members of a class which has no honor and is not entitled to respect. The pornography industry treats women as though the truth about their nature may be ignored or distorted with impunity. The point is not that pornography may in- cite men to rape women. The point is that the pornography industry blithely perpetuates derogatory myths, blithely lies, about the nature of women, for its own financial gain. In publishing Victim Pornography, the pornography industry treats women, as a class, as less than persons. In my view, this is sufficient to support the claim that Victim Pornography is morally objectionable, A word about the legal implications of this analysis: The anti-pornography ordinances proposed in Indianapolis and Min- neapolis suggest that the sale of pornography be viewed as a violation of women's civil rights. I think this is more promising than the old approach of objecting to pornography on grounds of obscenity. The champions of free speech characterize all obscenity laws as attempts to curtail the free exchange of ideas simply because the most sensitive members of society are offended by them. However absurd it may be to characterize Victim Pornography as an exchange of ideas, the civil libertarians do not seem likely to relinquish this position any time soon. The approach taken by MacKinnon and Dworkin has the advantage of not lending itself to this interpretation. Even a cursory reading of their defense will show that they are not bluestockings imposing their personal subjective standards of decency on the rest of society. Furthermore, treating pornography as a violation of civil rights rather than as an affront to people who are offended by obscenity, entails that it cannot be dealt with, as Joel Feinberg (1980, 89) suggests, by 49 hypatia noting that people do not have to read what offends them. In other words, if pornography were objectionable simply in the sense that it offends some people, it might be appropriate to conclude that censor- ship is not warranted. As Feinberg argues, if the material that offends one is easily avoided, as obscene books and movies are, the fact that they are offensive to some does not constitute reason to censor them. However, if pornography is not simply obscene, but a violation of civil rights, the suggestion that people who find it objectionable should simp- ly avoid it, is hardly appropriate. Violations of civil rights are not cor- rected by ignoring them. The MacKinnon/Dworkin appeal to the civil rights of women rests on equal rights statutes. Their hypothesis is that pornography is a discriminatory practice based on sex because its effect is to deny women equal opportunities in society. This approach has the disadvantage of having to appeal to highly controversial studies concerning the conse- quences of pornography: its success depends on the plausibility of the claim that when pornography is offered for sale, the result is a signifi- cant negative influence on people's beliefs about women, and a subse- quent negative influence on people's behavior towards women. To date, this claim has been treated by the courts as not providing sufficient reason to curtail first amendment rights. Whatever negative conse- quences the sale of pornography might have-and these are minimized-they are not thought to be serious enough to warrant censorship. My analysis of Victim Pornography as degrading suggests a different unpacking of the MacKinnon/Dworkin hypothesis that pornography violates the civil rights of women. On my account, Victim Pornography libels women as a class, in impugning the nature of women. This ap- proach would not have to rely on controversial empirical studies con- cerning the consequences of pornography. Libel can be established without demonstrating actual damage to the plaintiff. Libel laws originated in a time when a person's honor and reputation were valued for their own sake, and not simply because of their business value. Therefore, in proving libel, it is enough to show that a defamatory state- ment about the plaintiff is false. Furthermore, this approach does not constitute a new challenge to free speech. Libel has never been protected by the First Amendment, and it is unlikely that even the most liberal of civil libertarians would be tempted to argue that it should be. Would a case against Victim Pornography as libel stand up in court? There are precedents for treating defamatory statements concerning groups as libel. The rationale is that individuals can be harmed by defamatory statements about groups of which they are members as well 50 judith m. hill as by defamatory statements about them as individuals. For example, repeated statements to the effect that all lawyers are dishonest obviously cause harm to individual lawyers. Although a particular lawyer may be hurt more by statements to the effect that she, in particular, is dishonest, than by statements to the effect that all lawyers are dishonest, the latter as well as the former certainly has the capacity to damage her reputation and business. In order to protect individuals, the law must prevent unwarranted defamation of groups as well as of specific individuals. Group libel suits have been brought successfully by: an individual who was defamed as a member of a jury;4 an individual who was defam- ed as a member of a board of County Commissioners;5 an individual who was defamed as a member of a staff of doctors at a hospital;6 an individual who was defamed as a member of a group of engineers employed by a construction company.7 Historically, there has been some reluctance on the part of the judicial system to extend the principle of group libel to large groups, e.g., to defamatory statements about "all Jews," "all priests," "all Blacks." Obviously, this would present an obstacle to finding the pornography industry guilty of libel against the class of women. However, it is reasonable to assume that individuals may be unjustly defamed by derogatory statements concerning large groups of which they are members, no less than by derogatory statements about small groups of which they are members (Reisman 1942, 770-771). Consequently, I do not think this obstacle is insurmountable. The major difficulty I foresee in establishing that pornography libels women as a class is the problem of establishing that Victim Pornography does indeed imply that women are generally masochistic nym- phomaniacs. The pornography industry will insist that it is dealing in fiction, that the material it sells depicting the degradation of women has nothing to do with reality; that its object is to entertain, not to inform. It is beyond the scope of this paper to construct the legal case against pornography. I will only repeat that the fact that films or reading material are presented as fiction does not entail that they are supposed to be, expected to be, devoid of truth. Furthermore, it is not necessary to prove intent to injure in establishing libel; the fact that the producers of Victim Pornography do not intend to influence anyone's beliefs about the nature of women as a class (if it is a fact), is irrelevant. If the con- tent of Victim Pornography carries the implication that, in general, women are masochistic, nymphomanic, and not fully persons in the moral sense, the case for libel stands. To conclude: The pornography industry makes a large share of its 51 hypatia profit by selling material that displays a total lack of regard for the truth about womankind on the part of the industry. Pornographic material that depicts all or most women characters as masochists or nymphomaniacs or as mindless demi-persons, carries with it the im- plication that this is the nature of womankind, and therefore of all in- dividual women. Whether or not anyone believes that this is true of women, or acts accordingly, as a result of reading pornographic books or watching pornographic films, the implication itself is defamatory. In marketing such material, the pornography industry treats all women as nothing more than means to its own financial gain. This is not a matter of the pornography industry excusably treating women only as means in the course of a very limited business relationship (in the way in which an employer might excusably treat an employee only as a means). The propagation of false and derogatory statements about a class of people, for the sake of profit, inexcusably treats all members of that class as though they were means only, as though they were not ends in themselves. Many women are embarrassed even to acknowledge the existence of pornography. Many fear that they would only invite ridicule by open- ly objecting to it. Some women believe that pornography has nothing to do with them, or that it is harmless, or that censorship is a greater evil than pornography. Primarily for these reasons, many women make no objection to pornography. I hope to have shown that pornography does concern all women. Whether or not pornography ever incites men to rape, or promotes de- personalized sex, all women are defamed by material that implies that typically, women like to be treated as less than persons by their sexual partners; and all women are degraded by the pornography industry's display of contempt for womankind in marketing such material. Embarrassment and fear of ridicule are not good reasons to refrain from objecting to the sale of pornographic material that supports false and offensive beliefs about womankind. As we noted in Part I, degrada- tion should be taken seriously not only because it involves treating peo- ple as though they were less than people, but also because it involves an erosion of moral courage on the part of the degraded person. We cannot afford to pretend that pornography does not concern us. Only by expressing outrage at being used, can we hope to maintain self-respect. 52 judith m. hill notes 1. I should acknowledge that men as well as women can be, and sometimes are, portrayed in pornographic material as being degraded. Nevertheless, we would do well to keep in mind a few significant differences between pornography that portrays men as degraded, and pornography that protrays women as degraded: (1) Material in which men are the victims of sexually aggressive women is the exception rather than the rule; (2) Very little else in the culture reinforces the idea of men being degraded by women; and (3) The victimized men and aggressive women in such material are usually depicted as homosexual, and therefore not "really" men and not "really" women, respectively, by the standards of the material itself; thus, it is still quasi-women who are victimized and pseudo-men who are victimizers. 2. I am not suggesting, of course, that women who participate in making Victim Pornography are less degraded than other women by the sale of pornography, but only that they are not necessarily degraded in their role as models. 3. A word about the importance of context. If we lived in a culture in which nothing supported the idea that women are less than full persons, I might be more reluctant to say that Victim Pornography has implications concerning the nature of womankind. If nothing in the culture supported the idea that women may be treated as though they were not ends in themselves, I might be willing to say that Victim Pornography is pure fantasy, no more to be taken seriously-no more to be generalized from-than a car- toon that portrays cats as indiscriminate eaters, or an advertisement that portrays auto mechanics as good natured and helpful, or a story that portrays men as enjoying abuse. But the fact is that there are many facets of our culture that tend to support the view that women like to be abused. Much of popular music romanticizes such relationships; advertisements tacitly give them a stamp of approval by describing abuse as the norm for the attractive upper-middle class family next door, or by giving it a slightly exotic flavor; some religious dogma openly prescribes treating women as less than persons. In light of this tradition, Victim Pornography cannot be easily dismissed as mere fantasy, with no implications concerning the nature of women. Victim Pornography contributes to the tradition of viewing women as less than full persons, whatever the intention of its authors. 4. Byers v. Martin, 2 Colo. 605, 25 Am.Rep. 755 (1875); Welsh v. Tribune Publishing Co., 83 Mich. 661, 57 N.W. 562 (1890). 5. Wofford v. Meeks, 129 Ala. 349, 30 So. 625 (1900); Palmerlee v. Notage, 119 Minn. 351, 138 N.W. 312 (1912); Prosser v. Callis, 117 Ind. 105, 19 N.E. 735 (1888). 6. Bornmann v. Star Co., 174 N.Y. 212, 66 N.E. 723 (1903). Contra: Kassowitz v. Sentinel Co., 226 Wis. 468, 227 N.W. 177 (1938). 7. Hardy v. Williamson, 86 Ga. 551, 12 S.E. 874 (1891). 53 hypatia references Berger, Fred. 1977. Pornography, sex, and censorship. Social Theory and Practice 4 (2): 183-210. Dworkin, Andrea. 1981. Pornography: Men possessing women. New York: Perigee Books. Feinberg, Joel. 1980. Harmless immoralities and offensive nuisances. In Rights, justice and the bounds of liberty. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goldman, Emma. 1983. Living my life. New York: Knopf. Hentoff, Nat. 1984. War on pornography. The Washington Post, 31 August, p. A21. Hill, Thomas. 1973. Servility and self-respect. The Monist 57 (1): 87-104. Reisman, David. 1942. Democracy and defamation: Control on group libel. Columbia Law Review 42 (5). Shipp, E.R. 1984. Federal judge hears arguments on validity of Indianapolis pornography measure. New York Times, 31 July, p. A10. Styron, William. 1979. Sophie's choice. New York: Random House. 54 victoria davion Do Good Feminists Compete? In this paper I argue against the view widely held among feminists that nurturing and competition are incompatible. I also explore the following two more specific objections against competition: (1) com- petitions are "mini-wars" which encourage hatred; (2) while not "mini- wars," competitions foster a war-like mentality. Underlying these ob- jections is the fear that too strong a sense of self makes war likely by severing connection with others. I argue that because patriarchy en- courages women to have too little sense of self, some competition may be useful. M y topic is the relationships between competition, nurturing, and war. I have been disturbed by a common view among feminist thinkers regarding competition. It is seen as an evil which must be eliminated if people are to nurture one another. Examples of this attitude are as follows. In a review article on Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas, Mar- cia Yudkin (1984) claims that Woolf wants to "get one to back off from institutions and practices that promote 'war' in the narrow sense, and then see that those institutions and practices are 'war' in a wider sense." Yudkin supports this view. Woolf herself says of competition and jealousy that they are emotions ". . . which we need not draw upon biography to prove, nor ask psychology to show, are emotions which have their share in encouraging a disposition toward war" (1938, 21). In "The future-If There is One-Is Female," Sally Miller Gearhart (1982), in discussing war, states that the qualities of "objectification, violence and competition" characterize a war-like mentality. Finally, the authors of "The Answer is Matriarchy" state: "We have been taught to base our personal relationships on the warrior mode of competition, beating and conquering our friends and associates in games, in business and in politics" (Love and Shanklin 1984, 279). There are two sorts of objections in the positions stated above. The first is that competitions are themselves "mini-wars" which encourage hatred toward others. The other is that even if competitions are not themselves "mini-wars," competition fosters a war-like mentality. These assumptions about the nature of competition merit some careful ex- Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © by Victoria Davion. 55 hypatla amination which they have not yet received. In this paper I attempt to contribute toward such an examination. This project will include a discussion of what I believe are some positive aspects of competi- tion, as well as a close look at the two objections stated above. My examination of these objections will include an analysis of their origin. More specifically, I believe that these objections are based on a belief that competition fosters a strong sense of self and that the develop- ment of a strong sense of self causes a loss of a sense of connection with others, the loss of which is necessary for war and detrimental to nurturing. Hence I believe that the fear of competition can ultimately be linked with the view that a strong sense of self is a bad thing. The view that a strong sense of self can lead to a war-like mentality is im- plied in the work of Sara Ruddick, which I shall discuss. I suggest that although too strong a sense of self may be a bad thing, too little is not good either. Even if it is true that too strong a sense of self can lead to a war-like mentality, this isn't likely to be a general problem for women raised under patriarchy. Women tend to have the opposite pro- blem, too little sense of self. This isn't surprising, as women are en- couraged to put the interests of others above our own constantly. I sug- gest that perhaps competition can be helpful in the reaching of a healthy balance between a sense of oneself and a feeling of connection with others. The subject of competition is therefore important because it raises these interesting and important issues about connection and dif- ference, which have been receiving a great deal of attention among feminist thinkers. The first project is to define "competition." This turns out to be a rather difficult task. The O.E.D. provides several definitions: (1) "Ac- tion of endeavoring to gain what another endeavors to gain at the same time." (2) "A contest for the aquisition of something; a match to deter- mine relative excellence." (3) "A trial of ability in order to decide superiority of fitness of a number of candidates." A few comments on these definitions are in order. Notice that none of them say anything about the type of activity, but rather focus on the purpose of engaging in it. This suggests that any number of activities can be competitions of some sort. And so the definitions are rather abstract. Questions need to be asked about what activity the match itself consists in as well as what it is the contestants are attempting to win. It may turn out that certain kinds of competitive activities are okay while others are objec- tionable. A related term, "competitor," is defined in the following way: (1) "One who engages in a competition." (2) "One who seeks an ob- ject in rivalry with others also seeking it." (3) "One associated with another seeking the same or common object, an associate or partner." It is interesting that two seemingly opposite definitions occur in the 56 victoria davion O.E.D. for this word. Someone who seeks an object in rivalry against another and someone seeking the same object, a partner. These defini- tions appear to be contradictory, but they are the key to certain in- sights about the nature of competition, or at least certain kinds of com- petition. Does it make sense to define two individuals both as rivals and partners? I will now show examples where this does in fact seem to be the case. These examples form a subgroup of competitive activities. One such example is tennis. The first thing which is obvious but worth mentioning is that one cannot play tennis alone. A partner is necessary. Furthermore, the partner should be someone you trust for she is the one who must be relied upon to tell you when the ball is in and when it is out. (Here I am not thinking of professional tennis where there is a referee). If the opponent wants to cheat in a private game she can probably get away with this. But if she is fair, she will not cheat even if it is to her advantage to do so. This is a good exercise in being fair to others and making sure that they get what they deserve. Here we have a case in which two people are competing to win. However they must also cooperate with each other in order for the competition to be possible. Together they make it possible to have the experience of playing the game. Hence, while they are opponents in one sense, they are partners in another. This involves trust, a sense of fairness, and even a friendly attitude among the players. Learning to accept disappointment is an important aspect of human development. And this, along with learning to be fair, can be developed from participating in certain kinds of competition. Also when one is competing one learns how to respond quickly under a certain pressure without getting too upset if things don't work out. Here we can look for a link between the activities of competing and nurturing. If some types of competition can teach one certain admirable or useful qualities, then part of nurturing someone may be to encourage them to engage in competition, and even to compete with them yourself. To nurture someone is literally to help them grow. Teaching someone admirable traits is a part of this process. I argue that certain kinds of competi- tion, particularly the type that encourages people to be partners and opponents at the same time, are not at all incompatible with caring a great deal for others. Although as individuals we often have different goals, we also at the same time have many of the same ones, and by cooperating we can fulfill many of these. I believe competition can teach this. People need to learn that they can both be partners and have some different goals as well. I will now examine what I take to be the two major objections many feminists have against competition. As I stated before, these are (1) that competitions are themselves "mini-wars" and (2) that competi- 57 hypatia tion fosters a war-like mentality rather than a nurturing one. I will begin with the first objection. The sort of competition that I have discussed thus far, tennis, is mainly a one-on-one sport. It is an example of a competition in which the competitors are working toward a common and yet separate goal. Team sports can be seen in this light also. The opponents learn to cooperate with each other in order to follow the rules and play the game. Like war, these games have more than one player on each team, and players work together to beat the other team. So far this sounds quite a bit like war. But we already see one essential difference: those who are fighting a war certainly do not cooperate with the other side in order to fight the war. In a game when the rules are not followed, someone stops things, but this doesn't necessarily hap- pen in a war. Even though there are supposed to be rules of war, they do not have to be obeyed as the rules of team sports must. Another similarity between team sports and war is that often people on oppos- ing teams form alliances with teammates and a dislike for members of different teams. Similarly, in a war those fighting on opposite sides form a hatred for their opponents. Giving out propaganda against the enemies in order to make them seem horrible is a tactic often used in time of war. If soldiers begin to sympathize with the enemy, the war effort is endangered. The more hostility toward the enemy the better. Although this can happen, in team sports it needn't. Hating the oppo- nent is not necessary to one's ability to be an effective player. This makes sense because being an effective player doesn't call for killing or severely damaging other players. There are some games that are more violent than others, and perhaps it would be best to eliminate these, but it is certainly not the case that all team sports are violent. Part of the reason these loyalties to certain teams are formed is the culture sur- rounding the game, yet there may be ways to stop this. For example, players and teams could constantly be rotated so that these alliances do not form. Hatred of one's opponent is not a necessary component of team sports while it is necessary in war. Another important distinc- tion between competitions and war is that in many games people do not only compete to win. The experience of playing the game itself is often considered valuable. Although this may be the case in warfare as well, as some soldiers view the experience of combat as valuable in itself, this seems to be sadistic and unfortunate, while to enjoy playing a game for the experience of playing it does not in itself seem wrong or unfortunate. Hence we see another important difference between certain kinds of competition and war. Finally it should be noticed that in a war, opponents want the other side to be no good at fighting. They have a stake in the other team's being bad at this. This isn't, however, true of all competitions. If I am going to engage in a competitive sport- 58 victoria davion ing event, I may well want the opponent to be a good player, in order that the game be exciting. This reveals that attitudes towards opponents can be very different depending on what kind of competition one is engaging in.' It doesn't seem plausible to maintain that all competi- tions are themselves like "mini-wars." It is true that in both sporting events and wars we have so called "winners" and "losers," but hav- ing "winners" and "losers" is a similarity that masks very great dif- ferences between war and other competitions. I have not tried to argue that wars are not competitions, although I think a case for this might be made, if one wants to argue that all competition involves a certain kind of cooperating between those on opposing sides. However I do not think that it is necessary to argue in this way. "Competition" is a family resemblance word, and many different activities may be thought of as competitions. It is enough to point out that some kinds of competition involve cooperation and are not necessarily damaging to a society that wants to nurture its members. In the abstract it is not wrong to compete for something. The question will turn on what is being competed for and what sort of activity the competition is. Perhaps the more sensible objection against competition is the se- cond one, namely that it fosters a war-like mentality even though all competitions are not themselves "mini-wars." In a review of Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas Marcia Yudkin asks rhetorically, "If we teach the importance of competition, and that one can only succeed at the expense of someone else who fails, are we contributing to war?" Yudkin thinks we are. She claims that because women have not participated in many of the competitive institutions of patriarchy we are in a privileg- ed position. She says, "Let's use the privilege of our position to teach equality instead of hierarchy, leadership instead of domination, self mastery instead of mastery over others, cooperation instead of com- petition" (1984, 263). The fear here may be that we sever the connec- tion between people when we compete with them. And this is why com- petition is seen as contributing toward war. In order to eliminate all competition we would have to eliminate any kind of recognition to in- dividuals for jobs well-done. For any kind of recognition can be said to foster competitive attitudes in individuals. Is the answer then, simp- ly, to avoid any sort of recognition of people who have done something well? I don't think this would be beneficial. The incentive to do well is often linked to trying to please someone in order to gain recogni- tion. If we stop recognizing achievement we will have made a great er- ror, not to mention that this would probably be impossible. Even a smile tells another that they have done well. I think there is a link between the fear that competition fosters a war- like mentality and some recent work being done on both the subjects 59 hypatla of women's ethics and mothering. I turn now to an examination of this link. To recognize someone is to single them out. Perhaps it is this sing- ling out which bothers certain feminists and is at the root of the claim that competition fosters a war-like mentality. To single someone out is to emphasize certain differences between her and other people. It is a process which focuses on difference rather than sameness. How does this link up with war? In her article, "Preservative Love And Military Destruction: Some Reflections on Mothering and Peace," Sara Ruddick (1984b) argues that maternal thinking is opposed to violence. She states "Non-violence is a constitutive principle of maternal think- ing." According to Ruddick, women hold certain different values than men, and women have a different style of thinking than men do. She calls the maternal style of thinking "concreteness." This style "respects complexity, connection, particularity and ambiguity." People think- ing in this way are "less concerned with claiming rights, more concerned with sharing responsibilities. They do not value independence and autonomy over connection and the restraints of caring." She contrasts this with another style of thinking which she calls "abstraction." She says: "I am convinced that a certain style of thinking-a tendency to abstract-is connected to warfare." This style "refers to a cluster of interrelated dispositions to simplify, dissociate, generalize, and sharp- ly define." It is this style which she associates with men. The ability to abstract is seen as connected to warfare because when something is abstract, it becomes less human. In war the enemy becomes an abstract entity rather than a real group of living, suffering human be- ings. Therefore the ability to differentiate sharply between self and other is necessary in war, while a sense that the enemy is similar or the same as oneself, a sense of connection with the enemy, is damaging to the war effort. Therefore, Ruddick argues, the style of thinking characteristic of women is not conducive to warfare, while the style of thinking characterized by men is. With Ruddick's analysis in mind we can now return to the question of competition in general and the related question of recognition. When we compete with others, we engage in the sort of activity that Ruddick would associate with the abstract style of thinking. We feel a sharp distinction between self and other. We certainly don't view their win- ning as in any way the same as our winning. Hence the competitors can be said to have strong sense of self. Also, the recognition that com- petition fosters once again brings out difference rather than sameness of individuals. If having a sharply defined sense of self contributes to a war-like mentality, then there may be a reason for avoiding activities which encourage these traits. On the other hand, perhaps activities 60 victoria davion which emphasize connection should be encouraged. The conclusion is that competition should be avoided. In "The Answer Is Matriarchy" a similar conclusion is reached. The authors state that "Under capitalism mothers are faced with a dilemma. They can force their children to con- form to a competitive economy, to a competitive educational system, to competitive games .... Under socialism a mother who attempted to nurture the unique will of her child would most likely be denounced or arrested. However, she has the compensation that the socialist patriarchs socialized her child in a supportive, non-competitive way" (Love and Shanklin 1984, 278). Here, all competition is opposed to support, and once more, no distinctions between different types of com- petition are made. Again, the fear seems to be that competition is op- posed to a nurturing attitude which stresses connection rather than difference. At this point I suggest a re-evaluation. Again we must notice that patriarchy has never encouraged women to develop a strong sense of self. Instead we are supposed to live through the achievements of others, vicariously. There is nothing at all wrong with feeling good about the achievements of others. This is certainly an admirable trait which should be encouraged among people. But this is very different from getting confused about which achievements you have made and which have been made by others. If one goes through life feeling good about the successes of others without trying to have the experiences which attemp- ting to succeed oneself can provide, one deprives oneself of important experiences and important opportunities for growth. It isn't necessarily true that maternal thinking does indeed serve as a model of connection being praised by many feminists today. Rud- dick comes close to recognizing this, but then she backs off. In "Mater- nal Thinking" she says "Maternal practice assumes a legitimate special concern for the children one has engendered and passionately loves as well for the families in which they live. Any attempt to deny this special form of self-interest will only lead to hypocritical false consciousness or rigid totalistic loyalties" (Ruddick 1984a, 239). It is odd that Rud- dick explains the special interest in a child as self-interest. Here I think there is a confusion between self and other. Perhaps in order to suc- cessfully raise a small child in need of total care from others it is in- deed necessary to be selfless for a period of time. This may in fact be a good thing, but to confuse this interest in another with self interest is to be confused about boundaries between self and other. In patriar- chy, women are supposed to engage in this sort of "special self interest," which is a euphemism for "interest in some other," to the exclusion of a healthy interest in oneself, all the time. This makes it possible for men to obtain the service and devotion they desire from women. Also, 61 hypatia women who have a confused notion of what it is to be self-interested don't have a sense of connection with world at large and all of its in- habitants but rather with specific individuals whom they view as special. It is not clear how this is any better than self-interest in the first place, and it certainly isn't clear how having an especially strong interest in the well-being of some special other is going to help prevent war. In fact, appeals to the well-being of loved ones have been used as a way of convincing someone to go to war. Having a healthy interest in the well being and achievements of others is a great thing, but this is very different from a confused identification with others to the point where one's sense of self disappears completely. I'm not at all convinced that we need to become selfless in order to prevent war. I think this would be too bad. If what Ruddick and others say about men's and women's different styles of thinking is true, it seems that while men may have too strong a sense of self, women have too little. If this is so, then engag- ing in the sort of activities that help foster a stronger sense of self may be just what is needed for women at this point. If competition will help accomplish this, then it may be good rather than evil when used cor- rectly. What is needed is a balance between a sense of oneself and a sense of connection. I have suggested that certain kinds of competi- tion can help people see themselves as connected while different at the same time. Of course, it will be noticed that my examples have been taken from a certain kind of competition, sports. But other types of competition may be beneficial as well. Competing to see who can do the best job on a project that is considered worthwhile is one candidate. An example might be a clean-up campaign in which all of the contestants realize that the project itself is worth-while and so have a sense of work- ing together on a good thing, while at the same time each tries to do the best job and win the competition. Here people work together for the same goal - a clean environment - while at the same time each has her own personal goal, that of winning. Competitions of this sort might be vehicles which can help us develop a balance between a healthy sense of ourselves as unique worthwhile individuals and a sense of con- nection with others. Such a balance will be as likely to help us eliminate war as the attempt to stress sameness and selflessness ever could, with the added benefit of recognizing our uniqueness in the process. In closing I cannot refrain from remarking that this paper leaves me with an uneasy feeling. I have been against competition for quite some time. I'm not even sure that I have changed my mind. I hope however that I have taken an important step in looking at some of the good things that competition has to offer, as well as pointing out some assumptions which underlie the objections to competition I have discuss- ed. I think that this must be done before any kind of intelligent deci- 62 victoria davion sion can be made as to which types of competition, if any, are beneficial and which types are harmful. notes 1. This point was made by Naomi Scheman during the discussion following an earlier draft of this paper at the Midwest Conference of the Society for Women in Philosophy at Carbondale, Illinois, October 12, 1985. references The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. 1971. Oxford University Press. Gearhart, Sally Miller. 1982. The future-If there is one-Is female. In Reweaving the web of life: Feminism and nonviolence, ed. Pam McAllister. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers. Love, Barbara and Elizabeth Shanklin. 1984. The answer is matriar- chy. In Mothering, ed. Joyce Trebilcot. New Jersey: Rowman and Allenheld. Ruddick, Sara. 1984a. Maternal thinking. In Mothering, ed. Joyce Trebilcot. New Jersey: Rowman and Allenheld. . 1984b. Preservative love and military destruction: Some Reflec- tions on mothering and peace. In Mothering, ed. Joyce Trebilcot. New Jersey: Rowman And Allenheld. Woolf, Virginia. 1938. Three guineas. New York and London: Har- court Brace Jovanovich. Yudkin, Marcia. 1984. Reflections on Woolf's Three guineas. In Women and men's wars, ed. Judith Stiehm. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 63 susan wendell A (Qualified) Defense of Liberal Feminism Liberal feminism is not committed to a number of philosophical posi- tions for which it is frequently criticized, including abstract individ- ualism, certain individualistic approaches to morality and society, valu- ing the mental/rational over the physical/emotional, and the traditional liberal way of drawing the line between the public and the private. Moreover, liberal feminism's clearest political commitments, including equality of opportunity, are important to women's liberation and not necessarily incompatible with the goals of socialist and radical feminism. Introduction Because I am committed to socialism, I do not think of myself as a liberal feminist and would not defend liberal feminism without important qualifications. On the other hand, I want to defend certain aspects of liberal feminism because I am also committed to some tradi- tional liberal principles, such as equal opportunity for self-development and a modified version of Mill's principle of liberty, and to many liberal feminist reforms. In addition, I hope that my defense of liberal feminism will help to demonstrate that feminism has out-grown the political tradi- tions from which it emerged, and that traditional political categories are no longer very useful for understanding the similarities and dif- ferences among feminist analyses, strategies and goals. What Is Liberal Feminism? If it is true that feminism no longer fits comfortably into the tradi- tional political categories, it is somewhat artificial to be talking about liberal feminism. Liberal feminism is an historical tradition that grew out of liberalism, as can be seen very clearly in the work of such feminists as Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill, but feminists who took principles from that tradition have developed analyses and goals that go far beyond those of 18th and 19th Century liberal feminists, and many feminists who have goals and strategies identified as liberal feminist by such writers as Jaggar and Struhl (1978), Eisen- stein (1981) and Scheman (1983) reject major components of traditional liberalism. For these reasons, instead of trying to define liberal feminism Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © By Susan Wendell. 65 hypatia precisely, I will give a brief description of the political commitments most clearly identifiable as liberal feminist and then focus on the alleged- ly liberal feminist views that have come under recent criticism. I can safely say that liberal feminism is not committed to socialism, or it would be socialist feminism. Liberal feminists usually are, however, committed to major economic re-organization and considerable re- distribution of wealth, since one of the modern political goals most closely associated with liberal feminism is equality of opportunity, which would undoubtedly require and lead to both. (I will return to this sub- ject later.) The liberal feminist tradition, like most other feminist tradi- tions, has always asserted that the value of women as human beings is not instrumental to the welfare of men and children and that it is equal to the value of men, and demanded various forms of public and private recognition of it, including respect for women's freedom and privacy. Liberal feminists have always promoted equality of legal rights for women, and have more recently demanded an end to de facto discrimination on the basis of sex,' enlisting the State in attaining that goal. Liberal feminists have the traditional liberal beliefs in the power of education as a means of social reform and its importance to human fulfillment, and, since Mary Wollstonecraft, they have demanded educa- tion for girls and women equal to that offered to boys and men. Liberal feminism is frequently criticized for its alleged commitments to the philosophical assumptions and developments of the liberal tradi- tion from which it grew. Any evidence that liberal feminists do not have these commitments can be interpreted as showing the inconsistency of liberal feminist theory (as it is by Jaggar [1983, 37:28]), but it seems to me more interesting and optimistic to interpret it as showing that liberal feminism is a philosophically better kind of liberalism. In any case, I will start my defense of liberal feminism by arguing that it is not committed to a number of philosophical positions for which it is criticized, including abstract individualism, certain kinds of in- dividualistic approaches to morality and society, valuing the mental/ra- tional over the physical/emotional, and the traditional liberal way of drawing the line between the public and the private. Then I will argue that liberal feminism's clearest political com- mitments: to the promotion of women's greater recognition and self- value as individuals, to equality of opportunity, to the promotion of equal education for girls and boys, to ending sex prejudice and defac- to discrimination, to equality of legal rights, and to the use of educa- tion as a major tool of social reform, are important to women's libera- tion and not necessarily incompatible with the goals of socialist and radical feminism. 66 susan wendell Liberal Feminism and Abstract Individualism In "Individualism and the Objects of Psychology," Naomi Scheman describes the individualist assumptions of "the ideology of liberal in- dividualism" in this way: Thus, it is supposed to be a natural fact about human beings, and hence a constraint on any possible social theory, that, no matter how social our development may be, we exist essentially as separate individuals-with wants, preferences, needs, abilities, pleasures, and pains-and any social order has to begin by respecting these as attaching to us determinately and singly, as a way of respecting us. Classical liberal social theory gets off the ground with the observation that individuals so defined are in need of being enticed-or threatened-into enduring and stable association with one another. (Scheman 1983, 231) In Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Alison Jaggar characterizes abstract individualism thus: The assumption in this case is that human individuals are ontologically prior to society; in other words, human individuals are the basic constituents out of which social groups are composed. Logically if not empirically, human individuals could exist outside a social context; their essential characteristics, their needs and interests, their capacities and desires, are given independently of their social context and are not created or even fundamental- ly altered by that context. This metaphysical assumption is sometimes called abstract individualism because it con- ceives of human individuals in abstraction from any social circumstances. (Jaggar 1983, 28, 29)2 As I interpret Scheman, she is asserting that a component of abstract individualism is the assumption that human beings do not, by our nature, desire society for its own sake. Thus, we "need to be enticed or threatened into enduring and stable association." This is not clearly part of Jaggar's conception of abstract individualism, but in another passage she does criticize "the liberal assumption that human individuals are essentially solitary, with needs and interests that are separate from if not in opposition to those of other individuals" (Jaggar 1983, 40). Jaggar seems to hold that abstract individualism includes the assump- tion that human beings' most important characteristics, including some 67 hypatla important needs, interests, capacities and desires, are not caused by the society in which we developed as children or live as adults. Scheman makes it clear that she thinks abstract individualism does not deny that our development is social. By this I assume she means that abstract individualism can acknowledge that the needs, interests, capacities and desires which each individual has are, at least in part, caused by the society in which s/he develops. Jaggar does not appear to concede this much to abstract individualism, since she says it assumes, among other things, that individuals' "essential characteristics . . . are given in- dependently of their social context and are not created or even fun- damentally altered by that context" (see passage quoted above). Later she says: "If we reject abstract individualism and suppose instead that human desires and interest are socially constituted, then we can expect that the members of any society are likely to learn to want just those things that the society provides" (Jaggar 1983,43). Scheman and Jaggar seem to agree that abstract individualism in- cludes the assumption that human individuals can be conceived of out- side a social context because their characteristics, including their needs, desires and capacities, can be adequately described without reference to their social context. Note that this assumption differs from the claim that our social context does not cause our most important character- istics, and it does not imply that claim. Society might cause us to have many characteristics that are neither socially defined nor dependent on society for their continuation in us. Nor does this assumption imply that we do not desire society as part of our nature, since we might desire association with other individuals without desiring a particular kind of association that could only be described by reference to a social con- text, e.g. we might all want to be members of some human group. The assumption that individuals can be conceived of and adequately describ- ed without reference to our social context does, however, imply that our social positions and relationships are not essential characteristics of people, that we can be understood and identified apart from them. How is this abstract individualism, distilled from Jaggar and Scheman's descriptions, related to liberal feminism? Scheman seems, in the following passage, to believe that liberal feminism has some com- mitment to abstract individualism as she has described it, and that this commitment has political implications that are threatening to the status quo but also wrong-headed. The fear arises from a recognition of the fact that men have been free to imagine themselves as self-defining only because women have held the intimate social world together, in part by seeing ourselves as inseparable from 68 susan wendell it. The norms of personhood, which liberals would strive to make as genuinely universal as they now only pretend to be, depend in fact on their not being so. ... Thus, the fear aroused by liberal feminism's ideal of opening to women the same sort of autonomy previously reserv- ed for men is, I think, a real one. There is every reason to react with alarm to the pros- pect of a world filled with self-actualizing persons pull- ing their own strings, capable of guiltlessly saying 'no' to anyone about anything, and freely choosing when to begin and end all their relationships. It is hard to see how, in such a world, children could be raised, the sick or disturbed could be cared for, or people could know each other through their lives and grow old together. Liberal feminism does have much in common with this sort of 'human potential' individualistic talk, but it is my suspicion that it was in reaction to the deeper, and more deeply threatening, insights and demands of feminism that the current vogue for self-actualization developed- urging us all back inside the apolitical confines of our own heads and hearts and guts. (Scheman 1983, 240-241) Jaggar (1983, 42) argues that liberal feminism provides an implicit challenge to abstract individualism" by focussing upon the ways that male supremacy molds women's interests, needs and wants. Ultimate- ly, however, she interprets this implicit challenge as an inconsistency of liberal feminist theory, which she sees as based upon essentially the same view of human nature as modern non-feminist liberalism. Because Jaggar (1983, 33,35) views liberal feminism as fundamentally an at- tempt to apply liberal principles of political equality and individual liber- ty to women as well as men, and because she sees these principles as deriving from the liberal conception of human nature as she interprets it, understandably she views liberal feminism as having some commit- ment to the same conception of human nature. According to Jaggar, this conception includes not only abstract individualism but "normative dualism, . . . the view that what is especially valuable about human beings is their 'mental' capacity for rationality" (1983, 40), the belief that this capacity is possessed in approximately equal measure by all men (or people), and "the instrumental interpretation of rationality which holds that an individual can make a rational choice between a variety of means to a given end, but that one cannot give a rational justification for any particular rank ordering of ends" (1983, 41). I will discuss the question of liberal feminism's commitment to these 69 hypatia additional beliefs about human nature and values shortly, but let us look first at whether liberal feminism is committed to abstract individualism. I see no reason to attribute commitment to abstract individualism to liberal feminists unless they express such a commitment or it is im- plied by other positions they adopt. Jaggar says that the liberal prin- ciples of political equality and individual liberty are derived from a view of human nature which includes abstract individualism, and if they must be, then liberal feminists are committed to abstract individualism. Therefore, it is important to examine the plausibility of the claim that these principles important to liberal feminists imply a commitment to abstract individualism, and I will do this first. Later, I will present two examples, one historical and one contemporary, of feminists commit- ted to the liberal ideals of political equality and individual liberty who do not derive them from a view of human nature which includes abstract individualism. I take it that the liberal ideal of political equality includes legal equali- ty and equal rights to political participation and that the liberal ideal of individual liberty means (roughly) freedom of thought, expression and action within the limitation that we do not harm others. How might it be argued that a commitment to these ideals commits one to abstract individualism? Let us consider a few plausible possibilities. It might be maintained that the only philosophical justification of the liberal ideal of political equality is some view that human beings are equally valuable in virtue of some basic characteristics or capacities we all share, regardless of our social backgrounds and present social contexts. Such a view seems to imply that societies do not create some of the most important characteristics or capacities of human beings, since there are so many different kinds of human society and so many possible positions in them, and the view generalizes over all human be- ings. Thus, this view appears to imply Jaggar's version of abstract individualism. However, this view is not the only possible justification of the liberal ideal of political equality. One might maintain that political equality is the best system for helping people to protect their own interests, or that it makes the best provision for most people's happiness or self- development (see the discussion of J.S. Mill and Carol Gould below), whatever their interests, happiness or self-development consist in. One might claim that it has proven dangerous to the interests, happiness or self-development of human beings to allow others to make major decisions affecting their lives without their representation or consent. Alternatively, one might defend political equality between any two groups (such as men and women) on the grounds that there is no prov- 70 susan wendell en correlation between membership in one of the groups on the one hand and, on the other hand, capacity to participate in government, to exercise political rights and to make decisions that protect the in- terests of oneself and others. All of these alternative justifications are compatible with the assertion that there are no characteristics or capacities that all human beings share. Indeed, they are compatible with the view that many of the important characteristics of individuals are created by their societies and/or manifested in their social relationships. It might be maintained that the only philosophical justification for political freedom or individual liberty is some view that all, or at least most, human beings can best decide for themselves how to develop themselves or accomplish their own well-being. This view seems to im- ply Jaggar's version of abstract individualism, because it implies that society could not affect individuals so profoundly that they would not be their own best guardians, e.g. by causing them to want things that make them unhappy or giving them persistent false beliefs about the consequences of certain decisions. However, liberals can and frequently do concede that human beings are often bad at ensuring our own well- being or development, but argue that since history seems to indicate that we are even worse at ensuring other people's, the best arrange- ment is individual liberty with the limitation that one does not harm others or interfere with their similar liberty. Incidentally, one does not have to hold that there is no objective basis for criticizing people's values and ways of life (within the limitation that they do not violate the rights of others) in order to defend individual liberty. Jaggar is wrong when she says: Individuals are entitled to set their own ends and, so long as they do not violate the rights of others, there are in principle no limits to what they may want to do or believe they ought to do. In principle, therefore, liberals are committed to the belief that individuals are fulfilled whenever they are doing what they have decided freely to do however unpleasant, degrading or wrong this may appear to someone else. (Jaggar 1983, 174) One can hold (as J.S. Mill did) that there is an objective basis for criticiz- ing people's choices, persuading them to live in certain ways, and even teaching them certain values at a young age, but that it is wrong to interfere with the conduct of the lives of adults so long as they are not harming others. I may well believe that I knowfor certain what is best for you and that I should under no circumstances force you to do it or prevent you from choosing something I know is bad for you. This commitment to non-interference may be based on the political concern 71 hypatia that to interfere on behalf of good opens the door to interference on behalf of evil, or on the belief that there are some goods, perhaps the most important ones, that cannot be forced upon people or that are only good for us when we choose them. For example, I may be con- vinced that a friend of mine should not stay with an alcoholic husband who constantly mocks and belittles her, even though she believes that her staying is best for both of them, but I may be equally convinced that no one should force her to leave him and that it would not be good for her to be forced to leave him. Perhaps the liberal ideals of political equality and individual liberty are supposed to commit liberals to abstract individualism because they imply that there may be something important to safeguard politically on behalf of individuals. If all the important psychological character- istics of individuals, including capacities and needs, are entirely social- ly constructed or determined by their social context, then what basis could there be for protecting the individual in and from society? If socie- ty entirely constructs the individual, then society cannot violate the in- dividual, except perhaps by means of its own internal contradictions, e.g., by creating individuals who need certain conditions and then depriving them of those conditions. There can be no moral objection to a highly controlled society, indeed to any society that is internally consistent in this respect, unless one has a view of human nature that includes the possibility that some important characteristics of in- dividuals, especially capacities or needs, are not entirely socially con- structed. Yet surely this latter view of human nature is not abstract in- dividualism, or if it is, then most people, including most socialists, are committed to abstract individualism. If some of our capacities or needs are not socially constructed, the individuals might have some interests to protect in and from society. This is not to assert that individuals have no fundamental desire to be part of society, nor that none of their important characteristics are caused by society, nor that their most im- portant characteristics and interests can be described independently of their social context. Interestingly, Jaggar says: Socialist feminism is committed to the basic Marxist conception of human nature as created historically through the dialectical interrelation between human biology, human society and the physical environment. (Jaggar 1983, 125) If human nature is created in such a dialectical relation, surely we can place the dialectic at risk by allowing society to suppress new natures when they emerge. Since it is unlikely that everyone in a society will 72 susan wendell change in the same way at the same time, we cannot provide the condi- tions necessary for changes in human nature unless we give sufficient protection to individual interests. This problem has been recognized in liberal theory. Some traditional liberal thinkers have tended to view human nature as essentially unchanging in its important characteristics, but others (like Mill) have been concerned to safeguard the possibility of change by not allowing any society, no matter how harmoniously constructed in relation to present human nature, to have such control over the lives of individuals that new natures could not emerge, develop and spread. Unless one believes that human nature will change no matter how unusual individuals are treated, anyone who wants to allow for the possibility of major changes in humanity must be concerned about political liberty. A concern to allow for changes in human nature might also lead one to conclude that political equality is a good principle to adopt, on the grounds that it can, in the right conditions, promote the sort of diversity that leads to dialectical movement, and that to allow some people more political rights than others endangers the freedom to change. I have found no good reason to believe that the liberal ideals of political equality and individual liberty commit everyone who holds them to abstract individualism. Furthermore, I can offer two examples of feminist philosophers committed to these liberal ideals who do not derive them from a view of human nature which includes or implies abstract individualism. Although there is not room here to discuss or quote from their work at length, I think the reader will find these ex- amples illuminating and relatively straightforward. In The Subjection of Women, J.S. Mill (1870) derived the necessity for women's political equality with men from two convictions: that women need political equality to safeguard their own interests3 and that political inequality interferes with the happiness of both women and men.4 In addition, Mill argued that women must have liberty of action because it is necessary to their happiness, both as a means to fulfilling their desires and because freedom of choice is, in itself, an important ingredient of happiness. Mill did not hold the components of abstract individualism as Jag- gar and Scheman describe them. First, he took the position that human beings, by our nature, desire association with others for its own sake (Mill [1861] 1957, 40). Second, in The Subjection of Women, Mill makes one of his most persuasive and detailed arguments that many of peo- ple's important characteristics, including their capacities and desires, are shaped by the society in which they are raised (pp. 141-144). In- deed, he states that we cannot know what the natural differences bet- ween the sexes are until women and men are social equals (pp. 38, 41, 73 hypatla 125). Thirdly, although Mill did believe he knew some things about human nature that were relatively independent of social context, such as that people are happier when they can make important choices about their own lives, he did not believe that all the most important characteristics of individuals could be described independently of social context. There are at least two facts about individuals that were vitally important to Mill and could not be described independently of social context: how strongly they desire the welfare of others ([1861] 1957, 41-43) and whether they can interact with others as equals (1870, 81, 148-153). For a modern example, consider the value framework offered recently by Carol Gould in "Private Rights and Public Virtues:" I think the preeminent value that ought to underlie the feminist movement is freedom, that is, self-development. This arises through the exercise of agency, that is, through the exercise of the human capacity of free choice, in forms of activity undertaken to realize one's purposes and to satisfy one's needs. Such activity is manifested both in social interaction and in human work as a transforma- tion of the natural world. On this view, each human be- ing is regarded as an agent with a capacity for free choice and self-development. In this respect, all individuals are equal. Since they are all equal in this way, there is no reason for one individual or for any class of individuals to have more of a right to exercise this capacity for self- realization than any other. Thus, there are no grounds for making differences in gender the basis for differen- tial rights to self-realization. The equal rights of women and men are thus grounded in the nature of human agen- cy itself. (Gould 1983, 3-18) I do not know whether Gould would identify herself as a liberal feminist, but from the equal right to self-development she concludes that we have an equal right to participate in the decisions of govern- ment and in decisions in the economic, social and cultural domains (Gould 1983, 6,9). Thus, like most modern liberals and most feminists, Gould extends her concern for equality beyond the traditional liberal ideal of political equality, but she includes this kind of political equali- ty among her goals. She also says that free choice is necessary to self- development, and that it requires the privacy of individuals and "freedom to arrange their personal relations without the interference of institutions or of the state" (Gould 1983, 10. See also pp. 5-6, 13.). She therefore supports a version of the liberal ideal of individual liberty. 74 susan wendell By saying that self-development is grounded in social interaction and in work, Gould implicitly rejects the view that society does not create our important characteristics, and the view that individuals can be ade- quately described without reference to our social context. Furthermore, she would not hold that human beings do not by nature desire society, because that would imply that we do not desire the conditions necessary for our self-development, which she says include "the full development of both individuality and community" (Gould 1983, 17). Thus, she does not hold any of the components of abstract individualism as Jaggar and Scheman describe it. Both Mill and Gould illustrate the possibility of a commitment to liberal principles of equality and liberty which is not based upon beliefs about human nature which include abstract individualism. Practical Forms of Individualism Since liberal ideals of political equality and individual liberty need not be derived from a view of human nature that includes abstract in- dividualism and do not imply such a view, I see no reason to attribute a belief in abstract individualism to liberal feminists unless they express such a belief or it is implied by other positions they adopt. But does liberal feminism promote a kind of practical individualism, an in- dividualistic approach to living like that ascribed to it by Scheman in the passage quoted above, in which individuals are too absorbed by their own "self-actualization" to care about or take any responsibility for other people's happiness? Scheman's description is, I think, a caricature of both the human potential movement and liberal feminism's commitment to in- dividualism. A commitment to the value of individuals and their self- development, or even to the ethical priority of individuals over groups, does not commit one to narcissism or egoism or to the belief that one's own most important characteristics are somehow independent of one's relationships with other people. Indeed, liberals have long defended liberty and equality partly on the basis of their benefits to human rela- tionships. One of Mary Wollstonecraft's ([1833] 1967) major arguments for women's education and opportunity to develop as independent in- dividuals was that, with these benefits, women would be better wives and mothers. In The Subjection of Women, Mill (1870, 66-70, 170-174) argued that some of the worst consequences of inequality between the sexes were in the damage done to people's relationships and the poten- tial unrealized in them, especially the relationships between women and men and those among men. Ms. magazine, which is very representative of modern liberal feminism, contains a large proportion of articles 75 hypatla which focus on relationships, discussing the damage done to them by inequality and presenting proposals for making them more egalitarian. (See Ms. Vol XII.) The liberal feminist tradition hardly supports the narrow sort of individualism attributed to it by Scheman. What, then, is the content of liberal feminism's individualism? Cen- tral to liberal feminism is the assertion that women are valuable in themselves, as individual human beings, and not just as sources of pleasure and providers of services for men and children. Note that one can believe this and also consistently believe that all or many of the most valuable characteristics of all individuals, including women, are created and manifested in their relationships with others, but that women's relationships have placed too much emphasis on their pleasing and taking care of others and not enough on their engaging in equal or reciprocal interactions. In her critique of liberal feminism, The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism, Zillah Eisenstein makes a similar observation about the function of individualism in feminist theory: Individualism posits the importance of self-sovereignty and independence as a universal claim and therefore can be used to justify women's independence from men.... Feminism uses the individualistic stance against men because men inhibit women's self and collective develop- ment; it need not extend this vision to premise women's isolation from one another. In other words, the liberal conception of an individual with rights and of women's independence from men are important contributions to feminist theory. The points must be distinguished from the ideology of liberal individualism that posits the isolated, competitive individual. (Eisenstein 1981, 154) The possibility of women's coming to value ourselves more as in- dividuals with needs and desires of our own and less as nurturers and sources of pleasure to others raises the spectre of women's becoming "selfish." This is not, I think, because selfishness would necessarily result, but because present relations in our culture are built so firmly on the assumption that men will indulge in certain kinds of emotional and practical selfishness and women will aspire to pleasing men and acting out the role of selfless nurturer.5 Insofar as women's identities and interests are subordinated to the family and their relationships with men, men are able (and encouraged) to avoid taking equal responsibility for childcare, housework and other forms of service work, and for maintaining emotional relationships. Thus, it may be difficult for us to imagine a woman's giving up the selfless role without imagining her 76 susan wendell exchanging it for the selfish one, but that is not the only possibility. A woman may accept doing her share of nurturing and giving pleasure but refuse to do more than her share. Such a change appears selfish and uncaring only if we assume that men are incapable of responding by taking greater responsibility for their own and their children's nur- turance and emotional life, i.e. for doing their share. The possibility that women might no longer identify ourselves primarily as nurturers, sources of pleasure and maintainers of relation- ships is very threatening to the present division of labour and respon- sibility. This might account for the strong resistance liberal feminists have always encountered (from men and women) when they attempt to apply liberal principles of liberty and equality to women, even where men have adopted these principles for themselves. The hopeful pros- pect this possibility presents-of widening the sphere of one's identity, interest and responsibility and of valuing one's own experience as highly as that of others-may also account for liberal feminism's popularity among North American women, since liberal feminism puts a great deal of emphasis on women's value as individuals. This hypothesis is an in- teresting alternative to the theory that liberal feminism is more popular in North America than socialist or radical feminism because of its greater apparent compatibility with capitalist ideology. One might think (as Jaggar [1983, 193-194] does) that since modern liberal feminism advocates equality of opportunity it is committed to a meritocratic model of society and a competitive form of individualism, in which each of us is pitted against the others in striving for our own narrow self-interest. Although it is probably true that some liberal feminists hold these three commitments as a package, and although it has been tied to them historically, equality of opportunity is a broadly applicable political goal that is not necessarily attached to either meritocracy or competition. Equality of opportunity is a promising solution to a certain kind of problem of distribution. When desire for something exceeds the supply of it and need is not an appropriate criterion, or not appropriately the sole criterion, for sharing it, equality of opportunity may be an excellent solution. This sort of problem does not arise only in capitalist or other competitive economic systems. Some things cannot and others should not be distributed equally, or even on the basis of need, such as the job of surgeon or the use of electron microscopes or the finest musical instruments. Any society is likely to confront this kind of distribution problem, and equality of opportunity is a way of ensuring that those who are capable of doing a job well or making very good use of a scarce resource will be chosen to do so. There need be no competition involved, since distribution can be based on demonstrating a certain level of pro- 77 hypatia ficiency, and a society can commit itself to providing the appropriate work or the scarce resource for everyone who attains that level. When authority or power (and sometimes wealth) are the scarce resources distributed by equality of opportunity, a so-called meritocracy results. The name is somewhat deceptive, since merit in the sense of moral desert is frequently not involved.6 In any case, many people who support equality of opportunity as a way of creating and selecting doc- tors, scholars, plumbers, musicians and childcare workers would not also support it as a way of distributing political authority and power or wealth. If wealth were distributed according to need and political power were shared, let us say by means of participatory democracy, equality of opportunity to do other things would not produce a meritocracy, nor would it have to foster a competitive form of individualism.7 Thus, the political implications of equality of opportunity lie in the answer to: opportunity to do what? If the answer is: to acquire wealth, then creating equality of opportunity amounts to cleaning up capitalism so that it is sex-blind (or race-blind, or whatever, depending on whose opportunities are to be equalized), and we do not know if or how this would be possible. If the answer is: to develop as full a range of our capacities as possible, then bringing about equality of opportunity may require creating an egalitarian socialist society. There are, of course, many possible answers in addition to these two rather extreme ones. However, even under some conservative answers to: opportunity to do what?, creating equality of opportunity seems to require major changes in the structure and distribution of work and the distribution of resources. Thus, as Jaggar (1983, 194) points out, equality of oppor- tunity can be a political goal which appears safely reformist and turns out to have rather radical implications. I will return to this subject later. At this point, I hope only to have shown that calling for some kinds of equality of opportunity, for example, equal opportunity for women to engage in all forms of training and work (a popular demand of liberal feminists), does not commit liberal feminists to either a meritocratic model of society or a competitive form of individualism. Mind over Body, Reason over Emotion? Liberal feminists are often criticized for adopting mainstream, male- biased values, for assuming in their demands for equal education, equal rights and equality of opportunity that what is most worth having and doing is what men think worth having and doing. Jaggar says: Liberal feminists assume that most individuals are like- ly to discover fulfillment through the exercise of their 78 susan wendell rational capacities in the public world and consequently these feminists emphasize the importance of equality of opportunity in that world.... Liberal feminist assump- tions rest on a devaluation of women's traditional work and indeed of the labor of most working people. (Jaggar 1983, 188) Jaggar particularly emphasizes the fact that the liberal tradition valued individuals for their capacity to reason, and she places liberal feminism firmly in the tradition which values the rational over the emo- tional and the mind over the body.8 Much has been written about the connection between that system of values and the oppression of women, whom men have tended to identify with the emotions and the body.9 If liberal feminism is committed to that value system, it might be a very serious force for conservatism. My own impression is that liberal feminists are divided on this issue, and to understand how they are divided, it is necessary to look at various approaches to that value system. A way of looking at the world which divides human faculties into reason/emotion or mind/body, and human activities into rational/ emotional or mental/physical, and then places greater value on reason, the mind and rational and mental activities can be, and has been, criticiz- ed on two bases. First, one might argue that it is artificial and inac- curate to divide human faculties and many human activities in this way, that reason and emotion, mind and body are so intermingled and in- tegrated in most human activities that such a division is rarely applicable and usually obscures the complexity of real people and their behaviour. 10 Second, one might argue that, having made these distinctions, it is wrong to value reason more than emotion, mind more than body, the rational and mental more than the emotional and physical, since all are equally necessary to human survival and the richness of human experience. In addition, one might, without necessarily challenging the accuracy of its divisions or the wisdom of its placing value where it does, argue that this traditional system of values has been misapplied to women and their activities. Liberal feminists have long maintained that women have the same capacity to reason as do men, are no more emotional by nature and no more determined by our bodily processes. This Jag- gar acknowledges. However, liberal feminists, including Wollstonecraft and Mill, have also argued that many of women's traditional activities, especially childcare and management of a household, require reason and the exercise of the mind to a far greater degree than men usually recognize, and, as Mill (1870, 105-111) claimed, confront us with over- 79 hypatia whelining evidence of women's equal, if not superior, mental capacities. Thus, even if one accepts (as Mill essentially does) or fails to challenge this traditional system of values, one is not committed to devaluing women's traditional work or the skilled labour of most working peo- ple. Of course, most women and many men also perform many relative- ly unskilled tasks (such as washing floors and collecting garbage), and in this value system such tasks are not valued in themselves, although they may be valued for their necessary results. Notice that this view does not imply that people who perform a lot of unskilled labour should be valued less than those who do not, nor that they should be paid less, nor even that they should have to do this work, since someone who holds this view might also think that unskilled labour should be phased out wherever possible (without putting people out of work) or shared equally by everyone. Where do liberal feminists stand among all these possible positions? One thing is certain: ever since Mill there have been many liberal feminists insisting upon the value of women's work in the home. Recent- ly in Canada, liberal feminists have been prominent among those call- ing for pensions for homemakers and reform of the marriage and divorce laws to acknowledge the financial contribution to the family of women's work at home. Clearly, not all liberal feminists accept the de-valuing of women's traditional work. However, it is not clear on the basis of these facts alone whether they accept the general system of values we have been discussing. Fortunately, other evidence is available. In their concern to eliminate sex-role conditioning in child- raising and education and to stop the stereotyping of adults, liberal feminists have neither simply striven to raise girls more as boys have been raised nor simply asserted that women have traditionally male characteristics. They have also striven to give boys some of the advan- tages of girls' traditional upbringing, notably permission to have and express tender and vulnerable emotions and encouragement to behave in nurturing ways towards others, and they have affirmed the legitimacy of men's having traditionally female characteristics, especially emotional expressiveness and competence in housework and caring for children. 1 Their taking this position on sex roles shows that many liberal feminists recognize that there are virtues in both traditionally female and tradi- tionally male characteristics, and it also shows that they do not de-value the emotions or women's traditional labour to anything like the degree that the culture in general has de-valued them. Some liberal feminists denigrate housework, childcare and many of women's traditional activities and characteristics, and want only a chance to succeed in a traditionally male arena of activity. For that matter, some Marxist and radical feminists have similar attitudes and 80 susan wendell ambitions. This is perfectly understandable when we consider how many women do traditional work because they had little or no choice, how easy it is to become trapped in it, and how little recognition or reward it usually receives. We do not have to attribute their point of view to the value-system of the liberal tradition, but even if we do attribute it to that, it is clear that many other liberal feminists have not just ac- cepted that value system but have challenged it. Liberal feminists' concern to eliminate sex discrimination and gain equality of opportunity for women to engage in traditionally male ac- tivities need not arise from a belief that these activities are likely to be more fulfilling for everyone than traditionally female activities. It frequently arises from the belief that people should, as far as possible, get to do the work they want to do and are capable of doing, and that no one should have to settle for work s/he is not challenged by or dislikes doing. As Mill (1870, 186) said, "If there is anything vitally important to the happiness of human beings, it is that they should relish their habitual pursuit." The Public and The Private - The Pornography Issue One area in which liberal feminism has clearly expanded the outlook of liberalism and improved upon traditional liberal theory is in draw- ing the lines between the public and private spheres of life and between legitimate and illegitimate interference by the State. That those lines cannot simply be drawn at the family, because individuals sometimes need the protection of the public (or the State) from members of their own families, has been implicitly or explicitly recognized by liberal feminists since Mill. As Jaggar (1983, 198-199) points out, liberal feminist practice has tended to diminish the private sphere, although liberal feminists tend to retain a theoretical commitment to the right to privacy. Anita Allen (1983) argues that such a commitment may be very valuable to women, and I would like to point out here that a com- mitment to privacy and individual liberty does not necessarily place liberal feminists in opposition to other feminists on one of the major feminist issues of our time-pornography. Jaggar says: The liberal feminist commitment to liberty and the in- violability of private life places liberal feminists among most other feminists in their opposition to restraints on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, etc. The same commitment, however, separates liberal feminists from most other feminists on the issue of pornography .... Pornography presents a special problem for liberal 81 hypatla feminists because of liberalism's historic commitment to freedom of expression and the right to privacy. Liberal feminists may be 'personally' or 'privately' revolted or titillated by pornography, but they have no 'political' grounds for opposing it unless it can be shown to have a direct causal connection with the violation of women's rights. (Jaggar 1983, 180) I have argued elsewhere at length (Wendell 1983) that a very good case for restricting the display and availability of pornography that por- trays violence and coercion and the production and distribution of por- nography that is created with children or by other coercive means can be made on the basis of Mill's principle of liberty alone. Mill's princi- ple allows us to interfere with expression when it causes serious harm to others, provided that the harm cannot be prevented by acceptable means other than restricting the expression. I do not know exactly what Jaggar means by "a direct causal connection with the violation of women's rights," but even though we have relatively little information now about pornography's effects on people's behaviour, we can see that unrestricted production, display and availability of pornography causes serious direct harms that cannot be prevented by acceptable means other than placing restrictions on it. Furthermore, restriction by the State is not the only possible form of opposition to pornography. Many people committed to freedom of expression passionately hate the messages about women, men and sexuality that most (even non-violent) pornography conveys, just as they hate many messages about other aspects of life conveyed by popular culture and the media, and yet they believe that it is better to oppose such messages with alternative messages and with education that promotes a critical attitude toward pornography than to involve the law. Liberals have other political commitments besides their concern for individual freedom, and they are not usually reluctant to use that freedom to promote their own views about how to treat oneself and other people morally. Liberal Feminism's Political Commitments and Women's Liberation Women and individualism I have said that liberal feminism is committed to promoting women's recognition of their own value as individuals and public and private recognition of that value by others. I have argued that this does not mean that liberal feminism is encouraging women to become selfish, to seek their own interest without concern for other people's welfare. Yet might not selfishness be the practical outcome of promoting 82 susan wendell women's greater value as individuals, especially in a society which bases men's value so much upon competition? We cannot dismiss the possibility that as women become more con- cerned with our value as individuals, we will lose the special moral em- phasis on care and responsibility that Carol Gilligan (1982) has iden- tified in her studies of sex differences in approaches to moral problems. Interestingly, some of Gilligan's subjects seem to regard the idea of doing justice to their own needs, desires and rights as virtually taboo.12 In placing emphasis upon care and responsibility for others, they seem to forget that they too are people with needs and rights. Surely there is now good reason to believe that they forget or avoid this because girls and women are taught that pleasing and taking care of others is what gives them worth, and that a good woman is a selfless woman. Gilligan (1982, 149) says, and I agree, that mature moral development for women involves an integration of the concept of rights and a recogni- tion of their own rights, which will enable women "to consider it moral to care not only for others but for themselves." What many women are striving for is a balanced, complex interplay between concern for oneself and concern for others, which includes the understanding that one's own welfare is not and cannot be independent of the welfare of other people. A way of thinking and living that integrates self-value and care for others is not easy to achieve in a culture that constantly presents a dichotomy between selfishness and self-sacrifice. However, asserting the worth of women as individuals at least creates the possibili- ty that we will move toward such an integration, while leaving women with self-sacrifice out of fear that we will switch over to selfishness is too hopeless a solution for me to accept. Women's developing greater individualism is not only in our per- sonal interest but also politically important at this time, as many socialist and radical feminists, as well as liberal feminists, recognize. Women are not likely to demand rights and freedoms they think they do not deserve. Nor are women who feel that their own worth comes from taking care of others likely to demand that men take equal responsibility for the welfare of children, the sick and the old. Self-sacrifice and over-identifying with others also interferes with women's abilities to work together, to co-operate in opposing oppressive social institutions and creating alternatives to them. Too often we carry self-sacrifice into the women's movement when we have stopped sacrificing ourselves for men but have not learned to take our own needs and desires seriously. Such self-sacrifice is not a gift freely given; it car- ries with it the same load of resentment and unrealistic expectations of reward that were there when it was given to men. In addition, if women in feminist political and service organizations try to take too 83 hypatla much responsibility for other women's welfare, we make it difficult for them to find the strength and skill to take care of themselves. Then the helpers exhaust themselves, and those they set out to help continue to feel weak and helpless. In political practice as elsewhere, there is not a simple choice between being selfless and being selfish. It is possi- ble to respect one's own needs and desires while also taking a keen in- terest in other people's and remaining willing to make some sacrifices, if necessary, for them. Learning to strike this balance is the basis of co-operation, and for most women, it means giving up the moral ideal of self-sacrifice. Equality of opportunity I have argued that equality of opportunity is not a goal just for com- petitive economic and social circumstances, and that its political im- plications depend on the answer to: Opportunity to do what? In- terestingly, if one gives some rather conservative answers to this ques- tion and advocates, for example, equality of opportunity to gain prestige, power and wealth, one finds that achieving it would require major changes in North American societies, as Jaggar points out: In identifying barriers to women's achievement, liberal feminists have become increasingly aware of 'internal' as well as 'external' barriers. They have seen how the total environment of male supremacy shapes women's percep- tions of themselves; molds women's interests, needs and wants; and limits women's ambition, determination and perseverence. Liberal feminists conclude that equality of opportunity requires equality in children's early educa- tion and environment. (Jaggar 1983, 194) I think it can be shown, and I have argued elsewhere (Wendell 1976), that creating even equal employment opportunity for women and men requires giving girls and boys the same early education in the follow- ing respects: a) Girls and boys must be given the same (or equally good) condi- tions for developing basic skills and knowledge. b) Girls and boys must be given the same information about the jobs and roles available to them. c) Girls and boys must be given the same (or equally good) means of acquiring whatever special skills and knowledge are necessary to all the professions. d) Girls and boys must be given the same (or equally good) condi- tions for physical development. 84 susan wendell e) Girls and boys must be treated the same in the matter of their psychological development; i.e. neither sex should be influenced more than the other to develop or not to develop particular psychological traits or desires. Jaggar draws attention to the fact that liberal feminists could argue for state control of every aspect of life on the basis that it would be needed to create all the necessary educational conditions for equality of opportunity, and such a position would, of course, be incompatible with liberal feminism's commitment to individual liberty. On the other hand, liberal feminists could see the creation of these conditions as a long-term project to be accomplished partly by state control, e.g. over public educational institutions, and partly by such personal and political efforts as persuading parents and other adults to change their child- raising practices, informing young people of their choices and encourag- ing them to develop their capacities, and drawing attention (especially in the media) to a wide range of possible role-models. Also essential to reaching even such a modest goal as equal employ- ment opportunity is ending defacto sex discrimination in higher educa- tion, training, hiring and promotion for all occupations. Liberal feminists have sought the help of the State in preventing de facto discrimination by legislation against it and implementation of affir- mative action programmes. 3 Yet discrimination takes so many forms, some of them quite subtle, and can occur at so many points in a per- son's career, that it cannot be completely prevented so long as sex pre- judice still exists. Ending sex prejudice requires both putting an end to sex stereotyping, i.e. to attributing and assigning characteristics and behaviour to individuals on the basis of sex, and changing the value system that undervalues the activities, achievements and characteristics of women or associated with women. As I have argued elsewhere (Wendell 1980), both steps are required to bring about the end of sex discrimination. Having started with the relatively conservative goal of creating equal employment opportunity for women, we find that to achieve it we must bring about two major social reforms: giving girls and boys the same early education and ending sex prejudice, which in turn will require major redistribution of resources and vast changes in consciousness. Other reforms may also be necessary to achieving this goal. For exam- ple, many women are handicapped in reaching their employment goals by having to work a double day because of the unequal division of labour at home. Thus, it may be necessary either to get men to take equal responsibility for childcare and housework, or to socialize the labour women do at home so that it does not have to be the respon- sibility of individual women, in order to create equal employment op- 85 hypatla portunity. Most of the more general answers we could give to 'oppor- tunity to do what?,' such as opportunity to develop one's full capacities or opportunity to have both satisfying work and a happy family life, would certainly seem to require an end to women's double work-day and fair redistribution of responsibility for childcare and housework. Equality of opportunity turns out to be a more radical political goal than it might at first appear. It is notoriously difficult to assess the long-term consequences of working for social reforms. In "Feminism: Reform or Revolution?" Sandra Harding (1976), who identifies herself as a socialist feminist, argues convincingly that the reform/revolution dichotomy is not a useful guide to political actions, and that those of us committed to re- making society should assess reforms as strategies toward the feminist goal of a non-oppressive society. Charlotte Bunch, who defines herself as a "radical," in that she is committed to fundamental changes in socie- ty, and who says, "The primary goal is women gaining power in order to eliminate patriarchy and create a more humane society" (Bunch 1981, 196), offers five criteria for evaluating reforms on the basis of their contribution to that goal: "1) Does this reform materially improve the lives of women, and if so, which women, and how many? 2) Does it build an individual woman's self-respect, strength, and confidence? 3) Does it give women a sense of power, strength, and imagination as a group and help build structures for further change? 4) Does it educate women politically, enhancing their ability to criticize and challenge the system in the future? 5) Does it weaken patriarchal control of society's institutions and help women gain power over them?" Of the three major reforms required to bring about equality of employment opportunity, I find giving girls and boys the same early education the most difficult to assess along the lines Harding and Bunch suggest. This is because the consequences of this particular reform de- pend so heavily on our success in dealing with the kind of sex prejudice which undervalues women's traditional activities, achievements and characteristics. If this prejudice, essentially the value-system discussed on pages 78-81, has a great deal of influence in the process of bringing about the same early education for girls and boys, that reform is likely to consist of trying to raise girls the way boys are now raised (with all of its vices as well as its virtues) without trying to give boys, and girls, any of the good elements of girls' present upbringing. Placing equal value on women and the strengths and virtues traditionally associated with women is essential if this liberal reform is not to result in the in- creased masculinization of all society, which would, I think, be un- acceptable to most socialist and radical feminists as well as to many liberal feminists. 86 susan wendell Ending sex discrimination and prejudice are long-term goals that sure- ly must be an essential part of anyone's plans to create a more humane and less oppressive society. Liberals might be criticized, by those who want to bring about a society in which the State is either unnecessary or utterly transformed, for enlisting the State in the fight to end sex discrimination and undermine prejudice. Yet it is not clear why we should not enlist the State's help now, no matter what we want or believe its long-term fate to be. Liberal feminists want the State to help bring about changes in behaviour and consciousness that they hope will become virtually permanent, passed from generation to generation as sex prejudice dies out; eventually, it is hoped, the State's involvement will have become unnecessary, because sex prejudice will have become a rare eccentricity. Ending women's double work-day by fair re-distribution of respon- sibility for childcare and housework and the other labour women per- form at home is surely a goal that meets both Harding's and Bunch's criteria for good reform. In fact, it is high on the agenda of most radical and socialist feminists. Many would argue that it is not possible to achieve it in a capitalist economy. If that is the case, then liberal feminists committed to kinds of equality of opportunity that require ending the double work-day and also committed to capitalism will have to choose between them. I think, however, it is an open question whether this '1 or any of the other reforms supported by liberal feminism can be achieved within capitalism, a question which can be answered only by trying. Equality of legal rights Liberal feminists have long been committed to achieving women's equality with men in legal rights. This commitment is frequently criticiz- ed by socialist and radical feminists on three grounds. First, equality under the law is far from sufficient to guarantee that women will not be oppressed, even by the legal system, since access to freedom and justice is determined in large part by access to social and economic power. Most liberals are also aware of the insufficiency of legal equality to end women's oppression, if only because, as dejure class, race and sex discrimination has been reduced over the past 150 years in the English-speaking world, the power and pervasiveness of de facto discrimination have been revealed. Second, legal equality can be used to cover up or rationalize other kinds of inequality, including defacto discrimination and the more subtle ways in which women's choices are limited. "After all," it can be said, "there are no rules preventing them from doing anything they want, so women must not be trying hard 87 hypatia enough, or perhaps women don't really have what it takes to get what they want." Third, since many socialist and radical feminists are com- mitted to abolishing or transforming the State completely, it seems to them futile and perhaps a betrayal of their ultimate goals to work for legal reforms. These objections to working for legal equality must be weighed against its benefits. The immediate benefits to individual women of moves toward legal equality have been substantial. For example, re- cent reforms of the marriage laws in some Canadian provinces have guaranteed for the first time that women who have contributed their labour to making the family farm or business successful will not lose everything if the marriage breaks down. A good argument can be made that most legal reforms have not produced the beneficial effects on in- dividual women's lives that were expected of them,'5 but we must ap- preciate what legal equality can do for some women when we see them winning back jobs they lost because of sexual harassment, winning monetary compensation because of wage discrimination, and winning the right to be considered on an equal basis with men for jobs from which they were previously excluded.'6 Nevertheless, I suspect that the greatest benefits of legal equality are not the immediate benefits to individuals but the long-term contribu- tions that both the public struggles for legal equality and the recogni- tion of principles of equality in the laws of the land have made toward changing people's beliefs and attitudes. Consider the long struggle (which is not yet over) to reform the rape laws, the enforcement methods by which they were applied, and the treatment of rape cases in the courts. Some rape victims have surely benefitted directly from im- provements in the way they are treated by the police and prosecutors, and from changes in court procedures and standards of appropriate evidence. Rape victims used to be (and many still are) on trial for their chastity and sexual morality, as though there were a presumption that they were more responsible for the actions of an accused rapist than he was. In many places in Canada and the United States, the legal situa- tion of the rape victim has improved considerably, but still everyone admits that relatively few rapists are convicted (an estimated 2% in Canada),'7 and even fewer serve a significant prison term. However, consider the enormous improvement in awareness, especially among women, of the realities of rape, compared to most people's attitudes and beliefs about it fifteen years ago. At least some of that improve- ment has come from the public efforts to reform the legal system. People have begun discussing the issue of responsibility openly, and more and more victims are refusing to accept guilt and shame for having been raped. When the law supports them in its judgment, by changes in the 88 susan wendell criminal code and in the opinions expressed by judges, people begin to re-examine attitudes they took for granted.18 The law is a public ex- pression of what behaviour is acceptable or unacceptable in a society. For many citizens, unfortunately, it is the standard of morality; few people will condemn actions the law condones. In most matters, the law is a weak tool for forcing people to behave in the ways we want them to, but I see the law, and the public struggle to reform the legal system, as powerful forces for changing consciousness. Those who fear that obtaining legal equality will fool women into believing that we are the social and economic equals of men are under- estimating women and, I think, not paying enough attention to the historical evidence. Surely history shows that oppressed groups do not tend to be satisfied with legal equality, and that obtaining it helps to uncover the other sources of oppression. Whatever ideological uses the dominant groups can make of legal equality, they have hardly succeeded in convincing everyone that the other aspects of oppression are illu- sions.19 Education and reform The major purpose of some and the most effective result of many liberal feminist reforms seems to be changing women's and men's beliefs and feelings about ourselves, other people and the nature of our inter- actions with one another. It is, of course, a liberal tradition to hope to improve social and economic conditions in large part by educating individuals. Behind this tradition lies a faith in the moral potential of human nature. The reformer who counts on the efficacy of education believes that when people know the nature and causes of their own and other people's unnecessary suffering, and when their ability to care for themselves and others is cultivated, they will be moved to create a bet- ter society. This view of human nature is very different from the pic- ture, often attributed to liberals, of psychologically isolated individuals pursuing their narrow self-interest, but it is at least as much a part of the liberal tradition. It is also a view shared, implicitly or explicitly, by most feminists, whose strategies rely heavily on the power of chang- ing people's beliefs and feelings. Feminist Strategies What are the alternative strategies open to feminists? We can con- vince women and men to end our oppressive relations or coerce them somehow into ending them. Liberal feminists accept and even advocate a certain amount of coercion by the State, for example, to prevent sex discrimination. In practice, in representative democracies, State coercion 89 hypatia requires the support or tacit acceptance of a majority or near-majority of the people, and most liberal feminists remain committed to the prin- ciple of majority rule, modified, of course, by guaranteed minority rights. It is also noteworthy that however much socialist and radical feminists may believe that consciousness is determined by material con- ditions and power relations, few are willing to advocate a minority's changing them by coercing the majority, except perhaps when lives are in immediate danger. Feminists tend to shun this strategy for two reasons: women have too often been betrayed and victimized by vanguard politics, in which a minority decides and enacts what it thinks best for the majority; and we are suspicious of coercion and violence as means to a non-oppressive society. The reasons for these two at- titudes are too numerous to discuss here, but I think anyone familiar with the literature of the women's movement would agree that the at- titudes are very strong and widespread among feminsts.20 If coercion of the majority is to be avoided, then changing con- sciousness is the immediate basis for feminist strategy. We must con- vince the majority of people to change oppressive institutions, unfair distributions of resources and power, and the other social inequities which cause unhappiness and corrupt our personal relations. The ques- tion then becomes: What are the best ways to change consciousness? It is still an open question. Certainly no one knows enough about it yet to say that working for the reforms liberal feminists advocate is not one of the most effective strategies toward ending women's op- pression in North America. Qualifications For reasons too numerous and complex to discuss here, I find liberal feminist analyses of the nature of women's oppression and the condi- tions which perpetuate it inadequate. Furthermore, I am committed to ultimate goals that most liberal feminists would reject, especially end- ing private ownership of the means of production. In addition, liberal feminist principles are rarely applied on a global scale, and it seems clear that much of the oppression suffered by women in poor coun- tries is due not to their inequality with men in their own countries (which is not insignificant), but to their inequality with those of us who live in wealthy countries. Yet, despite these qualifications, I support wholeheartedly the liberal feminist reforms I have discussed, and I suspect that to struggle for them is the most effective strategy for our time and place, the best way to move here and now toward a just and compassionate society in which freedom flourishes. 90 susan wendell notes I wish to thank the members of the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy who attended the 1984 Conference in Montreal and the editor and referees of Hypatia for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. 1. The fact that early feminists concentrated on eliminating legal inequities should not be taken as a sign of their relative conservatism. The power and extent of defacto discrimination rarely becomes apparent until most of the dejure discrimination has been removed. 2. For another, similar, definition of abstract indivdualism, see Carole Pateman (1979, 25). 3. Mill also makes this point in a letter to Florence Nightingale. See Mill (1972, Letter 1169, December 31, 1867). 4. Throughout The Subjection of Women, Mill describes the ways he observed political inequality causing unhappiness and preventing happiness among women and men in his own society. See especially Chapter IV. 5. For a good discussion of this point, see M. Rivka Polatnick (1984). 6. The explanation of this point is too complex to deal with here. See Susan D. Wendell (1976, chapter II). 7. In her justly harsh criticism of meritocracy, Jaggar seems to miss this point. See Jaggar (1983, 193-197). 8. This is not just a liberal tradition, of course, but many liberals, including Locke and Mill, are in it. 9. See, for example, Sandra Harding (1983). 10. See Harding (1983) and Adrienne Rich (1976). 11. This is clear, for example, in Ms., especially in the magazine's section: "Stories for Free Children." 12. See especially the case of Ruth (Gilligan 1982, 101-103). 13. For a discussion of discrimination and affirmative action as a means of prevent- ing it, see Susan Wendell (1980). 14. On this question, see Virginia Held (1984), Diane Ehrensaft (1984), Janice Moulton and Francine Rainone (1983). 15. Frances Olsen (1983) has argued that many legal reforms of the family and the marketplace that have benefitted some women have had side effects that worked against many women's interests; in the end, however, she does not deny that many individual women's lives have been substantially improved by legal reform, only that legal reform is sufficient to create the kinds of relations among people that she wants to see. 16. See The Canadian Human Rights Reporter for some inspiring evidence of this kind. 17. 1984 figures from the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. 18. Consider the influence of the New Bedford, Massachusetts, case alone. 19. In a Harris poll commissioned by Ms. in March, 1984, 57% of a representative sample of 1006 American women felt that the organized movement for women's economic, social and legal equality had just begun. See Ms., Vol. XIII, No. 1, July, 1984, p. 56 20. For a good discussion of this issue see Sheila Rowbotham (1979). 91 hypatla references Allen, Anita. 1983. Women and their privacy: What is at stake? In Beyond domination. See Gould 1983. Bunch, Charlotte. 1981. The reform tool kit. In Building feminist theory, ed. The Quest Staff. New York: Longman. Ehrensaft, Diane. 1984. When women and men mother. In Mothering. See Trebilcot 1984. Eisenstein, Zillah. 1981. The radical future of liberal feminism. New York: Longman. Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard. Gould, Carol C. 1983. Private rights and public virtues: Women, the family and democracy. In Beyond domination, ed. Carol C. Gould. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld. Harding, Sandra. 1976. Feminism: Reform or revolution? In Women and philosophy, eds. Carol C. Gould and Marx W. Wartofsky. New York: Putnam. ---. 1983. Is gender a variable in conceptions of rationality? In Beyond domination. See Gould 1983. Held, Virginia. 1984. The obligations of mothers and fathers. In Mothering. See Trebilcot 1984. Jaggar, Alison M. 1983. Feminist politics and human nature. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld. Jaggar, Alison M. and Paula Rothenberg Struhl, eds. 1978. Feminist frameworks. New York: McGraw-Hill. Mill, John Stuart. 1870. The subjection of women, New York: D. Appleton. - . [1861] 1957. Utilitarianism. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. - . 1972. The later letters of John Stuart Mill 1848-1873. Ed. F.E. Mineka and D.N. Lindley. Toronto: University of Toronto. Moulton, Janice and Francine Rainone. 1983. Women's work and sex roles. In Beyond domination. See Gould 1983. Olsen, Frances. 1983. The family and the market: A study of ideology and legal reform. Harvard Law Review 96 (7): 1497-1578. Pateman, Carole. 1979. The problem of political obligation. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Polatnick, M. Rivka. 1984. Why men don't rear children: A power analysis. In Mothering. See Trebilcot 1984. Rich, Adrienne. 1976. Of woman born. New York: Norton. Rowbotham, Sheila. 1979. Beyond the fragments. London: Islington Community Press. Scheman, Naomi. 1983. Individualism and the objects of psychology. 92 susan wendell In Discovering reality, eds. Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka. Boston: D. Reidel. Trebilcot, Joyce, ed. 1984. Mothering: Essays in feminist theory. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld. Wendell, Susan D. 1976. The subjection of women today. Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia. ---. 1980. Discrimination, sex prejudice and affirmative action. Atlantis 6 (1): . 1983. Pornography and freedom of expression. In Pornography and censorship, eds. David Copp and Susan Wendell. Buffalo: Prometheus. Wollstonecraft, Mary. [1833] 1967. A vindication of the rights of woman. New York: Norton. 93 andrea nye The Unity of Language This paper identifies the founding project of traditional philosophy of language as an attempt to unify the diversity and individuality of spoken language in order to produce a transpersonal intelligibility. The supposed necessary truth that we cannot directly understand what others say which underlies such a project is exposed as a willful avoidance of the discourse of others typical of masculine styles of communication. Philosophy of language begins with the attempt to unify language, to reduce to one formal reality, one logic, or one grammar, language's apparent diversity. Although the mechanisms of unification differ as the history of this project, and of philosophy, unfolds, the beginning point is the same. Platonists, phenomenologists, linguists, positivists, offer alternate principles on which a unified language can be understood but share a more profound agreement: the diversity of individuals' speech must be rejected as self-evidently unintelligible. This paper attempts to understand this assertion of self-evidence from a feminist perspective, not as a rationally necessary judgment but as a blind spot. Self-evidence masks the position from which the philosophical unification of language begins. The philosopher has deter- mined that he will not see and will not hear, and so will not understand what others say, a refusal that gives him license to substitute his words for theirs. The use of the masculine pronoun for the philosopher is not meant to be generic. The refusal to hear that as the starting point of the philosophical unification of language is a masculine position, that is, it constitutes the position of men in male-dominated society. As philosophy of language develops, a language is theorized that fits a masculine conversational style, and philosophical discourse, claiming to be above ordinary talk, becomes the paradigm of a certain kind of exchange between men. The terms of this exchange are set by the estrangement of the speakers, both from each other and from the often "feminized" objects about which they talk.' This paper attempts to move outside the economy of an alienated exchange between men. If philosophy is read within this paradigm the Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © By Andrea Nye. 95 hypatia unintelligibility of heterogeneous talk continues to be self-evident. To rationally critique or logically analyze the arguments of philosophers would be to suffer from the same blindness and deafness that is at the center of the attempt to unify language. Instead I try to exercise that gift for which women are often credited, the ability to listen to what others are saying; not, however, for the traditionally "feminine" pur- poses of empathy and support, but in order to understand what men are saying. Only in this way, can feminist thought engage in conversa- tion or dispute with those who claim for their language the authority to tell us who we are and what we may do. Plato was perhaps the founding father of authoritarian language. His image of the sun, with its remorseless clarity, symbolizes rational order, the systematic arrangement of concepts reflected in logical form. In Plato, vision is substituted for voice. The philosopher contemplates the forms in silence, in a revelation that even philosophical language can only imperfectly express. Dazzled by the light of reason, the eye of the mind achieves unity and escapes the perceived diversity of physical things. An inability to speak and a blindness to material reality clears the way as the Platonic philosopher becomes successively unable to look "directly at animals and plants" in their bewildering detail (Plato Republic 523, b-c).2 His soul, in its search for truth, has turned away from the diversity of "becoming" to the contemplation of essence (Plato Republic 518, c). Mathematics plays its traditional role in this achieve- ment of seeing and not seeing, because in mathematical reasoning, "each unity (is) equal to every other without the slightest difference between its parts (Plato Republic 526, a).3 Any application that would reattach number to "visible and tangible bodies" mars unity and returns the search for truth to "huckstering," mere commerce or profiteering (Plato Republic 525,c).4 So Plato formulates an argument for linguistic unity that is rework- ed by linguists, phenomenologists, positivists. Perceptions of physical things, always relative, shifting, diverse, are not intelligible or expressible in rationally ordered language. The most such particular and personal insights can yield is a babble of tongues, a confusion of language games, a complex web of "procedures, sequences, and co-existences" (Plato Republic 516, d), of prizes, successes, honors, "the incessant, disorderly buzzing of discourse" (Foucault 1972, 229) that the "knowing" speaker will eschew. For the philosopher, a rejection of these practices and discourses is necessary if the way to truth is to be cleared. From the perspective of the sun, linguistic diversity can only be seen as a curse, as the punishment a jealous god inflicts on the people of Babel, as the ultimate tragedy, the thwarting of the project of ascent to perfect knowledge. Insistence on the multiplicity of language is a depraved 96 andrea nye resistance to the clarity of the sun which illuminates Platonic forms as well as their counterparts, universal grammar, propositional calculus, the phenomenologist's essences. Linguistics inherits the Platonic project.5 Linguists try to establish clarity in language by practicing a kind of paleontology. Factoring out the diverse features of language, the linguist discovers permanent struc- tures that operate not diachronically and mutably as each word is respoken and remeant, but synchronically and uniformly. Etymology, as successive layers of intended meanings, becomes the unsystematizable flesh which falls away when one contemplates the generative structures of language. Just as Platonic forms, these structures are to be studied in isolation from the confused and diverse intentions that originated them in the same way a fossil can be examined long after the individual animal whose body has given it form has disappeared. Language becomes, as Bakhtin put it, ... the sclerotic deposits of an intentional process, signs left behind on the path of the real living project of an intention, of the particular way it imparts meanings to general linguistic norms. (Bakhtin 1981, 292) Each individual leaves its mark in a hard durable medium and when irrelevant differences between one remnant and another are disregard- ed, a generalized form of life or speech can be outlined. At the same time, the science of paleontology pretends to tell us something about the living animal. The student of Plato's forms was expected to return to the dark cavern of practical affairs to advise and instruct. The linguist, or logician, claims to discover something about actual thought and language. For these reasons there can never be a perfect detachment from linguistic realities. Neither the Platonist nor the linguist can escape completely the corrupting intentions of speakers. As Bakhtin continues: these eternal markers, linguistically observable and fix- able, cannot in themselves be understood or studied without understanding the specific conceptualization they have been given by an individual. (Bakhtin, 1981, 292) If a form like "the Good," or a semantic element such as "red" is to have any meaning, or any interest, it must remain linked in some way to what individual speakers mean by the words "good" or "red." So diversities in ordinary usage continue to threaten to compromise the clarity of a unified language. The dream of oneness, order, and harmony, of a clarity of thought which would reduce diversity to over- riding design or principle, is under seige from the confusions of the 97 hypatia flesh. The philospher king gives way to physical appetites, the legislator yields to practical political exigencies, the linguist to the semantic ir- regularities of poetry or metaphor. The confusion can never be com- pletely cleared away. Logical form is always confounded by a bewilder- ing array of "language games" which in their diversity and contradic- tions resist any attempt to define clearly what can and cannot be said.6 Linguistic structures are challenged by speech practices that persist in being ungrammatical; any actual speaking community with divisions of class, interest, status, accommodates deviations which confront "or- thodox" discourse with poetry, patois, dialect. The intelligibility of such "deviant" speech is often the most comfortable protest an oppresed situation permits.7 The "orthodox" grammatical or rational speaker must, therefore, be carefully selected and his or her inevitably faulty performances kept distinct from orderly linguistic "competence." Even philosphers who acknowledge the diversity of language games or the heterogeneity of logical forms cling to some vestige of unity. The language game theory of Wittgenstein's Investigations (1958), even as it asserts the multiplicity of the uses of words, never casts off the need for criteria; although these are not the criteria of universal forms, they constitute rules of practice that provide a grounding for mean- ingful speech. Derrida's deconstruction of logocentric discourse in Of Grammatology (1976), even as it asserts the heterogeneity of discourse, still provides a uniform version of the production of linguistic mean- ing which reduces to traces and ruptures which are all, it is claimed, that meaning can be. Here the outlines of a unified order, dim and ultimately compromised, are still present in the attempt to "account" for language: to anchor, with Wittgenstein, linguistic practices in in- stinctive, primitive, interactions, or to indicate, with Derrida, the metonymical and metaphorical mechanisms by which discourse must be generated. At the same time, in the speech of any individual, a stubborn idiosyn- crasy persists. Wittgenstein himself ponders this mysterious "personali- ty" of words: Suppose someone said: every familiar word, in a book, for example, actually carries an atmosphere with it in our minds, a "corona" of lightly indicated uses . . . (1958, 181). Now I say nothing about the cause of this phenomenon. They might be associations from my childhood. (1958, 216) Words take on for each person a unique flavor, the aura of "certain associations and memories" which are part of a unique history. Not only that, but even an individual's speech has no unity. Bakhtin in his 98 andrea nye Dialogic Imagination (1981) speaks of the poor, uneducated, peasant who must speak intelligently a variety of discourses. He (or she) must speak the language of the hearth, of the old proverbs and folksongs, he (or she) must, when dealing with village officials, speak officialeze, and he (or she) must understand something of the language of the church. The fact that it is all in Russian, or French, or English is in- significant beside the difficult transitions that must be made from one set of pre-suppositions and logical structures to another. And yet the peasant accomplishes the transitions with ease, all the time giving each modality an individual voice. Anyone must do the same, must speak to family, to government, to clerks, to the academic community, to the priest, in languages that differ in reasoning and orientation. No one can escape such diverse positioning, according to Bakhtin, because any non-differentiated "socio-ideological position" is impossible. This multiplicity of discourses is acknowledged in literature. There, the omniscient narrator represents the closest analogy to the philosopher's rational hegemony over language, but understood in the context of the discourse of other characters, even the narrator's om- niscience becomes only one identifiable style. The novelist, writing within the "stratification" of discourse, must take up a particular posi- tion "amid the heteroglossia of (his) epoch" (Bakhtin 1981, 300). Fur- thermore, the shift from one "language" to another is accomplished without syntactical markers (Bakhtin 1981, 300, 304), making it clear that no underlying unity can account for our skill, either as writers or as readers, to change perspective. There are no common structural features that can provide the basis of this inter-intelligibility. Subtle changes of tone are indicated without overt markers such as the punc- tuation of indirect speech and still a reader of an author like Dickens easily recognizes when a different character's viewpoint is being ironical- ly reported. The removal from words of this "personality" is necessary if there is to be a logical language. Instead of expressing personal experience, language must be grounded in authoritarian impersonal truths. Posi- tioned, fluid, unique, human experience must be hardened into data that cannot be questioned. A more stable and unitary foundation must be found for language than either platonic form, which may itself be only a unique personal vision, or grammatical structures which have no meaning unless compromised with a semantics that links words to experience. Science becomes the new instrument for overcoming what Ayer (1958) calls the "egocentric predicament," and for constructing in its place a universal objective truth that can be understood. As Russell explains, the task of philosophy 99 hypatla . . . consists in criticizing and clarifying notions which are apt to be regarded as fundamental and accepted un- critically. As instances I might mention: mind, matter, consciousness, knowledge, experience, causality, will, time. I believe all these notions to be inexact and approx- imate, essentially infected with vagueness, incapable of forming part of any exact science. (Russell 1956, 341) When sensory content is claimed as the finally stable content of com- municable concepts, it is necessary to guard anew against personal idiosyncrasy and inaccessibility. Whatever is to count as sense-data, must be uniform and accessible to all. So, in an attempt to avoid in- dividual sensation, Carnap denies phenomenological content altogether, asserting that descriptions of "experiences" are really statements about the body (1971, 86). The early Wittgenstein, for perhaps the same reasons, denies the Tractatus' logical simples experiential content. The privacy and the essential incommunicability of personal experience is unsuitable as a basis for science or logic, and formal structures are again detached from experience. Ayer is more cautious. It is true, he argues, that it is a convention of our language that no one can experience another's sensations, and that, because the histories of two people do not overlap, sensations can- not be the basis of mutual understanding (1958, 154). But because I can imagine a language in which I have the same experiences as others, and I always could have had the experience of someone else,8 it is possi- ble to infer that they see things as I do. Because sense-data are con- tingently owned by one person rather than another, it is possible to argue from analogy that others' experiences are similar to mine, and that others' observations can be relied on. For Ayer, the analogy is necessary. We do not feel what another feels, but could have. We play our game of patience with our own cards, but assume that we could equally well play with another's. And although the cards must be only mine, they share the structure or "form" of other's cards.9 Seeing that we appear to be playing the same game, and given the apparent similari- ty of the moves that others make, we are warranted in inferring that they feel as we do. The barrier that persists between the logical space of individual's experiences, is bridged only because we can imagine that the other's experience is ours, and therefore are able to substitute what we might feel for what another feels.'° It is as clear to Ayer as it is to Carnap that it will be disastrous to logical language to have its particulars remain the experiences of in- dividuals. Either others' precepts must become mine, as Ayer argues they contingently could have been since the pool of sense-data is only 100 andrea nye arbitrarily divided into a series of "histories," or precepts must be aban- doned altogether for a logically coherent, canonical idiom that refers to states of the physical world, as in Carnap. If it were the case that I could immediately communicate to others my response to a situation, make them see it and feel it as I do, experiences and opinions would not have to be replaced by "data," or by measurements of physiological response. That the way I feel is not communicable, that there can be no words which reliably carry experience, is the beginning point from which both Ayer and Carnap construct a theory of unified scientific language. Even when phenomenology resuscitates subjectivity against an ob- jective factual positivism, the necessary truth that we have no direct access to others' thoughts or feelings remains foundational. Husserl agrees we recognize others only as "co-existences" i.e., as seemingly analogous to ourselves. At the same time, phenomenology must de- fend its claim to universality. It must show that the essential relations and structures it discovers are not peculiar to one individual, race, na- tionality, or culture. This must be done against the obvious fact of diver- sity in intentional structure. Husserl (1970) describes his struggle to resolve this conflict in The Crisis of European Sciences. Like the omniscient novelist's, the phenomenologist's positioning "above his own natural being and above the natural world" (152) is what will enable him to escape the distor- tions inherent within any particular perspective. He must remove himself from practical involvement and concerns, and become a "fully disinterested spectator" (157). Taking nothing for granted, nothing as "ground," he can then inquire into the horizons of thought. But if this remains a purely solipsistic inquiry, if it is only his own thoughts that are in question, his discoveries will have no meaning for anyone else. Somehow the phenomenologist must manage to name a common reality beneath the "openly endless multiplicity of changing experiences and experienced things, one's own and other's" (164) to achieve an inter- subjective truth." But Husserl recognizes the distortion possible in any move from one individual's thought to the thought of "man." The naivete of the first epoche had the result, as we im- mediately saw, that I, the philosophizing "ego," in taking myself as the functioning "I," as ego-pole of trans- cendental acts and accomplishments, proceeded in one leap and without grounding, that is, illegitimately, to at- tribute to the mankind in which I find myself the same transformation into functioning transcendental subjec- tivity which I had carried out alone in myself. (Husserl 101 hypatia 1970, 186) In fact we do not live our lives as "isolated" thinkers but have "con- tact with other human beings"; different people who see things in dif- ferent ways. Husserl rejected his earlier claim that all things exist only relatively to a transcendental ego. Not only are we in contact with others but a "reciprocal correction" goes on which establishes a "harmony of validity," and a definition of what is "normal." However, although Husserl claims to accept the "intersubjectivity" of the phenomenologist's knowledge, he does not give up unity. Whether "anyone says so or not," throughout any seemingly irreducible disagree- ment, there is always "a unification," "brought about" or at least "cer- tain in advance as possibly attainable by everyone." Each of us, Husserl asserts, lives in "one and the same world" (1970, 163). The terms on which such a unification must be achieved are made clear. As Husserl notes, there is always plenty of "discrepancy." What if people do not think or speak "normally?" What if they are insane? Or act like children? Or, one could add in the same spirit, what if they are of a different, "primitive," culture; what if they are women? How can what they say be subsumed under what "mature and normal human beings say," those who are part of the "world of culture?" Some peo- ple, Husserl says: do not cofunction in respect to the world understood in the hitherto accepted (and always fundamental) sense, that is the world which has truth through "reason." (Husserl 1970, 187, emphasis added) We must, therefore, Husserl continues, attribute to these "abnormal" subjects a way of thought as "analogue" of ourselves. Although for Husserl, a process of correction does occur, it apparently only operates among people who share the same cultural world and subscribe to the same standards of reason; others can be directly understood only as analogous. The impossibility of understanding any radical deviation from our own thought is self-evident, as is the necessity for unity. Husserl's intersubjectivity can only be achieved on that basis. But in what non-declinable language could such a universal thinker communicate his insights? To express a truth, it is actual language he must use, a language whose very grammar involves a positioning in relation to others. A different language, a different kind of "I" must be invented, Husserl declares, different from the ordinary "I" who is always in relation to a "you" or a "we." This "equivocation" on "I" is necessary to define a position above natural existence and to con- 102 andrea nye stitute the world as the "world for all" (1970, 184). For this transcenden- tal "I," ordinary language with its declinable verbs, pronouns, demonstratives, must be rejected, and words, as they come from another's mouth, mixed with another's breath, must be purged of their alien personality. The Platonist also rejected the speech of others as unintelligible. For Plato the inconsistent opinions of the uninitiated and uneducated were unintelligible because they were contradictory and incapable of being formally expressed. The shifting and diverse nuances of speech were empty because they were not related to universal ideas under the unified sovereignty of the Good. The Platonic student was enjoined to close his ears and eyes to the babble of tongues in the Assembly or in the Law courts. He was urged to turn his back on illusions of ordinary experience, to reject the earnest discussion of honors, strategies, coming events, engaged in by the prisoners of the cave. He should instead make the ascent to the sun, to a world of formal relations that will order human thought and institutions. The unintelligibility of others' speech becomes in the positivist's argu- ment the absolute inaccessibility of other minds. No longer is it the con- tradictions in popular opinion that justify disregarding ordinary speech, but the rational certainty that our experience is private, and that we can never, no matter what anyone says or how eloquently they say it, know what another is feeling. This necessary philosophical truth then justifies a projection of the scientist's own seeing onto others. The con- venient provisio that he "could have been in their shoes" allows the positivist to substitute what he sees for what others are seeing. The scien- tist, then, just as the Platonist or phenomenologist, may proceed in an authoritative idiom to pronounce truths for everyone, that is for people in general, who will have nothing themselves to say because their unsystematic babble is irrelevant to truth and knowledge. Ordinary im- pressions and concerns are replaced, not with metaphysically ordered concepts, but with the data that previously established "correct" methods of measurement will make uncontestable. Empirical studies will take the place of personal opinions: studies that may show that lowering the taxes of the rich will make the poor better off, or that a defensive shield could be built in space that would stop enemy missiles, or that rape is accompanied by "precipitating" behavior on the part of the victim. Such studies based on data are the authorities used to support programs and policies. Science silences the uninitiated as its language in economics, sociology or military science reaches a degree of technical complexity accessible only to experts who exchange infor- mation at conferences and have no interest in the views of "laymen."12 Husserl makes a similar commitment. The phenomenologist, remov- 103 hypatia ing himself from practical experience to intuit essences, must claim to discover an objective knowledge. That is to say, he must claim to speak for everyone and not just for himself. Those who are "insane," "irra- tional," "primitive," "childish," must not be allowed to confuse the orderliness of thought. They must be understood not in terms of their own diverse and philosophically incoherent thought, but in terms of the philosopher's unified thought. The "I" of interpersonal language, Husserl asserts, must take on a new meaning: it must detach itself from the "yous" and "theys" of ordinary discourse. Then a language can be invented that will express the thoughts of the "absolutely unique, ultimately functioning ego." In each case rejection of the diversity of speech is a rejection of others' speech. Others' speech is claimed to be unintelligible and so replaceable by the articulated unified speech of one authoritarian voice, whether that voice is of the Platonic school, the phenomenologist's transcenden- tal ego or the community of scientists. In all these cases, the practical advantages of a unified language are dubious. Once unified, or fossiliz- ed, in Platonic conceptual trees, in transformational grammar, in the phenomenologist's essences, or in the positivist's propositional calculus, language is not able to perform its function as communication or even provide evidence of what that might have been. The philosopher of Plato's dialogues carries on a monologue punctuated by the admiring assent of his students, but the dialogue typically ends on a note of con- fusion. The student may have been intimidated by Plato's logic to as- sent, but at the same time he has not given up his common sense views. He is shaken and unsure, but Plato's argument has given him nothing of substance to substitute for his naive beliefs. The positivist's proposi- tional calculus becomes the computer program, but the printout is only an artifact until corrupted by a translation into human speech. The jargon of phenomenology is unintelligible to all but professional philosophers and can serve no useful purpose. In no case is there a revolution in the way people talk, instead an alternative to talking is proposed in the form of an alienated exchange accessible only to a few initiates. Nor can the social value of a technical language purged of idiosyn- crasies and ambiguities, be a sufficient justification for the philosopher's project. When, in a scientific discourse unified through adherence to a mathematical model of clarity and precision, we achieve accuracy and, consequently, mastery over our terms and our practice, the pure mathematics of the philosopher can supposedly be translated into the formulae that will improve human life. At the same time, it is clear that some technological innovation is an improvement over natural pro- cesses and some is not. Synthetic clothing that binds the body is not 104 andrea nye better than cotton; automobiles are an inefficient means of mass tran- sit; food additives cause disease, etc.'3 The mathematical formulae of science cannot express these practical problems, much less make com- mensurate the conflicting values of profit and public health, produc- tion and quality of life. A technical accounting of projected accident rates and costs of improvement of a dangerous product may, for ex- ample, prevent a practical problem from being understood or solved. Technical language is as potentially damaging to human life as it is potentially improving. There may be political advantages to a discourse that is unified, in which, as Foucault said, "limitation and exclusion" create great con- ceptual "edifices" in which falsehood is proscribed and in which the roles of speakers are fixed. However, even according to Foucault (1972, 227), any political motive to construct "epistemes" or systems of discur- sive practice, is reinforced by the philosophical insistence, with us since the "defeat of the Sophists," on an ideal truth and on rationality. The epistemes, although Foucault is not willing to identify them with the project of a "conscious subject," reflect a common philosophical ideal, a "craving," not just for political power which must always be limited, parochial, incomplete, and defined within the discourse itself, but for an alienated rational order removed from practical life. The philosophical project of the unification of language cannot be understood as practical. A unified language is not useful for com- munication, may cause more evil than good, and is not translatable into political power without remainder. The question remains as to how the philosophical project of unification can be made intelligible. As is often the case, what is taken for granted, what is asserted as necessary truth, reveals what is most problematic.'4 The unification of language rests on and begins from the position that there is no way to under- stand what others feel or understand as uniquely their own. Direct com- munication is impossible. Only this stance, this positioning, can make intelligible the craving for unity. The yearning for perfect knowledge begins from a self-imposed separation from the always clamorous, much too intelligible voices that constitute any human society. Who is it that Plato refused to hear? In Athens there were many voices he might have wished to avoid, especially given his precarious position, as suspected sympathizer with Sparta and with aristocratic despotism. Rich mer- chants had new economic power, the Sophists preached the democratic ideas of social contract and consensus politics, shopkeepers and blacksmiths spoke up in the Assembly. These voices of common opinion Plato deplored as too confused to be intelligible, as outcries of rabble rousers and upstarts whose "appetites" threatened to undermine the smooth perpetuation of Athenian class privilege. 105 hypatia The positivists had different voices to avoid hearing. Positivism's prescription for a logical language is based on a proscription of metaphysics. Logical clarity was extolled as the alternative to the mean- inglessness and emptiness of theology and ethics; German metaphysics, full of bombast and overinflated emotional claims, was exposed as dangerous. However, the tactic of the Vienna Circle was avoidance. The positivist turned his back on metaphysics, on metaphysical anti- Semitism, and on metaphysical theories of a master race. As mean- ingless, these claims need not be heard because strictly speaking they cannot be understood. The resulting edifice of a philosophy, shared by the Anglo-American analytic tradition, that meticulously and single- mindedly articulates the logical claims of science, flourishes, but flourishes alongside an even more virulently flourishing metaphysics. Meaningless though it may have been declared to be by the Vienna Cir- cle, metaphysics continued to communicate to the German masses well enough to inspire a Fascist concensus. Furthermore, the positivist with his newly constituted value-free science could be re-enlisted into the service of the state as technocrat. When Husserl wrote the Crisis of the European Sciences in 1935, the motives for not hearing must have been even more pressing. The vulgarization, banalization, pornographization, gynophobia of German culture, mixed with pained reactions to the growing political and economic crisis, produced a dischordant chorus of voices that would be finally silenced only by Hitler's meglomaniac rhetoric. Husserl's call for a return to the classical sources of philosophy and for a reaffirma- tion of the rationality of western culture ignored this cacaphony. In- stead, an attention to subjective consciousness and a "bracketing" of the external world constituted the establishment of a universal philosophy of the sciences as a safe haven of rationality. From these refusals to hear, philosphers begin to philosophize: if there is to be a common meaning, it must be constructed, because as long as names are allowed to shift and mutate, they will not be understood and the speaker, removed from ordinary discourse, will remain alone. No man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names. Neither will he so far trust names or the givers of names as to be confident in any knowledge which condemns himself and other ex- istences to an unhealthy state of unreality. (Plato, Cratylus, 440c) The ordinary person may be content with the fleeting and subjective insights expressed in the ambiguous language of common sense, but the philosopher will rise above particular and contingent concerns. Such 106 andrea nye personal concerns could never be expressed or understood when their names might mean one thing in one person's mouth, and another in another's, and when judgments, instead of holding still, are retracted and revised with bewildering speed as we move from one situation to another. An artificial communication must be devised that will fill the silence where was once the babble of tongues. Otherwise the philosopher's isolation is intolerable. Once it has been decided that we begin from a solitude in which we will not hear what others are saying, will not allow their words to touch us or move us, and will not take from them their tainted talk, the project of the unification of language opens as the only way in which that solitude can be relieved. Again, the original position, that our thoughts and feelings are our possessions and others' their's, establishes the position from which ra- tional order is constructed and defended. Once the grounding of discourse is so laid, any communication becomes a guarded communica- tion, one in which openness is mediated by categories and structures that channel what is to be said into acceptable and bearable idioms. What is outside structure: "madness," "irrationality," "metaphysics," "childishness," "poetry," can be legitimately ignored or repressed. By a "gentleman's agreement," by the establishment of what is "correct," the rules for how a thing is to be said successfully restrain what is to be said, so that no direct confrontation with another's thoughts or feel- ings is necessary.5 If Husserl (1970, 184) insisted that he had neither "willfully" nor "by accident" cut himself off from the human race, it was because, for the transcendental ego, the "you's," "we's," "he's" that make up the human race no longer existed. The assertion of the "necessity" of such a "bracketing" cover the complex attitudes that might motivate a reduction of others to "phenomena." The real motive for the ascent to the Platonic sun is not the necessary truth that opinion is un- intelligible, that the feelings of others are inaccessible, or that inter- subjectivity can only be achieved by unity, but must be placed back one logical step. The question is not why, given our solitude, we want to escape to some artificial parody of communication, but why we are estranged in the first place. Possible reasons for such a refusal to hear others, for such a blind- ness to others' situations, are not hard to reconstruct. To hear someone else may be painful and disturbing when it involves, as it often must, their anxiety or anger, especially when it is anger or anxiety for which we may be responsible. It may also be disturbing in deeper ways. To listen is to be in someone's power. It is to be open to the changes that hearing may effect. And that can mean, from a defensive perspective, a loss of self. Even another's joy may be threatening, if we take it as 107 hypatia revealing our own failure and deficiency. In each case historical study may uncover the social settings of such reasoning, and its expression in self-evident philosophical truth. Biographical and psychological studies may throw further light on familial relations that shape a personality more comfortable with alienated separation than with engagement. Such a withdrawal is discussed by Nancy Chodorow (1978) as one possible mode of pre- Oedipal development. The very young child must deal with the difficult problem of the mother's disappearance and return. This feared rup- ture in the child's symbiotic unity with the mother engenders frustra- tion and anxiety. The conflict can be resolved in different ways. One way, typical of the woman's assumption of identity with the mother, involves the recognition of the mother as an autonomous subject, set- ting the tone for continuing relationships of mutuality and respect. The masculine reaction, informed by difference, is to gain distance and autonomy by withdrawing into a private world from which he can view the mother as a manipulatable or disposable object. It is not surprising, given Chodorow's analysis of masculine psychology, that official, authoritarian discourse is dominated by men; male domination goes deeper than a conscious co-option of discourse, and can be linked to an infirmity generated in the socio-psychological conditions under which male personality is formed. The possibility of both historical and psychological studies of philosophical theorizing suggests that what is claimed as philosophical necessity constitutes instead a different kind of inevitability. It is in- evitable that a personality overcome with fears of intimacy and engage- ment with others will attempt to construct a substitute discourse. It is inevitable that avoidance of chaotic social conflict will lead to theorizing divorced from reality. At the same time, the language spoken by some- one who has drawn back from the words of others into reason or logic must, like any other language, carry the marks of its original inten- tion. Even in the pure authoritarian tones of Platonic order, logical positivism, phenomenology, there is a certain tone of insecurity, of defensiveness, of retreat from the claims and complaints of others. In the end it is the assertion of the unintelligibility of ordinary speech that is intelligible, as a certain kind of speech, as the complex, nuanced, interested, even passionate, expression of a human position. When the speech of philosophers is understood in this way, the project of the unification of language appears in a new light as prompted by a previously undertaken alienation. The champion of unity must find a new language, not because the old was unintelligible but because he has, at the very beginning of his project, determined not to hear what others say. If in the visual world, to look at the sun is to go blind, to 108 andrea nye listen with the solar light of reason is to go deaf and dumb to the cries, to the pleas for help, to the atrocities committed by those around us. notes 1. Cf. recent empirical studies documenting differences in masculine and feminine conversational styles as collected e.g. in Chris Kramarae (1981). 2. Cf. Luce Irigaray (1974) where Irigaray uncovers the tension between the essen- tial inaccessibility of the sun to the eye and its importance to the claim for authoritarian vision. Because the sun can only be glimpsed obliquely, as "differe d'un miroir," its guiding light is replaced by "the natural light" of reason whose claim to sovereignty borrows the sun's glory. 3. Cf. twentieth century proponents of logical form, such as Frege, who also propose mathematization of language to cure language's ambiguity and subjectivity. E.g. "On the Aim of the Conceptual Notation" and "On the Scientific Justification of a Concep- tual Notation" (Frege 1972). 4. However, Plato interestingly includes as legitimate uses of mathematics not just "the conversion of the soul from the world of generation to essence and truth" but also "the uses of war." 5. A parallel between classical forms and linguistic structures is evident in Katz's (1981) most recent work where he argues that linguistics involves a Platonic ontology of abstract entities. 6. In Wittgenstein's language games, delineation of necessary characteristics gives way to family resemblance: interlocking, non-exclusive uses through which there is no common thread. 7. E.g., this may be the explanation for the prevalence of patois under colonial rule. The native language may be suppressed or lost, but a purposeful tampering with the oppressor's words allows a slave or servant to humiliate a master to his very face and in his own co-opted language. 8. Cf. Bertrand Russell (1956, 161-162) who argues that it is a "matter of empirical fact" that I can't know by immediate experience what another is experiencing (emphasis added). 9. Cf. Russell on Logical Atomism (1956, 173). The particulars with which we are "acquainted" may vary and be subjective, but the inferences the scientist draws-"the astronomer's sun" not the sun of ordinary experience-are public and intelligible to all. 10. Ayer offered a more simplistic solution to the problem of other minds in Language, Truth and Logic (1952, 132) where he collapsed the inferable content of another's experience into "empirically derived structure." 11. Cf. Husserl (1970, 179): "The world ... is from the start taken only as a correlate of the subjective appearances, views, subjective acts and capacities through which it con- stantly has, and ever attains, anew, its changeable (but) unitary sense." 12. The two aims, that of leaving spoken discourse as it is and providing a canonical idiom, are sometimes combined, as when Putnam argued that the reference of ordinary terms can be fixed by reliance on scientific "experts." We trust, even though we don't understand, that there are established criteria accessible to science that determine what is a wren or a sparrow. Ordinary people will continue to speak their own ungrounded language, but are aware that a grounding in scientific definition exists. "There are tools 109 hypatia like a hammer or a screw and a screw driver which can be used by one person; and there are tools like a steamship which require the cooperative activity of a number of persons to use" (Hillary Putnam 1978, 125). More often it is made clear that philosophy does not tell us "how certain symbols are actually used" or could be used in practical life, but is instead a "logical activity." e.g., Ayer (1952, 70). 13. For other examples see Lewis Mumford (1963, 52-53). 14. Cf. Husserl's comment (1970, 189): "Every self-evidence is the title of a problem, with the sole exception of phenomenological self-evidence," with its familiar combina- tion of insight into others' blindspots, and blindness to one's own. 15. This encroachment can be seen in the blurred and shifting line between grammar and semantics. Grammar, as the scope of selection restrictions, structural semantics, or generative semantics expands, engulfs successively what little is left of semantics as a brute intrusion of unintegrated content into linguistic structure. references Ayer, A.J. 1952. Language, truth and logic. New York: Dover. ---. 1958. The foundations of empirical knowledge. London: MacMillan. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Carnap, Rudolph. 1971. Foundations of the unity of science, vol. II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Ofgrammatology. Trans. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The archaeology of knowledge. Trans. A.M. Sheridan. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Frege, G. 1972. Conceptual notation and related articles. Ed. and trans. by Terrell Bynum. Oxford: Clarendon. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The crisis of European sciences. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Irigaray, Luce. 1974. Jeune vierge-pupille de l'oeil. In Speculum de l'autre femme. Paris: Les Edition le Minuit. Katz, Jerold J. 1981. Language and abstract objects. Oxford: Blackwell. Kramarae, Chris. 1981. Women and men speaking. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Mumford, Lewis. 1963. Technics and civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Plato. 1961. The collected dialogues. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Hunt- 110 andrea nye ington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Putnam, Hillary. 1978. Meaning and reference. In Contemporary philosophical logic, eds. I.M. Copi and J.A. Gould. Russell, Bertrand. 1956. Logic and knowledge. London: Allen and Unwin. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. 111 julien s. murphy The Look in Sartre and Rich The relevance of Sartre's theory of "the look" for feminist philosophy is evaluated through juxtaposition of his analysis with images of women's oppression in Rich's early poetry. A theory of liberation that recognizes the existential dimensions of women's situations is presented. Following traces of feminist vision in Rich's recent work challenges the category of "woman" which lies at the root of the sexism. Crucial to feminist theory is an understanding of the oppres- sion we experience as women in patriarchal society. The category "woman," which dooms us to sexist oppression, is a category, which, none of us can entirely escape. "Woman" is also a category that none of us can deny if we are to understand our lives in patriarchy. We make even the most liberating of choices in the midst of sexist constraint. No matter how we shape ourselves, we live in a society in which we are seen by others as women. The oppression we experience is so ever present that any feminist theory needs clear and concrete insights into its structure. As feminist philosophers, moreover, we are immersed in oppression even as we theorize about it. A phenomenological approach to the nature of sex- ist oppression can reveal the lived situation by which the oppression of women is maintained through daily acts that manifest an oppressive kind of seeing. Enlightening views on the experience of oppression can be found in the phenomenological work, Being and Nothingness by Jean Paul Sartre, especially Sartre's theory of "the look." Although Sartre does not address sexist oppression and has only the barest sketch of a theory of liberation, his theory of "the look" is integral to a feminist phenomenological analysis of oppression and liberation. Without intending to, Sartre has provided us with a particularly useful description of women's experience of devaluation in a world where men are dominant. The relevance of Sartre's theory of "the look" for feminist philosophy will be shown by juxtaposition of his analysis with images of women's oppression in the early work of a feminist poet- Adrienne Rich-tracking the development of women's consciousness through a phenomenological style. By moving through the Sartrean look Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © By Julien S. Murphy. 113 hypatla and beyond to images of liberating vision among women in Rich's re- cent works, The Dream of a Common Language, A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, and Your Native Land, Your Life, we can develop an incisive analysis of the movement out of oppression: that movement in which we are not born women, must recognize ourselves as women, and need be women no longer (Beauvoir 1952, 249; Wittig 1981, 47-54). The movement beyond oppression requires new eyes for the oppressor and the oppressed. Sartre (1974, 229) writes of the oppressor: "In order for the oppressor to get a clear view of an unjustifiable situation, it is not enough to look at it honestly, he must also change the structure of his eyes." Sartre's claim that the oppressor must "change the struc- ture of his eyes" implies that one must choose those actions which radically disrupt the present system of judging and call into question how one is to be in the future. Rich (1979, 35) writes of women's pro- ject as oppressed: "The act of looking-back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering another text from a new critical direction-is for women-an act of survival." The act of examining our lives anew is presented by Rich as central to the realization of our freedom. Yet, precisely because new ways of seeing are needed by both oppressor and oppresed, we find ourselves in a problematic situation: How can we "look back" with "fresh eyes" when even our backward glance is shaped by the look of the oppressor? Feminism and feminist philosophy exist not outside, but in the midst of, patriarchy, giving rise to the perplexing dilemma: If we are seen as belonging to that group of individuals having "women's eyes," through looks that blind our vision in advance and against our will, how can we claim to see with "fresh eyes?" What fresh views of ourselves can we develop-without illusion-while existing within societies which assert emphatically that we are less than men? I. Distance, Desire, and Destruction in "The Look" Analysis of our oppression in patriarchy begins with an examina- tion of how we are seen as "women." Our awareness of falling under the construct "woman" often occurs in individual encounters in daily social life. The work of Sartre and Rich is instrumental in demonstrating the lived situation of the look, and the ways in which this oppressive kind of seeing effect a fundamental difference in our existence. The movement of oppression begins with the look of the oppressor, a look whose distance, desire, and destruction frame the context for our lives. The look of the oppressor is, as Marilyn Frye (1983, 66-72) points out, centered around arrogance. Indeed, from a Sartrean perspective, the look of the other can rob us of our possibilities, alienate us from ourselves and our options for choice, and make us feel in the service 114 julien s. murphy of the other. The impact of the look can be so devastating that it reduces us, at a glance, to powerlessness, to the status of a thing. The recogni- tion that we are always under the gaze of the other evidences that our freedom is held in constant check. We live, to varying degrees, as ob- jects in the world of others. The power of the look to rob us of our possibilities is in the looker who negates the freedom of the individual looked at. The look, be it one of vehement degradation, or mild interest, presents a moment of conscious life in which we are aware of existing for others as merely concrete bodies. For Sartre, any individual, irrespective of gender, ex- periences the anguish of being objectified in the experience of being seen. Insofar as each person is capable of receiving and returning the gaze, each person can function as oppressor and oppressed. Sartre (1953, 345) writes that "being-seen-by-the-Other" is the truth of "seeing-the-Other." The mutual oppression of the looker and the looked-at is not unlike the power play common to male forms of com- petition, as illustrated by Sartre's all male examples of spy and war- fare scenes: a man peeping through a keyhole feels the look when he hears footsteps suddenly approaching, a man hiding in a dark corner experiences the look when another circles the area with a bright light; men crawling through the brush in the midst of an attack encounter the look of others when they come upon an ominous farmhouse (Sar- tre 1953, 350, 257, 353). In the look, individuals engage in a social war of mutual objectification. Rich's instances of the look directed at women show that the ob- jectification can strike at the very core of one's being and can be more devastating than Sartre described in his warfare examples. For Rich, the look of the other can so interrupt our lives that we may not be able to stare back. So foreboding is our experience of the "eye of the glass" that we may hide behind our eyeball like "a woman waiting behind grimed blinds slatted across a courtyard / she never looks into" (1975, 177). The force of the stare marks, as an incision, our power to see: "Walking, I felt my eyes like wounds / raw in my head, / so postal- clerks, I thought, must stare" (1975, 62). The eye as a wound, does not yet see, but rather experiences only the pain of being looked at. Within oppressive vision, distance is established by the looker in order to be saved from objectification. The looker creates distance by enter- ing into a vacuous isolation. Sartre (1953, 258) notes the remoteness of the looker in the look: "The Other's look is the disappearance of the Other's eyes ... one hides his eyes; he seems to go in front of them." Rich (1975, 185) illustrates the experience of being seen by one who is hidden in his gaze: "your eyes are stars of a different magnitude / they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT." 115 hypatla Desire is the most familiar element of the look directed toward women. Rich (1975, 124) writes of the conjunction of distance and desire, "How many men have touched me with their eyes / more hotly than they later touched me with their lips." Distance and desire can work together to reduce women in the eyes of men to objects for viola- tion. In a discussion of desire, Sartre (1953, 258) writes of desire for women much in the way that one would desire an inanimate object. He can "desire a woman in the world, standing near a table, lying naked on a bed, or seated at my side." Even the most casual instance of desire assumes the violation of women in Sartre's work. He writes of "absent- minded desire," by referencing when one "undresses a woman with his look." Such a metaphor suggests action at a distance-undressing a woman with one's eyes-reflects the presumed all-encompassing power of the oppressor's gaze. The alienation that the looked at experiences through the desire of the looker is found in the poetry of Rich (1975, 227): "I am trying to imagine how it feels to you / to want a woman / trying to hallucinate desire centered in a cock / focused like a burning glass, desire without discrimination: to want a woman like a fix." The destructive nature of the look lies in its capacity to annihilate the freedom of the individual who is looked at. The desire of the look is inevitably linked to an act of destruction. Sartre (1953, 756, 757) claims that the desiring look always seeks the destruction of its object. In the suddenness of the look, "I experience a subtle alienation of all of my possibilities (Sartre 1953, 258). Rich (1975, 186) states, "You look at me like an emergency." To be seen as an "emergency," is to experience oneself in the look of another as a thing to be controlled, stopped, extinguished. The destructive aspect of oppressive seeing con- stitutes a view of women that presupposes our extinction as autonomous beings and disconnects us from an array of possibilities we fashion for ourselves. The look directed toward women within patriarchy distances women from positions of power, focuses on women as objects of male sexual desire, and seeks the destruction of women as free subjects. II. The Eyes of the Group When the look is analyzed in terms of groups of individuals of une- qual power the complexity of the movement out of oppression becomes evident. Collective awareness of a shared social situation brings with it a shift in perception such that the group looked at need no longer view itself under the guise of limiting social constructs. Our recogni- tion of the look of oppressive seeing is accompanied by the possibility that we need not be women, that our eyes need not be shaped by the 116 julien s. murphy oppressor. The look between political and economic groups of unequal social standing is aptly described by Sartre (1953, 543) in terms of the look of "the Third" and the "Us-object." The Third, be it God, capitalism, the white race, or patriarchy constitutes a series of individuals as a totality by impressing on those individuals a social construct comprised of an arbitrary collection of traits. The Third maintains its position of power in society by restricting the possibilities of the Us-object to the range of characteristics attributed to it. Frye's (1983, 56) notion of coercion, as a "manipulation of the circumstances and manipula- tion of the options" is central to the power of the Third. If the Third is understood as patriarchy, the Third would be said to maintain itself by a grand scheme involving manipulation of circumstances and choices which require females to do what is deemed fitting and proper for "women." The Us-object comes into existence through the look of the Third. The oppression of an individual as "woman" is no longer seen as a random act of misplaced aggression, but is recognized as pertaining to a shared situation of collective oppression. The entire series of in- dividuals seen as "women" becomes an Us-object in which each member of the Us-object shares in common the awareness of being look- ed at by the Third. Yet, no member of the Us-object can actually be that object, for the collection of traits that form the Us-object depends entirely on the judgment of the Third. We can never be women, for "woman" is a form of existence that is forced upon us from the out- side by the Third with the demand that we see ourselves through the eyes of the Us-object and do not claim a vision of our own. The emergence of the Us-object from the look of the Third entails a change in perception in which the Us acts, in light of its awareness of the gaze of the Third, to bring forth its own, new eyes. In Rich's "The Phenomenology of Anger" (1975, 201), female consciousness emerges into self-consciousness through recognition of its anger at the look of the Third: "I hate you. / I hate the mask you wear, your eyes / assuming a depth / they do not possess, drawing me / into the grotto of your skull." In Rich's "Burning Oneself Out" (1975, 170), the eye of female consciousness, "the eye sunk inward / the eye bleeding with speech," struggles to speak the language which it sees for itself: "a pair of eyes imprisoned for years inside my skull / is burning its way out- ward, the headaches are terrible" (1975, 125). Action taken by the Us, when it perceives the look of the Third, runs a perilous course between falling back into and thereby perpetuating the constructs created by the Third, and transcending those constructs altogether. For Sartre (1953, 675), we cannot actually be the constructs 117 hypatia created by the Third, and hence he calls such constructs "unrealizables." We can only attempt to claim those constructs in our daily lives. Such attempts are always projects of "bad faith." They assume we could actually exist in terms of their demands. It would mean, as Frye (1983, 74) writes, that "she has assumed his interest. She now sees with his eye, his arrogant eye." In bad faith we slip into seeing ourselves primari- ly through the eyes of the others. In bad faith, we may attempt to ig- nore the historical and political context of the constructs created by the Third. We may even deny the restriction of choice that such con- structs impose on our lives. Or we can reject the constructs entirely and avoid bad faith by authentically claiming responsibility for our situation. To avoid bad faith, we must recognize that we are the object of the gaze of the Third. The first step in freeing ourselves is to claim our oppressive situation. Sartre (1974, 145) writes, a Jew must demand "full rights as a Jew," a worker must "demand to be liberated as a worker." It is only through a political identification with the oppressive construct, that the oppressed can move toward rendering that construct mean- ingless. Any attempt to disassociate ourselves from our historical situa- tion is but an inauthentic attempt at assimilation. We must claim we are "women," not because any one of us really is a "woman," but rather because we all are immersed within a historical situation of be- ing seen as "women." It is only from acting within our historical situa- tion, that true liberation can be brought about. However, although authenticity entails claiming our oppression, it does not require that we negate any possible moments of freedom within our situation. Authenticity demands an acute awareness that we must be free in this world, that we must choose ourselves by taking into account these cir- cumstances. As long as there are choices within our situation, we have some freedom, and since situations always afford some range of choices, Sartre (1953, 629) claims we are "wholly and forever free." We must use our freedom to not only claim our rights but we must act "to go beyond that situation to one that is fully human" (Sartre 1974, 145). An authentic appraisal of our situation as women, requires a com- mittment to taking up our lives in the midst of the patriarchal gaze. How we are seen as "women" in patriarchy is part of our reality. As Rich (1978, 25) writes in "Twenty-One Love Poems,": "Wherever in this city, screens flicker / with pornography, with science-fiction vam- pires, / victimized hirelings bending to the lash, / we also have to walk. ... Our lives occur, unmistakably, within our historical situation. Rich remarks, "We need to grasp our lives inseparable from those rancid dreams." Our freedom is inseparable from the oppressive context that sees us as "women." We take up our freedom when we look closely at ourselves in a situa- 118 julien s. murphy tion which is, in part, forced upon us. In "The Images" Rich (1981a, 3) asks, "But when did we ever choose to see our bodies strung / in bondage and crucifixion across exhausted air/ when did we choose / to be lynched on the queasy electric signs / of midtown when did we choose / to become the masturbator's fix." We have not chosen the crude depictions of ourselves or to live in a world that oppresses us. Yet, we do choose how we see ourselves. Rich (1981a, 5) writes, "I recollect myself in that presence." That our eyes need not be shaped by the oppressor becomes in- creasingly evident as we claim our freedom in the midst of our historical situation. In the refusal to exist for others and in the development of our consciousness as oppressed beings there emerges a new mode of seeing by which we move out of oppression. III. Feminist Vision Feminist vision claims that women must be free and proposes, as central to that goal, a revisioning of how we see ourselves and each other under the patriarchal gaze. The "look" of feminist vision in Rich's later poetry is grounded in the development of women's consciousness through a solidarity among women that is at once both sexual and political. Rich envisions a gynocentric movement in her lesbian feminism. She describes the discovery of women seeing each other as lovers: "that two women / ... should think it possible / now for the first time / perhaps, to love each other / neither as fellow-victims / nor as a temporary shadow of something better" (Rich 1975, 133, 134). Feminist vision enables us to take a fresh look at ourselves, at each other, and at our situation. In the "look" of feminist vision we discover that our eyes need be neither those of the victim nor those of the op- pressor. Feminist seeing, through its boldness and freedom, confronts and moves beyond the distance, destruction, and desire that permeate the look of oppression. Rich uses hereness as a confrontation with distance. She writes of the choice to act "here," that is, in our own bodies and from our own situations. We take up our vision and our lives, as she entitles one poem, "Not Somewhere Else but Here" (Rich 1978, 39). The choice to be "here," to be for ourselves, is depicted by Rich (1978, 6) in "Phan- tasia for Elvira Shatayev," a celebration of the women's climbing team that perished on Lenin's Peak. Rich reflects, in the person of Elvira, "for months for years each one of us / had felt her own yes growing in her ... that yes gathered its forces." Yet, the climbers' consciousness expands only to encounter limits, "to meet a No of no degrees / the black hole sucking the world in." The women's collective vision, woven 119 hypatia together with the mountain and the blue sky, is described by Rich, "our frozen eyes unribboned through the storm / we could have stitched that blueness together like a quilt." The real danger is not mountain climb- ing, but the isolation of women from each other: "We know now we have always been in danger / down in our separateness / and now up here together but till now / we had not touched our strength." The choice to confront the distance of patriarchal oppression with acting here, within our situation, does not alleviate our oppression. Hereness can manifest, however, a movement toward wholeness. In "Origins and History of Consciousness," Rich (1978, 8) writes of women's consciousness, of the "drive to connect," the urge to assem- ble the pieces of ourselves into a meaningful web of experience. The look of the oppressor is broken when the oppressed connect with each other for understanding and transforming our lives. Rich presents a wholistic and tactile image of feminist vision: "the water / is mild, I sink and float / like a warm amphibious animal / that has broken the net." We take up our lives "here" within our situations when we break through the netting and no longer transcribe the differences between women as barriers to a common womanly vision. In A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (A WP) Rich (198 la) acknowledges the differences that exist between women and that may impede solidarity, specifically, racism, family roles, physical limitations, politics, and failings in friendships. All the while Rich stretches language across these barriers trying to understand how we are divided from each other. In her poem on racism, "Frame," Rich (1981a, 46) describes the experience of a white woman seeing a white policeman assault a black woman, writing, "I don't know her. I am / standing though somewhere just outside the frame / of all this, trying to see. " The family differences between women emerge in the distance between a daughter- in-law and her mother-in-law in "Mother-in-Law" (1981a, 31), with the mother-in-law asking "tell me something true, " and the daughter- in-law responding, "Ask me something." The difference of physical limitations are described in "Transit" (1981a, 19) when the impaired skiier, knowing the other woman will soon pass her by, looks for something common between them: "And when we pass each other I look into her face / wondering what we have in common / where our minds converge, . . . as I halt beside the fence tangled in snow, / she passes me as I shall never pass her / in this life." In "For Ethel Rosenberg" Rich (1981a, 29) confronts political differences between women asking, "Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg would you / have marched to take back the night / collected signatures / for battered women who kill / ... would you have burst the net." The pain of failures in friend- ships is found in "For Julia in Nebraska," when Rich (1981a, 18) speaks 120 julien s. murphy of "when our maps diverge, when we miss signals, fail" and in "Rift" (1981a, 49) a break between friends, "I have in my head some images of you: / your face turned awkwardly from the kiss of greeting" and mentions the pain of missed signals, divergence, "when we fail each other / there is no exorcism. The hurt continues." Yet, despite the dif- ferences in women's situations, Rich seeks common ground through the barriers that have separated us. The "look" of the oppressor denies women's freedom by positing us as objects in the patriarchal world. In the "looks" of feminist con- sciousness we discover new forms of subjectivity and power through action that refuses destruction. By choosing to act, we align ourselves with moments of freedom at the core of our subjectivity. Although we are seen as powerless, we claim power within ourselves by refusing, whenever possible, to allow patriarchy to limit our possibilities. Our freedom to act in small or great ways constitutes our rebellion. To take up our lives against patriarchy moves us to new ground. As Rich (1978, 75) writes, "No one who survives to speak / new language, has avoid- ed this: / the cutting-away of an old force that held her / rooted to an old ground." Feminist vision sees the source of our power to act within patriarchy as lying with ourselves. Through feminist vision, each of us sees in new ways the daily actions required to retain our freedom amidst oppressive constraints. In "A Vision" Rich (1981a, 50) thinks of the gaze of Simone Weil, "You. There, with your gazing eyes / Your blazing eyes / . . . You with your cornea and iris and their power / you with your stubborn lids that have stayed open / at the moment of pouring liquid steel?" Feminist vision brings us to see ever more forcefully, ever more deeply. The look can reshape the world such that we, along with Rich, may dare to wonder what it would be like "to take and use our love, / to hose it on a city, on a world" (1978, 13). With every act that springs from consciousness of our situation as women, we make a reality for ourselves. Feminist vision recasts desire to encompass a passion for our freedom. The desire between women need not be bounded by patriarchy. Rich (1978, 76) writes of the look between women, "Two women, eye to eye, measuring each other's spirit, each other's limitless desire / ... Vision begins to happen in such a life." Vision enables us to see our possibilities. With integrity we create ourselves in the midst of patriarchal desire. Integrity is not loyalty to an absolute principle, but commitment to our freedom that expresses steadfastness to the project of moving out of oppression. In Rich's poem, "Integrity" (1981a, 9), anger and tenderness are summoned so that we can pursue our projects from our 121 hypatia own ground. Integrity presents a way of looking at ourselves and each other that places as central the projects we choose within our situa- tions. As we cast aside external standards for evaluating ourselves, each of us discovers unique patterns for assuming our situational freedom. The steadfastness of integrity enables us to steer a course through and out of oppression. IV. Vision's Voice Feminist vision acquires voice in Rich's most recent poetry, Your Native Land, Your Life (YNL) (1986), bringing full circle the hints of a feminist theory of oppression and liberation. Although there is still look imagery in YNL, "And if my look becomes the bomb that rips/ the family home apart" (1986, 16), it is voice that emerges as a central metaphor allowing the "eyes bleeding with speech" to break open. Rich speaks from the center, defying her marginal woman's situation: "from the center of my body / a voice bursts" (1986, 94), speaking through and beyond women's situation, "speaking from, and of, and to, my country" (1986, jacket flap). The emergence of voice is marked in "North American Time" which begins by breaking through the net of politically correct poetry, "When my dreams showed signs / of becom- ing / politically correct / no unruly images / escaping beyond borders / when walking in the street I found my / themes cut out for me / . . then I began to wonder," towards the affirmation of feminist voice bold enough to address any injustice, "out of the Bronx, the Harlem River / the drowned towns of the Quabbin / the pilfered burial mounds / the toxic swamps, the testing-grounds / and I start to speak again" (Rich 1986, 33-36). Rich gives voice to her feminist vision and offers glimpses of libera- tion by thinking through connections common to diverse forms of op- pressions, interweaving sexism, racism, heterosexism, anti-semitism into experience. For instance, in "Yom Kippur 1984" (1986, 75-78) women and men are fellow-sufferers as Jews, Blacks, and homosexuals: "What is a Jew in solitude? / ... What is a woman in solitude: a queer woman or man? . . . faggot kicked into the icy / river, woman dragged from her stalled car / ... young scholar shot at the university ... nothing availing his Blackness." The poem goes on to connect two forms of oppression in a single experience: "Jew who has turned her back / . . hiking alone / found with a swastika carved in her back at the foot of the cliffs / (did she die as queer or as Jew?)" The voice of feminist vision chooses to confront the world's suffer- ing, the world's injustice, to move outward from a feminist politic to embrace the "edges that blur," "to connect ... the pain of anyone's 122 julien s. murphy body with the pain of the body's world / for it is the body's world / they are trying to destroy forever / the best world is the body's world / filled with creatures filled with dread" (Rich 1986, 100). To confront the world's body does not mean "withdrawing from difference with whose pain we can choose not to engage" (Rich 1981b, 90), but rather knowing the world through our women's situation, our "womanly lens." "When / I speak of an end to suffering ... I mean knowing the world, and my place in it, . . . as a powerful and womanly series of choices: and here I write these words, in their fullness: powerful, womanly," (Rich 1986, 8, 27). For Rich, we are at the same time, womanly, powerful, responsible and accountable to a vision that can- not ignore injustices that may escape feminist analysis. "Try telling yourself" she writes in another poem, "you are not accountable / to the lie of your tribe / the breadth of your planet" (Rich 1986, 34). Feminist vision needs to speak from the center of our lives, and we, as feminists, need to see our lives as centered in, and central to the world in which we live. Rich sees ways out of oppression and towards liberation as both recognizing our womanly situation as a lens through which we see the world, and as defying our womanly situation by referring to "the breaker of rules . . . the one / who is neither a man nor a woman," and later "when we who refuse to be women and men as women and men are / chartered, tell our stories of solitude spent in multitude / . . .what will solitude mean?" (Rich 1986, 57,78). The movement out of oppression involves constant reexamination of the category "woman" as integrally linked to all other oppressive constructs, such that we see that at one moment, we are not born women, but become women when under the patriarchal gaze. At another moment, we must recognize ourselves as women. We must con- front "woman" as the construct under which we are seen, and which, attempts to shape our reality. And, as yet another moment, we need to be women no longer. The hereness, power, and integrity of feminist vision respond to the distance, desire, and destruction of oppression by demonstrating that our vision need not be that of the oppressor. Vision's voice presents new ways of speaking about ourselves and refuses to be silent to the limits patriarchy has placed on our situation. The voice of fresh eyes is possible when we lay aside "woman," while not forgetting that we take up our lives in the center of a world that continues to see us under that construct. With fresh eyes, we appraise our possibilities for freedom within and on the ground where we find ourselves. Within our situation, we speak as subjects, for ourselves, and others in the midst of our movement out of oppression. 123 hypatla notes My thanks to Jeffner Allen for her insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. references Beauvoir, Simone de. 1952. The second sex. Trans. H.M. Parshley. New York: Bantam. Frye, Marilyn. 1983. In and out of harm's way: Arrogance and love. In The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Trumansburg, New York: The Crossing Press. Rich, Adrienne. 1975. Poems: Selected and new, 1950-1974. New York: Norton. 1978. The dream of a common language. New York: Norton. . 1979. On lies, secrets and silence. New York: Norton. --- . 1981a. A wild patience has taken me this far, 1978-1981. New York: Norton. -- . 1981b. Notes for a magazine: What does separatism mean? Sinister Wisdom 18:90. ----. 1986. Your native land, your life. New York: Norton. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1953. Being and nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press. .1974. The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Vol 1. Trans. Richard C. McLeary; eds. Michel Conat and Michel Rybalka. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Wittig, Monique. 1981. One is not born a woman. Feminist Issues 1 (2): 47-54. 124 h.e. baber How Bad Is Rape? I argue that to be compelled to do routine work is to be gravely harmed. Indeed, that pink-collar work is a more serious harm to women than rape. My purpose is to urge politically active feminists and feminist organizations to arrange their priorities accordingly and devote most of their resources to working for the elimination of sex segregation in employment. R ape is bad. This is uncontroversial.' It is one of the many wrongs committed against women. But how bad is rape, more particularly, how bad is it vis-a-vis other gender-based offenses? I shall argue that while rape is very bad indeed, the work that most women employed outside the home are compelled to do is more seriously harmful insofar as doing such work damages the most fundamental interests of the victim, what Joel Feinberg calls "welfare interests," whereas rape typically does not.2 It may be suggested that the very question of which of these evils is the more serious is misconceived insofar as the harms they induce are so different in character as to be incommensurable. Nevertheless, for practical purposes we are often obliged to weigh interests in diverse goods against one another and to compare harms which are very dif- ferent in nature. Feinberg's account of how we may assess the relative seriousness of various harms, in Harm to Others (1984) and elsewhere, provides a rational basis for such comparisons and for my considera- tion of the relative seriousness of rape and work. In addition, my com- parison of these harms brings to light a lacuna in Feinberg's discussion which I propose to fill by providing an account of the way in which the duration of a harmed state contributes to its seriousness. Why Rape is Bad Rape is bad because it constitutes a serious harm to the victim. To harm a person is to thwart, set back or otherwise interfere with his in- terests. Understood in this sense, "harm" is not synonymous with "hurt." We typically have an interest in avoiding chronic, distracting Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © by H.E. Baber. 125 hypatia physical pain and psychic anguish insofar as we require a certain degree of physical and emotional well-being to pursue our projects, hence hurts are often harmful (e.g. root canal work). Arguably, there are also harms which are not hurtful. Our interests extend to states of affairs beyond immediate experience. I have an interest, for example, in my reputa- tion so that if I am slandered I am harmed even if I am altogether unaware of what is being said about me. Names can never hurt me but they can, even without my knowledge, harm me insofar as I have an interest in others' thinking well of me. Harms are thus to be understood in terms of the interests or stakes that persons have in states of affairs. Virtually everyone has an interest in avoiding involuntary contact with others, particularly unwanted contacts which are intimate or in- vasive. Being raped violates this interest hence, quite apart from any further consequences it may have for the victim or for others, it con- stitutes a harm. In addition, people have an interest in not being used as mere means for the benefit of others, an interest which is violated by rape. Finally, all persons can be presumed to have an interest in going about their business free of restriction and interference. Rape, like other crimes of violence, thwarts this interest. Since rape sets back some of the victim's most important interests, the victim of rape is in a harmed condition. Furthermore, the condition of being raped is a harmful condition as well as a harmed condition insofar as it has a tendency to generate further harms-anxiety, feelings of degradation and other psychological states which may interfere with the victim's pursuit of other projects. In these respects rape is no different from other violent crimes. The victim of assault or robbery is violated and this in and of itself con- stitutes a harm. In addition, being assaulted or robbed is harmful in- sofar as victims of assault and robbery tend to suffer from fears and psychological traumas as a result of their experience which may interfere with their pursuit of other projects. Now there is a tendency to exaggerate the harmfulness of rape, that is, to make much of the incapacitating psychological traumas that some victims suffer as a result of being raped. One motive for such claims is the recognition that the harm of rape per se is often underestimated and hence that, in some quarters, rape is not taken as seriously as it ought to be taken. Rape has not been treated in the same way as other crimes of violence. A person, whether male or female, who is mugged is not asked to produce witnesses, to provide evidence of his good character or display bodily injuries as evidence of his unwillingness to surrender his wallet to his assailant. In the past, however, the burden of proof has been placed wrongfully on the victims of rape to show their respectability and their unwillingness, the assumption being that 126 h.e. baber (heterosexual) rape is merely a sexual act rather than an act of violence and that sex acts can be presumed to be desired by the participants unless there is strong evidence to the contrary. This is not so. Writers who stress the traumas rape victims suffer cite the deleterious consequences of rape in response to such assumptions. It is, however, quite unnecessary to exaggerate the harmfulness of rape to explain its seriousness. Women are not merely sexual resources whose wants and interests can be ignored-and women do not secretly want to be raped. Like men, women have an important interest in not being used or interfered with, hence being raped is a harm. Even if it did not hurt the victim physically or psychologically or tend to bring about any further harms it would still be a harm in and of itself. A person who is assaulted or robbed does not need to produce evidence of the psychological trauma he suffers as a consequence in order to persuade others that he has been harmed. We recognize that, quite apart from the consequences, the act of assault or robbery is itself a harm. The same should be true of rape. If we recognize rape for what it is, a violent crime against the person, we shall not take past sexual activi- ty as evidence that the victim has not "really" been raped any more than we should take a history of habitual charitable contributions as evidence that the victim of mugging has not "really" been robbed, neither shall we feel compelled to stress the psychological consequences of rape to persuade ourselves that rape is in and of itself a harm. If this is made clear, there is no compelling reason to harp on the suffering of rape victims. Furthermore, arguably, on balance, it may be undesirable to do so. First, making much of the traumas rape vic- tims allegedly suffer tends to reinforce the pervasive sexist assumption that women are cowards who break under stress and are incapable of dealing with physical danger or violence. Secondly, it would seem that conceiving of such traumas as normal, expected consequences of rape does a disservice to victims who might otherwise be considerably less traumatized by their experiences. The Relative Seriousness of Harms Everyone agrees that rape is bad. The disagreement is over how bad. This raises a more general question, namely that of ranking harms with regard to their relative seriousness. Given our understanding of harm as the thwarting of a being's in- terests and our assumption that a person's interests extend beyond im- mediate experience, it will not do to rank harms strictly according to the amount of disutility they generate for the victim or the extent to which they decrease his utility. A person is harmed when his interests 127 hypatla are impeded regardless of whether he suffers as a consequence. Per- sons have an interest in liberty, for example, and are harmed when deprived of liberty even if they do not feel frustrated as a consequence. The advice of stoics has a hollow ring and projects for "adjusting" people to severely restrictive conditions strike most of us as unacceptable precisely because we recognize that even if self-cultivation or condi- tioning can prevent us from being hurt or feeling frustrated by the thwarting of our most fundamental interests, such practices cannot pre- vent us from being harmed. Intuitively, the seriousness of a harm is determined by the impor- tance of the interest which is violated within the network of the vic- tim's interests. Some interests are more important than others in the sense that harm to them is likely to lead to greater damage to the whole economy of personal (or as the case may be, community) interests than harm to the lesser interest will do, just as harm to one's heart or brain will do more damage to one's bodily health than an "equal degree" of harm to less vital organs. Thus, the interest of a stan- dard person in X may be more important than his interest in Y in that it is, in an analogous sense, more "vital" in his whole interest network than is his interest in Y. A person's welfare interests tend to be his most vital ones, and also to be equally vital. (Feinberg 1984, 204-5) A person's "welfare interests" are those which are typically most vital in a personal system of interests, e.g. interests in minimally de- cent health and the absence of chronic distracting pain, a tolerable en- vironment, economic sufficiency, emotional stability, the absence of intolerable stress and minimal political liberty-all those things which are required for the "standard person" to pursue any further projects effectively. These are interests in conditions that are generalized means to a great variety of possible goals and whose joint realization, in the absence of very special circumstances, is necessary for the achievement of more ultimate aims. ... When they are blocked or damaged, a person is very seriously harmed indeed, for in that case his more ultimate aspirations are defeated too; whereas setbacks to a higher goal do not to the same degree inflict damage on the whole network of his interests. (Feinberg 1984, 37) Three points should be noted here. First, we decide which interests 128 h.e. baber are to count as welfare interests by reflecting upon the needs and capacities of the "standard person." Some people indeed are more capable than the standard person-and we have all heard their inspira- tional stories ad nausaum. The standard person however cannot be ex- pected to produce saleable paintings with a brush held in his mouth if paralyzed nor can the standard person be expected to overcome grind- ing poverty and gross discrimination to achieve brilliant success at the very pinnacle of the corporate ladder. Secondly, welfare interests are interests in having minimally tolerable amounts of good things, just enough to enable their possessor to pur- sue his ulterior interests. Empirical questions may be raised as to what sort of environment is "tolerable" to the standard person, what degree of political liberty he needs to pursue his goals and how much material security he requires. Nevertheless a person who lives under conditions of extreme political oppression, who ever fears the midnight visit of the secret police, or one who spends most of his time and energy scratch- ing to maintain the minimal material conditions for survival is effec- tively blocked from pursuing other ends. Now persons have an interest in having more of goods such as health, money and political liberty than they require for the pursuit of their ulterior interests since such surplus goods are a cushion against unfore- seen reverses. In hard times, a middle class family may have to cut its entertainment and clothing budget-a working class family however may be reduced to chill penury while the truly poor are forced out on to the street. Nevertheless the interest in having money, health and the like in excess of the tolerable minimum is not itself a welfare interest. Finally it should be noted that "welfare interests, taken together, make a chain that is no stronger than its weakest link." There are few, if any tradeoffs possible among welfare interests: an excess of one good cannot compensate for the lack of a minimally tolerable level of another. "All the money in the world won't help you if you have a fatal disease, and great physical strength will not compensate for destitution or im- prisonment" (Feinberg 1984, 57)-nor, one might add, will fringe benefits, company picnics, impressive titles or even high pay compen- sate for dull, demeaning work in an all but intolerable environment. The greatest harms which can come to persons are those which af- fect their most vital interests. To maim or cripple a person is to do him a great harm insofar as one's interest in physical health is a very vital interest, indeed, a welfare interest. Stealing a sum of money from a rich man is less harmful than stealing the same sum of money from a pauper insofar as depriving a person of his means of survival sets back a welfare interest whereas depleting his excess funds does not. Now in light of these considerations it should be apparent, first, that 129 hypatla rape is a serious harm but, secondly, that it is not among the most serious harms that can befall a person. It is a serious offense because everyone has an interest in liberty construed in the broadest sense not merely as freedom from state regulation but as freedom to go about one's business without interference. Whenever a person's projects are impeded, whether by a public agency or a private individual, he is, to that extent, harmed. Rape interferes with a person's freedom to pur- sue his own projects and is, to that extent, a harm. It does not, however, render a person altogether incapable of pursuing his ulterior interests. Having a certain minimally tolerable amount of liberty is a welfare in- terest without which a person cannot pursue any further projects. While rape diminishes one's liberty, it does not diminish it to such an extent that the victim is precluded from pursuing other projects which are in his interest. No doubt most rape victims, like victims of violent crime generally, are traumatized. Some rape victims indeed may be so severely traumatiz- ed that they incur long-term, severe psychological injury and are rendered incapable of pursuing other projects. For the standard per- son however, for whom sexuality is a peripheral matter on which relatively little hangs,3 being raped, though it constitutes a serious assault on the person, does not violate a welfare interest. There is no evidence to suggest that most rape victims are permanently incapacitated by their experiences nor that in the long run their lives are much poorer than they otherwise would have been. Again, this is not to minimize the harm of rape: rape is a grave harm, nevertheless some harms are graver still and, in the long run, more harmful. Times, interests and harms What can be worse than rape? A number of tragic scenarios come to mind: (1) A person is killed in the bloom of youth, when he has in- numerable projects and plans for the future. Intuitively death is always a bad thing, though it is disputed whether it is a harm, but clearly un- timely death is a grave harm insofar as it dooms the victim's interest in pursuing a great many projects. (2) A person is severely maimed or crippled. The interests of a person who is mentally or physically incapacitated are thwarted as the range of options available to him in his impaired state is severely limited. (3) A person is destitute, deprived of food, clothing and shelter. Here one thinks of the victims of famine in Africa or street people reduced to sleeping in doorways in our otherwise affluent cities. Persons in such circumstances have not got the resources to pursue their ulterior interests. 130 h.e. baber (4) A person is enslaved. He is treated as a mere tool for the pursuit of his master's projects and deprived of the time and resources to pur- sue his own. Each of these misfortunes is worse than rape. And the list could be continued. Notice that all of the harmed conditions described are not merely painful or traumatic but chronic rather than episodic. They occupy large chunks of persons' histories-or, in the case of untimely death, actually obliterate large segments of their projected histories. To this extent such harmed conditions interfere more with the pursuit of other projects which are conducive to persons' well-being than does rape. Now it is not entirely clear from Feinberg's discussion how the tem- poral extent of harms figure into calculations of their relative seriousness. Feinberg (1984, 45ff.) suggests that transitory hurts, whether physical or mental, do not harm the interests of the standard person, for whom the absence of pain is not a focal aim, whereas chronic, distracting pain and emotional instability set back persons' most vital interests insofar as they preclude them from pursuing their goals and projects. Nevertheless, intense pain, however transitory, may be all- encompassing and completely distracting for the extent of its duration. It is not entirely clear from Feinberg's discussion however why, given his account of interests and harms, we should not be forced to con- clude that some transitory hurts are harms not because they violate an interest in not being hurt but because they preclude the victim from pursuing other interests, albeit for a very short time. Indeed, it is not clear why we should not be compelled to regard some very transitory pains, traumas and inconveniences as set-backs to welfare interests. If we agree that being imprisoned for a number of years impedes a welfare interest insofar as it precludes the prisoner from pursuing his ulterior interests while imprisoned, why should we not say that being locked in the bathroom for twenty minutes is a harm of equal, if not greater magnitude, though of shorter duration? After all, while locked in the bathroom, I am, if anything, in a worse position to pursue my ulterior interests than I should be if I were in prison. Intuitively however the duration of a harmed state figures impor- tantly in assessments of its seriousness. Being locked in the bathroom for twenty minutes is not, we think, a great harm of short duration-it is simply a trivial harm insofar as it makes no significant difference to the victim's total life plan. Being imprisoned for several years, on the contrary, does make an important difference to the victim's biography: all other things being equal it precludes him from realizing a great number of aims that he should otherwise have accomplished. 131 hypatla All is not as it was after the prisoner has served his sentence. After his release, the prisoner has much less time to accomplish his ends. A large chunk of his life has been blanked out and most likely his total life history will be poorer for it. Imprisonment impedes a welfare interest insofar as it deprives the prisoner of the minimal amount of liberty requisite for the pursuit of a great many of his ulterior interests. Furthermore, the deprivation of liberty imposed upon the prisoner, like other harms to welfare interests, cannot be truly compensated by an abundance of other goods. Even the lavish banquets and luxurious accommodations imagined by self- proclaimed advocates of law and order who deplore the "soft treat- ment" of offenders could not compensate for the restriction of in- dividual liberty imposed upon prisoners. Furthermore, benefits con- ferred after the prisoner's release cannot truly compensate him either. A person who has been falsely imprisoned may be "compensated" after a fashion with a monetary settlement but we all recognize that this does not really set things right: he has, after all, lost that many years off of his life and as a consequence he will never achieve a great many things that he would otherwise have achieved. We might capture our intuitions about the role that the duration of harmed states play in determining their seriousness in the following way: Typically, people's focal aims are, as it were, timeless. Some people, indeed, may have the ambition to accomplish certain feats at certain times of their lives, e.g. to make a million by age thirty, but in most cases the objects of our desires are not temporally tagged and timing is not, in the strict sense, essential to their realization. I can no longer make-a-million-by-age-thirty though I still can make a million. Of course I would prefer to have the million sooner rather than later. If, however, my aim is merely to make a million at some time or other I can afford to sit tight. Though the circumstances that prevail at some times may be more conducive to the achievement of my goal than those which prevail at other times, it is not essential to the realization of my ambition that it occur at any special time. My aim is not essentially time-bound. Because most of persons' focal aims are not time-bound, persons by and large can afford to sit tight. Barring the occasional Man from Porlock, our interests are not seriously set back by transitory pains or other relatively short-lived distractions. A momentary twinge may pre- vent me from starting to write my paper at 12:05. No matter: I shall start it at 12:06, and the delay is unlikely to have any significant effect on my total opus. My interest is in producing a certain body of work during my lifetime and this interest is sufficiently robust to withstand a good many temporary set-backs. Nevertheless, while most people's 132 h.e. baber interests are relatively robust, insofar as they are not time-bound, they are not impregnable. Long-term or chronic distractions can seriously impede even those interests which are not time-bound. If I suffer from chronic, distracting pain or emotional instability for a number of years I may never write my paper or realize many of my other ambitions. Art is long but life, alas, is short. Now when it comes to assessing the relative seriousness of various harms we consider them with respect to their tendency to interfere with our typically "timeless" aims. The most serious harms are those which interfere with the greatest number of interests for the longest time, those which are most likely to prevent us from ever achieving our goals. The greatest harms, those which damage welfare interests, therefore, bring about harmed states which are chronic rather than episodic. Working is worse than being raped On this account being obliged to work is, for many people, a very serious harm indeed insofar as work is chronic: it occupies a large part of the worker's waking life for a long time. For the fortunate few, work in and of itself contributes to the worker's well-being. For many workers, however, work provides few satisfactions. For the least for- tunate, whose jobs are dull, routine and regimented, work provides no satisfactions whatsoever and the time devoted to work prevents them from pursuing any other projects which might be conducive to their well-being. As a matter of fact women figure disproportionately though not ex- clusively in this group. Discrimination is not only unfair-and this in itself constitutes a harm-it is harmful insofar as many women as a result of discriminatory employment practices are compelled to take very unpleasant, underpaid, dead-end jobs and, as a consequence, to spend a substantial part of their waking lives at tedious, regimented, mind-killing toil. A great many men have equally appalling jobs. I sug- gest however that anyone, whether male or female, who spends a good deal of time at such work is in a more seriously harmed state than one who is raped. Women however have an additional grievance insofar as such jobs fall disproportionately to them as a consequence of unfair employment practices. A few hours or even a week of typing statistics or operating a switch- board, however unpleasant, may not be seriously harmful. For most women in the workforce, however, such unpleasantness occupies a substantial part of their waking hours for years. Currently most women can look forward to spending the greater part of their adult lives typ- ing, hash-slinging, cashiering or assembling small fiddly mechanisms. 133 hypatia To be compelled to do such work is to be harmed in the most serious way. Doing such work impedes a welfare interest: it deprives the worker of the minimal degree of freedom requisite for the pursuit of a number of other interests. As with other such deprivations, the harm done can- not be undone by other benefits. Sexists may suggest that women in such positions gain satisfaction from selfless service to their employers and families and some self-proclaimed feminists may suggest that the satisfaction of financial independence makes up for the drudgery. This is however plainly false. The amount of time workers must spend at their jobs deprives them of the freedom necessary to the effective pur- suit of their other projects. For this there can be no true compensation. Rape, like all crimes against the person, is bad in part because it deprives the victim of some degree of freedom; being compelled to work is worse in this regard insofar as it chronically deprives the victim of the minimal amount of freedom requisite to the pursuit of other im- portant interests which are conducive to his well-being. Work is worse than rape in other respects as well. The pink-collar worker, like the rape victim, is used as a mere means to the ends of others but, arguably, in being used the worker is violated in a more intimate, more detrimental way than the rape victim. Rape is an emo- tionally charged issue insofar as it has become a symbol of all the ways in which women are violated and exploited, but rape per se merely violates the victim's sexual integrity. The work that most women do however violates their integrity as intellectual beings. The routine clerical work which falls almost exclusively to women precludes the worker's thinking about other matters: she is fettered intellectually for the greater part of her day. Such work occupies the mind just enough to dominate the worker's inner life but not enough to be of any interest. One does not have to buy questionable Cartesian doctrines about the nature of the self to recognize that persons have a greater stake in their mental and emotional lives than they do in their sexuality. Recognizing this, it seems reasonable to suggest that being "raped" intellectually violates a more vital interest than being raped sexually. Now there are indeed certain disanalogies between the harms of rape and pink-collar work. First, arguably, persons have a right not to be raped but they do not have a right to avoid unpleasant work. Second- ly, while rapists clearly harm their victims it is not so clear that employers, particularly if they have not engaged in unfair hiring prac- tices, harm their employees. Thirdly, it may be suggested that the rape victim is forced into a compromising position whereas the pink-collar worker is not. Finally, it will be suggested that the work most women do is not so grim as I have suggested. None of these suggestions however seriously damages my case. 134 h.e. baber First, I have not argued that being compelled to do unpleasant work is a wrong but only that it is a harm, and a grave one. To be harmed is not necessarily to be wronged, nor do persons have a right absolute not to be harmed in any way. It may be, in some cases, that the ad- vancement of the interests of others outweighs the harm that comes to the victim so that, on balance, the harm to the victim does not con- stitute an injustice or a wrong. As consumers, all of us, men and women alike, have an interest in retaining women as a source of cheap clerical and service work. It may be that, on balance, this outweighs the in- terest of women as potential workers in not being exploited-though I doubt it. If this is so then the exploitation of women in these posi- tions is not a wrong. It is, nevertheless, a harm. Secondly, on Feinberg's account, natural disasters-and not merely persons who omit to aid victims-cause great harm. More generally, to be in a harmed state is not necessarily to be harmed by some moral agent. To suggest that workers are seriously harmed by the work they do is not to say that their employers are harming them. Indeed, it seems that most supervisors, managers and owners of businesses are rather like carriers of harmful diseases: they are causally responsible for per- sons' coming to harm, but we should not want to say that they harm anyone. Thirdly, most women in the pink-collar sector are compelled to work: the myth that most women enter the workforce to get out of the house and make pin money has long been exploded. Now intuitions about what constitutes coercion differ radically. Some suggest, for example, that a woman who cannot display bruises or wounds as evidence of a desperate struggle has not really been forced to have sex with her assailant. I however go with the commonsensical meaning of coercion, without pretending to know the analysis. On this account a woman with a knife to her throat is forced to engage in sexual intercourse and a woman with no other adequate means of support for herself and her family is forced to work. An exceptional person indeed may pull herself up by the bootstraps; the standard person however cannot. Fourthly, a growing sociological literature on women in the workforce, observation, and personal experience all suggest that the work most women do is every bit as harmful as I have suggested. A "phenomenology" of womenswork is beyond the scope of this paper, and beyond my competence as an analytic philosopher. Even if I should succeed in conveying the dull misery of the working day, the stress at other times, knowing that another day of work is getting closer, and beyond this, the knowledge that there is no way out, it would not be entirely to the point. As Feinberg notes, except for Epicureans, for whom the absence of pain is a focal aim, neither physical pain nor 135 hypatla psychic anguish is in and of itself a harm: they are harms only insofar as they impede the agent's interests. It is not the misery of working per se but the extent to which most work precludes one's pursuit of other ends which makes work the grave harm that it is. Even if many workers avoid the hurt, all endure the harm insofar as their interests are impeded and their lives are impoverished. Finally, I recognize that many men are forced to do demeaning, dull, often dangerous work. Again, this is hardly a criticism of my case. I grant that men are harmed in the most serious way by being forced into such drudgery. My suggestion is merely that a person, whether male or female, who spends a good deal of time doing such work is in a more seriously harmed state than one who is raped. Rape is bad, indeed, very bad. But being a keypunch operator is worse. I recognize that this conclusion will be met with considerable hostili- ty. Beyond the harm that rapists inflict upon their victims, rape is a powerful symbol of the oppression women suffer and thus naturally arouses the wrath and indignation of virtually all women who are aware of their situation. Still, to the vast numbers of single parents who are unable to provide a minimally decent standard of living for their families on the wages paid for "women's work," to all women who do pink collar work, and to all who recognize that they are in danger of being compelled to take such work-and virtually all of us are in danger- the shift of emphasis by some feminist organizations from activities geared to end sex discrimination in employment to a range of other projects is extremely irritating. Why Rape is Considered the Supreme Evil-a postscript In light of the fact (which should be apparent to all reasonable peo- ple) that spending the better part of one's waking hours over a period of years at boring, regimented work is worse than being the victim of violent crime, one wonders why it is so often assumed that rape is the supreme evil. Two conjectures come to mind. First, it is generally assumed that women are largely incapable of dealing with danger or physical violence. Since rape is a crime against women primarily, given this assumption, it would follow that most rape victims would be more traumatized than victims of other violent crimes. This is an insult to women: it is incumbent upon us to show that we are as macho as anyone! Secondly, women are traditionally viewed primarily in connection with concerns which center around their sexuality-in terms of their roles as lovers, wives and mothers. Because women are seen in this way, it is commonly assumed that they have a greater stake in matters con- 136 h.e. baber cerning sexuality in the broadest sense than do men. So, for example, all issues concerning reproduction are thought of as "women's issues" despite the recognition by all but the most primitive peoples that men play an essential role in the reproductive process. Indeed, it is often assumed that women have more of a stake in sexual matters than they do in any other concerns. Given these assumptions it would follow that any violation of sex- ual integrity would be extremely harmful to women. Arguably if rape is considered among the gravest of harms it is largely because women are regarded as beings whose welfare is tied up most intimately with sexual concerns and relationships, persons to whom other matters, such as intellectual stimulation and professional achievement, are relatively peripheral. Most women take strong exception to being regarded as "sex ob- jects." What is often thought to be objectionable about this role is the suggestion of passivity, the implication that one is an object which is used for sexual purposes rather than a subject of sexual experience. But there is something even more objectionable about the idea of be- ing a "sex object," namely the suggestion that one is primarily a sex- ual being, a person whose most important interests are connected to the genital area and the reproductive system and with roles that are tied up with one's sexuality. I suggest that the primary reason why rape is regarded as one of the most serious harms that can befall a woman is precisely because women are regarded as sex objects, beings who have little of value beyond their sexuality. Further I suggest that women who would regard being raped as the supreme violation and humiliation are implicitly buying into this view. If these are indeed the reasons why rape is seen as supremely harm- ful to women, as I suggest they are, then it follows that the suggestion that rape is the worst harm that can befall a woman is a consequence of sexist assumptions about the character and interests of women. Rape, like all other crimes of violence, constitutes a serious harm to the vic- tim. Nevertheless, I have suggested that to consider it the most serious of all harms is no less sexist than to consider it no harm at all. notes 1. Everyone agrees that rape is bad. The controversy concerns the criteria for counting an act as an instance of rape in the first place, including the relevance of the victim's 137 hypatia prior sexual conduct, and the trustworthiness of victims' testimony. The recent reopen- ing of the Dotson case, for example, represents a threat to feminist gains insofar as it tends to undermine the credibility of victims-not because it suggests that rape is less serious than is commonly supposed. The core meaning of "rape" is "forcible or fraudulent sexual intercourse especially imposed on women" (The Little Oxford Dictionary) but given the elaborate and confus- ing rules of sexual etiquette that have traditionally figured in human courtship rituals it has not always been clear what constituted fraud or coercion in these matters. In par- ticular, it has been assumed that female coyness is simply part of the courtship ritual so that women who acquiesce to the sexual demands of acquaintances under protest are merely playing the game and thus have not in fact been forced into anything. That is to say it is assumed that under such conditions the sexual act is not an instance of rape at all, hence that a woman who claims she has been raped in such circumstances is dis- ingenuous and may be assumed to have malicious motives. It is to these assumptions that women should object-not to my suggestion that rape is a less serious harm than has commonly been thought. What sexists underestimate is not the seriousness of rape but rather the frequency with which it occurs. 2. See especially chapters 1 and 5 in Joel Feinberg (1984). 3. My argument rests on the assumption that very little hangs on sexuality issues, that persons focal aims, and hence their interests, have to do primarily with matters which are quite separate and not much affected by sexual activities, whether voluntary or in- voluntary. In spite of popular acceptance of Freudian doctrines, this does seem to be the case. In a society where people's most important aims were tied up with sexual activities, things would be different and rape would be even more serious than it is among us. Im- agine, for example, a society in which women were excluded entirely from the workforce and marriage was their only economic option so that a woman's sexuality, like the cowboy's horse, was her only means of livelihood; imagine that in this society sexual purity were highly valued (at least for women) and a woman who was known to be "damaged goods" for whatever reason, was as a result rendered unmarriageable and subjected to constant humiliation by her relatives and society at large. In such cir- cumstances rape would indeed violate a welfare interest and would be among the most serious of crimes, rather like horsetheft in the Old West. There are no doubt societies in which this is the case. It is not however the case among us. Again, some people may regard their sexual integrity as so intimately wrapped up with their self-concept that they would be violated in the most profound way if forced to have sexual intercourse against their will. There are no doubt persons for whom this is the case. It is not however the case for the standard person. Admittedly, this is an empirical conjecture. But we do recognize that it is the case for the standard male person, and the assumption that women are different seems to be a manifestation of the sexist assumption that women are primarily sexual beings. references Feinberg, Joel. 1984. Harm to others. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 138 comment/reply luisa muraro On Conflicts and Differences Among Women Jana Sawicki uses the work and methods of Foucault to explore the possibility of a politics of difference. I argue that Foucault may help us overcome some forms of dogmatism inherited from men's political philosophy of the past, but Foucault is otherwise useless, or worse: misleading. Because Sawicki presents a politics of diversity among women regardless of, and independent from, a politics of sexual dif- ference, I believe Foucault is misleading. 1 .Jana Sawicki's contribution, "Foucault and Feminism: Toward a Politics of Difference" (1 986), illustrates the advantages and the disadvantages a woman may expect when using ideas elaborated by men to reason about herself and the world. Like myself and other women, Jana Sawicki calls for politics in which the diversity among women would not hinder us, but, on the contrary, would be a source for creative change. She turns to Foucault in order to lay out "the basic features of a politics of difference." She then ap- plies the results of her research to a matter that divides feminists in the United States. According to Sawicki, we can use Foucault's work to our own purpose, despite the androcentrism of his writings. I can see one advantage of Sawicki's referring to Foucault: she finds in his writings the theoretical means to fight the dogmatism that some feminist positions have assimilated from the political and philosophical tradition. There is no doubt that a woman who reads Foucault will reason about power in a much more sophisticated way than a woman who has only Marx or Locke in mind. However, I think the advan- tages stop there. Foucault can free us from old dogmatic ideas. However, the pro- blem we have doesn't stem from old dogmatic ideas. It stems from the fact that we lack a social form for our relationships. In fact, the rela- tionships between women in patriarchal societies have been ruled by an external authority-a man's authority. Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1 987). © By Luisa Muraro. 1 39 hypatla The disadvantage of using Foucault for a politics of difference is ob- vious when Sawicki arrives at a politics where differences among women are considered without reference to sexual difference. We know that only a politics of sexual difference gives or can give meaning to our diversities; otherwise, the differences among women, white or women of color, old or young, educated or not, only result from men's desires. If this is true, and our history tells us it is, then the first thing re- quired from us by the conflicts born from diversity among women is that we proceed further ahead in sexual difference politics. Here Foucault is of no use whatsoever: he may even be misleading. In this, I agree with Rosi Braidotti (1 985) and Rada Ivekovic (1 986). The philosophers who thought about difference have no thought on sexual difference. When reasoning on society and its radical transformations, Foucault takes into account relations between men and men, between men and women, but not the relations between women and women. These, however, are our main sources of knowledge and strength with which to change society. The question is not androcentrism, but how to pro- ceed in order to know the given reality. 2. Jana Sawicki wants to illustrate the value and also the limitations of Foucault's politics of difference. Her illustration of its value is clear, while that of its limitations is not. She writes that a politics of difference among women "need not lapse into a form of pluralism in which anything goes" (p. 35). All right, but: is it here that she sees his limita- tion and then moves away from Foucault? If so, the real danger Sawicki points out, the danger of lapsing into a meaningless feminist pluralism, doesn't depend on an intrinsic limita- tion of Foucault's work. It depends on the use she intends to make of such work. Sawicki also writes: "in a feminist politics of difference, theory and moral judgements would be geared to specific contexts" (emphasis mine). Here we are far from Foucault whose thought does not take moral judgements into account. Could this be his limitation? Is reason- ing without resorting to moral judgements a limitation? It isn't to me. I cannot think of a way of adapting Foucault to the problem that Sawicki, like myself and other women, is tackling. The fact that there are conflicts among women, had Foucault been aware of it, was neither a problem to him, nor a possible means to change anything. Therefore Sawicki's attempt to use Foucault in order to solve the problem of difference among women, inevitably results in her now mak- ing this problem in Foucault's thought commonplace. 1 40 luisa muraro 3. If we want our diversities to become a source of creative change, we must go ahead, we must bore deeper into the politics of sexual difference. We will further this politics, at the level of practice and theory, when social relationships between women have "a dimension of verticality" (this expression, but not the idea, I found in Simone Weil). The dimension of horizontality, made possible by feminism, allow- ed us to appreciate our belonging to the feminine gender in the forms of sisterhood, of togetherness, of solidarity, etc. Verticality will enable us to find in the feminine gender the source of our human value and a measure for what we are as individuals as well. Both these dimensions are necessary for a social existence of the sex- ual difference. The feminine difference does not exist if a woman doesn't think herself as descending from a feminine beginning, whatever the means through which this relationship is signified. But it has to be signified. In the relationships between women, the dimension of verticality is still weak or lacking. Therefore our politics of difference is also weak. When Sawicki refers to Foucault in order to elaborate thoughts of her own and to tackle a problem of women's politics, she endows him with great authority. The reference to an author is not a neutral action. The sex of the person who makes the reference and the sex of the per- son referred to link together and produce a meaningful combination which bears on the text and its purport. A woman, Jana Sawicki, referring to a man, Michel Foucault, in order to solve a problem concerning relationships between women, in- directly tells about the lack of social authority of the feminine origin and, therefore, about the weakness of a politics of sexual difference. references Braidotti, Rosi. 1 985. Modelli di dissonanza: donne e/in filosofia. In Le donne e i segni, ed. Patrizia Magli. Urbino (Italia): II lavoro editoriale. Ivekovic, Rada. 1 986. Destin du sujet dit "faible" et critique du "devenir femme." Zagreb (Yugoslavia): manuscript. Sawicki, Jana. 1 986. Foucault and Feminism: Toward a politics of dif- ference. Hypatia 1 (2): 23-36. 1 41 comment/reply mary libertin The Politics of Women's Studies and Men's Studies This paper is a response to the problematic relation between men's studies and women's studies; it is also a particular response to Harry Brod's discussion of the theoretical need for men's studies programs in his article "The New Men's Studies: From Feminist Theory to Gender Scholarship." The paper argues that a male feminist would be more effective in a women's studies program, that the latter already includes research about the experiences of both males and females. Although future research on both genders is needed, the paper argues that there does not currently exist a gap in theory or in practice in women's studies programs, as Brod claims. The paper argues in favor of both men and women working together to strengthen and broaden women's studies programs in existence and encourages the creation of more programs and more study of gender issues. TIhe reality of men's studies programs calls for a reconsidera- tion of women's studies and its relation to men's studies. Responding to a sexist curriculum, women's studies originally met (and is still meeting) important needs: providing empirical evidence including previously ignored data concerning women's and men's lives upon which to revise current knowledge and change our way of thinking about the world, and using this as a basis for solutions to a variety of perennial problems. Responding to oppression, the women's movement demand- ed (and still demands) reproductive rights, an end to sexual objectifica- tion and violence, equality for women in the workplace and in the courts, along with other concerns and issues. Feminism spans across cultures, age groups, races, sexual-preferences, ideologies, occupations, and classes-and even biological sexes. The question is whether feminists should include men's studies within their programs or work to develop men's studies as a separate discipline in its own right. I would like to add another question: would a man who is a feminist be more effective in women's studies or men's studies? Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © By Mary Libertin. 143 hypatla Harry Brod, in "The New Men's Studies," believes "men's studies is essential to fulfilling the feminist project which underlies women's studies, and that feminist scholarship cannot reach its fullest, most radical potential without the addition of men's studies." This is an important claim which needs to be examined. How does Brod define the feminist project which underlies women's studies? And what is the radical potential that the addition of men's studies would foster? Brod defines the feminist project as one "focusing on gender rather than simply on women." He states that "it is this expanded totalistic vision of women's studies as the study of gender, requiring a re-vision of the entire curriculum rather than simply the addition of insights about women, which brings the need for men's study into focus" (p. 186). And the radical potential that men's studies would foster may take a back seat to the theoretical justification for its existence, or so it would seem when he says the "need to motivate men towards feminist political change" is not a "primary concern" of his, though it is a "valid" con- sideration (p. 180). What happens to the radical potential of feminism when the feminist project which underlies women's studies is conceived as one which focuses on gender? Of course, this may remain to be seen. Brod is cor- rect to provide a historical perspective to the issue of gender studies, and he is correct to suggest that women's studies has already been study- ing gender roles of men and women. Thus one may wonder, if women's studies is studying gender presently, why men's studies programs need to be instituted and funded. Males and females who are feminists have been studying the perspectives of women's and men's experiences. Brod says that "it is this expanded totalistic vision of women's studies as the study of gender, requiring a re-vision of the entire curriculum rather than simply the addition of insights about women, which brings the need for men's study into focus" (p. 186). But feminists never con- ceived of women's studies as an addendum to the canon but as a revi- sion of the canon of knowledge to reflect the historical sociopolitical context of men's and women's lives. By referring at this point to the feminist project as an addendum, Brod provides a basis for reconcep- tionalizing women's studies as gender studies, which should be studies by men and women, but this seems slightly inaccurate, narrows the definition of women's studies, and depoliticizes the grassroots feminism underlying women's studies. Brod's focus on gender scholarship allows him to make a logical claim that "the project of gender scholarship mandates a particular concep- tion of men's studies" (p. 186). He explains: "This conception is grounded in an increasingly sustained understanding and an increas- 144 mary libertin ingly emerging conviction. The understanding is that in falsely generaliz- ing man as 'male' to man as 'human' we have, to our great loss, obliterated the specificities of both women's and men's lives. The con- viction is that the only way to depower the pseudo-universality of generic 'man' is to study man as particular, rather than as pseudo-generic" (p. 186). Brod seems to be turning the tables around on the issue of 'man' used generically. Yet when he calls for a focus on man as par- ticular, is he referring to men as individuals or to the gender? The ques- tion of specificity and generality is indeed important to current feminist scholarship, where more accuracy is found in delineating the age, class, physical ability, sexual orientation, region, religion, ethnicity, class, race, occupation rather than in generalizing about all of these areas. In this way feminists can collect and analyze the interrelated factors in patriarchal society's oppression of people through systems and in- stitutions and its effects upon us all. Feminism is thus more than a white, upper middle class agenda for improvement. But as Carole Vance and Ann Snitow explain, "if careless generaliza- tion about women's experience is dangerous and mystifying, so too is avoidance of generalization in the belief that each woman's experience is so unique and conditioned by multiple social influences that larger patterns are impossible to discern, that to attempt to generalize is to do violence to individual experience" (1984, 133). In addition, they raise questions about the theory of construction. They suggest that feminists working on sexuality "must confront the dialectic between specificity and generalization and endure its ongoing tension" (p. 133, emphasis added). Not only do I agree with them in this area of study, but I also find the dialectic between specificity and generalization a necessary tension in all areas of women's studies. I would extend their warning to our present situation. There is a dialectic between the specific and general, one which Brod omits from his discussion of how gender studies re- quires us "to study man as particular, rather than as pseudo-generic." Elaine Showalter, using the model of Shirley and Edwin Ardener which shows that "women constitute a muted group, the boundaries of whose culture and reality overlap, but are not wholly contained by, the domi- nant (male) group" (1981, 199) suggests that there is a "wild zone" of women's experience-a place "off-limits" to men-and vice-versa. But the men's zone of experience which is alien to women is "within the circle of the dominant structure and thus accessible to or structured by language" (p. 200). This area of men's experiences needs to be studied from a feminist perspective, but it will require more than what Brod proposes in his study of men as particular. Brod seems to have 145 hypatia ignored the differences between men and women studied as groups, wherein the difference between "dominant" and "muted" exists for individuals and for the groups. The main contradiction in Brod's position is that he wants men's studies to be the study of "man as particular" (p. 186) while he would define women's studies as "gender studies." He thereby ignores the markedness of the two groups (man/woman) which favors man. And he also seems to ignore the manner in which that markedness affects the study of individuals. The need for more than just a collection of data about individuals is essential. And when men and women are studied as individuals, as Brod states, is he not basing his reasoning on an anatomical or biological distinction, which comes very close to the same distinction which essentialists hold? Does he hold an essen- tialist position which he undercuts elsewhere in the paper? As the French theorist Helene Cixous states, "there are some men who do not repres their femininity, some women who, more or less strongly, inscribe their masculinity" (1985, 81). She avoids the "confusion man/masculine, woman/feminine" by connecting the "political economy" and the "libidinal economy" and by referring to individuals as bisexual (1986, 81). She defines "bisexuality" as that "with which every subject, who is not shut up inside the spurious Phallocentric Performing Theater, sets up his or her erotic universe. Bisexuality-that is to say the loca- tion within oneself of the presence of both sexes, evident and insistent in different ways according to the individual, the nonexclusion of dif- ference or of a sex" (1986, 84-85). In any case, Brod's reasoning is circular (studying men as particular will give us information about men as particular). It is also contradic- tory. He claims to agree with "this expanded totalistic vision of women's studies as the study of gender, requiring a re-vision of the entire cur- riculum rather than simply the additions of insights about women, which brings the need for men's studies into focus" yet his insights about men in particular will not seem to get past individual insights of men. And these insights he claims are needed as additions to the insights of women. He says "the study of men as particular, i.e., men's studies, is a necessary component of the feminist claim to universal, and not mere- ly compensatory, truth" (p. 187). His position is illogical and unfair. Feminists are working toward change and are not claiming universal truth. Gender studies is more than a collection of insights from all in- dividuals, whether or not they are feminist. The presentation of his lengthy "etymology of the concept of 'gender' in its current usage" (p. 180), woven into a discussion of the essen- tialist and non-essentialist theories of identity, thus warrants another 146 mary libertin retrospective glance. First, the debate he presents is a red herring in a discussion of men's studies. His case for men's studies does not logical- ly depend upon the debate; the essentialist/non-essentialist debates exist without the concept of gender. The debate he presents is a narrow, dichotomous perspective on an issue concerning the relationship be- tween an individual and a society; the non-essentialist position is held by feminists in France who seem much like non-feminists in America, and essentialists such as Mary Daly can be seen to espouse ideas that are very non-essentialist if the idea of gender were not present. Moreover, his presentation, in my opinion, is riddled with inaccuracies. I disagree with Brod's characterization of the history of the concept of gender as it relates to the non-essentialist theory of the self and to feminism. The debate about personal identity (is there a core self) was used by everyone-radical and non-radical feminists, feminists and non- feminists, those who believe in actively changing the patriarchal system and those who are less committed. The issue is and should be how we can, as a group of people in society, change the system which harms us as a group and as individuals. Real empirical harm is perpetrated on individuals and groups of individuals in society. Whether these in- dividuals admit personal harm is one issue. Whether these individuals transfer this harm into a pattern of harm is another. An individual may admit neither, or both. A person making any of these choices can be called essentialist or non-essentialist or can use these terms personally defined in different ways. Whether or not there is a core self to an in- dividual's identity, an individual is a legal entity, and feminists have argued for equality for individuals. Certainly individuals are labeled male or female, legally, a label based on biological sex. For this reason, I cannot agree that "the normative political theory of feminism was cast in terms of an essentialist theory of the self" (p. 182). And for the same reason, I cannot admit that the "problems with the non- essentialist theory of the self which emerges from the radicalization of the sex role hypothesis cuts deeply into mainstream feminist thought" and that "it drives a wedge between the political and academic arms of the movement" (p. 181). When Brod supports his contention that "much of the normative political theory of feminism was cast in terms of an essentialist theory of the self," he follows with this sentence: "Feminism's normative critique of male dominated thought and action railed against the stifling and repression of women's authentic selves" (p. 182). Instead I contend that feminists worked toward revising the law (remember the ERA) and that their primary goals were legal as they related to economic opportunity and discrimination. In addition, I would contend that more academics working in women's studies sup- 147 hypatla ported these feminist goals, rather than being antagonistic toward them. It may be convenient for Brod to assess the history of gender as he does, but we should keep in mind that even if we grant the above wedge between academics and feminists, "the loss of a posited essential self [which] posed a particular problem [the above] for feminist theory" (p. 181) posed more of a problem for those who were opposed to feminist theory, for they were locked into convention and used essen- tialist arguments against feminist theory. I also find Brod's following passage, found after his above remark, a bit curious and inaccurate: In addition, it should be noted that the non-essentialist theory of the self was always consistently rejected from one specific feminist quarter. There was always a strain of radical feminist theory which held that observed dif- ferences between women and men were [his emphasis] rooted in different inherent essences, and some held fur- ther that these differences should be celebrated, not minimized or negated. Those who followed this school of thought could never fully accept all the talk of "roles" which could and should simply be "unlearned" (p. 181). If Brod is referring to lesbians when he refers to the actions of the above "specific feminist quarter" who constitute "a strain of radical feminist theory," I wonder why he omits the word. I also question the veracity of his claim about this nameless group. I know radical lesbians who worshipped a mother goddess and who also believed, as does Cixous now, that all people are bisexual and who lived amiably with hetero- sexual men. Even those most radical in the nameless quarter who prefer- red to separate themselves as much as possible from men would not agree that roles could "simply be 'unlearned'." I find Brod's descrip- tion of people who most simply "celebrated, not minimized or negated" the idea of inherent essences most characteristic of non-feminists, such as Phyllis Schlafly. In any case Brod connects the above "conflict between feminism's critique of sexism generated by its empirical social theory, based on the non-essentialist sex role model and its critique of sexism generated by its normative political theory, based on the essentialist self- development model" to "two entirely different standards of justice" (p. 182). I cannot agree that a "normative political theory of feminism" is/was cast in an essentialist theory of self. Nor can I agree that there are two standards of justice that can be neatly linked to the essen- tialist/non-essentialist positions, as Brod does. There is not a clear either/or exclusion in the positions. One cannot link only distributive 148 mary libertin justice to the non-essentialist position and non-distributive or personal justice with the essentialist position. The problems Brod sees are cast in dichotomous terms: man/woman; feminists in the academy/outside the academy; essentialist/non- essentialist; individual/society; distributive/non-distributive justice. Dif- ferent levels of questions and problems are linked together illogically. If you are a feminist teaching in a women's studies program in an American University you probably believe in a non-essentialist notion of distributive justice and find yourself looking across a theoretical gap at the radical political arm of feminism, according to Brod! I disagree- this characterization may occur and may be quite important to discuss, but it is used to suggest either theoretical problems of women's studies programs or a split between feminists outside and inside women's studies programs, which is highly exaggerated. Men's studies is introduced in- to the discussion as if it were a solution to problems in the women's movement. This is not the case. Surely gender rather than biological sex is the focus of much study in the 1980's; biological distinctions between male and female are not equivalent to the social distinctions between masculine and feminine. But rather than make a distinction between non-feminists who speak as if they were essentialists (women should be ladies/women-men should be men) and feminists who speak as if they were essentialists (women have a core women's identity), Brod ignores non-feminists altogether and makes a reader of his paper feel much more splintering (theoretical) among feminists than actually exists. He says "the purpose of men's studies is to fill the gap [of studies that are sorely lacking]." There is no gap. It is my contention that these studies (of men as particular individuals) can be made (and have been made) within women's studies programs, by women and men who are feminists. In other words, there is no logical theoretical justification for the creation of additional men's studies programs wihin women's studies programs. To suggest that the creation of men's studies pro- grams would allow "the status of men [to be] equally brought into ques- tion" so that man is not "the assumed norm, women always ... the 'other"' (p. 187) is to forget that women and men have already brought the status of men into question and, even more, to forget that the historical assumed norms about the status of men and women require political action as well as study for equality to occur. Brod tries to counter the possibility that men's studies can develop "in directions inimical to feminism" (p. 190). It is also true that lasting change will require the cooperation of men. It is for this reason that feminists should encourage men to become feminists and to work in 149 hypatia women's studies programs. Women should enlist the help of male feminists to study the burgeoning areas of the unknown. But the pro- gram, if it is to be feminist, should be called women's studies not women's studies and men's studies. If there is no theoretical basis for the creation of separate programs; if as Brod states, "women in women's studies departments and programs" should have the "decision- making authority to incorporate men's studies components into women's studies" (p. 192), what is the controversy about? Seen as a "component," men's studies is already part of women's studies pro- grams and part of the feminist agenda. The controversy may be about status and funding. Men who are feminists (and men who are not feminists) would stand a better chance of funding in our patriarchal institutions. Why should women's studies departments encourage the competition for already limited funds? Such could be the case at universities with added men's studies programs. Some universities, it is conceivable, could have men's studies programs started without a women's studies program. Women and men feminists should instead together petition for larger budgets for women's studies and prevent the antagonism that could occur between two programs (men's and women's studies) that originally may have been created as complementary. Because men's studies can become inimical to feminism, especially in this wave of conservativism we are in, I strong- ly believe women and men should work together to strengthen and broaden the women's studies programs in existence and encourage the creation of more women's studies programs at other universities. It would be tempting for men who are feminists to argue for separate status as an equally valid program and call that program men's studies, for the immediate advantages would be many to those particular men personally and professionally. If these men consider the long-term prob- lems from their feminist perspective, they may see some disadvantages: the possibility of cooptation, the possible weakening of the force of feminism in women's studies programs. Indeed, it is difficult for men to share women's standpoint. Thus women should encourage male feminists in whatever ways we can. Allison M. Jaggar in Feminist Politics and Human Nature explains this quite well: Since women cannot transform reality alone, they must also find ways to work politically with men without being dominated by them and men may even be able to con- tribute to women's theoretical work. To do so, however, men will have to learn women's 'text,' a process that will 150 mary libertin require at least as much humility and commitment as that needed by white/Anglo women to understand the experience of women of color. Even when men contribute to the construction of a systematic alter- native to the dominant world view, it is still accurate to describe this alternative as a representation of reality from the standpoint of women. ... Women's standpoint offers a perspective on reality that is accessi- ble in principle to men as well as to women, although a materialist epistemology predicts that men will find it more difficult than women to comprehend this perspective and that widespread male acceptance of it will require political as well as theoretical struggle. (1983, 387)2 In our present theoretical struggle we may ask: would a man who is a feminist be more effective in women's studies programs rather than a separate men's studies program? The answer is yes. notes A slightly different version of this paper was distributed at the Midwest Modern Language Association Convention in St. Louis, November 1985. I wish to thank those who offered their ideas and support at that time, and also The Shippensburg University Foundation, which, in part, supported my travel to St. Louis. 1. Harry Brod, "The New Men's Studies," Program for the Study of Women and Men in Society and Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, a pre- convention condensed version of a paper read in earlier forms at the Western Social Science Association Convention, April 26, 1984, San Diego California, and the California State University, Fullerton, Symposium on "Philosophy and Women," March 2, 1985. The full version, "The New Men's Studies: From Feminist Theory to Gender Scholarship," is scheduled for publication in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. This quota- tion is from p. 180; subsequent references will be parenthetical. 2. Jaggar (1983) provides excellent analyses of four categories of feminism (Liberal, Traditional Marxism, Radical, and Socialist) in terms of their theories of human nature and politics and argues in favor of the superiority of Socialist Feminism. This provides further information on the debate between essentialist and non-essentialist theories of identity. Other relevant discussions of the debate between essentialists and non-essentialists include Simone de Beauvoir, (1984, 229-235); Susan Rubin Suleiman, (1985, 43-65). Charles Peirce ([1870] 1984) argues that "absolute individuality is merely ideal" in a context that is clearly not connected to gender or the contemporary feminist debate. 151 hypatla references Ardener, Edwin. 1977. Belief and the problem of women. In Perceiv- ing women, ed. Shirley Ardener. New York: J.M. Dent. Beauvoir, Simone de. 1984. France: Feminism-Alive, well, and in con- stant danger. In Sisterhood is global, ed. and compiled by Robin Morgan. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Brod, Harry. 1987. The new men's studies: From feminist theory to gender scholarship. Hypatia 2 (1): 179-196. Cixous, Helene and Catherine Clement. 1986. La Jeune Nee, 1975. The newly born woman. Trans. Betsy Wing, forward by Sandra M. Gilbert. Theory and History of Literature, vol. 24. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. Jaggar, Alison M. 1983. Feminist politics and human nature. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld. Peirce, Charles S. [1870] 1984. Description of a notation for the logic of relatives. In Memoirs of the American academy, vol. 9 pp. 317-78. Reprinted in Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A chronological edition: Volume 2, 1867-1871, eds. Edward C. Moore, et. al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Showalter, Elaine. 1981. Feminist criticism in the wilderness. Critical Inquiry (Winter): 197-205. Suleiman, Susan Rubin. 1985. (Re)writing the body: The politics and poetics of female eroticism. Poetics Today 6 (1-2): 43-65. Vance, Carole and Ann Snitow. 1984. Toward a conversation about sex in feminism: A modest proposal. Signs 10 (Autumn): 126-135. 152 comment/reply harry brod Does Manning Men's Studies Emasculate Women's Studies? Defends "The New Men's Studies: From Feminist Theory to Gender Scholarship" (Hypatia 2:1, Winter 1987) against what is argued are Mary Libertin's misreadings. The argument for men's studies is logically in- dependent of though related to the debate about essentialism in women's studies. Men's studies studies men in and as particular groups. Intellec- tual should not be equated with institutional autonomy. The feminist study of men should be supported by feminist scholars. I attribute most of Mary Libertin's disagreements with what she thinks my article says to her thinking it says more and other than it does. Mary Libertin offers as a criticism the observation that the "case for men's studies does not logically depend upon the debate" regar- ding essentialism/non-essentialism. But I never presented one as a logical deduction from the other. I wrote only that a reconstruction of this debate would be illuminating because some reasons favoring men's studies were already implicitly present and accepted in the trend towards gender studies which in part emerges from it. She states as a criticism: "One cannot link only distributive justice to the non- essentialist position and non-distributive or personal justice with the essentialist position. . . . Different levels of questions and problems are linked together illogically." But this was my point-I specifically denied the existence of such correspondences and any relations of logical entailment between these levels. I wrote: "while recognizing that these distinctions cannot be collapsed into one another, there are nonetheless conceptual affinities." Many of Libertin's criticisms of my account of aspects of gender scholarship seem to me to assume broader claims on my part than I make, as if I were claiming to have written a complete and definitive Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © By Harry Brod. 153 hypatia history of feminism and women's studies. But I made no such claims. I claimed only to be articulating one strain of the recent history of feminist scholarship, explicitly stating "this is not intended as anything like a comprehensive account or analysis of the history of the field." I had a much more limited objective, that of tracing certain relevant trends in feminist scholarship. In much the same vein Libertin distorts my restricting my attention in this essay to the scholarly rather than political aspects of gender issues to infer an apolitical view on my part. My statement near the start of the article delimiting its scope that political considerations "are not my concern here" is quoted out of context as a claim that political considerations "are not my concern." But if we let the fear of not saying everything prevent us from saying anything, nothing will ever be said. We see red herrings in different places. The debate on essen- tialism/nonessentialism is "a red herring" only if one has misconstrued its role in the essay as Libertin has. To my mind Libertin's discussion of particularity as individualism is a red herring. She pretends that my call for the study of men as particular reduces to a call for the study of individual male biographies. This reading reduces my argument to absurdity. I find no basis in the text for such a misreading. My sup- posed "main contradiction" here is sheer invention on her part. In the essay the call for the study of men as particular is contrasted with the sexist practice of studying men simply as generic humans. It is a call to study men as a particular group, not a call to refrain from studying men in and as groups. Certainly we must take account of differences among men and not view men simply as a single generic class, any more than women should be so viewed, but the array of authorities marshalled against me here is simply irrelevant. Just under the surface of Libertin's wondering about why I did not name lesbians as a certain strain of feminist theory I was describing lurks the implicit charge of my collusion in lesbian oppression or homophobia. My reasons were that I wished to avoid the kind of false dichotomizing and reductionism Libertin elsewhere accuses me of. While some strains of lesbian separatism can be described in the terms I was using, others cannot, while other non-lesbian feminists can be described in these terms. Libertin's mode of analysis here is unfortunate- ly symptomatic of her approach. Having decided I really mean lesbians, she then criticizes me for inaccurately portraying them. She takes issue with claims not made after erroneously reading those claims into the essay. The same misinterpretive strategy gives rise to her debate with me about the autonomy of men's studies programs, though here, in con- 154 harry brod trast to the earlier cases, an important omission in my essay provides some motivation for the misreading. She reads the project of men's studies being defended in the essay as an institutional project, that of creating men's studies programs separate from and competing with women's studies programs. I would have thought it clear enough that the subject of my essay was men's studies as an intellectual, scholarly project, with the question of its institutional embodiment left unad- dressed. Had I been arguing for the legitimacy of something like Asian Studies, for example, as a legitimate and discrete intellectual enterprise, it would have been inappropriate to assume anything at all on the ques- tion of whether I favored Asian Studies being an independent depart- ment, or being housed in Ethnic Studies, Pacific Area studies, or under any other rubric. Similarly, my argument for men's studies simply did not address questions of its institutional relation to women's studies. I agree that I could legitimately have been expected to address these issues, given their obvious salience and practical importance, and can be taken to task for this omission. I can plead only the constraints of time and space for not having adequately done so (coupled with the original draft of this essay having been written several years ago when I was a neophyte both in men's studies and institutional politics). Given that such issues should have been addressed more fully in the essay, Libertin may perhaps be more justified here than elsewhere in reading things into the essay. Still, I would have expected my clear statement that decisions on such questions should remain with women in women's studies to caution against Libertin's hasty assumptions about my position. Interested readers will find that I more fully take up these questions and questions about the relations between men's studies, gay studies, and other fields, as well as questions regarding the political perspec- tives of men's studies and their relation to various feminisms, in my Introduction and my essay "The Case for Men's Studies" in my edited book The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies (Allen & Unwin, 1987). Briefly, were we starting at ground zero I would advocate "feminist studies" as the rubric for both women's and men's studies, and still favor this terminology where appropriate. But the question I take myself to be answering has a different starting point. Given the existence of something called women's studies, what should we now call a new kind of systematic feminist scholarship on men? My answer is men's studies. In the book I propose cooperative ways of resolving competition for resources, argue that men's studies must develop through feminist theory and in close cooperation with women's studies, and restate my reservations about the new terminology of "gender 155 hypatla studies." (Given my express repudiation of "gender studies," Liber- tin's statement that I "would define women's studies as 'gender studies"' is bafflingly false.) I argue that decisions about autonomy or integration as women's, men's and/or gender studies must be made according to particular circumstances in particular institutions. I do stress the intellectual autonomy of men's studies, but this does not necessarily translate to institutional separation. I am worried by her call for feminist men to involve themselves in women's rather than men's studies. Certainly they should work to strengthen women's studies, but I think they should also work to fur- ther men's studies. While I want to be clear that in principle either gender can legitimately and fruitfully study the other, on the whole I think there are good reasons for men to tend their own gardens rather than others'. Further, one cannot so lightly switch one's research com- mitments. As feminists have convincingly demonstrated, the personal is the scholarly as well as the political. I think feminist men's desires to study men from feminist perspectives should be encouraged rather than discouraged. notes The short time I had to reply makes this more of a reaction than a considered response. On rereading it seems more defensive and combative than I find ideal. However, I can do no better at present. I prefer to let it stand rather than fail to respond. 156 the forum candace watson Celibacy and Its Implications For Autonomy This paper connects celibacy to autonomy, which is derived from economic, emotional, and sexual self-determination. Although society attempts to control and define women's sexuality, the celibate woman who masturbates can retrieve her sexuality without the massive social rearrangements which are necessary for economic and emotional libera- tion. Because masturbation is accessible and singular, sexual autonomy is available to a woman who chooses celibacy, regardless of the other exigencies in her life, as illustrated in the example here from popular literature. W omen's autonomy must necessarily derive from our economic, emotional, and sexual self-determination. The degree to which circumstance and culture intervene to shape our economic, emo- tional, and sexual destinies is what feminists understand and articulate as "the personal is political," and is precisely what makes autonomy anything but a personal choice. In both the economic and emotional arenas personal autonomy is overwhelmingly contingent on massive social rearrangement. But in the sexual realm woman's self- determination is accessible and most nearly attainable, especially if she is celibate and her celibacy includes masturbation. While celibacy need not include and certainly does not imply masturbation, this discussion will assume the choice to masturbate-a choice which does not in any event stand in contradiction to the literal meaning of "celibacy" or celibacy as it is commonly practiced. Through masturbation, the celibate woman can celebrate her sexuality apart from the aspects of its social expression, as in this example from popular literature: In those mornings I began to touch myself. I felt what was at first a shapeless yearning in my body, and I learn- ed to bring it to life. I would reach between my legs, Hypatia vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1987). © By Candace Watson. 157 hypatia separate the folds of my flesh. My own saliva on my fingertips would make me wet; and I came. I came again and again in those mornings, by myself, with my thoughts all my own (Miller 1986, 83). So speaks Anna Dunlap in Sue Miller's The Good Mother. Discussion of this bestseller, however, invariably connects Anna's sexual awaken- ing to her lover, Leo, ignoring Anna's assertion "that I learned to have those feelings unconnected with anyone in particular" (Miller 1986, 85). This passage and its neglect reveal both the sexual power of the celibate woman, and her potentially radical invisibility. Miller's Anna is sexually self-determined; she develops and ex- periences her sexuality apart from being a mother and/or a lover. That Anna brings herself to orgasm against the background of her daughter Molly's early-morning play chatter seemingly dissolves, in this instance at least, the contrived conflict between the erotic and the maternal. Though Anna loses her lover because she is a mother, and in some more devastating sense she loses her daughter, these losses result from the male intrusion in the maternal matrix and are unconnected to Anna's essential erotic life, which she developed alone and only temporarily directed toward Leo. To be sure, the perceived need for faithful and fertile wives has bastardized woman's sexuality-defined it according to male need and pleasure. And, in service to the species, women are sexually brutalized-subjected to medical misogyny, rape and battering. Still, to some extent, sexuality can be lived separate from its social context. For instance, and for some of us, spontaneous orgasm is experienced as a physical impulse strictly. Even though orgasm is overlaid with social meaning and experience, that meaning and experience (except perhaps in the case of sexual trauma) does not automatically render the pleasure of orgasm altogether irretrievable. While our culture ties our eroticism to heterosexual intercourse and reproduction, we can recall our sex- uality without first turning the world upside down. We can, through celibacy and masturbation, define our sexuality and satisfy ourselves sexually. This is not only personal and political, it is possible as well. references Miller, Sue. 1986. The good mother. NY: Harper. 158 notes on contributors H.E. Baber has her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins and is currently assist- ant professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego. Her primary areas of interest are metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Harry Brod has held a joint appointment in the Program for the Study of Women and Men in Society and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Southern California from 1982-87. For 1987-88 he is a Fellow in Law and Philosophy at the Harvard Law School, where he is working on men's reproductive rights. He is Editor of The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies (Allen & Unwin, 1987), and A Mensch Among Men: Explorations in Jewish Masculinity (The Cross- ing Press, forthcoming 1988), as well as special issues of several scholarly journals on various aspects of men's studies. He is a frequent lecturer and men's movement activist, and is currently the National Spokes- person for the National Organization for Changing Men. He has published on social and political theory, Hegel, applied ethics, and critical thinking, and is writing a book on male feminism. Victoria Davion is currently a lecturer in the philosophy department, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Judith Hill is assistant professor of philosophy at George Mason Univer- sity. Currently, she is working on a book on the concept of reasons in ethical theory. Mary Libertin is an assistant professor of English at Shippensburg University. She has published poetry and articles on Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and semiotics. Maria C. Lugones was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1944. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1967. She is associate professor of philosophy at Carleton College and a community organizer among Hispanos in the North of Nuevo Mejico. Mary Briody Mahowald teaches primarily in the medical school at Case Western Reserve University, but she also (still) teaches Philosophy of Woman (2nd ed., Hackett, 1983) at Western Reserve College. Her published articles have dealt with topics such as community, pater- nalism, abortion, feminism, moral agency in children, and obstetric and gynecological issues. Luisa Muraro teaches philosophy of language and philosophy of science at the University of Verona (Italy). With other women she started the group "Diotima" for a philosophy of sexual difference. She is the author of articles and essays in linguistics and politics. 159 hypatla Julien S. Murphy is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Maine, where she is also on the Women's Studies Faculty. Her work includes publications on abortion, reproductive technology, and AIDS, as well as publications in phenomenology and deconstruc- tion. Currently, she is writing on Derrida. Andrea Nye teaches philosophy and feminist theory at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Her book Feminist Theory and the Philosophies of Man, which explores the connection between feminist thought and masculine theorizing, will be available in the Fall from Croom Helm Ltd., U.K. or Methuen Inc., American distributor. Candace Watson has a B.A. in Women's Studies from SUNY in New Paltz, where she still lives. She is remodeling a house and has one daughter. Susan Wendell is assistant professor of philosophy and Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University. She and David Copp edited Por- nography and Censorship, Prometheus Books, 1983. She has publish- ed articles on discrimination, equality of opportunity and pornography, and is currently writing about responsibility and women's oppression. 160 announcements Call for Contributions: The APA Committee on the Status of Women is pleased to announce publication of the Feminism and Philosophy Newsletter. The purpose of the Newsletter is to provide information about recent work in the area of feminist philosophy, listing new publications, and providing book reviews. It will include discussions of how to integrate or "mainstream" this material into traditional philosophy courses. It will also provide a forum for discussing the status of women in the profession. The editor invites contributions to the Newsletter. We are interested in literature overviews, book reviews, suggestions for curriculum revi- sions or transformations, discussions of feminist pedagogical methods, and so on. It is our intention that the Newsletter serve as a resource both for feminist philosophers and for colleagues whose main interests have not been in the area of feminist philosophy. Manuscripts, proposals, suggestions, and all other communications and inquiries should be addressed to: Nancy Tuana, Editor, Arts and Humanities, JO 31, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75083-0688. SWIP Newsletter: Announcements or items for the SWIP Newsletter for 1987-88 should be sent to the Editor, Marilyn Friedman, 2550 Yeager Road, Apt. 20-11, West Lafayette, IN 47906. Ph. (317) 463-7825. A Gay and Lesbian Caucus is now being organized within the American Philosophical Association. The purpose of this caucus will be both to foster the philosophical study of gay and lesban issues and to give a distinct voice to gay and lesbian concerns within the Associa- tion. For more information, contact: Prof. John Pugh, Department of Philosophy, John Carroll University, Union Heights, OH 44118. 1987 Index/Directory of Women's Media, containing listings for 525 women's periodicals, as well as women's presses, publishers, news ser- vices, radio-TV, film groups, book stores, and more, is available for $12.00 from: Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press, 3306 Ross Place, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008, (202) 966-7783. Hypatia T-Shirts: T-Shirts featuring the image from the cover of Hypatia are available in various color/fabric/size combinations. Write to the Hypatia office for details: Hypatia, Box 1437, SIUE, Edwards- ville, IL 62026-1437. 161 hypatia Society for the Study of Women Philosophers. An organizational meeting for the purpose of founding a Society for the Study of Women Philosophers will be held in New York at the December, 1987 meeting of the American Philosophical Association. The following is a tentative and preliminary statement of the purposes of the Society: The first purpose of the Society is to create and sus- tain a "Republic of Letters," in which women are both citizens and sovereigns. To that end, we shall com- memorate women philosophers of the past as well as of the present by engaging their texts, whether critically or appreciatively, in a dialogical interchange. In this way, both we and our sisters from the past can also become interlocutors for our sisters in the future. The second purpose of the Society is to examine the nature of philosophy, specifically in the light of women's contributions to the discipline. Thus, papers are welcome which reflect upon the methodology and style of women philosophers themselves, or which compare the texts of women with those of men. Furthermore, since philosophical method can be distinguished from philosophical understanding, it is possible that philosophical understanding may be reach- ed in a variety of ways not usually considered strictly philosophical. The Society, therefore, will also explore the nature of philosophy by comparing texts that have traditionally been defined as strictly philosophical with those, especially by women, which have been considered marginal to the discipline, e.g., mystical, poetical, fict- ional or autobiographical texts. We thus hope to enlarge and enrich the resources of everyone who is concerned with the central and most basic questions of human life. The discussion and emendation of this statement, along with the drafting of a constitution and the election of a Board of Officers, will take place at the December meeting. The Society is to be open to women and men from all disciplines. Anyone who would like to become a member please contact: Veda Cobb-Stevens, Department of Philosophy, University of Lowell, Lowell, MA 01854. Acknowledgement: Betty Safford, guest editor of the Hypatia special issue, "Philosophy and Women Symposium," wishes to express her appreciation to Professor Sandra Sutphen of the Department of Political Science, California State University, Fullerton, for her helpful and detailed editorial comments on one of the papers for that issue. 162 announcements Job Announcement: The Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, assistant professor, tenure track, begining fall semester, 1988. 8 courses/year (4/semester) undergraduate only. ADS or ADC: non-Western philosophy, comparative religion, philosophy of religion, Native American philosophy, applied ethics. Specialization in one or more preferred. Teaching responsibilities will include frequent sections of Introduction to Philosophy, ABD in Philosophy required prior to application, Ph.D. preferred. Experience preferred. Some sum- mer work available. Send complete dossier to: Dr. Paul E. Rasmussen, Chairperson, Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, 1725 State Street, LaCrosse, WI 54601. Deadline for applica- tion: July 15, 1987, or should the position not be filled, the effective date for application will be extended one week and thereafter at one week intervals until the position is filled. Errata: The Hypatia Editor regrets the typographical errors in the following items from the Reference section of Nancy Fraser's, "Women, Welfare and the Politics of Need Interpretation," Hypatia 2:1, p. 120. Barrett, Nancy S. 1984. The welfare trap. Unpublished manuscript. Brown, Carol. 1981. Mothers, fathers, and children: From private to public patriarchy. In Women and revolution, ed. Lydia Sargent. Boston: South End Press. Fraser, Nancy. 1985a. Michel Foucault: A "Young Conservative"? Ethics 96:165-184. . 1985b. What's critical about critical theory? The case of Haber- mas and Gender. New German Critique 35:97-131. Errata: The Editor regrets that the name of one of our Associate Editors, Joyce Trebilcot, Washington University, St. Louis, was in- advertently deleted from the list of Associate Editors in Hypatia 2:1. 163 HypaRia A JOURNAL OF Eemh$t Pblkopby -:I::i:iS -: 'Sy..'Back Issues Volumi: Number 1, Spring 198619 's Dile;mma: A Problem i n Political Membership, by Harto'f#i; Women Philosophers in the Ancient Greek Donning the Mantle, by Kathleen Wider, .How Many : Does It Take to Make aJoke: Sexist Humor and /rongwithit, byMeerrieBergmann, The Politics of Self- A FeministPerspective byDiaa T. Meyers, Preparing for a Feminist Praxis, by)Andrea Nye, Romantic Love, and Self-Respectb Kathr..Pauly Morgan, Oppres- RLesistane: Fry's Pittics an:d Reality, by Claudia Card, t/.SReply?' by Laura M. Purdy and Nancy Tuana Jolume l, Numter 2, Fall 1986 )od and S:xualit": edited by Ann Ferguson andSex'ualty: Soi ' eminist Questions, byAnn icault ad Fmi. ' .-..Toward a Politics of Dif- mnaSai-k Female Friendship: Contra Chodorow tein, by?Jantie.i Raymod, Woman: Revealed or by Cyihia A. 'Freelani The Feminist Sexuality ics and.i'Politics, by CherylH. Cohen, Femin-iim and O)'Brien vs. Beauvoir, byReyesLazaro, Possess:ive net Farrell-Smith,: The Future of Mothering::::: Rep- nchnology and Feminist Theory, by As!-iDonchin, rninist Choose a?Marriage-Like tions hip?, by Back issues each: $10/indiv. ':and $: SIUE-Edwardsville, IL 62026-1437 20/insti. Editor, Hypatia, Antigone Valerie..L The Way Altrui, sioani ai] Sdiii submission guidelines Hypatia solicits papers on all topics in feminist philosophy. We will regularly publish general issues as well as special issues on a single topic, or comprising the proceedings of a conference in feminist philosophy. All papers should conform to Hypatia style using the Author/Date system of citing references (see the Chicago Manual of Style). Papers should be submitted in duplicate with the author's name on the title page only for the anonymous reviewing process. The Forum, edited by Maria Lugones, publishes short papers (2-3 pages) on a designated topic, in order to further dialogue within feminist philosophy. Papers on the topic of Women and Poverty should be sub- mitted by November 1, 1987, for inclusion in the next general issue. Papers are also invited for that issue on the continuing topic of Celibacy. Papers should be sent to: Maria Lugones, Box Y, Valdez, New Mexico, 87580. The Book Review section will publish reviews of publications in feminist philosophy. To propose publications for review, or to con- tribute book reviews, query the Book Review Editor: Jeffner Allen, Department of Philosophy, SUNY Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13901. Special Issues History of Women in Philosophy, edited by Linda Lopez McAlister. We are seeking papers on any aspect of the history of women in philosophy, from the ancient period to the twentieth century, e.g., feminist analyses of the works of women philosophers; expository, biographical and bibliographical pieces; discussions of ways to "mainstream" the works of women philosophers into history of philosophy curricula; assessments of the contributions of women to philosophy; items for an Archives section. All materials should con- form to Hypatia style, and be submitted in duplicate to: Linda Lopez McAlister, Women's Studies Program, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620. Deadline for papers: September 15, 1987. 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Address All Communications to: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research BROWN UNIVERSITY, BOX 1947 PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND 029IZ Annual subscription rates: $17.00 (foreign, $I8.5o) for libraries and institutions $13.00 for individuals; single copies $4.25 (double issue, $8.o5) and $3.25 (double issue, $6.5o), respectively. There is an additional charge for postage and handling on all back issues. A circular listing the main contents of the journal and a list of available back issues will be sent upon request. DIALOGUE Canadian Philosophical Review/Revue canadienne de philosophie Vol. XXV, No. 3, Autumn/automne 1986 Articles Using Nazi Scientific Data / ROBERT M. MARTIN On Using Nazi Data: The Case Against / ARTHUR SCHAFER Remarques sur La liberte grecque / ROBERT MULLER The Moral and Ethical Significance of TIT FOR TAT / PETER DANIELSON Gauthier on Deterrence / MARK VOROBEJ La pensee d'Aristote s'organisait-elle en systeme? Reflexions sur l'exegese d'un philosophe / RICHARD BODEUS Redacteur francophone: Franqois Du- chesneau, Departement de philosophie, Universite de Montreal, C.P. 6128, succ. A, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7 Putnam, Reference and Essentialism / JOHN WECKERT Critical Notices/Etudes critiques La tradition des Categories aristoteliciennes, a propos d'une traduction recente / GEORGES LEROUX The Theory of The Theory of the Arts / ROGER A. SHINER Interventions Book Reviews/Comptes rendus Books Received/Livres requs English-language editor: Michael McDonald, Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3GI THE !OU&NAL OF TAHE LBITISH SOCIETY FOR PHEOMENOLOOY An International Review of Philosophy and the Human Sciences EDITOR: WOLFE MAYS Volume 18, Number 2, May 1987 Articles Ingarden, Inscription, and Literary Ontology, by Richard Shusterman Hell and the Private Language Argument: Sartre and Wittgenstein on Self- Consciousness, the Body and Others, by Kathleen Wider Dialectical Logic and the Conception of Truth, by Richard Dien Winfield "I am no-thing ." - The Name and Cleft-Reference of Wo/Man, by Gayle L. Ormiston Is there an Overcoming of Metaphysics in Heidegger? by Georg Rompp Reviews and Notes The JBSP publishes papers on phenomenology and existential philosophy as well as contributions from other fields of philosophy. 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