Social and Political Philosophy

Assignment for sixth class (March 15)

Feminist critique of malestream political theory

It will not have escaped your notice that all of our readings so far have been written by men. It may have escaped your notice that these men, almost without exception, have agreed that women’s place in the polis should be subordinate to that of men. As is all too common, the editors of our Reader have omitted the discussions of the nature and role of women that can be found in the writings of the canonical male political thinkers. We talked a bit about Aristotle’s view of this. You might also take note of John Stuart Mill’s description of the legal status of women on pp. 393-395. This second-class status was not out of line with the thinking of the champions of liberty and equality for men.

As long as women’s thoughts have been made known to the public, they have been protesting this subordinate condition, and our Reader does sample this counter-tradition. (Hence the first three items on the reading list below.) Oddly, it was a man, John Stuart Mill, who produced one of the first systematic arguments for full equality for women (though he always insisted that his wife Harriet was a full partner in the writing of his works.) Unfortunately, the reader gives us nothing after Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 classic, so I’ve had to supplement it with handouts and online resources.

Read:

Selections from Christine de Pizan, Marie-Olympes de Gouges, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, and Simone de Beauvoir in Princeton Readings in Political Thought, pp. 153-158, 356-370, 388-397, and 601-614.

Articles by Marilyn Frye and Sandra Bartky (Handouts)

Online materials by Eleanor Holmes Norton, Susan Moller Okin, Rosemary Tong, and Katha Pollitt as described in my email sent 3/1/03.

Write: 3-5 pages (total) answering the following questions:

1 Why does John Stuart Mill “deny that anyone knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes?” (p. 392)

2 What do you think Simone de Beauvoir means by saying that women have been defined as “the Other”?

3 How does Marilyn Frye use the metaphor of a birdcage to explain how oppression can be hard to see?

4 What does she mean when she says (p.16) that "Women are oppressed as women. . . . But men are not oppressed as men."

5 What do you think of Frye’s analysis of oppression and of the conclusions she draws about the position of men and women in our society? To what extent do you think that Frye’s account of social reality is still accurate? Specifically: Do you think that women still have good reasons to fear male power (to fear, for example, sexual assault, employment discrimination, abandonment, ridicule or incomprehension)? Do you think that women are still brought up (or sent messages by the mass media) in ways that undermine their capacity to act independently and to think of themselves as fully equal to men in rights, respect, etc.?

6 Explain and critically discuss one of the following claims:

a. “..the ideal body of femininity … [is] a body on which an inferior status has been inscribed.” (Bartky, p.71) Consequently, a feminism that strives for equal rights for women, while accepting “conventional standards of body display,” is incoherent. (Bartky, p. 78)

b. Women’s disproportionate provision of emotional sustenance to men is ‘objectively disempowering’ even when it feels empowering. Consequently, “women run real risks of exploitation in the transactions of heterosexual caregiving.”(Bartky, p. 117)

7 Pollitt criticizes what she calls ‘difference feminism’ and endorses ‘equality feminism’. What do these terms mean and what are her reasons for preferring the latter? (See Tong’s encyclopedia article for explanations of the views Pollitt is criticizing.)

8 What do you think about this? Do you think that it is enough to win for women the same rights that men already have? Or should the goal of the women’s movement be to transform our patriarchal society into something different, to transform its structures and organizing principles in a way that reflects the values and experiences that are specific to women? If the latter, what would this look like?