Gain and Loss
Jean Drèze notes an important fact that’s worth keeping in mind:
Sen is praised as a “feminist economist” but it is not very clear what “feminist” actually stands for (except for a general concern with gender issues) and why Sen qualifies. A notable exception is Martha Nussbaum’s bold assessment. Taking issue with the notion that freedom is always a desirable social goal, she points out that “gender justice cannot be successfully pursued without limiting male freedom”.
Fer sher. And that’s one reason there is so much Faisal Bodiesque blather about keeping families intact and dealing with problems within the community, cluttering up the place – because improvement of the lot of women (whether you call it justice, or freedom, or capabilities, or all those and more) brings with it some disimprovement of the lot of men. Men have less ability to demand services of their female relatives, and to tell them what to do, and to shut them up. They also have less ability to control how women who are not their relatives dress, behave, think, write, and travel. There’s also some (considerable) gain, for men who can value it: they get to live around women who are more worth living around as opposed to women who are like angry sheep. But not all men want that; lots of men prefer the angry sheep. Who cares what the sheep thinks, after all? We don’t talk to our mutton or our sweaters, do we.
“gender justice cannot be successfully pursued without limiting male freedom”
Not in an absolute sense, only in the sense that your starting point is a status quo in which men have more freedom than women and women are more limited than men. Why should anyone’s freedom be defined as them having the power to limit someone else’s? That’s like someone spouting Holocaust denial and claiming their freedom of speech is impinged upon because others aren’t prevented from rebutting them. Or claiming that someone else’s right not to accept their religion limits their freedom of belief. Or claiming that their right to a family is harmed by the existence of refuges to which an unhappily oppressed family member might flee. Of course, I know what you meant by “Fer sher,” but it seems to me that to accept the use of “male freedom” as a term describing that status quo is an unnecessary concession. Surely, if that is “male freedom” then we also want to limit “female freedom” in those admittedly rarer circumstances in which that kind of abuse occurs. As you can see, I am mainly having difficulty seeing anyone’s power to oppress being asociated with their “freedom.”
freedom to oppress, the fifth freedom. you can’t take that away! :)
It’s the difference between freedom and license (4a), isn’t it?
Ah, but people do make such claims all the time. And it seems to me quite obvious that they’re accurate as far as they go. Life is absolutely bristling with limitations on our freedom. We’re not free to commit murder, to set fire to the supermarket when it runs out of Triscuits, to punch people with impunity, to sing an aria in the middle of a performance of ‘Hamlet’ – and so on.
No, I think the power to oppress is very definitely a freedom. Of course, it’s even more of a limitation of other people’s freedom, but that doesn’t make it not a freedom.
Whe else would pissed off white guys be so pissed off?
Maybe you’re confusing freedom with right? You did make an unmarked move to ‘right’ up there. Of course I don’t think people have a right to oppress others, but I do think the power and ability to do so is a freedom, and a highly cherished one at that.
That’s one reason I’m not a libertarian. It’s also an irritating feature of US (and other) politics: the move from the undoubted fact that, say, laws against pollution are a limitation on certain freedoms, to the thought that that is an outrage. We just don’t get to have perfect freedom, any of us. Not even alpha males – because they’re always being challenged.
People don’t always get this. Some of the anarchists during the Spanish Civil War were keen on the idea of complete sexual freedom, which meant that no one could ever say no to anyone who wanted to have sex with her/him. Err…
Freedoms compete, that’s all. In the nature of things.
Point taken and yes, I probably was lumping freedom and right together. Hey, these things can be hard when you’re not a natural born oppressor.
They can be hard anyway. Clearly those Spanish anarchists hadn’t quite thought things through…
The problem with the statement “gender justice cannot be successfully pursued without limiting male freedom” is that it is needlessly open to different interpretations…such as that there is only a limited amount of freedom and that for women to have more means that men must have less.
So I think this formulation is not a productive approach to the issues of women’s rights as it implies some fixed zero-sum amount of “freedom” so that if women gain freedom then men must lose. Male domination of women is NOT a legitimate freedom which can be defended. So if you don’t have any claim to a particular freedom, it shouldn’t be seen (or presented rhetorically) as a “freedom” which men will lose.
Yes, men must be forced to forego certain practices and claims. But to elevate those practices and claims to “freedoms” strikes me as a rhetorical error.
“…because improvement of the lot of women (whether you call it justice, or freedom, or capabilities, or all those and more) brings with it some disimprovement of the lot of men.”
Actually I think it matters a great deal what you call when it comes to the “disimprovement of the lot of men.”
If you characterize it as losing some “freedom” then it sounds as if the men have lost something to which they had a legitimate claim. If it is characterized and thus seen as losing a “privilege” it has a whole different sense. And I think a far more accurate one.
Men have no moral claim of any kind to a “privilege” to hold women in a subordinate position. So they have lost nothing which they legitimately had if women gain equal rights.
‘But to elevate those practices and claims to “freedoms” strikes me as a rhetorical error.’
But whether it’s a rhetorical error or not may be beside the point if it’s true. I haven’t read Nussbaum’s new book, but from what Ryan says it looks as if she’s claiming that it’s true that gender justice cannot be successfully pursued without limiting male freedom, not that it’s rhetorically advantageous to say so.
Rhetoric is far from being all there is to politics. If Nussbaum is right (and I think she is), there are many reasons why it is useful to know that. For one thing it is useful to be aware that male domination is not something that can be done away with by the mere power of thought.
OB, I don’t see how one can talk about Nussbaum’s point being true if the “point” is whether to characterise what men lose with female empowerment as “freedom” or as “privilege”. She says it’s “freedom”. David was saying it’s “privilege”. The only way Nussbaum is right is if in fact it is a freedom and not a privilege, and that depends upon how we and the people around us define the words.
I introduced the word license earlier because I think it more accurately describes the fact of a sexual heirarchy than “freedom”. I wouldn’t argue against using “privilege” either.
But maybe what you mean is that is how many men see it: they see it as a loss of freedom, which of course is part of why male domination is not something that can be done away with by the mere power of thought.
But I don’t think it’s very difficult to understand the existence of a sexual heirarchy once attention is paid to it.
Unfortunately, I think all the theoretical gains of the 60s and 70s were lost as the people pushing them quit paying attention, and the larger cultural forces (commercial, like advertising and entertainment and non-commercial like religion) just kept on with their momentum, and it was now unchecked.
And it seems like the existence of the theory and the fact that it is popularly known is enough to send a few hard cases into ballistic mode to make sure they keep their license to boss women around.
I guess one thing I have against the word “privilege” is that it doesn’t make us think about the other side of the coin for men. It’s as if the power to boss around is all good for us. But it’s not, and that consciousness was something that helped to change things for a while in the 60s and 70s.
‘David was saying it’s “privilege”.’
Hmmyes, but he was also saying that it’s a rhetorical error to call it ‘freedom’. His comments are about both accuracy and tactics.
“The only way Nussbaum is right is if in fact it is a freedom and not a privilege, and that depends upon how we and the people around us define the words.”
True. But I don’t think I’m drawing on a particularly distorted definition of the word.
I just think it’s really basic. People like bossing other people around. We all do. Forces that constrain that are a constraint on our freedom. A damn necessary one, but a constraint all the same.
“But maybe what you mean is that is how many men see it”
Sure, that’s part of what I mean, but I also mean they’re not wrong to see it that way. Why would they be?
I’m puzzled that this is so contentious. We can’t always get what we want; isn’t that kind of well known? We have impulses to swat people or say nasty things at times; we squash those impulses; our freedom is limited. The discontents of civilization. Is this news?
The excellent thing about conversations here is that I can so often find myself reading something that makes me wonder how I ever thought what I just said an hour ago. :)
I guess it’s about who gets to claim to be on the side of “freedom”.
But also if “freedom” includes “license” and “privilege” then what use are those words?
And perhaps it’s easier to get someone to give up a power if it’s called a “privilege” than if it’s called a “freedom”. If it’s called a freedom then he’s doing you a favour, or he should be getting somehting in return. If he’s giving up a privilege it’s easier to see it as setting things right.
Heh!
I take ‘license’ and ‘privilege’ to be different words, not just subsets within freedom – so I would think that’s what use they are. They’re about slightly different things. Nice distinctions are enormously useful.
Sure, maybe it is easier to get people to give up good things if they’re called something else. But then you have to explain yourself when they figure out that in fact they are giving up good things.
I don’t think feminism has ever denied that there are blindingly obvious advantages for men in systems that dominate women. It’s the same with any system of forced labour. Obviously there are advantages for the people on top.
Well, that is certainly the problem, isn’t it? It’s a bit like breaking a drug habit. It’s very convenient and familiar plus it has immediate advantages. So on the one hand I guess you ned to argue that because they are unfair the advantages are costly in the longer term.
It seems to me the best argument against the sexual division of labor, or at least one argument for that, is that it made sense back when it became established (which would be why it became established) but it doesn’t serve either sex well now due to changed circumstances.
Interestingly, that follows exactly what I find the most convincing argument against religion.
Perhaps that is the second most convincing argument against religion, with the most convincing argument being that the suspension of disbelief that allows religion to live may at any time reach a tipping point and become radically unsustainable. That requires accepting the hypothesis that the end is nigh for the suspension of disbelief, but if that is true then vast amounts of cultural infrastructure are going to come crashing down all around us.
Yup, that is indeed the problem.
Mind you – it seems to me one can always argue that the freedom to exploit or oppress (or otherwise mistreat) is a freedom not worth having, especially not for people who have been made aware that oppression is what it is. It’s a tainted freedom, since one can’t get rid of one’s awareness of its nature. We’re all free to, say, torture animals when no one is looking, but to most of us that’s a freedom not worth having.
Like everything else, it is a metaphor for the French Revolution. In the gender order, men are the aristocrats. What they take to be ‘freedoms’ natural to their existence are in fact privileges extracted from the system through the coercion of the non-privileged. Changing this will require an act of overturning so comprehensive that even the best-willed of such ‘aristocrats’ are unlikely openly to face up to the implications, because to do so genuinely challenges the very grounds of their being. In a similar way, the relations between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’ are also a metaphor for France before 1789. I am only being slightly ironic.
All power to the people, Dave!
Or, perhaps it’s more a question of what was once sustainable and in keeping with people’s values and what is sustainable and in keeping with our values now and in the future.