Interesting article about state of nature

We talked earlier about the state of nature and whether or not people would naturally be violent and motivated only by selfish desires. Interesting view that goes against most established views on the state of nature.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-it-natural-for-humans-to-make-war-new-study-of-tribal-societies-reveals-conflict-is-an-alien-concept-8718069.html

Coming Next Week!

Hi all, 

I wanted to pass on information about an event coming up next week. It is a play being directed by a theater minor for her senior piece. The following is a description: 

"In David Ives's seductive, darkly funny Venus in Fur, a playwright-director, Thomas, has written an adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's classic erotic novel Venus in Fur, the story of an obsessive relationship between a man and the mistress to whom he becomes enslaved. At the end of a long day in which the actresses Thomas auditions fail to impress him, in walks Vanda, very late and seemingly clueless, but she convinces him to give her a chance. As they perform scenes from the play, the lines between writer, actor, director, and character begin to blur. An unsettling drama, a playful comedy, Venus in Fur​ also constitutes a masterful exploration of the art of acting - onstage and off."

It also touches on the power struggle between men and women in general, the objectification of women, and the danger of idealizing each other (both men and women). We will be having a "talk-back" after the show where the audience can ask questions and offer feedback after the show. I'm really excited to hear what people have to say about it. I think it will spark some interesting conversation and maybe some controversy.

I think it'd be worth it to attend one of the shows. It's running Monday April 7 and Tuesday April 8 at 7:30 at McCoy Theater.

~ Brooke

Anna's moral dilemma in Frozen

What would you do with the trolley problem? If you can't decide, then what would you do if you were Anna in the Disney movie Frozen? If you were told you are going to be saved by a kiss, are you going to give up the kiss to block a blade coming down on another human being, Elsa? In this case, you are choosing to save yourself and saving another human being. If Anna and Elsa were “mushrooms” suddenly mature in a world without prior human connections, in a Hobbesian “sate of nature”, then Anna would definitely save herself. There is, however, never a time in our lives where we are disconnected to other human beings like mushrooms. Then what is the use of the "state of nature" dreams but to misguide us to think that justice in substitutionalist universalism is the only mature moral option?

In “The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Moral Theory”, Seyla Benhabib articulates what she calls an “anticipatory-utopian critique of the universalistic moral theories”. The problem that resides in the old white men’s moral political theory is that they took the experience of that particular group of old white men to be the experience of everybody else (which is the meaning of “substitutionalist” they can substitute anybody with the persons in their thought experiments). How is it that you can imagine what it is like to be a woman, or more specifically the women sitting next to you this morning on the bus, if you have been a man all your life? This leads to Benhabib’s first criticism: disembodiment and disembededness are not accurate descriptions of the conditions of social actors.

Feminist critiques assume that the gender-sex is an axis of oppression against women. Even our language is implicitly patriarchal. Whatever that is feminine are symbolically passive and bad; whatever that is masculine are always active and good. I believe this is an accurate assumption of our society. Feminists like Benhabib criticize that the old white men’s substitutionalist universalism for marginalizing the experience of people associated with femininity: A Kantian universalisable rule is masculine, a consideration to the uniqueness of each person is therefore feminine. Masculinity is maturity and femininity is immaturity. Therefore justice is the only measurement of moral maturity. It is obvious there’s problem with this criteria for maturity. It assumes that women, who are forced to have the biology that signifies femininity, to be feminine and thereby immature morally. Psychological studies that show more women than men adopting the care model of moral theory therefore confirms the claim that men are more mature morally than women. It makes the mistake of putting care and justice on two ends of a maturity ladder. Care and justice should be considered equally as moral options that both lead to moral maturity.

Let’s think about Anna again. Would we say Anna’s action is moral? Most audience would agree. Even the little kids. This is because who Anna is saving is not just another mushroom, but her sister friend that she loves deeply. Maybe moral dilemmas are really a convention of the patriarchal culture. What do you think? Dr.J said it’s better to think about moral dilemmas before they happen. The thing is, they are never going to happen! They help us figure out what we value sometimes but purely thinking that there are universal moral laws that govern everyone is not helpful. It only reinforces the idea that there is only one kind of right and there’s only one kind of people with similar experiences.

Benhabib, Seyla. "The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gillgan Controversy and Moral Theory." The Feminist Philosophy Reader. By Alison Bailey. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008. N. pag. Print.

Lets look at Books

Sometimes I am struck by the nature of the texts we read as students of a liberal college. There are many novels we meet through our studies, and more we discover through our own exploration of books. As a gender and sexuality studies minor, I tend to find problems in many of these books. More recent texts sometimes try to subtly address the virgin/whore dichotomy, which has remained a staple of literary criticism and theory for a while now. While this theory is described in different forms and given unique backgrounds, the conclusion remains that society (tends to) divide femininity into a binary of "good" virgin and "bad" temptress. We iconicize (is that a words?) this in our ideas of the Virgin Mary and the Temptress Eve. 

So we read texts where authors attempt to undermine these theories. They create dynamic females, and try to give strong literary heroes. But of course, they do this within the Judeo-Christian enculturated structures of gender. Which mean that often times these "dynamic" female characters are such a joke. 

After class, I went back to my apartment, and thought about how wonderful unique contributions of experience could be to our understandings of morality. We could allow Gilligan to impact this idea. Men tend to favor the justice perspective - so having a female perspective allows a deeper understanding of care. Or we can recall the ideals discussed by Benhabib. This would mean recognizing that moral philosophy often excludes women in their privatization of women's experiences. Since this conceptualizes the relevant other as male, we as participants in a "moral" society need to criticize universalistic moral theory.

Using Benhabib - we can complicate many works within the literary world. Leah hints to this in her precis for class:

 "Benhabib finishes by bringing up the “generalized other” and the “concrete other” to further illustrate these moral perspectives. The generalized other is focused on rights, formal equality, and reciprocity, while similarity constitutes moral dignity. On the other hand, the concrete other is focused on each individual’s needs, equity, and complementary reciprocity, while difference constitutes moral dignity. Benhabib states that Kohlberg and Rawls find it important to put yourself into someone else’s shoes in order to maintain moral reciprocity; however, their veil of ignorance about social conditions causes moral philosophers to ignore the ways that others are different from themselves. Benhabib suggests the use of a communicative model of need interpretations, where moral agents communicate with each other in order to understand each other better when developing morality."

So I challenge you to criticize one of the many texts within English Literature using Benhabib. Analyze A Tale of Two Cities. Create a counter argument for Pride and Prejudice. Flip through the Great Gatsby. Or use one of your own favorite novels. I adore Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. But holy mercy, this work can be so messed up. Bulgakov presents Margarita as a current day Eve through the elements of fertility, passion, and nudity. Then he portrays her as a temptress through articulating both her passionate nature and resulting nudity. But Bulgakov’s writing DOES STEM from a place of culturally engrained ideas. And without the impact of other experiences, his writing is locked within a place of patriarchy and ethno-centrism.

Try it out yourself. No worries if you're not an English major. I sure as heck am not. 

 

HBD, Gloria!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tabby-biddle/happy-birthday-gloria-ste_b_5025232.html

Ban and Be Bossy

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and founder of the Lean In movement, recently initiated the Ban Bossy campaign, employing the star power of Beyonce, Condoleeza Rice, and Jennifer Garner to illustrate that young girls’ assertiveness is punished through negative labels (e.g., bossy, stubborn, pushy), leading to gender inequality as shown by girls being more interrupted than their male peers, less likely to raise their hands to ask questions in the classroom, and less likely to pursue leadership roles. As the name implies, Sandberg responds to this inequality by calling to ban the word bossy.

The Ban Bossy campaign is not without its criticisms. Most prominently, bell hooks raised a counter movement under the #bebossyandproud Twitter tagline, encouraging women to reclaim bossy instead of banning the word by tweeting that they are “bossy and proud because (fill in the blank)."

This response prompted me to ask a few questions: First, what advantage does bell hooks's movement offer over Sandberg’s? Second, why is this response necessarily juxtaposed against Sandberg’s movement?

Although the ends to promote gender equality are equivalent, the means are different. #bebossyandproud reframes feminist causes from functioning as thought police to functioning as a form of empowerment. “You should not say bossy” becomes “we should embrace bossy.” While both acknowledge the damage inherent in such gendered insults, bell hooks’s campaign places the locus of power and change in those affected by the insults. It says women policed by language should strip the insult of its derogatory intent and embrace it as symbolic of their assertiveness.

Sandberg’s message has a different target audience. While it does not empower the insulted women to own and reclaim the insult, it states that those who insult women should stop insulting them.

Seeing these differences, why are these posed as counter movements? It should be a both/and instead of an either/or. To elaborate, I would still sanction gendered insults that marginalize women as I would promote women to remove the power of those insults (likewise, SlutWalks empower some women to embrace their sexuality and protest rape excuses; however, we should still call out those who insult sexually active women as sluts). I enjoy that some women are able to channel the insult to be a source of energy and a reaffirmation of their strength; however, there is still value in calling out sexist insults. Both arguments should be present to effect change.

In short, there is room for both a “fuck you” and a “fuck yeah.”

Reproductive Justice: It's About Way More than Abortion

One of the issues I'm most passionate about is reproductive rights, health, and justice. Since I'll be missing class next week due to my activism around this issue, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about it.

For several decades, the United States pro-choice movement has worked towards securing the legal right to abortion for women. Although Roe v. Wade declared a right to abortion in 1973, many state laws have been passed in the forty years following which have worked to limit this right. Pro-choice organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) have focused their political advocacy work on fighting these Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws in order to give women the “choice” to have an abortion. There are several issues involving reproductive freedom which are left out of this pro-choice discourse. The pro-choice movement, like many other feminist-led issues, mostly represents the experiences of middle class white women. In response to this lack of representation of all women, a group of women of color worked to create the reproductive justice (RJ) movement. This movement addresses the many systems of oppression which function to deny women of color and low-income women the right to control their reproductive lives.

SisterSong: A Women of Color Reproductive Justice Coalition defines reproductive justice as “the right to have children, not have children, and to parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments.” Reproductive justice connects reproductive freedom to other systems of oppression which contain and control the autonomy of women of color in particular. Intersectionality frames reproductive justice, as it is an understanding of the interconnectedness of these systems of oppression which guides reproductive justice. Intersectionality helps activists to uncover the ways that this system of oppression functions and to continue working towards devising a social movement which addresses all facets of this system.

Whereas the pro-choice movement emphasizes the legality of abortion as a “right” to abortion, reproductive justice emphasizes access to abortion over this legal right. Thousands of women do not have financial or geographical access to abortion, therefore making abortion a choice which is not available to them. The Hyde Amendment, tacked to appropriations bills beginning in 1976, barred the use of federal funds to pay for abortion. This amendment essentially ended the right to abortion for low-income women, as the cost of abortion is prohibitive to their ability to access these services. Due to the passage of TRAP laws, thousands of women are forced to endure mandatory waiting periods and to travel hundreds of miles to access basic reproductive services. This hoop-jumping is only an option for women who have the finances to afford hotel rooms, lost wages for days off, childcare, and transportation out of town. This reflects the inequality of opportunities which are available for women of color and low-income women.

At the same time, abortion access is not the entire scope of issues of reproductive freedom. Women of color have historically been denied the autonomy to birth and raise children in the ways that they want to. In an attempt to “purify” the gene pool of the human race, the eugenics movement sought to end the reproduction of women of color through methods such as sterilization. In fact, Margaret Sanger, a founder of Planned Parenthood and a birth control activist, was a known supporter of eugenics. Sterilization has been practiced as recently as 2010 in California prisons, despite the state banning the procedures in 1979. Birth control has also been used and is still being used coercively against women of color and low-income women. Many women on welfare were pressured to use Norplant, a contraceptive implant which is inserted in the upper arm. When some women were offered Norplant insertion for free, they were often either refused removal or asked to pay for the removal later.

Reproductive justice cannot exist without economic justice, as low-income women will not truly have the right to reproduce if they cannot afford to raise their children. This economic justice includes promoting such initiatives as raising the minimum wage, securing reliable public transportation for all, providing paid parental leave, and providing free or affordable daycare for the children of employees. Racialized mass incarceration plays neatly into this economic system of oppression as well. American de-industrialization led communities of people of color to primarily work in the service sector, which offered fewer benefits and less unionization. This fostered poverty in these communities, which often creates situations which enable crime to occur. The War on Drugs has also been proven to disproportionally target people of color for drug crimes which white people commit at the same rate. Mass incarceration is an extension of reproductive justice’s systematic control of the bodies of people of color. As an extension of the War on Drugs, laws such as the Interagency Policy on Cocaine Abuse in Pregnancy have subjected pregnant women to non-consensual drug testing. This drug testing results in reporting to police, which then leads to the arrests of pregnant women who test positively for drugs. Many of these women are forced to give birth while in shackles; many of them have had their children taken away and put into state custody. Unsurprisingly, the great majority of women who are affected by these laws are women of color and low-income women. These laws have the power to decide who is “worthy” of mothering.

In order for the reproductive justice movement to be truly successful, the goals of reproductive rights, reproductive health, and reproductive justice must be attained. The lack of access to abortion and contraception, and the denial of the right to childbirth both function to deny women of color equal opportunities in the field of reproductive freedom. Through growing the reproductive justice movement, forming alliances, and making important policy changes, this women of color-led movement is working its way toward reproductive freedom.