The Gift

 

 

Love and marriage

Some of the most consequential decisions you'll ever make in your life revolve around the institution marriage. Should you get married? With who? What will the power relations be within the relationship? How will you address disagreements? These are all questions that you'll have to endeavor to find answers to, and many of the answers will have a normative dimension. In other words, when answering many of these questions, you'll regularly have to think about what's right—in every conceivable meaning of the word—for you and for your loved one(s). As if this weren't complicated enough already, I'd like to give you a historical survey of different philosophical perspectives on marriage, just to add even more choices in the multiple-choice test that is life. As you will come to see, the institution of marriage has had its fair share of fans and detractors (Almond 2010).

One detractor of marriage and family life was none other than the master: Plato. In his masterwork Republic, Plato made the case that the institution of marriage should be abolished. This is because, unlike other thinkers of his time, Plato recognized the potential equality of women in becoming rulers of the state. Moreover, Plato insisted that the ideal state requires that only those most suited to rule became rulers. So, if a woman was the most suited for the task, they should become rulers. But, Plato noticed, family life took up most of women's time. As such, it was necessary to completely overhaul the family structure so as to give women the opportunity to rule (should they be qualified to). What would be the new social order? Male-female pairings would be abolished. Of course, the population still had to be replenished. So, during certain festivals, pairs of males and females would be selected, they would copulate, and (eventually) a child would be born. But this child would be raised in nurseries by individuals trained specifically in the art of child-rearing. The biological parents would not remain together as a pair-bond and they would never know their offspring—the cost of living in an ideal state.

If you'd like a more "traditional" take on marriage, look no further than Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle believed that men were more fit to command, and thus should take control in marital relations (Politics 1253b, 1259b, 1260a). Even Aristotle had a more lax take on marriage than Christian philosophers. It was thinkers like Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, and Saint Thomas Aquinas that argued for the Christian perspective that marriage is the only acceptable context in which one can have sex—something that the ancients were not exactly known for. Aquinas in particular spoke of the many pernicious elements of sexual lust, as you will see in the next section. He advises that sex be confined to marriage and primarily for procreation, with only occasional copulation to protect against temptation—the so-called "marriage debt."

John Locke had an interesting take:

Kant, unsurprisingly, disagreed with Locke. For Kant, the judicial status of partners was a lifelong contract which had an element of something like property rights. In other words, the spouses had something like property rights with respect to one another—especially to one another's sexual organs. But it's much more than that. "Marriage prevents us from using others merely as instruments for fulfilling our sexual appetites, for marital partners satisfy their sexual desires as part of a lasting relationship in which each treats and regards the other as a human being" (Tuana & Shrage 2010: 17). Kant will also be covered in the next section.

In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) rejected the idea that one should have a companion for life. She also insisted on keeping a separate residence from that of her husband, the anarchist William Godwin (1756-1836). We've met Godwin before in this course. The thought-experiment in The Trolley which we referred to as the near and dear argument is simply a stylized version of an argument by Godwin. Godwin and Wollstonecraft's daughter also acquired literary fame. Her name was Mary Shelley (1797-1851), and she was the author of Frankenstein. Her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), took his father- and mother-in-law's views seriously. He wrote a short essay against legal marriage but insisted in a romantic institution of sexual union fueled by feeling and attraction. Surely he loved Mary very much (Almond 2010: 79).

Harriet Taylor, the wife of utilitarian John Stuart Mill, argued that economic independence, through paid work outside the home, was essential if women were ever to stand equal to men (ibid.). Since we will cover this view in more detail later in this lesson, we should give it a name. Call this sameness feminism.

Of course, Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels had an opinion on this matter too:

More recently, there is opposition to marriage from the polyamorous community. A person who endorses polyamory is someone who engages in multiple sex or love relationships simultaneously. Someone with this predilection might critique the various justifications for marriage. For example, some philosophers argue that sustaining a love relationship requires that one maintains sexual exclusivity. In other words, staying in love requires only having sex with the person you're in love with. But some, like Bertrand Russell, have even argued that extra-marital sex could actually strengthen otherwise difficult marriages. In other words, an open marriage (in which one has the explicit consent of one's partner to have sexual relations with other people) might actually improve the working relationship of the married couple. Perhaps this occurs because polyamorous relationships have communication built-in to them, and hence there is greater honesty and openness than in exclusive arrangements (see Elizabeth Brake's entry on Marriage and Domestic Partnership in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for more).

Nonetheless, marriage does have some measurable benefits:

 

 

 

Important Concepts + Sidebar

 

Pessimism vs Optimism

 

Pornography

Although the topic may be uncomfortable in a college undergraduate course, several ethicists have raised alarm about the effect of pornography on society. The following discussion on this topic is taken from Tuana & Shrage (2010: 29-35). One important thinker in this debate is Catharine McKinnon. In her Feminism Unmodified, she denounces the sale of women's sexuality for male entertainment, e.g., in pornography. Moreover, she argues that when pornographic materials depict women as aroused and sexually fulfilled by aggressive and violent sexual treatment by men, this mis-educates men and their sexual expectations. This leads to normalized objectification of women which, according to the categorical imperative, is to not treat women as ends in-and-of-themselves, but rather as a means to an end.

Ann Garry challenges McKinnon's Kantian-flavored feminist critique. After reviewing the social science literature on the effect of pornography on men, she concludes that it's probably not the case that pornography itself causes men to objectify women, but that they both have a joint cause. Adding nuance, this is to say that it is partly the case that pornography does harm women, but an important factor in this is that our society treats sex as "dirty." As such, depicting someone as a sex object is degrading. In other words, it is because society fails to treat women as fully-fledged persons and because society treats sex as "dirty" that, when women are sexually objectified, they are done more social damage than if men were to be sexually objectified in the same way. Said counterfactually, if society were non-sexist, then a non-sexist pornography would be possible; it is the social asymmetry between men and women that impedes this. Here is Garry's depiction of non-sexist pornography:

Of course, there are some who enjoy sex of the kind that many (or most?) find—shall we say—unpalatable. I am referring here to sadomasochism, the practice of deriving sexual gratification from the infliction of physical pain and/or humiliation. Patrick Hopkins responds that participants in sadomasochistic (SM) sex are not eroticizing sexual violence because these are only 'simulations'. He informs us that in SM there is attraction, negotiation, playfulness, and, most important of all, the power to halt the activity. It is also possible to switch roles such that "dom" becomes a "sub". Lastly, there is typically "safe words" and other forms of attention to safety. And so, Hopkins concludes, SM does not involve real subordination or terror, although it may involve some physical pain (although that's sort of the point).

 

Prostitution

Another practice that is regularly condemned by many feminist ethicists is prostitution (Tuana & Shrage 2010: 32-34). For example, Elizabeth Anderson, like many other ethicists (in my estimation), that there are some activities that should simply not be a part of a market system, since the norms of the market degrade and corrupt these activities, e.g., selling human organs and (of course) sex. Margaret Radin takes Anderson's argument further and asks us to imagine the deforming effects that the market would have on sex:

Other ethicists are not so sure about Anderson and Radin's analysis. Marxist feminist Harriet Fraad (2017) argues that it is the exploitation involved in prostitution (e.g., by the pimp, by abusive customers, etc.) that is inherently wrong; the sex acts themselves are simply a form of labor. As such, Fraad envisions conceivable arrangements in which a union of sex workers organize a means by which to safely practice their sexual and emotional labors in a worker-owned collective enterprise. In other words, if sex work were legalized, worker-owned brothels could provide a regulated, safe, non-coercive environment in which sex workers could provide their labor without any exploitation. There would be no pimp (since it worker-owned), bad customers would be ejected by security staff, and safety measures would be regularly ensured for both workers and customers.

There are still more complicated/nuanced positions. Debra Satz (1992) argues for the decriminalization of prostitution despite arguing that, in our cultural context, prostitution is morally wrong since it perpetuates inequality between men and women. Put another way, her own view is that “prostitution [in our society] represents women as the sexual servants of men. It supports and embodies the widely held belief that men have strong sex drives which must be satisfied—largely through gaining access to some woman’s body” (78). But she concludes that despite it being morally wrong, prostitution should be decriminalized because the current policy eliminates a possible means of income for those who need it the most. In other words, it is wrong in our society, but to keep it illegal is to harm some (mostly female) members of society for which prostitution is their primary means of income.

 

Food for thought...

 

 

 

 

Gendered discrimination

Clearly, one recurring theme in the discussion so far is the lack of social parity between men and women. So, it appears that a discussion about potential solutions to gender discrimination is a fitting way to close this lesson.

In her helpful summary, Rosemarie Tong (2010) reviews the three major stages (or "waves") of feminist thought, as well as some interesting recurring debates within these waves. Beginning with the latter, feminist have been decidedly split over the sameness-difference-dominance-diversity debate. Feminists on the sameness side argue that women have to become the same as men in order to become men's equals, with what "same" means varying from thinker to thinker. Those on the difference side deny that women have to become the same as men. Yet another perspective comes from the dominance thinkers who make the case that equality for women consists in neither becoming the same nor maintaining their differences; rather, equality has to do with liberating women from the dominance of men. As such, women need to "identify and explode those attitudes, ideologies, systems, and structures that keep women less powerful than men" (Tong 2010: 220). Lastly, the diversity view believes that all the other approaches are incomplete. The equality problem for women won't truly be addressed until the disparities between rich women and poor women, white women and minority women, young women and old women, as well as between men and women, are also eliminated.

During the first wave of feminist thought, which is historically located in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it appears that the advocates of the sameness view, which emphasized self-development and self-sufficiency, gained the upper hand. Mary Wollstonecraft is an excellent exemplar of this view:

In contrast to Wollstone's perspective, Catherine Beecher argued that women were actually insulated from the market place and political forum. So, they don't have the same temptations and proclivities for the acquisition of wealth and power that men have. In other words, "women remain 'purer' than men and, therefore, [are] more capable of civilizing, indeed 'Christianizing' the human species" (ibid.). As such, it is women's differences from men that ought to be maintained and even celebrated. As such, Beecher is an advocate of the difference view.

The second wave came in the 20^th century. This wave is characterized by the rise of the dominance view. Per Tong, the rise of the dominance view came after a split between second-wave feminists. On one side of the divide were liberal feminists who believed that female subordination came from a set of social and legal constraints; in other words, they believed that society failed to provide women with the educational and occupational opportunities it provides for men. On the other side were revolutionary radical feminists. These feminists believed that the problem was much more deep-seated. They believed that the subordination of women came from hierarchical power relationships that were built into the system itself. The only solution was to destroy it.

Things get more complicated from here. The revolutionary feminists were themselves split into various camps, which Tong condenses into three basic perspectives. The radical-libertarian feminists targeted gender roles and puritanical approaches to sex. They advocated androgyny (the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics into an ambiguous form) and "perverse" sex (a kind of sex where dominance roles alternate, with each partner taking turns being passive, receptive, vulnerable, etc.). Radical-cultural feminists urged women to abandon values traditionally associated with masculinity (such as assertiveness, aggressiveness, emotional restraint) and embrace values associated with femininity (gentleness, supportiveness, empathy, nurturance). The third camp, radical-dominance feminists, agreed with the radical-cultural feminists that feminine virtues were excellent, but they cautioned that they are not necessarily women's 'best friends', since they also can set women up for exploitation and misery. They advocated that women disconnect as much as possible from men, looking within for their self-definition and self-respect. It may even the case that, per some radical-dominance feminists, that the best way to resist gender oppression is to not get married, since marriage often forces women into a dependence-role while simultaneously isolating women from each other (Tong 2010: 240).

The third wave is much more recent and is characterized by the diversity view. This view, when broadened to include racial discrimination, is also referred to as intersectionality. This is a complicated perspective that cannot be done justice here. What can be said is this. According to this perspective, achieving true gender equality is unimaginable without simultaneously achieving racial and class equality, since, for many, gender is not the primary source of their oppression; it's their race or their socioeconomic status.

Although the different waves of feminism are interesting in their own right, both as intellectual history as well as for their ethical prescriptions, the sameness-difference-dominance-diversity debate is most important for our purposes since it prescribes to us how to proceed—how to move towards eliminating gender and sexual discrimination. Defending one of these views above the others will clarify many thorny normative questions. For example, consider the double standard when it comes to sexual behavior. Society appears to be less condemnatory of men who are 'players' than of promiscuous women, who are condemned as 'whores'. Sameness feminists, of course, argue that women's sexual desires should be given as much 'free play' as men's. Difference and dominance feminists agree that society unfairly restricts women's sexual urges but add that heterosexual relationships are still the paradigm of domination-subordination relationships. Thus, they are much more cautious about advocating traditional relationships, even though they wouldn't necessary have to caution men in the same way—another example of the difference between the difference perspective and the others.

 

 

 

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FYI

Suggested Reading: Alan Soble, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Philosophy of Sexuality, Introduction and Sections 1, 2, & 3

Supplementary Material—

• Video: CrashCourse, Natural Law Theory

• Video: The School of Life, Thomas Aquinas

• Audio: Freakonomics, The Fracking Boom, a Baby Boom, and the Retreat From Marriage

• Video: Father Albert, Interview with Anne Coulter

Advanced Material—

• Reading: Elizabether Brake, Marriage and Domestic Partnership

• Reading: Debra Satz, Markets in Women’s Sexual Labor

• Reading: John Celock, Donald Pridemore, Wisconsin Legislator, Says Single Parenting Leads To Abuse

 

Footnotes

1. John Stuart Mill expressed similar sentiments; see The Trolley.