Original and significant female philosophers?
In a talk at the University of Austin in 2014, Charles Murray was asked by a student whether he stood by this claim: "No woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the world's great philosophical traditions"
He answered: "Tell me who you had in mind" ...[silence]... "Until somebody gives me evidence to the contrary, yeah, I'll stick with that statement."
Is Murray correct?
Points off for personal attacks on Murray and/or calling him a sexist. Attack the statement, not the speaker.
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Hilariously enough, the only female philosopher that I can think of and that comes closest is Ayn Rand. She is significant and original -- and this is really stretching it -- but perhaps the most overrated one that I can think of after Marx.
I do not consider Arendt, Nussbaum significant and/or original -- neither Foot or Anscombe. They are certainly not on the level of Kant and Hume.
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1 and 2 are the relevant articles. 3 is Murray's own defence.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/murray/360789/
[2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/04/10/charles_murray_on_women_philosophers_stands_by_his_claim_that_no_woman_has.html
[3] http://www.bible-researcher.com/murray1.html
He answered: "Tell me who you had in mind" ...[silence]... "Until somebody gives me evidence to the contrary, yeah, I'll stick with that statement."
Is Murray correct?
Points off for personal attacks on Murray and/or calling him a sexist. Attack the statement, not the speaker.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hilariously enough, the only female philosopher that I can think of and that comes closest is Ayn Rand. She is significant and original -- and this is really stretching it -- but perhaps the most overrated one that I can think of after Marx.
I do not consider Arendt, Nussbaum significant and/or original -- neither Foot or Anscombe. They are certainly not on the level of Kant and Hume.
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1 and 2 are the relevant articles. 3 is Murray's own defence.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/murray/360789/
[2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/04/10/charles_murray_on_women_philosophers_stands_by_his_claim_that_no_woman_has.html
[3] http://www.bible-researcher.com/murray1.html
Comments (183)
"It may be a philosopher, but it's derivative"
"It may be a tradition, but it's not a great tradition"
But if you were to include Thales, for instance, I'd have a hard time seeing how you would not include Hypatia.
The Atlantic article you linked to makes exactly the right point I think when it rejects the question itself as a complete sham, or at least transforms it into a point of departure to put not women, but 'the tradition' into question: "The real question shouldn't be "can woman do philosophy?" but rather "can philosophy make itself worthy of women like Sojourner Truth, Patricia Hill Collins, and Joanna Russ?" Is there a philosophy that can speak thoughtfully about equality, about injustice, and about women?".
So a philosopher is only original and significant if they're on the level of Kant and Hume? Seems like saying that someone is only a great footballer if they're as good as Messi or Ronaldo. You're setting the bar unreasonably high.
Regarding Anscombe, she did coin the term "consequentialism" and gave rise to contemporary virtue ethics. Seems like an original and significant contribution.
That's misleading. Women have twice as many nerve receptors per square centimeter of skin, but men have more skin. I think it works out as women having 38% more nerve receptors.
Social and environmental factors play a significant role more so than receptors vis-a-vis a woman' capacity to undertake philosophical study. I work with young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds and the opinions on when they should marry, how to dress, what to think has solidified that to try and get them to switch that training and find focus with an education and themselves is only possible when I lead by example because they look up to me, but even so it is incredibly difficult.
Women have been coerced to conform into passive and disposable objects for centuries so three cheers for Nussbaum, Arendt, Beauvoir etc for defying all the odds. Charles Murray can shove his gender bias where it hurts.
Only off by 62%? That ain't bad.
I think there have been some women holding this status - Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Simone Weil, etc.
Quoting Emptyheady
That they are not the level of Kant or Hume that is certain. But that doesn't mean they aren't great philosophers. Kant and Hume, just like Wittgenstein, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Aquinas, etc. these people are unique - they are on an entirely different level. When we speak of philosophers, we don't speak of those very rare few only. Probably nobody in the whole world (whether they be male or female) today is at the same level as those people, and that alone speaks volumes.
In addition to this, men have often had access through history to education first - meaning that women only got the chance if there were sufficient resources left after educating men. And education was never culturally emphasised for women. Even today, education is only emphasised for women in-so-far as they are told to get a degree so that they can be given a job, not to learn for learning's sake. Furthermore, society, since women were directly needed for reproduction, has always had a much stronger interest in indoctrinating women to unthinkingly join the masses and adhere to social indoctrination - even today. As Schopenhauer said:
"If a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.”
Good job :)
There have been no significant women genocidal dictators. Does this reflect an innate moral superiority, a universal female incompetence, or the structural dominance of the male?
My own bias tells me that Murray is not pointing to a curious fact in need of careful investigation and analysis, but attempting to justify the gender disparity as natural and inevitable rather than constructed.
Imagine the student asking is female. Is there not something of a self-fulfilling prophecy at work? You are a woman, therefore you are not worth my time teaching or listening to; I think I would be thinking about changing courses - and another great woman philosopher is lost to posterity.
I have no points to be taken off in this game, so I am quite happy to call Murray sexist, and @Emptyheady sexist. And as a great philosopher once said, "None of what I said are insults. It is a simple observational fact having read your post."
Kant liked to deflect away from himself and personal questions, and only ever gave vague, dismissive comments about his personal life. He definitely was ashamed of something. Like the least was wrong with him from what I could tell. Why so obsessed with being good? Why books over people?
He also was interested in religious quacks of his time. That guy that wrote about the near death experience that was popular a few years ago because he was a famous neuroscientist, Kant would definitely be following that story.
Don't say that in Germany, you'll get arrested.
You know that you can't show Nazi's or Nazi iconography in Germany? That's like half of all of the bad guys in video games and movies! Wtf do they do over there?
There's a dark side to every fetish.
I wonder if it's something to do with the language, as per the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis?
Everyone sex stuff is weird as shit except for mine.
Quoting Michael
This is probably the best critique so far.
Quoting unenlightened
This was my suspicion as well and I think you’re partly right on this one. But I also think that he is mostly spot on regarding innate differences between the genders. Ascribing everything to discrimination is scientifically completely unsound.
He points out a few well-established facts:
(1) The standard deviation in IQ among men is significant higher than among women, which makes men dominate both ends of the extreme on the spectrum. The results is that pretty much all exceptional geniuses and idiots are men.
(2) Philosophy is the only humanities major that has an average IQ that is above economists and engineers, while the field is still dominated by men. Also note the clear correlation between IQ and Gender in different majors.
(3) The Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, has been given to 44 people since it originated in 1936. All have been men. (...) In a large sample of mathematically gifted youths, for example, seven times as many males as females scored in the top percentile of the SAT mathematics test. We do not have good test data on the male-female ratio at the top one-hundredth or top one-thousandth of a percentile, where first-rate mathematicians are most likely to be found, but collateral evidence suggests that the male advantage there continues to increase, perhaps exponentially. Men also consistently outscore women on SAT Maths scores.
(4) Even in the 20th century, women got only 2 percent of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences—a proportion constant for both halves of the century—and 10 percent of the prizes in literature.
(5) Thus, for reasons embedded in the biochemistry and neurophysiology of being female, many women with the cognitive skills for achievement at the highest level also have something else they want to do in life: have a baby. In the arts and sciences, forty is the mean age at which peak accomplishment occurs, preceded by years of intense effort mastering the discipline in question.
(6) I have omitted perhaps the most obvious reason why men and women differ at the highest levels of accomplishment: men take more risks, are more competitive, and are more aggressive than women.
(7) Evolutionary biologists have some theories that feed into an explanation for the disparity. In primitive societies, men did the hunting, which often took them far from home. Males with the ability to recognize landscapes from different orientations and thereby find their way back had a survival advantage. Men who could process trajectories in three dimensions—the trajectory, say, of a spear thrown at an edible mammal—also had a survival advantage. Women did the gathering. Those who could distinguish among complex arrays of vegetation, remembering which were the poisonous plants and which the nourishing ones, also had a survival advantage. Thus the logic for explaining why men should have developed elevated three-dimensional visuospatial skills and women an elevated ability to remember objects and their relative locations—differences that show up in specialized tests today.
(8) One hypothesis for explaining this paradox is that three-dimensional processing absorbs the extra male capacity. In the last few years, magnetic-resonance imaging has refined the evidence for this hypothesis, revealing that parts of the brain’s parietal cortex associated with space perception are proportionally bigger in men than in women.
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The links can be found in either the text or here.
Well I have a general critique of scientific psychology, as some will have noticed. There is a fundamental problem with all the statistics you bring forth above. which is that their truth does not necessarily support the hypothesis of innate differences as is generally supposed. There is a pressure to conform to stereotypes, there is stereotypical treatment, and there is internalised stereotype identification.
I have already suggested that a woman might well find Murray's courses uncongenial, and that they might not even get fair and equal treatment. They may have been given barbies to play with and not lego, they may have been made subtly or unsubtly aware that clever women are unpopular, that mathematics is 'unfeminine', that competing with men is more dangerous for a female.
In short, the stereotype does not just tell you what you are, it demands that you be that. Psychological understanding changes the psyche, and this undermines the 'innate truth' of psychology of all kinds because the theory creates the phenomena.
"Geneticists have found that the diversity of the DNA in the mitochondria of different people (which men and women inherit from their mothers) is far greater than the diversity of the DNA in Y chromosomes (which men inherit from their fathers). This suggests that for tens of millennia men had greater variation in their reproductive success than women. Some men had many descendants and others had none (leaving us with a small number of distinct Y chromosomes), whereas a larger number of women had a more evenly distributed number of descendants (leaving us with a larger number of distinct mitochondrial genomes). These are precisely the conditions that cause sexual selection, in which males compete for opportunities to mate and females choose the best-quality males." (Pinker 2002)
Christopher Hitchens echoes that point in his polemic article:
There is only one big problem, lack of evidence. The "stereotype" is universal, which statistically severly stacks the odds against this hypothesis. Now, I know that you are not good at statistics (as you claimed that yourself). The odds of that "coincidence" is 1 in 2^195 (countries) -->
1 : 50000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
that the coin happens to falls on the same side in all those cases (metaphorically speaking).
Furthermore, stereotypes can be true. We are actually quite good at them.
At last, you can not claim "discrimination" as the only explanatory factor without providing evidence that all the other factors are false. That requires a lot of empirical work, and I have yet to see just one...
But seriously, I'd argue that women doing philosophy has historically been more tied with a religious affiliation, such as the many female Christian mystics in the European medieval period, of whom there was a great number. I'd also suggest that women tend more toward poetry than philosophy straight-out. This could be extended out toward literature in general, though I think this trend has diminished significantly in modern times.
They can indeed, and that is why science confirms them. But this does not make them innate.
Your statistics would be relevant and possibly even correct if stereotypes were not communicable diseases.
This is very true, but it does nothing to further the inquiry, it does not exclude the very strong evidence for non-discriminatory factors, such as genetic differences and the behavioural characteristics. The fact that all the evidence strengthen each other as soon as we accept that evolution is true, makes Murray's case quite solid at its core.
So why are women so under-represented in majors with a high average level of IQ?
What Spelke claimed here is quite common, namely that women are discouraged to enter male dominated fields.
Pinker responses concisely: "I think you could take the same phenomenon and come to the opposite conclusion! Say there were really was such a self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating dynamic: a difference originates for reasons that might be arbitrary; people perceive the difference; they perpetuate it by their expectations. Just as bad, you say, is the fact that people don't go into fields in which they don't find enough people like themselves. If so, the dynamic you would expect is that the representation of different genders or ethnic groups should migrate to the extremes. That is, there is a positive feedback loop where if you're in the minority, it will discourage people like you from entering the field, which will mean that there'll be even fewer people in the field, and so on. On either side of this threshold you should get a drift of the percentages in opposite directions.
Now, there is an alternative model. At many points in history, arbitrary barriers against the entry of genders and races and ethnic groups to various professions were removed. And as soon as the barrier was removed, far from the statistical underrepresentation perpetuating or exaggerating itself, as you predict, the floodgates open, and the formerly underrepresented people reaches some natural level. It's the Jackie Robinson effect in baseball. In the case of gender and science, remember what our datum is. It's not that women are under-represented in professions in general or in the sciences in general: in many professions women are perfectly well represented, such as being a veterinarian, in which the majority of recent graduates are women by a long shot. If you go back fifty years or a hundred years, there would have been virtually no veterinarians who were women. That underrepresentation did not perpetuate itself via the positive feedback loop that you allude to."
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What else is interesting is that the explanation regarding sexism is extremely vague, to the point of not being falsifiable in any case. It is as if those proponents put on their tin-foil hats and become the female version of Alex Jones. The Alex Jones' of academia.
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Facts =/= sexists.
Neither has there ever been a great female composer
But given the above facts, this is not surprising. Composing music requires some exceptional abstract and systemic thought.
Simon Baron-cohen claimed that autism is an extreme masculine trait. There seems to be some non-random overlap between autism, masculinity and exceptional talents.
Probably the reasons there hasn't been as many influential female philosophers as male are:
1.) Female education has historically been limited in comparison to male education.
2.) Females have historically been subjugated by a patriarchy in which males are given the opportunity for transcendence while females are stuck in immanence, oftentimes expected to support their husbands' transcendence.
3.) Philosophy might just be something males tend to do more of, but this doesn't mean males are somehow "better" than females. If anything it might just mean that males tend to be more neurotic and isolating than females, as well as excessively proud of these character faults. It's usually hard to admit when you're not attractive/charming/popular/influential so it's not surprising that these sorts of people rescue their self-esteem by elevating themselves on a plane of existence higher than anyone else simply because they think about things that most people don't know or care about. If this superiority complex has any legitimacy, then, it applies to everyone who does not do philosophy, not just some portion of the female population.
Indeed. My vain hope is to block the enquiry completely.
I'll take your word for it.
Kant was quite possibly a virgin all his life, with little to no interest in sex for the sake of pleasure.
Camille Puglia discussed why there are very few great women painters. She observed that this is the case despite women having plenty of access to artist-training--several hundred thousand women taking drawing and painting classes (over the previous 2 centuries). She attributes the dominance of male painters of great stature to "the male gaze" -- the priority of looking. Visuality is more important to men than to women. Could be.
If you take the population as a whole over the last 2 or 3 thousand years (what... 10 billion people?) very very few people did exceedingly well at anything in the areas of 'cultural production'.
Performing far above the plane of the average, truly excelling in cultural production, is limited to a small number of people. The barrier to high-level performance isn't in the stars, isn't solely in oppressive systems of discrimination, it's in us. The "package" -- genius, high levels of creativity, unusually profound insight, high ambition, aggressive competitiveness, is rare. 99.99% of us are not going to be notable at anything.
Take any field -- mathematics to shoeing horses -- people will perform somewhere on the normal distribution, from really very good to just very bad.
One would suppose that women and men are as evenly represented in the thin, extreme ends of the distribution as they are in the fat middle. It seems like the conditions of success at the high extreme end are such that only those with social support (family connections, wealth, social status, etc.), high levels of competitive drive--aka aggressiveness, or the ability and willingness to survive as loners, are going to make it.
What it takes to succeed at the high extreme end just might not be all that attractive to women.
And maybe, a lot of what academically oriented men do just isn't that interesting to women either.
... is a bit of a waste of time, like studying the existence of obvious differences between chalk and cheese. One might wonder at cheesemongers bigging up the statistics on how much calcium there is in cheese.
Yes but it's still another area of study that should be approached normally, instead of with fear. Why should we mind being different? It's only if you presuppose that men are superior, that women being different becomes insulting. And indeed it's only if one presupposes that men are superior, that training women to behave like men becomes reasonable...
It's the norms of study that I have a beef with, along with the norms of training that come from them. The fact is we do mind being different, and we mind others being different even more. That is why we want to measure and classify each other all the time.
But surely that's also part of understanding each other - understanding how it is we're different.
But this doesn't mean they're oppressing the rest of us. It means that they're very well-organised, they work well together, they are very interested in science and learning from a young age. We should actually follow their example and make ourselves better!
No. Adolf Hitler was a progressive, and just like other progressives, he had ideas which were obviously crazy. Only that the progressives never realise their ideas are crazy, until it's too late. Just like today. God bless us that we got rid of Obama and Crooked Hillary >:O Those lunatics would have destroyed America!
Anyway, regarding your comment, there is extremely strong inverse-correlation between the level of income/education and fertility rate, which is exemplified with women due to pregnancies.
I read somewhere that the most dominant factor for this phenomenon is the idea of opportunity cost. Women often complain that they are getting "punished" for having to choose between a stable family or a successful career. What you stated is echoed by Murray's essay.
One obvious policy is to compensate those career women through government handouts. This is highly controversial, since this will be a de facto wealth distribution from the poor to the rich, heavily increasing inequality.
Opportunity cost is a fundamental economic principle, an objective fact of life, not the fault of any institution. Many women can't fathom that, which is a shame but not a surprise. Only one woman got a Nobel prize in economics so far, compared to 73 men.
As a famous economist once said: 'there are no solutions, only trade-offs'.
Men should be less ambitious and successful, so that we can become more equal.
What's the point of being equal? How boring that would be...
It's THE fundamental economic - or better said business - principle. Every choice is a negation.
Filthy...but genuinely arousing.
The same thing, only less of it. Better? 145 words v. 307.
Camille Puglia says women have had plenty of opportunity to be great painters. Apparently they don't have what it takes (like, the male gaze).
The standard distribution will not be mocked. Most (99.009%) people never do anything great because most people have ordinary abilities. Whether it be mathematics or horse shoeing, genius is rare. Very perceptive, creative minds seldom occur. Smart people are a small minority. Most of us live in the big hump in the middle. That's OK because we mediocrities in the big hump actually keep the world turning.
The people on the top (or out there in the .001% of high achievement) clawed, bought, or bullied their way to the top. It takes more than genius--it takes balls. And connections don't hurt, either. Most women don't have balls, but a few do.
I agree >:O genius!
Heh, heh, heh. I accidentally flagged your comment.
Sounds like the voice of frustration to me. I know Unenlightened gets pissed off if one focuses on the why instead of the what.. but especially with stuff like this.. the why is the only interesting aspect of it (to me).
So if you got the impression at some point that you aren't allowed to ask this kind of question or that it would be wrong to think the way you do -- I'm genuinely sorry about that. You have a right to think whatever makes the most sense to you.
It would be a little ironic if you didn't go about it with a little intelligence, for instance in paying attention to what you can and can not do with statistics, but otherwise.. explore away.
Personal anecdote that may fit in: I worked at AT&T for ten years. In that time I saw a number of women drop out of electronic engineering to raise their kids. One was my boss's boss's boss. She was supposed to keep going up the line to NY. She quit. I heard she bought an amusement park, but wanted to spend more time with her kids.
I didn't quite know what to make of that, especially as I watched the trend. I myself quit to go off and explore living in a van or in the woods. I eventually became a massage therapist, and then a nurse. I lived the life I wanted. There's no doubt about that. I hope you do too.
BTW.. why are you focusing on this question so much?
Which one? X-)
I pretty much agree here.
I think that women are not as competitive as men are.
Women in general seem to be unwilling to put in the same level of effort, commitment and sacrifice as men when it comes to excelling.
I don't think you can argue that women are fundamentally incapable compared to men, except for perhaps in pure physical prowess, and even then on a pound for pound basis women are just as capable as men physically.
It's not this. Rather they do what it takes to avoid conflict. Women hate conflict, at least most of them do. I'm a very conflictual person, I enjoy conflicts, and I see this quite frequently in women. They back down easily. Even men do, but they first put up some resistance.
The point I was making was that I do not believe there is grounds to argue that women are less capable than men are, say for example at confrontation, but that women not as willing as are men.
I do not believe it is sexist to point out that, compared to men, women are less willing to do what is necessary to be a top competitor in certain arena's of competition and that this, more than anything else, accounts for male dominance in areas like science and philosophy.
By and large women simply don't have the will or interest to make the necessary commitments and sacrifices. even women that would be capable are more likely to make other things a priority.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I thought your previous post was fine. Writing is all about clarity and purpose. Length is unimportant.
Anyway, to the crux of your post. What people (mostly leftists) need to realise is that life is a not a zero-sum game. All socialists arguments are rooted in some kind of zero-sum thinking, but one of the first thing they teach you in economic classes is that economics is not a zero-sum game.
Men's successes do not go at the cost of women.
It is evidently the case that the gender gap in higher education increases if the financial aspects becomes less important. For, example, there are proportionally more women in engineering in India or in other poorer countries than in Norway, because the women in Norway worry less about money, and are therefore more inclined to choose what they truly enjoy instead of planning a career.
Women and men make different choices, and there is strong evidence that discrimination plays little to no role.
>:O Was it accidental?
I'm not sure if it's just the risk... I've known women who are big risk takers, and fearless in the face of risk, so long as that risk doesn't include becoming directly engaged in conflict with other people.
I myself for example, am not a big risk taker. I'm a coward when it comes to risk, I want certainty. So I'm not sure that men are "bigger risk takers".
I argue both. Going by the evidence I cited, women are less willing to make the necessary sacrifices and are naturally less capable.
>:O Sure, I don't mind. I actually did accidentally hit flag on yours lol
Having a difference in priorities does not make women less capable in my opinion.
I agree that men and women make different decisions based on different set of priorities that are driven by biological imperatives but I do not agree that being a woman automatically makes you incapable of doing something as good as a man, well except for purely physical things of course.
Awesome! What's the point? That culture has nothing to do with gender disparity?
That was sort of my point.
It is not social constructs that accounts for some gender disparities.
For example most men are not willing or interested in being stay at home parents compared to women.
That simply is not as validating to most men compared to women.
She's a #feminazi ;)
This is some dumb shit right here, >:O
There definitely are biological differences. Historically, black women in America allowed white men to see that the behavior of white women wasn't nature, but culture. Without a comparison of that kind, how would we tell the difference?
I don't understand this.
Sorry.
Can you rephrase or go into more depth?
I don't fight battles that I'm certain to lose now, that would be silly no? I have a new client who hates Trump for example, and I had to listen to him yesterday for ~30mins ranting about Trump related things. Of course I kept my mouth shut, nod the head and agreed with him, otherwise I'm sure I would've lost the job >:O
Maybe you are not a martyr to your values.
Quoting Mongrel
So, are you really in favor of people thinking whatever makes the most sense to them or not?
The comment was about the STYLE of filling male roles, not that females can't fill male roles, or males can't fill female roles. If women and men were both drafted here the way they are in Israel, being a female soldier would be routinized. It isn't in the US.
If you find my style preferences to be an affront, then I say, that is too fucking bad.
To me, it is about the telos of a particular job, regardless of gender. Just do the job well. I do not care whether you have a Y chromosome or not, but do not lower the bar to satisfy some kind of socialist ideal where all jobs are perfectly balanced by gender through affirmative action. Most fire-fighters are men because men are physically and mentally more competent. Are there exceptions? Sure, we call them lesbians.
Another exception: I will never hire a male nanny to look after my children. I have a deep suspicion of male nannies, and I hold the right to be sexist in this regard.
I have found that my shorter, less nuanced posts are getting read more, and generate more response. You may think my style preferences are some dumb shit, but at least you responded. Thanks!
You're right. Your aesthetics are your business. So do you disapprove of men in drag?
I remember being sensitive to this. Instinctively, I wore a dress and dress shoes and pantyhose.. the whole nine yards.. for the first few years I worked at AT&T. I didn't want people to think I was trying to be a man. After I got my creds, I started wearing whatever I wanted.
I think I see your point.
I did not mean to imply that there are not or never have been social constructs that result in gender disparity.
I just don't agree with the view that social constructs account for all gender disparity.
I don't either. I used to have this half-assed theory about psychological differences. But I'm Gen-X. In my lifetime the old ways were mostly gone, but the ghost of patriarchy was still there. It was a pretty confusing scene. My generation is too soon to be trying to see what women can be when they're free of patriarchy.
I don't know how things are now. I know the generations that followed mine were more androgynous than we were.
Many people would agree that you have not perceived attractiveness and cultural appropriateness as relevant to yourself. [just joking, of course...]
"telos" of a particular job... applying "telos" to say, small appliance repair or long lines supervisor at the old AT&T seems like a $10 word for a 10¢ concept. Maybe the telos of a philosopher..., male or female, would be appropriate.
I agree.
Very wealthy and powerful people used to employ both governors and governesses to educate their children. "Nanny" isn't quite the same thing -- more of a glorified babysitter. I would question why, exactly, a guy wanted to be a "nanny". Private tutor, sure; nanny, no. I would suspect the male nanny of being some sort of (heterosexual) wimp. (w.i.m.p. = whingy ineffective male person).
As long as the results are sufficiently absurd, no.
Caption for picture: Duchess Kate has long been a fan of wearing nude pantyhose to cover up her legs.
Question: Is there some other reason for wearing pantyhose?
Fortune Magazine answers the question, "Why pantyhose sales are still surprisingly strong"
I wonder if feminists should be considered original and significant female philosophers.
That certainly would increase the number among the ranks of philosophers if we take feminism into account would it not?
Well feminism certainly had an impact in western cultures there is no disputing that.
Good point. Being influential, or considered significant, does not mean that a philosopher is philosophically significant. Like Hegel, for instance ;)
>:O
The old ways may be gone, but they're coming back, bigger and better and stronger than ever before. Quoting Mongrel
To be "free" of patriarchy is codename for being immoral and not worrying about it. Obligations freely chosen are part of freedom, and it would destroy freedom itself to destroy such obligations.
No, patriarchy "is a social system in which males hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property."[sup]1[/sup]
I don't see what that has to do with your claimed virtues. As if an egalitarian society leads to chaos, cruelty, and disrespect...
[sup]1[/sup] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy
What patriarchy is and what it stands for are entirely different things, in the same way that I stand for all the virtues, blah, blah, although I embody all the vices.
I won't give two taels for your abstract definition. What does this practically, in concreto, mean? Does it mean that women are encouraged to be decent people and take into account the feelings of their families? Does it mean that women are encouraged to be respectful instead of arrogant? Does it mean that women are encouraged to be chaste, instead of promiscuous? Is that a form of lacking in "social privilege"? :-}
Quoting StreetlightX
"Renounce the bong, and it will be a hundread times better for everyone" - adaptation from the Tao Te Ching X-)
And there you have it. It is immoral for a woman to be and do what it is a virtue for a man to be and do. And that is why, when you look around, you find that women hardly ever do x, y, or z, while men do them as much as they can.
Sylvia Walby describes it concretely as:
Other examples include women being discouraged (or forbidden) from certain types of education or employment, or even driving.
Right. So decency is immoral for a woman because it is moral for a man. great
Still abstract and vague. The fact women are less likely to be involved in politics isn't even something to be bothered by. You need additional assumptions for that. We have had prominent women leaders through history. Cleopatra, Queen Seondeok, Lady Mishil, Joan D'Arc, etc.
Quoting Michael
Right, and that's bad no? >:O Housework and raising children is inferior to having a career, right? >:O
Quoting Michael
Being more prone doesn't also mean they are abused more. But yes, this is or can be a problem.
Quoting Michael
Ok, she should be paid equally for equal work.
Quoting Michael
It should be treated the same as a man's - promiscuity should never be encouraged or respected.
I understand you to be saying that womanly virtues are different from manly virtues in their expression; that women should behave differently than men. Have I got that wrong?
No that is wrong. Men and women have the same virtues, however, different accents are placed on different virtues for each. For example, a man being courageous is emphasised more than a woman being courageous. But a woman being compassionate is emphasised more than a man being compassionate - although both of these are virtues that belong to both. But they should be more accentuated in the one than in the other.
Why should they be more accentuated in the one than in the other?
Because by their nature men and women are so constituted to complement each other.
Yes, that's what I thought. That is what patriarchy stands for, as you said. It is the male view that it is right for men to dominate, for men especially to dictate what is right for men and for women. So respect is more of a virtue for women, and arrogance is less of a vice for men to take one of your examples.
Quoting Agustino
And the circle is complete. It ought to be so because it is so, and if ever it isn't so it ought to be so because it is so.
I disagree with this.
Quoting unenlightened
I wouldn't agree with this.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes - it's the only way things can work and last. You're free to think otherwise and try it, but don't blame me when you'll fail :) The proof is in the pudding.
I've heard this claim (that women are poorly-represented in media and popular culture) made before, and I honestly don't know what is the basis for it. I've said before: watch almost any rom-com, sit-com, commercial, etc. and tell me which gender is more often portrayed as childish, unreasonable, incompetent, or boorish (hint: it's not the woman).
Indeed, "pop culture" and media lately seem to be producing a steady stream of works in which a strong female is the protagonist (the two most recent Star Wars films come to mind, for example).
Yes no wonder, the feminazis from Hollywood are in power... :-}
Please do me a favor, Agustino, and don't do me any favors.
And that is supposed to mean what exactly? :-}
I have to say I don't think a lot of those apply in western cultures.
Quoting Michael
It may be true that there are more men in positions of political power than women, but I think this is more often because men are more dedicated in pursuit of this goal than are women.
This disparity can be accounted for because of differences in men and women and I don't agree that it is the result of an oppressive patriarchy.
Quoting Michael
This actually is not true.
In domestic disputes women are more likely to initiate violence, men are simply better at inflicting it than are women so that the threat to women is higher.
Over all men are more likely to be the victims of violence in general than are women.
The disparity here is because men in general are more capable of causing injury when a domestic conflict is elevated to violence.
Quoting Michael
Again this is on average and it is because men are more likely to pursue wage increases and promotions compared to women.
When competing with men women are less likely to view themselves as a valued asset compared to men.
This disparity is the result of difference between men and women not systematic oppression.
For the most part when a woman is doing the same exact job as a man, with the same amount of experience and qualifications, the pay is equal.
Quoting Michael
Quoting Michael
Both masculinity and femininity has idealized representations in culture, the expectation to represent those idealizations are just as irrational for men as they are for women.
I simply don't agree there is any disparity here.
Authority is the issue for Agustino here. Patriarchy is (in part) the identification of when women lack authority over their lives and status. As an authority , feminism undermines marriage because it destroys its necessary application. The feminist will never say the only relevant question is whether a woman is respecting marriage's authority.
Under feminism, women become more important than marriage, more important than the status and desires of men. Authority of their lives passes to them. They are understood to independent agents of their own volition. In the context of marriage, relationships and social positions, it involves working with their decisions rather than being passive actors who just fill a desired social outcome.
Augstino complains Patriarchy is nebulous, but it's really not. Certainly, it is not defined in a few specific terms, but that's because it refers to a system and authority where women lack power, where an authority governs their lives without respect for the women themsleves. Any society will such a system qualifies as Patriarchy. As such, it can take various forms, which is why there is not some specific list of rules for what states amount to a Patriarchy.
Right, so disrespecting, say, your husband, is having authority? That's what a woman having authority is right? And by contrast a woman who respects her husband, she doesn't have any authority? Because having authority is being pieces of shit to each other. Never knew.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I never knew that a woman is free in-so-far as she's allowed to disrespect and plunder things that are of value, ie in-so-far as she's allowed to fulfil her own greed and lust.
:-} :-d
More abstract terms won't rescue you from the accusation of empty abstraction, away from the concrete realities that underlie things. Your feminism is just codename for vice, promiscuity and lust.
(Y) Insightful. Marriage is the hub of the whole thing.
Men who start small businesses are twice as likely to fail as women. Yet Steve Jobs was a man. True.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
This "insightful" passage. Let's see. So apparently, listen to this everyone... Just listen to this... Apparently, women are free, independent agents of their own volition, when they are permitted to disrespect marriage - so the equivalence is rendered between disrespect of marriage (and virtue) and being an independent agent. I guess, according to Willow, independent agents are those who are most free to give in to their lusts - and those who, on the contrary, restrain their lusts, they are the most slavish. "Working with their decisions" - right, if they suddenly decide "fuck the family", then fuck the family it is, because that's what being a fucking independent agent acting out of your own volition is - that's freedom! >:O What a grand trick, performed by a capable magician :-d
It can be being pieces of shit to each other, yes (but then so is the application of authority without reference to people as free agents). Not surprising though: we are talking about power here, which is not the same as ethics (though you seem to confuse the two sometimes). Who do you think is shocked by this exactly? Are you really that naive?
Then again, power can also mean the opposite. A person may use their freedom to behave well towards others.
Power is not ethics either. So no, the feminist isn't just allowed to fufuil her greed and lust at the expense of everyone else. It does mean, however, that such moral questions are thought of as a question of an independent acting being, rather than just a passive thing that's just going to fill a role.
No this way of life isn't common in your country actually. It's common just in the very developed and progressive places like NY, California, etc. The rest of the country, the largest share of the country in geographic terms actually, lives quite traditionally still for the most part. But your way of life is indeed suffocating these other regions, and they'll fight back, and you won't win. You stand no chance of winning. You realise that in the grand narrative of things, progressivism will die out. Reproduction and strength require discipline, which progressivism lack. If you lack devotion to the family, and if you lack the virtue of self-sacrifice when necessary, you and your kind will be wiped out in evolutionary terms. Don't delude yourself.
Good. So that's it, your feminism rewards bad behaviour, and punishes good behaviour. That's certainly a smart move.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
What the hell does this mean in non-abstract terms? Does this fucking mean that she's allowed to abandon her family for example without facing any consequences? Does this being "an independent acting being" (which is actually an empty and nonsensical abstraction), does this practically, not in abstract terms, but in concreto, does this mean she can be a little snitch? :-}
I have no idea how you got that impression, dude, but it's wrong.
It's not wrong at all Mongrel. You're just refusing to see the huge number of social conservative Christians in America, not to mention other traditionalists. How do you think Crooked Hillary lost? >:O You tell yourself stories of folks hating on the establishment, yadda yadda yadda - but the truth is their hatred is much deeper. They hate the fact that this establishment has been destroying their way of life - and they hate Hollywood and the media too. These people are sick of it.
You have only islands of progressivism in the US. Soon these islands will be submerged back into the ocean where they belong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_conservatism_in_the_United_States
at least 34% of your population is social conservative. Are you purposefully being disingenuous Mongrel, or are you just blind to it? Pat Buchanan, Russell Kirk, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, etc. :-}
My concept of conservatism isn't from the 1950s at all Mongrel. Again, I have no option but to think you're just lying. Have you ever listened to, for example Ben Carson? Have you ever listened to Ted fucking Cruz?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_conservatism_in_the_United_States
Not just marriage, but also status more generally. To be (and be recognised) as an independent being, who has their own thoughts and can pursue their own worthwhile projects. When it comes to these questions, women are frequently viewed as nothing. They are considered silent. In terms of an individual achievement, they cannot do anything worthwhile. Only the men have any capacity to perform great individual works. No, men are expected to be great-- they are thought a free individual, who is going to make something of themselves and others, to say something worth listening to. Women are just nothing, silent no matter how much they say. Some people (like Emptyheaded) put a lot of effort into thinking this, so they can enshrine the importance of men over women.
Yes it's about abstract words, which actually, in concreto, are masks for vice (Y)
For sure. That's a possibility. Due to the freedom of our world (since no state logically necessitated), anyone can be a little snitch. In concreto, there is nothing we can do to remove the possibility of someone behaving unethically (or in a way someone else doesn't like).
Not an "abstraction" with no meaning, but a truth of being free actors. No amount of pretence of "nature" or "authority" undoes this. Respect is only given by a person freedom. One cannot force other such that ethical behaviour (or the behaviour you want) is necessary.
No there is no such freedom. That's an abstraction right there.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No, but people must have skin in the game. Skin in the game, those are the words. And this is true whether they are male or female - their sex makes no difference.
To argue there is no such freedom amount to arguing for predetermination-- that are actions can somehow be defined without actions themselves-- which is utter nonsense.
When exactly do people not have skin in the game? With respect to ethical interests is that is unavoidable; one is seeking to achieve a particular way of life or perform an action they understand they need to.
What I think you mean is, however, is people need to be threatened by the powerful if they are to behave ethically. Sometimes, this is, indeed true. It's still respect given by personal freedom though. The people you threatened could have resisted or ignored you. No matter your threats, these people are always free agents. What you assert is not a "nature" or "authority" which cannot be violated, but an expression of power of mind and body over people, to (hopefully) get them to choose to behave in the way you want.
Common maaaan - the guy is a neurosurgeon you don't get to become a neurosurgeon if you're an idiot. Maybe you mean he's not educated in matters other than medicine? Maybe - he's certainly not a big brain on economics. But I think on morality and medicine he's good.
No it isn't. It really isn't. The freedom you're talking about is just words on a page, nothing real.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No they don't have skin in the game if they can do damaging actions and get away with it without suffering for it.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No they don't need to be threatened, they need to know that there are consequences for immoral behaviour. They can't get away with being little snitches.
Why do you think he's not smart on morality? :-}
True actually now that I think about it >:O - but there is a grain of truth in success doctrine lol.
Seemingly not. Which explains why there are no significant female philosophers. They are just too difficult to understand, and not worth the trouble, because ... there are no significant female philosophers.
?_? Yeah, that must be it...
Other factors might also contribute to lower rates of divorce, like economic stability, population stability, lower rates of alcohol and recreational drug use, and the like.
At a quick glance, it would appear that marriage and divorce rates are something of hodgepodge. While some contiguous areas have higher or lower rates of marriage and divorce, a clear connection between political behavior and marriage or divorce would be difficult. The country didn't change between 2012 and 2016. What changed was the candidates and the style of campaigning. Obama's outgoing over-all approval rating was far higher than Trump's in-comimg approval rating -- something of an aberration in itself.
Why do you reckon this is the case, given the conservative beliefs with regards to marriage?
Really? I'd expect this to be so for Orthodox Jews, but certainly not for the more liberal strains of Judaism, which from my reading, seems to be largely dominating the US Jewish population.
>:O
Inactive beliefs are less important than active practice. It's one thing to live in a progressive or conservative community; it's another thing to be engaged in that community. One can never darken the door of a church, but have great concern that the worship be conducted in a particular manner.
Engagement in a religious community will affect life-outcomes (like divorce) much more than sitting at home and nattering on about religion and the #)(%#*(@!)#(%& government, Obamacare, feminism, et al.
Surely, but that there is no difference between liberals and conservatives in practice on divorce/marriage, that suggests that inactive beliefs don't make any difference at all? That seems intuitively false to me. Certainly the fact that X has certain beliefs, even if X is not involved in a community exemplifying those beliefs or actively engaged in them such as attending anti-feminism protests, etc. one would still expect X to behave more conservatively than Y who has the opposite beliefs, but less conservatively than Z who has conservative beliefs, and is actively engaged with them.
Be that as it may, idle beliefs are worth less than actively lived beliefs. Actively lived beliefs are more effective than idle beliefs, because one is interacting socially with like minded people, and behaviors -- rather than just beliefs -- are reinforced by the group. "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." James said. This is true pretty much across the board from Marxists to fascists, with stops along the way for liberals and conservatives. A Marxist and a conservative who do nothing with their beliefs are ciphers, as far as the net difference their beliefs make.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
She was a genius, her work on symmetry and conservation laws accounts for some of our most fundamental scientific laws, and explains them merely as cases of symmetry breaking.
Culturally, woman are still coming into their own, so philosophy is still on the horizon for them. One step at a time. Today business, science, and politics, tomorrow, philosophy (specifically answering the Greatest of the Great Questions of LIfe: that of "Why bother?") (though I've already answered it) (because consciousness is a good thing) (consider the alternative), and we can be Mr. Mom's in the meantime - teaching our preschoolers calculus - it may be the preferred arrangement...