Sexism, Logic and Intuition II - Martin Prior

Sexism, Logic and Intuition II

I was originally intending to write on ‘Socialism and the ethics of gender rôles’, but I got bogged down.  Anyway, this article is of course going out on the Valentine’s Day Issue, when very recently Rupert Murdoch was thinking aloud that perhaps Page Three might well be scrapped.

So I am now adding a Part II to the paper I wrote last year, where I argued:

“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 think that Mr Murdoch’s reasons for having (and perhaps not having) Page Three are entirely cynical: he wants to boost his circulation.  Indeed it is a perversion of democracy that opinion-formers can attract a readership by such cynical methods – not least those who push their views by scare-mongering against Trades Unions, and thereby induce working people to act against their own interests.

I don’t believe in banning Page Three: if in our idealistic monogamous society the numbers don’t match, let the remainder of dividing by two pursue their needs privately and unobtrusively, perhaps towards the end of the paper.

But Mr Murdoch is to my mind a sexist since he has so little respect for women that he can use them in this way.  I think that if he wants to drop Page Three, this will also be cynical and disrespectful to women – particularly the moral self-congratulation - and he should be compelled to run it, and endure the loss of circulation he fears would happen.

Note on the ethics of gender rôles: in previous articles I have discussed

(i)             the importance of rôle combination in gender rôles, probably any rôles – permitting the learning of skills at a young age,

(ii)           the need for socialism to relate society and/or customs through skills to the environment.

Skills and technology are to my mind pivotal to the egalitarian goals of socialism, and I believe that whatever customs are evolved for effective combination of rôles, there should not be the stereotyping between the genders at the level of skills and technology.

But then, if there is no aptitude stereotyping, so that each subject attracts equal numbers of men and women, will the sciences attract more women.  Or the humanities attract more men?

Martin Prior

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Gender' Issue 38

Sexism, Logic and Intuition II - By Martin Prior

Sexism, Logic and Intuition II

I was originally intending to write on ‘Socialism and the ethics of gender rôles’, but I got bogged down.  Anyway, this article is of course going out on the Valentine’s Day Issue, when very recently Rupert Murdoch was thinking aloud that perhaps Page Three might well be scrapped.

So I am now adding a Part II to the paper I wrote last year, where I argued:

“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 think that Mr Murdoch’s reasons for having (and perhaps not having) Page Three are entirely cynical: he wants to boost his circulation.  Indeed it is a perversion of democracy that opinion-formers can attract a readership by such cynical methods – not least those who push their views by scare-mongering against Trades Unions, and thereby induce working people to act against their own interests.

I don’t believe in banning Page Three: if in our idealistic monogamous society the numbers don’t match, let the remainder of dividing by two pursue their needs privately and unobtrusively, perhaps towards the end of the paper.

But Mr Murdoch is to my mind a sexist since he has so little respect for women that he can use them in this way.  I think that if he wants to drop Page Three, this will also be cynical and disrespectful to women – particularly the moral self-congratulation - and he should be compelled to run it, and endure the loss of circulation he fears would happen.

Note on the ethics of gender rôles: in previous articles I have discussed

(i)             the importance of rôle combination in gender rôles, probably any rôles – permitting the learning of skills at a young age,

(ii)           the need for socialism to relate society and/or customs through skills to the environment.

Skills and technology are to my mind pivotal to the egalitarian goals of socialism, and I believe that whatever customs are evolved for effective combination of rôles, there should not be the stereotyping between the genders at the level of skills and technology.

But then, if there is no aptitude stereotyping, so that each subject attracts equal numbers of men and women, will the sciences attract more women.  Or the humanities attract more men?

Martin Prior

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Gender' Issue 38

Sexism, Logic and Intuition - By Martin Prior

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