Haslanger makes three central claims in this chapter:
A. She argues for a weakly gendered rationality (WGR): Some norms of rationality are weakly gendered.
B. She argues against strongly gendered rationality (SGR): All norms of rationality are strongly gendered.
C. She argues for contextually grounded rationality (CGR): Some norms of rationality are contextually grounded in a non-gendered social role that collaborates in sexual objectification.
A. Weakly Gendered Rationality
Haslanger argues for WGR as follows:
P1. Assumed Objectivity (AO) is a norm of rationality.
P2. AO is weakly gendered.
WGR. So, some norms of rationality are weakly gendered.
Premise 1: AO is a norm of rationality
Let AO denote the following conjunction of principles:
- Epistemic neutrality: take a “genuine” regularity in the behavior of something to be a consequence of its nature.
- Practical neutrality: constrain your decision making (and so your action) to accommodate things’ natures.
- Absolute aperspectivity: count observed regularities as “genuine” regularities just in case:
- the observations occur under normal circumstances (for example, by normal observers),
- the observations are not conditioned by the observer’s social position, and
- the observer has not influenced the behavior of the items under observation.
- Assumed aperspectivity: if a regularity is observed, then assume that:
- the circumstances are normal,
- the observations are not conditioned by the observers’ social position, and
- the observer has not influenced the behavior of the items under observation.
The conjunction of the first three principles—what Haslanger calls “absolute objectivity”—certainly figures in much scientific inquiry—one of our paradigmatic forms of rational activity. Consequently, absolute objectivity is a norm of rationality. Assumed aperspectivity, on the other hand, makes all observed regularities “genuine,” and thereby a consequence of its nature. That almost certainly is too strong. After all, most rational people recognize that some correlations are spurious. So, why should we actually think that AO is a norm of rationality?
Premise 2: AO is weakly gendered.
Haslanger offers a lengthier argument for this premise:
W1. A norm is weakly gendered iff it is appropriate to a gender role.
W2. A norm is appropriate to a social role iff satisfying the norm would significantly contribute to reliable success in that role.
W3. A sexual objectifier is a gender role.
W4. Satisfying AO would significantly contribute to reliable “success” in sexual objectification.
P2. So, AO is weakly gendered.
W1 and W2 are stipulated as definitions. I won’t discuss these, but do you agree or disagree with their central consequence?
A norm is weakly gendered iff satisfying the norm would significantly contribute to reliable success in a gender role.
Can you think of other senses in which norms can be “weakly gendered”? (You should ask yourself analogous questions for anything else I label as a “stipulation” or “definition.”)
Let’s turn to W3: Following MacKinnon, Haslanger defines a sexual objectifier as someone who stands in a position of eroticized dominance over others. An eroticized submissive participant is both viewed and treated as object of an objectifier’s desire, and is also viewed as for the satisfaction of the objectifier’s desire (i.e. instrumentally). Traditionally, men have been objectifiers; women have been objectified. Hence, being sexual objectifier is a gender role.
Turn now to W4: Satisfying AO would significantly contribute to one’s ability to “succeed” as an objectifier, as preexisting inequalities between objectifiers (men) and the individuals they objectify (women) will be observed, and hence treated as “genuine” or “natural.” This, of course, reinforces the power asymmetry between men and women. Indeed, since AO treats all observed regularities as consequences of the “natural” order, it will significantly contribute to the success of any beneficiary of the status quo (gendered or otherwise).
B. Against Strongly Gendered Rationality
Some feminists argue that there is something inherently gendered about purporting to be rational or objective. One of the leading arguments to this effect comes from Catharine MacKinnon. Haslanger disagrees. Her objection to MacKinnon is as follows:
P1. Assumed objectivity (AO) is a norm of rationality.
P2. A norm is strongly gendered iff it is grounded (either constitutively or contextually) in a gender role.
P3. A sexual objectifier is a gender role. (W3, above)
P4. AO is neither constitutively nor contextually grounded in sexual
~SGR. So, some norms of rationality are not strongly gendered.
We’ve already discussed P1 and P3. As with WGR, P2 is simply a stipulation. So, most of our attention should go towards P4. However, before proceeding, it’s worth noting a dialectical space that Haslanger does not explore. I’ve defined SGR in a way that renders Haslanger’s argument valid, though in the chapter, there would appear to be room for an intermediate position that she doesn’t discuss, viz.
SGR*. Some norms of rationality are strongly gendered.
The negation of this is much stronger than ~SGR, and hence much harder to establish:
~SGR*. No norms of rationality are strongly gendered.
Consequently, the fact that AO is not strongly gendered doesn’t say much against SGR*, unless AO is the most promising candidate for a strongly gendered norm of rationality. Thoughts?
Let’s go back to P4. Haslanger argues for this thusly:
S1. A norm is constitutively grounded in a social role iff satisfying the norm entails one’s participation in a particular social role.
S2. A norm is contextually grounded in a social role iff, given background conditions, satisfying that norm is or would be sufficient for functioning in that role.
S3. For all norms n, satisfying n entails participation in sexual objectification only if satisfying n entails eroticized dominance over others.
S4. Under no background conditions would satisfying AO entail eroticized dominance over others.
P4. So, AO is neither constitutively nor contextually grounded in sexual objectification.
As before S1 and S2 are stipulations. S3 follows from MacKinnon’s definition of objectification (discussed above). S4 is highly plausible, as AO says nothing about power or desire. (Indeed, it points to a weakness in Haslanger’s formulation of contextually grounded norms, for one can gerrymander background conditions so that anything entails anything else. Consequently, everything contextually grounds everything, so the concept is trivial without a more precise account of “background conditions.”)
C. Contextually Grounded Rationality
Finally, Haslanger argues that while AO is not grounded in sexual objectification, it is contextually grounded in another social role that is quite common and that enables or “collaborates” in sexual objectification.
C1. A norm is contextually grounded in a social role iff, given background conditions, satisfying that norm is or would be sufficient for functioning in that role.
C2. For all norms n, satisfying n entails participation in collaboration only if satisfying n entails treating observed regularities as consequences of a group’s nature.
C3. Under some background conditions, satisfying AO entails treating observed regularities as consequences of a group’s nature.
C4. AO is a norm of rationality.
CGR. So, some norms of rationality are contextually grounded in a non-gendered social role that collaborates in sexual objectification.
Very roughly, this collaborator has the same “projective beliefs” about women as an objectifier, but lacks either the desire and/or the power characteristic of an objectifier. Hence, women who see themselves and other women as “naturally submissive” can be collaborators.
Hey folks,
Sorry to be so late in jumping in on this discussion. I just got back to Midd from a funeral in Maine, so I’m a bit behind the ball.
I am inclined to agree with Haslanger on nearly all of her points. Though I feel her account could benefit from a few concrete contemporary examples of objectification through objectivity, I was impressed by the degree to which her somewhat armchairish theorizing was congruent with my own experience and intuitions. Given this sentiment, I was disappointed to realize I had no easy response to Professor Khalifa’s concern that Haslanger’s crucial concept of Assumed Objectivity was simply “too strong” to be plausible.
Certainly, it seems strange for Haslanger to contend that those who excel at acting rationally perform AO and thereby naively infer the “nature of things” from observed “genuine” regularities. Yet, by her own definition of AO, the combination of Absolute and Assumed Aperspectivity with Epistemic Neutrality commits Haslanger to this naive interpretation.
I wonder whether Haslanger has unnecessarily overcommitted herself. In her conclusion, Haslanger writes that “the norm of assumed objectivity does not capture a broad range of philosophical ideals of rationality; and it does not do justice to the sensitivity philosophers have shown concerning
the problem of postulating natures. Those working within a (broadly) empiricist tradition are happy to rely on observed regularities in forming their theories, but they are notoriously opposed to attributing natures to things” (81). It seems to me that empiricist philosophers are not alone in this. In my experience, natural scientists, generally thought to be exemplary rational thinkers, rarely make claims about the “nature of things” and yet still acknowledge and base their theories off of what Haslanger would term “genuine regularities”.
If Professor Khalifa (and Gioia as well) are concerned by Haslanger’s move by way of Epistemic Neutrality from the Humean “constant conjunction” to “nature”, then I wonder whether Haslanger could simply do without talk of things’ natures. Could not EN be reworded “take a “genuine” regularity in the behavior of something to be predictive of its future behavior”?
But perhaps the worry runs deeper. Professor Khalifa points out that many correlations (what may be observed as regularities) are “spurious” and that naive commitment would be inappropriate for an excellent rational actor. The idea here seems to be that the stipulations of AO give us little reason to think that abiding by AO will make one a more excellent producer of rational knowledge.
However, here I wonder whether the objection is truly fair. It seems that Haslanger is not committed to AO as a sufficient norm for rationality. AO seems to function more as a bundle of facilitating norms by which any rational project is made possible; in other words, its the norm which mandates that rational creators of knowledge must “drink the kool aid” and commit to their epistemic project. It is consistent with AO that one holds other norms which may constrain the conditions under which “genuine regularities” are considered reliably predictive or knowledge granting (i.e. principles of justification).
Further, Haslanger is a constructivist and is committed to the idea that objectifiers “project” (discussion of projective beliefs pg. 67-72) their understanding onto the world and in so doing (at least in the social realm) largely determine the regularities which they are able to observe. On this account, perhaps the objective knower shouldn’t be concerned with distinguishing between correlation and causation, so long as the observed phenomena accords with their understanding.
Perhaps this is too strong a reading of Haslanger?
My understanding from the reading and the summary is that exercising reason alone is not sufficient for the gender role to be performed, it requires other things as well. Thus, a female can perform a strongly gendered reason, whereas if reason is masculine, then a man exercising reason will be weakly gendered, because they have presumably fulfilled the missing conditions a woman cannot fill.
Despite the constant voice in the back of my head that male/man and female/woman are not boxed in categories that one cannot be 100% and reassuring myself that making them into boxed categories for the sake of understanding social conditions and the boxes people try to fit themselves in or are forced into I can understand how reason is masculine.
I ask myself why reason has to be weakly gendered and females/women will constantly fail at achieving a “perfect” reason and the only answer I can think of is patriarchy. But why patriarchy? Power, greed, being blind? Then I ask questions pertaining to religion and divinity and how people are hypocrites. Yet, if I am to express an honest question, I cannot, nor do I feel true excitement in asking a question grounded in man vs. women, but instead a question on human nature and why presumable men choose to be hypocrites, oppressors, and object others. What drives them, a false happiness? Also, what are the social acting factors that promote this way of acting?
Looking at the Haslanger’s definition of W1 — a weakly gendered norm — I wonder if a more precise definition is necessary. Haslanger defines a weakly gendered norm as one that is appropriate to a gender role and to be “appropriate” in this context is to contribute to success in that role. If a norm contributes to success in the roles of both men and women is it still fair to call it weakly gendered? The definition seems to lose its meaning when there is a lack of division. Perhaps a norm might be defined as weakly gendered by being inappropriate to the success of a gender role.
Take the example of good manners–a norm for successful “ladies” and “gentlemen.” By Haslanger’s account, good manners are weakly gendered. However, if they contribute equally to the success of both “ladies” and “gentlemen” the designation of “weakly gendered” does not seem worthy of note. In defining a norm as weakly gendered by its inappropriateness for the success of a gender role, the inequality from which a gendered norm derives is significance is emphasized.
Tucked away in footnote 13 on page 41, Haslanger makes the quick observation: “It is important to note that not all social relations are hierarchical (e.g., being a friend is not), and not all hierarchical relations are relations of domination (e.g., although plausibly the relations of doctor-patient, mother- daughter, and so on are hierarchical, they are not themselves relations of domination).”
I think this subject is very important for the analysis of MacKinnon’s work, though Haslanger does not give herself enough space to really elucidate the problem or respond to it. I think the important question is: How do you make the distinction between hierarchical roles that are benign (e.g. doctor-patient, teacher-student) and hierarchical roles that are “relations of domination”? The former, ostensibly benign roles are often known to collapse into relations of domination as well—how do we know they are not simply relations of domination in disguise?
I had a couple of comments regarding Haslanger’s discussion of rationality as objectivity. She describes Mackinnon’s position as equating rationality and objectivity, so that “one’s point of view is rational, iff it is objective, iff it is ‘neutral,’ ‘distanced,’ or ‘non-situated.’ (63). Objectivity then allows men to objectify women, because, as objective observers, men attribute observed submissive regularities to the nature of women. An object’s nature is the essence by virtue of which it belongs to a kind, determines what is appropriate for that object, and cannot be changed (66).
I would question whether making determinations of ‘nature’ (as opposed to merely making observations and noting the context or how often it occurred) is really crucial to rational activity, especially science. Can’t we make predictions without making assumptions about a thing’s nature, if something like a nature or essence even exists? Can a good scientist or rational person really assume that something is unchangeable? I also would like to echo Professor Khalifa’s commentary on assumed aperspectivity. While reason might call for us to reduce our effect on what we’re observing, wouldn’t it be irrational to ever assume that we completely reach that point of assumed objectivity? Is it right to equate objectivity and rationality?
I just wanted to quickly add:
Haslanger’s comments seem to be focused mostly on inductive reasoning – can they apply to deductive reasoning too (maybe the premises of many deductive arguments are from induction)? But inductive reasoning has always been a bit questionable, so again, is it fair to equate it with rationality?
On Page 41, when introducing the sex/gender difference, haslanger writes:
“What are the social relations that constitute gender? Here things become theoretically difficult, for although it seems plausible that gender difference appears cross-culturally and trans-historically, we must at the very least allow that the specific social relations constituting gender differ from culture to culture. But the recognition of broad social differences raises the question whether gender can be understood as a unitary phenomenon at all.”
Thus, the concept gender varies across time, culture and place. So if there is no consistent definition of gender how can it even be ascertained as a category? The attempts at defining gender through a relationship of power whereby the ‘woman’ is oppressed by the ‘man’ still relies on their being this gender difference in the first place and is conceptually no different (merely as a relationship of power) from the categories of race or class or what have you. Though one of the main assumptions of such an analysis is that gender is a social category and not a biological one and that sex and gender must remain distinct. I don’t think you can work with gender as a concept without ascertaining its link not to biology (either phenotypical or genotypical) but rather to a perception of biology. And it is this ‘perception of biology’ that creates and sustains gender roles and difference. I suppose this is similar to Haslanger’s discourse on norms and roles and their self-fulfilling instantiations. But I see the role, the ‘perceived difference’ as being necessarily prior to the concept of gender. Gender then existing as a means to reinforce the role, make the perceived difference appear as ‘nature.’
That wasn’t really a question?
On page 45, Haslinger states that the members of a society with entrenched gender norms tend to observe general differences between men and women and infer that these differences are “natural or inevitable.” She argues that this inference is mistaken, because “even if the generalizations are accurate, their accuracy may simply reflect the impact of the norms and the pattern of social relations that underwrites the acceptance of those norms.”
Does this claim mean that Haslinger would reject any evidence indicating that some gender differences are indeed the natural and inevitable result of biological differences between the sexes? (I have in mind the work of Steven Pinker.) If some gender differences reflect biology rather than social relations, how does this impact Haslinger’s project?
On page 79, Haslanger writes, “Nor does [systematic doubt of the distinction between natural and social categories] give us grounds for thinking that a commitment to things having ‘natures’ is antifeminist; in particular, recognizing that I am nota by nature a woman leaves untouched the broader question of whether I have a nature and, strange as it may sound, whether my nature is natural or not.”
I found this passage striking because it raises the possibility of biological explanations of social phenomena, which to my mind makes social questions more similar to the case of the begonia watered with ammonia (p. 75). Is there room in Haslanger’s analysis for people (male and female) to have natural natures? What effect would the discovery of, for instance, a natural nature of males have on the distinction between sex and gender? Would this make AO more acceptable in the analysis of social relations?
On Page 44 Haslanger contends that gender norms can become “internally contradictory” over the volatile course of social history. She states, “But we should keep in mind that norms and roles can also fall desperately out of sync when the norms remain rigid while social roles change; gender-norms ‘often take on complex lives and histories of their own, which often bear little resemblance to their functional roots'” (44). In the footnotes Haslinger offers an example of an “inherently contradictory” norm: the fact that a traditionally “good” woman is simultaneously asexual or prudent while also being expected to react to men’s sexual desire. Can anyone conceive of other examples of these “inherently contradictory” roles Haslanger discusses? Are women more susceptible to these “inherently contradictory” gender roles than men?
In Professor Khalifa’s paper under “WGR”:
“Turn now to W4: Satisfying AO would significantly contribute to one’s ability to “succeed” as an objectifier, as preexisting inequalities between objectifiers (men) and the individuals they objectify (women) will be observed, and hence treated as “genuine” or “natural.” This, of course, reinforces the power asymmetry between men and women. Indeed, since AO treats all observed regularities as consequences of the “natural” order, it will significantly contribute to the success of any beneficiary of the status quo (gendered or otherwise).”
My question is that:
I think in a lot of cases, men are not, or not the only objectifiers, and women are not, or not the only objectified. For example, mothers, or other older female relatives would take up the role of the “authority” and objectify the young women. Would this more complex relationship change, or undermine Haskanger’s view on WGR? Are the older women “rational” to her view?
I also have a methodology question: this book struck me as very clear and logical comparing to a lot other gender studies readings. without first examine whether rationality is gendered, Haslanger already employed rationality (reason) as the primary tool to write this book? What if her whole theory is, according to her, weakly gendered?
On page 54, Haslanger says:
“…if a norm is contextually grounded in a problematic social role, the appropriate move may not be to give up the norm; rather, it may be warranted instead to change the background conditions connecting the norm with the role. For example, plausibly in those contexts in which realizing the ideal of investigative journalist renders one a criminal, we should continue to endorse the role of investigative journalist and its norms but work to change the social conditions that are responsible for a journalist’s criminal status.”
Similarly, there exist several morally problematic norms that are contextually grounded in gender roles. In this case, should our aim be to eliminate gender roles entirely, do away with the problematic norms, or merely work to dissociate gender roles with the problematic norms?