Sexism,
Logic and Intuition
In the period 1974-6, I was active in the National
Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL now ‘Liberty’). At the beginning of this period, banning
pornography and prostitution were seen as reactionary in the same way perhaps
as any other form of censorship. Over
that short period attitudes changed and differing feminist views became more prominent.
I felt that a number of their arguments were
logically flawed and unhelpful. Before
going into detail I am going to consider two points, the first to do with
racism. The late Jade Goody from Big
Brother was once accused of being racist for doing an Indian accent, and her
response was ‘but people imitate my accent’.
But recently I heard an Indian say – I think on the Wright Show (Channel
5) – that he often heard people doing Indian accents, but he knew intuitively
when it was offensive. Being an
immigrant myself, I would say my reaction is similar. As a linguist I have on occasion done this
Indian accent – with best Sanskrit consonants - but I am in fact making a
linguistic point, as might an accent trainer in the theatre. But I have never formally studied Indian
intonation which I can improvise without any difficulty, and this bothers me
since I am not sure it comes out as respectful.
The second point can be made with a Venn diagram I
produced two issues ago, about negative reference. It is shown opposite:
Note that this is a mathematical statement: in
language, depending on intonation and context, we might be conceding that two
or three blondes might not be stupid (especially with a rising tone).
No, not all blondes are stupid, and some know
intuitively when they are being offensively treated as stupid. But I wonder if such attitudes have an
‘adverse environmental effect’: by being treated as stupid, they use their
intelligence less.
Let us know get to the substance of the issue:
certain activities are regarded as ‘treating women as objects’. Well firstly, an argument condemning activity
between consenting adults on the basis of a simile is a very questionable
ethical argument. Many things have a
resemblance to something else: if I lift somebody up from the floor, in a sense
I am treating somebody as an object, so one must go directly to the basis of
the similarity that causes concern.
But even if we accept this description of the
activity: treating some adults as objects with their consent does not imply we
should treat all such adults as objects regardless of their consent.
So we cannot condemn say beauty contests for
treating people as objects, but I believe we can go back to intuition: if our
intuition is that the people present at such activities ‘treat blondes as
stupid’ and the like, then we may feel that even if the event is not
intrinsically sexist, in practice that is precisely what it is. But we must also avoid making
generalisations.
I talked at the beginning about consenting adults,
and if we don’t respect intuitions we may well not gain such consent.
What set me on the path of questioning feminist
arguments was that of gender rôles, mainly condemned because different
societies had different rôle systems, and all tended to justify them on an
innate basis: so women were innately better cooks etc etc. Since this is wrong, gender rôles must be
wrong. But the flaw in this is that even
if societies don’t all have the same rôle systems, all societies have some rôles. My view is that gender rôles are chosen according
to what can be conveniently combined,
and even though one might feel this was not an optimal mix in terms of
aptitude, this is compensated for by early learning.
But this combination principle mainly applies
within households, so that in terms of careers, aptitude has to be relevant,
and studying this should certainly not critically depend on intuition: there is
no way that a combination principle can be invoked to say that ballet dancers
must be either female or gay! And
feminism is certainly not ‘post-’, so anyone thinking of being the father of
post-feminism need not apply. Nor
post-anti-racism. Nor (even in Tony
Blair’s wildest dreams) post-Trades-Unionism.
Philosophers may well be wary of resorting to
intuition, but in fact it is the basis of modern linguistics. Linguists these days do not accept something
as grammatical in a particular language unless it accords with the intuitions
of a native speaker. That is a starting
point: and philosophy cannot directly use intuitions, but it will have
something to say about any scientific method that draws upon it.
Such intuitions to my mind explain why for some
ethnic and other groups a neutral term soon becomes derogatory, so that another
neutral term has to be found. Thus the
term Polak is derogatory in the States, even though it is the Polish for
Pole. And ‘hussy’ originally meant
housewife, and ‘bird’ is derived from a dialect word – I believe Northern -
related to bride.
Just one more thing: aren’t beauty contests
reinforcing one particular idea of beauty, one particular ‘eye of the
beholder’? So who is what is
disrespectful to?
Postscript on post-feminism...
In the last issue we talked about magic, and about
madness in the issue before that, so now I can adapt my diagrams of those
issues to post-feminism:
The analysis is very similar to that of Magic. But the bubble should really straddle :) and :].
The very serious point relates to observations and
variables: any progressive movement will deal with a situation there are more
variables than observations, and must proceed by trial and error, picking out
the strands in a situation. As in
language-learning, which might be characterised by
imitation(!)
-> deduction -> correction,
error has to be constructive. In that process, where the parallel of
imitation is problematic but possibly still valid (perhaps rôle-models but this
needs further examination), deductions will often take the form of
over-generalisations. We will add to our
understanding if we allow for intuition, and allow for gender rôle within the
household and outside, but of course that creates problems as well as attempted
solutions.
By Martin Prior
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Gender' Issue 26
