Philpropsophy – Philosophy Articles and Article Summaries

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I don’t think I’ve covered feminism anywhere in my blog, so I’d like to quickly render my position for reader reference. It’s certainly more nuanced than what I’ve provided with the following, but this will be a start. I bring this up because I was recently reviewing Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s Herland, which portrays a society run solely by women. It’s also been the object of a renewed wave of radical separatist feminism, which often is based on the premise of some sort of fundamental dissimilarity between men and women that makes civil society with both genders unacceptable. –more–>While the past century of feminism has brought forward proper recognition of the human equality of women, it has also brought with it an expansive baggage of mythology about the inherent characteristics of women, particularly in contrast to those of men. Trying my best not to create a straw man here, I’m going to summarize some elements of the mythology in question, initially held only by feminist thinkers on the fringe of social thought, but later trickling into popular culture: women are more gentle and caring than men; men are bloodthirsty, violent, possessive, etc. whereas women are not; women seek to always make everyone happy and prefer to cooperate, while men are selfish and competitive; and so forth. These beliefs are not restricted to radical feminists, but are often held to some degree in common social views on gender.

Fundamentally, each gender’s relationship to violence is the most important element of this mythology. The most basic and obvious evidence is often cited to demonstrate that women are just as capable of violence as men. In the most limited and conventional sense they certainly are: some have committed violent crimes, some have become soldiers who have fought on the front lines. It’s not only males who have committed the very direct acts of harming another human being. This isn’t an appealing answer to most forms of the feminine mythology, which can always respond by citing that men have a higher tendency to do so or that women only do those things because they are made man-like, generally finding some rationalization of the most basic evidence against their position.

And fairly enough, that basic evidence simply lacks nuance. Female violence goes beyond just what I described there, though: women have also been cooks, mechanics, and played other support roles for war machines. They have become police officers. They have become politicians! One needn’t shed blood immediately with his (or her) own hands to be violent, but naturally the same mythology that obscures and sanctions the violence of the state has also rendered women immune to the same criticism. Few people would reject the following principle: that not only is ordering and directing violence an act of violence, but complicity in violence is also to some degree a violent act by the complacent. Just because men have been biologically selected to physically act out the violence does not mean that the participants in the support system for those acts of violence are somehow above it. Indeed, female social circles appear plagued with conflict and generally the antithesis of cooperation. As the anecdotal evidence goes, women conspire against each other, betray trust, can generally behave in a passive-aggressive manner, etc. These are not violent acts per se, but still express a similar sociopathic character as male physical violence.

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This leads to the greatest area in which females can contribute as much to the ills of the world as men; a place where sociopathic personalities can be expressed into life-long sociopathic tendencies in others. The strongest mythology in society relating to women is most certainly the mythology of motherhood. The pains of child labor are respected; child rearing is revered. While there is truth to those troubles of motherhood, they are frequently used to excuse the actions of mothers everywhere. Even mothers cite it themselves, as a trump card in any dispute: “I brought you into this world! I raised you! You came out of my vagina! ” That suffering is treated as a blank check that absolves any future actions on the mothers’ part – a great thing for the mother, considering all that’s needed to get that check signed is to have sex and give birth. Motherhood, by this principle, equates to a kind of moral ownership.

The moral omnipotence of motherhood is, unsurprisingly, pragmatically appropriate. The power disparity between parents and children is the greatest power disparity in the world. This applies to fathers, obviously, but because the role of females has developed as the primary caregiver, mothers are in a position to exercise this power disparity on a more frequent basis. Power disparities can be accompanied by abuse, and when the mechanisms that check that abuse are eliminated, the abuser is in an ideal position to extract the maximum from the abused. Generally, if someone encountered someone who was manipulative, even only once physically abusive, or simply uninteresting, among other unpleasant characteristics, they would choose not to associate with that person. Yet a majority of people always return to their parents’ sides and take care of them in old age, repeating adages like “love thy father and mother” a phenomenon most certainly attributable to that initial power disparity. Everyone would look at a man walking up to an adult in a wheelchair and beating him up and verbally abusing him as a most horrid moral act. The great irony, of course, is that the man in a wheelchair has infinitely greater power than a young child does.

Just by this intuition, it’s easy to argue that the worst kind of violence that can be committed is to abuse children. Mothers are in an optimal position to do this. Given the omnipresence of familial mythology, mothers’ primary caregiving, and the clearly frequent exercise of parental power, it is impossible to conclude that females have some kind of intrinsic immunization against the use of violence. While they may be more hesitant or less disposed to commit direct acts of bodily harm, they are most importantly not less likely to commit ethical wrongdoing.

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