Philosophy and Feminism Final

What does Laurence Thomas mean by moral deference? Why is it important to his account of “responding in the morally appropriate way to those who have been wronged” (358)? According to Thomas, why is moral deference a prelude to “bearing witness”? Can Thomas’s account be political as well as moral? If so, how?

Moral deference involves considering the particular experiences of people in groups that are ‘downwardly socially constituted’, which we haven’t experienced ourselves. We owe some people moral deference - we defer in a way that suggests that you’re concerned about responding in morally appropriate ways, by listening to these particular experiences closely and understanding the difference in these experiences. He says that we should presume in favour of a person’s account of their experiences, rather than dismissing them because we haven’t experienced these same things, when we can’t have experienced them because we don’t have access to these experiences - even if their account doesn’t align with what we think their account should be, we don’t dismiss it. We can’t understand something that we haven’t been through, and context matters. A man who’s been raped has a different experience to a woman who’s been raped, because of society’s views and expectations of women. Important to responding in morally appropriate ways because it opposes the idea that there’s a way for people to rationally grasp morally significant experiences of another person; illustrates that we live in a real world, not an ideal world, and people in oppressed groups are emotionally configured in certain ways. It’s a prelude to bearing witness because bearing witness is to win someone’s confidence that you can speak with conviction on their behalf to another about the moral pain they have endured; it’s letting their story take the front seat, telling their story with their own voice rather than with your own. Can’t do this without moral deference because you need to have heard the nuances, seen the emotions, and listened until you have insight into the character of the other’s moral pain. Can be political: Earning the trust of someone in a different social category. Forces you to engage w/ reality of our non-ideal world, and the ways that certain groups are privileged over others. Forces you to engage w/ reality that you can’t exactly ‘put yourself in another person’s shoes’ when they are downwardly socially constituted, because you haven’t had the experience of being downwardly socially constituted. 

Miranda Fricker delineates two kinds of epistemic injustice – testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Explain Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice by connecting the knowledge part captured in hermeneutical/epistemic with the injustice part. What are the primary and secondary harms of hermeneutical injustice? Provide an example from Fricker (or another reading) that captures the injustices/harms of hermeneutical injustice.

Hermeneutical injustice: the injustice of not being understood or heard either by yourself or by someone for whom it would be beneficial for you to be understood by, when marginalization is a significant factor in that failure. Your needs are not met, because you are not understood; structural issue. Primary harm: Unjust deficit of intelligibility. You won’t be taken as contributing to knowledge. Shut out of participation in a fundamental aspect of the human experience if you aren’t understood. By not being understood, people shut you out from being viewed as fully human, because they can’t be considered. Secondary harms: Concrete, practical harms. Example of trans people - being unable to convey their identities to medical professionals results in them not getting care. Spade - have to lie to medical professionals; come up with stories, try to align their lives with the expectations that the medical system has regarding what a trans person’s relationship to gender should look like. Identity related harms: Also secondary. Society views you according to a certain way, which contradicts your identity. Can be life or death for trans people; being misgendered could lead you to harm yourself because of this. Also, your sense of your own identity is shaped by the negative meanings structuring society.

Both Kathyrn Norlock and Sarah Ahmed describe their approaches as “praxis centered”. What does this mean for each of these theorists? How is this connected to their arguments in favour of non-ideal approaches?

Ahmed: Praxis - enacting the world we’re aiming for. Doing political work. Can’t separate the work from the world we’re in; not about an ideal world. Politics that wants to cause the end of a system, but not operating in this ideal scenario. Manifesto is a mission statement; defending manifestation of something that isn’t currently manifest 

Norlock: Starting w/ concrete details of inequalities, injustices, and oppression, and working from there. No point generating principles about an ideal world that we can’t reach. Praxis-centred - adjusting our expectations from changing an uncontrollable future, to developing better skills for living in a world that we can’t control. Work is continuous; never ends. Not giving up - maintaining and recommitting to cause 

Both: Reject notions of ideal world; we don’t live in an ideal world, we live in an imperfect one. We need to focus on skills, responsiveness, education. Constant struggle. Ahmed: always have to work to be a feminist killjoy. Norlock: work to make a better world never ends. More realistic if we acknowledge that we don’t live in an ideal world; less likely to burn out, stop trying.

Select ONE of the Principles from Sarah Ahmed’s “Conclusion 2 A Killjoy Manifesto” and outline/explain what Ahmed means by it. Connect what Ahmed is calling for in that principle to an argument, account, or approach by at least one other author in the course.

Principle 1: Not willing to make happiness my cause. Our society encourages us to do things to make other people happy, especially when people know that we will not be happy by doing that. Willing to not do that; willing to not make causing happiness her political cause. Learn that some people are made unhappy based on society’s expectations of happiness. Certain view of happiness that is defined by society, especially in neoliberal capitalist societies, that does not correspond to what will actually make you happy. The happy life has a particular vision of how you ought to be in the world that doesn’t fit with the unhappiness it creates for many people. Institutions are built on promises of happiness that hide the violence of these institutions. Willing to expose these myths of happiness, and expose the violence in institutions 

Connection to Gilligan: Gilligan talked about how women are socialized to eliminate ourselves from the equation, especially in moral decision-making; we don’t consider ourselves as having interests. Gilligan says this isn’t an ethic; you’re just removing yourself, deciding you don’t matter. Gilligan calls for women to realize that our interests do matter; think about how we can balance the interests of the self and the interests of others.

Not saying we shouldn’t care about others, but an ethic of care also requires that we care about ourselves.

Sue Campbell is critical of mainstream accounts of the emotions. Discuss the alternative framework she proposes “for understanding the public formation of feelings” (54) that make her account of the expression of emotions relational and political (you can focus on bitterness or sentimentality/emotionality). Draw out similarities to Laurence Thomas’s account of the role of emotions. Compare and contrast what we can glean from Sarah Ahmedon the role of emotions to what you cover in Campbell. What do these accounts tell us about the binary in mainstream liberal theory between reason and emotion?

Campbell: Those who are accused of being bitter will be dismissed. Thomas does this in a way. Bitterness is publicly formed, due to society’s oppression. Bitterness informs the actions you take, how you’re perceived, etc.; it informs how you act in the world. Link to Thomas. Account of bitterness that follows through who’s oppressed and who’s dismissed (Ahmed). Strips women of agency, trivializes their emotions, systemically constrains them. Leads to dismissing women’s accounts of their own lives. Link to Thomas - moral deference involves taking someone’s discussion of their own experiences as being informed and morally relevant

Link to Thomas: We aren’t all emotionally configured in the same way. Some of us are emotionally configured in ways that constitute us downwardly (oppression). This shapes who we are and how we’re perceived, and how we perceive ourselves. Self-perception - for Thomas, sense of vulnerability that comes with wondering if I perceived something correctly, etc.; emotional and intellectual burden of responding to how others perceive me. Thomas not talking about people who are bitter; says he’s focusing his account on people who have goodwill and want to talk about their experiences

Link to Ahmed: Killjoy feminism/feminist snap. Emotion isn’t just happening to individuals. Emotions play a major role in feminist snap - women have had enough, they’re going to become a ‘killjoy’; acknowledge that something is wrong, bad, oppressive, etc. Not making other people happy is central to theory; rejects idea that women should be making others happy. Snap only seems like the beginning of something if we ignore the pressure that leads to the snap. World in point of view of people doing oppression, not of people being oppressed; easy to dismiss

Campbell rejecting account of rationality that says that we can be separate from our emotions; acknowledging the inequality in the world. Ahmed also rejecting this - rejecting notion that neoliberal society will make everyone happy. Easy to not snap, to be calm and rational, when society isn’t oppressing or dismissing you; when you don’t have direct connection to the issues. Campbell - bitterness viewed as bitterness by oppressive society; dismiss oppressed people expressing anger and bitterness about their treatment.

Sarah Ahmed writes: “Corporeal diversity, how we come to inhabit different kinds of bodies, with differing capacities and incapacities, rhythms and tendencies, could be understood as a call to open up a world that has assumed a certain kind of body as a norm” (167). Explain how concepts such as control, surveillance, and governance play out in and through what Dean Spade and Susan Wendell tell us about bodies. Discuss at least two of Spade, Wendell, or Ahmed to illustrate the kinds of challenges to norms and structures that disabled OR trans people present. What are some of the ways in which these bodies can “open up a world”?

Wendell: Disability often socially constructed. What impairs us in society is socially constructed - someone in a wheelchair is impaired because society hasn’t set up supports for them to enter buildings, exist in world that’s made for able-bodied people. Disability defined in certain ways, so disabled people have to fit themselves into certain categories to get resourcesGovernment has control over bodies; gets to decide what accessibility means; means testing to prove that you deserve and need supports. Many people who experience physical, psychological, or economic struggles because of their bodies aren’t classed as disabled, because society and the medical establishment refuse to recognize this and expects them to perform as healthy people. Social recognition of disability determines whether you get help from doctors, government agencies, insurance companies, family and friends, etc. - definition of disability extremely important. Physical world is constructed in a way that disadvantages certain bodies; some bodies can’t move through the world in the same way. Bodies are categorized and organized in society in a way that frames them as ideal; for Wendell, disabled people don’t have luxury of an ideal body, have to engage with bodies as they are, not as they should be (opening up a world). Being able to live w/ pain in a certain way; not trying to eliminate, fix, or ignore pain

Spade: Medical system defines categories of people, diagnoses who falls into them, and has the power to decide what kind of treatment/surgery will be allowed. Binaries and dualisms when it comes to gender and the roles you’re forced to conform to; difficult to get surgery. We’re all governing each other in terms of societal expectations. Medical profession uses authority of DSM to define things like gender identity disorder, now gender dysphoria. Spade challenges ideas that these definitions reveal much, if anything, about being in a binary of either/or; asks what those seeking treatment have to undergo to prove they’re one or the other. Roles are learned behaviours, constructed; not natural. Requires abolition of idea that gender dysphoria is a disorder; having gender affirming care hidden behind wall of a mental disorder means there’s limits on who can access it and how. Trans people have to lie to doctors, construct a certain narrative about their life to prove they’re trans enough and get care. Same for disabled people, according to Wendell

Trans bodies opening up a world: Trans people open up paces for people to challenge/criticize norms. Existence of trans and intersex people disables strict binary of sex and gender. Challenging idea that body is the most important part of being - Talks about how he was different not just in gender, but class, religion, etc. Trans narratives often overgeneralized; he gives a personal story. Personal narrative informed by society as a whole; culturally informed. Trans people being in the world as subjects/agents challenges notion of gender expression.

According to Iris Marion Young “to experience cultural imperialism means to experience how the dominant meanings of a society render the particular perspective of one’s own group invisible at the same time as they stereotype one’s group and mark it out as the Other” (58-59). In what ways is this face of oppression relevant to Gilligan’s project of uncovering what women say about their moral decision-making processes? What does Gilligan uncover in listening to Amy? How does Gilligan explain care as an ethic that is different from an ethic of justice?

Idea that there’s a universal norm that’s assumed to be how we think about human beings, knowledge, and morality, which is based on white men. Traditional theory emphasizes the individual and the self; model based on white men. Challenges this approach; says we need a contextual approach, context matters. Women and girls are socialized differently into caregiving roles, taught to put themselves second. Traditional theory emphasizes the voices of men, the voice of this individualized notion of the self. Views women as wrong for not adhering to this model and for instead focusing on care and relationships. In listening to Amy, uncovers questions about how Heinz situation came about; focusing on communication, relationships, and connections, wondering if it had to come to the point that stealing drugs or letting his wife die are the only two options. Ethic of care focusing on questions of relationships, context, etc. that are missing in ethic of justice. Ethic of justice focuses on one, universalizable moral standard; unrealistic and impossible in world. Ethic of justice also gets rid of emotions; says there’s a rational way to approach things, doesn’t care about feelings. Western liberal context sees individuals as interchangeable; no consideration of who they are, what they’re like, their emotions, etc. 

Through bell hooks’ account of Sisterhood as “political solidarity built on the basis of diversity, shared strengths, and resources” OR hooks on “feminism: a movement to end sexist oppression” OR Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of a “transversal politics” that captures “the universality of intersecting oppressions as organized through diverse local realities” (228), these authors (and others in the course) argue for the importance of intersectionality to feminist theory and movement. Discuss two of these authors and their accounts of intersectionality. Whose account do you favour and why? Which of these accounts can provide answers to the question of “what to do” that we have asked and tried to answer throughout the course? Feel free to bring in at least one other author from the readings that can help answer these questions about intersectionality and “what to do”.

Collins: We need to have dialogue across national boundaries. Need to find commonalities to demonstrate worldwide networks of domination; major similarities in how oppression works worldwide. Need to consider interconnectedness of oppression; focusing on oppression in only one country ignores broader issues. Need to develop a global feminism, not restrict feminism to the west. Particular kinds of rights that all women might have limitations or restrictions on (poverty, reproductive rights, etc.; lives are similar and also different). Matrix of domination - US exists to dominate every aspect of peoples’ lives, tries to do so globally. Group histories are related and interdependent. Persistence of legacy of colonialism has led to economic system that is characterized by exploitation of women of colour everywhere; important therefore to consider global issues. Interconnectedness of black women’s experiences. Moves discussion of feminism into a global context; feminism needs to be in dialogue across countries with respect to thinking about issues that cross borders

hooks: Sexism intersects w/ racism, classism, and heterosexism. Not wanting to end only sexist oppression; need to consider all factors that influence people’s lives. Wants sisterhood/solidarity that’s meaningful in terms of being one that’s inclusive and aware of issues of gender, class, and race. Need to move as a united front, challenge structures. Can’t declare sisterhood based on a common enemy, because assumptions are made about who’s part of that sisterhood and who’s the enemy. Need to be able to challenge each other and disagree; can’t have change/revolution without some disagreement and evolution in thinking. Have to unlearn the idea that women cannot have solidarity with each other; have to unlearn idea that women should be competing. Doesn’t want to move too quickly in sisterhood and base it off of white, middle-class women, who are privileged and who originally got to decide what the feminist movement should be focused on in the public eye. Can’t transform society w/o sisterhood/solidarity