First- Charles Taylor has a great essay on transformative choices. I assume LA Paul quotes him, but if not he's worth reading as he explores what kinds of decisions have these tradeoffs built into them inherently. "Responsibility for Self"
But more importantly, on gender.
My thinking about this changed when my daughter was born. I used to think many virtues that I wanted for myself and my three sons were masculine virtues. But as my daughter (only 1.5 yrs old) became part of my life, I realized that they were just plain virtues.
A good example is toughness. Not crying from small things. Another one is courage and facing fears. Assertiveness.
Now its true, she's very gendered. She gets different compliments on beauty and cuteness and so on. And I live in a very gendered environment, where there is a clear cut distinction between roles (and people will openly be derisive of women doing masculine virtues and pity their husbands). But I wonder if there's something here that's better described than a different set of virtues. It might be that the virtues are actually very similar, but the roles people are expected to play are different. The way the virtues of the father and the son, or the king and the subject, soldier and priest- are not in the virtue set, but in their relation to the roles.
This might seem like its a cop-out, but it might not be a very big one. I imagine a single businesswoman would have a virtue set that is more similar to a businessman then either would have to a father or mother. I would imagine that businesshumans are more similar to each other, but gender roles in parents create division of labor that is customary and useful.
So I don't really see a way to change the virtues of gender, without changing the roles of gender.
It's been a while since I've read Paul so I don't remember if she quotes him or not, but this sounds very up my alley, so I'll check it out. Thanks!
> I don't really see a way to change the virtues of gender, without changing the roles of gender.
To be clear, I am extremely on board with changing the roles of gender, and this is very much not a call to RETVRN. It's much more like... how do we do gender that works, given that it sure seems like right now we're doing gender in a way that doesn't work.
I definitely agree that roles matter more than your gender per se, but I do think your gender is one of the roles that you end up playing that matter. There's a good concept from Amartya Sen of "the assumption of singular affiliation", which is about how we try to collapse people into a single identity label and in doing so are implicitly trying to force them to be small, and I think this is relevant here. To use your example of a businesswoman, she is taking on two different roles: That of a woman, and that of a businessperson. This means she's participating in two distinct (though, hopefully, heavily overlapping) normative communities, each with their own focuses on virtues, and she benefits from but also has to navigate the tensions between both.
I don't think there's a contradiction between virtues being masculine and feminine and also just being plain virtues. Take "toughness" (I think there's actually some fine slicing to be made here about whether "toughness" is really masculine as a virtue or is just something which expresses differently in different social contexts and we consider the male expression of toughness a more central example of it than female expressions, but let's ignore that and for the sake of the argument accept it as a masculine virtue). As you say, it's clearly useful for everyone, but I think the questions that gender it are more like... *How* tough do you need to be? Clearly the answer is not zero for any human being, but also clearly the answer is probably you need to be a lot tougher if you're going to become a soldier than if you're going to become an accountant. Even without any expectations on differing virtues required of men and women (of which there are many, both socially and perhaps biologically), the gendering of these roles will tend to create gendered skews (e.g. soldiers are 80-90% male. Accountants are apparently currently about 55% male. These are very "I casually googled it" stats though don't take it as reliable).
A genuinely difficult thing to navigate is what happens when you have roles with very different norms. This comes up in general, but I think is particularly obvious with gendered roles and gendered virtues. e.g. What do you do as a woman soldier? (I'd be genuinely interested in reading experiences of this).
I think current internet discourse consensus opinion is that the norms of the role should expand to accommodate the norms of the identity - e.g. business communication norms should expand to be more feminine (although I don't think that anyone would argue that a man who goes into childcare or nursing should result in a similar culture shift away from nurturing and towards assertiveness). I'm not sure this is a good idea, and I suspect it would be better to help people to learn to code switch between roles, and this is one of those well-intentioned attempts at inclusiveness that ultimately fail to work and thus also fail to actually be inclusive.
IIRC Alasdair MacIntyre had something interesting to say about how the need for this sort of code switching is what's wrong with kids these days and is a significant part of the alienation of the modern condition, but I haven't read enough MacIntyre to confidently recreate that opinion. A lack of unity in your identity can certainly be unpleasant, but I wonder how much of that unpleasantness comes from a false expectation of unity in the first place.
>What do you do as a woman soldier? (I'd be genuinely interested in reading experiences of this).
This is a good question. My hunch is that much like any excellence, women who are high tend to be alienated, and bc dating norms are to date upwards, they'll only find partners/spouses who are even higher in the masculinity trends. (This is only a partial aspect ofc.) Israel might be a good place to research bc there is a mandatory draft, and there are typical female vs male roles all over the IDF. I didn't serve, so I don't have much info.
Another interesting sociological experiment is happening in the Israeli Haredi sector. In a large part of the population there, the men are raised to be scholars living on stipends- kind of like lay monks. The women are raised to very standard stable jobs generally, (teacher, accountant, programming (new!)), and are the main breadwinners. Interestingly enough, its still a very patriarchal society in many ways.
I look forward to reading more of your thoughts in your upcoming essays!
> Previously there were masculine virtues and feminine virtues
BTW, etymologically in principle "virtus" should only have meant the former (the latter should have be "*muliertus"), though it has more generally meant "goodness" and been applied to women too at least since Classical Latin times.
Huh. I had no idea. This is particularly funny as modern virtue ethics is a heavily feminine discipline (I only-semi-joke that the overwhelming majority of philosophers doing virtue ethics are women and/or catholics).
I totally agree that it's very likely that a whole bunch of characteristics are affected by gender, for both cultural and in-built reasons.
But. I think there's vastly more overlap than there are extremes, and that by making space for women who are strong and men who nurture we both give space for people who are on the other side than whatever expectations "we" have, and also for people to express parts of themselves that might otherwise get covered up.
My daughter's nursery has about 20 carers. About 5 of them are men. There's clearly a gendered skew. But 5 years ago there was only 1 male carer. And it turns out that the kids are delighted to have both male and female carers, and that that opens up more options to all kinds of kids to be more themselves.
So maybe pretending that things are more equal than they already are will give people the chance to be themselves more, and that's a good thing to do.
Part of why I'm against pretending that things are more equal than they are is that I think this actively gets in the way of making things better. It's like trying to end racism through "race blind" policies that ignore the fact that you actually are still going to experience racism and need to have a plan for that.
I'm extremely in favour of there being more male carers (and teachers, and other similar professions), but if you try to pretend away the obstacles to that you end up with a lot of people who try and fail because they've been lied to and didn't get the support they needed to figure out how to do it properly, and a lot of people who don't even try because they can spot the lie.
If you want to *aspire* to more equality than there current is, me too! But that needs more in the way of practical action than just trying to meme it into existence.
I think it depends on what we mean by "pretending". If you mean saying "Men and women are entirely identical and equal and look where you like you will see no differences." then yes, I agree with you. If you mean saying "You can absolutely get to where you want to be, and it's all possible." even though things may be stacked against you societally, then I disagree.
Basically, I think that acting as if things are somewhat better than they are is generally worthwhile, but there are obviously limitations to how far you can push that before it falls over entirely.
(And sorry for not being clearer about that above - the first seems so obviously likely to collapse instantly I didn't think it was worth pointing out that I didn't mean that. I forget that some people *do* mean that.)
This is a great essay!
It hits on many things I've been thinking about.
First- Charles Taylor has a great essay on transformative choices. I assume LA Paul quotes him, but if not he's worth reading as he explores what kinds of decisions have these tradeoffs built into them inherently. "Responsibility for Self"
But more importantly, on gender.
My thinking about this changed when my daughter was born. I used to think many virtues that I wanted for myself and my three sons were masculine virtues. But as my daughter (only 1.5 yrs old) became part of my life, I realized that they were just plain virtues.
A good example is toughness. Not crying from small things. Another one is courage and facing fears. Assertiveness.
Now its true, she's very gendered. She gets different compliments on beauty and cuteness and so on. And I live in a very gendered environment, where there is a clear cut distinction between roles (and people will openly be derisive of women doing masculine virtues and pity their husbands). But I wonder if there's something here that's better described than a different set of virtues. It might be that the virtues are actually very similar, but the roles people are expected to play are different. The way the virtues of the father and the son, or the king and the subject, soldier and priest- are not in the virtue set, but in their relation to the roles.
This might seem like its a cop-out, but it might not be a very big one. I imagine a single businesswoman would have a virtue set that is more similar to a businessman then either would have to a father or mother. I would imagine that businesshumans are more similar to each other, but gender roles in parents create division of labor that is customary and useful.
So I don't really see a way to change the virtues of gender, without changing the roles of gender.
> Charles Taylor ... "Responsibility for Self"
It's been a while since I've read Paul so I don't remember if she quotes him or not, but this sounds very up my alley, so I'll check it out. Thanks!
> I don't really see a way to change the virtues of gender, without changing the roles of gender.
To be clear, I am extremely on board with changing the roles of gender, and this is very much not a call to RETVRN. It's much more like... how do we do gender that works, given that it sure seems like right now we're doing gender in a way that doesn't work.
I definitely agree that roles matter more than your gender per se, but I do think your gender is one of the roles that you end up playing that matter. There's a good concept from Amartya Sen of "the assumption of singular affiliation", which is about how we try to collapse people into a single identity label and in doing so are implicitly trying to force them to be small, and I think this is relevant here. To use your example of a businesswoman, she is taking on two different roles: That of a woman, and that of a businessperson. This means she's participating in two distinct (though, hopefully, heavily overlapping) normative communities, each with their own focuses on virtues, and she benefits from but also has to navigate the tensions between both.
I don't think there's a contradiction between virtues being masculine and feminine and also just being plain virtues. Take "toughness" (I think there's actually some fine slicing to be made here about whether "toughness" is really masculine as a virtue or is just something which expresses differently in different social contexts and we consider the male expression of toughness a more central example of it than female expressions, but let's ignore that and for the sake of the argument accept it as a masculine virtue). As you say, it's clearly useful for everyone, but I think the questions that gender it are more like... *How* tough do you need to be? Clearly the answer is not zero for any human being, but also clearly the answer is probably you need to be a lot tougher if you're going to become a soldier than if you're going to become an accountant. Even without any expectations on differing virtues required of men and women (of which there are many, both socially and perhaps biologically), the gendering of these roles will tend to create gendered skews (e.g. soldiers are 80-90% male. Accountants are apparently currently about 55% male. These are very "I casually googled it" stats though don't take it as reliable).
A genuinely difficult thing to navigate is what happens when you have roles with very different norms. This comes up in general, but I think is particularly obvious with gendered roles and gendered virtues. e.g. What do you do as a woman soldier? (I'd be genuinely interested in reading experiences of this).
I think current internet discourse consensus opinion is that the norms of the role should expand to accommodate the norms of the identity - e.g. business communication norms should expand to be more feminine (although I don't think that anyone would argue that a man who goes into childcare or nursing should result in a similar culture shift away from nurturing and towards assertiveness). I'm not sure this is a good idea, and I suspect it would be better to help people to learn to code switch between roles, and this is one of those well-intentioned attempts at inclusiveness that ultimately fail to work and thus also fail to actually be inclusive.
IIRC Alasdair MacIntyre had something interesting to say about how the need for this sort of code switching is what's wrong with kids these days and is a significant part of the alienation of the modern condition, but I haven't read enough MacIntyre to confidently recreate that opinion. A lack of unity in your identity can certainly be unpleasant, but I wonder how much of that unpleasantness comes from a false expectation of unity in the first place.
>What do you do as a woman soldier? (I'd be genuinely interested in reading experiences of this).
This is a good question. My hunch is that much like any excellence, women who are high tend to be alienated, and bc dating norms are to date upwards, they'll only find partners/spouses who are even higher in the masculinity trends. (This is only a partial aspect ofc.) Israel might be a good place to research bc there is a mandatory draft, and there are typical female vs male roles all over the IDF. I didn't serve, so I don't have much info.
Another interesting sociological experiment is happening in the Israeli Haredi sector. In a large part of the population there, the men are raised to be scholars living on stipends- kind of like lay monks. The women are raised to very standard stable jobs generally, (teacher, accountant, programming (new!)), and are the main breadwinners. Interestingly enough, its still a very patriarchal society in many ways.
I look forward to reading more of your thoughts in your upcoming essays!
> Previously there were masculine virtues and feminine virtues
BTW, etymologically in principle "virtus" should only have meant the former (the latter should have be "*muliertus"), though it has more generally meant "goodness" and been applied to women too at least since Classical Latin times.
Huh. I had no idea. This is particularly funny as modern virtue ethics is a heavily feminine discipline (I only-semi-joke that the overwhelming majority of philosophers doing virtue ethics are women and/or catholics).
I totally agree that it's very likely that a whole bunch of characteristics are affected by gender, for both cultural and in-built reasons.
But. I think there's vastly more overlap than there are extremes, and that by making space for women who are strong and men who nurture we both give space for people who are on the other side than whatever expectations "we" have, and also for people to express parts of themselves that might otherwise get covered up.
My daughter's nursery has about 20 carers. About 5 of them are men. There's clearly a gendered skew. But 5 years ago there was only 1 male carer. And it turns out that the kids are delighted to have both male and female carers, and that that opens up more options to all kinds of kids to be more themselves.
So maybe pretending that things are more equal than they already are will give people the chance to be themselves more, and that's a good thing to do.
Part of why I'm against pretending that things are more equal than they are is that I think this actively gets in the way of making things better. It's like trying to end racism through "race blind" policies that ignore the fact that you actually are still going to experience racism and need to have a plan for that.
I'm extremely in favour of there being more male carers (and teachers, and other similar professions), but if you try to pretend away the obstacles to that you end up with a lot of people who try and fail because they've been lied to and didn't get the support they needed to figure out how to do it properly, and a lot of people who don't even try because they can spot the lie.
If you want to *aspire* to more equality than there current is, me too! But that needs more in the way of practical action than just trying to meme it into existence.
I think it depends on what we mean by "pretending". If you mean saying "Men and women are entirely identical and equal and look where you like you will see no differences." then yes, I agree with you. If you mean saying "You can absolutely get to where you want to be, and it's all possible." even though things may be stacked against you societally, then I disagree.
Basically, I think that acting as if things are somewhat better than they are is generally worthwhile, but there are obviously limitations to how far you can push that before it falls over entirely.
(And sorry for not being clearer about that above - the first seems so obviously likely to collapse instantly I didn't think it was worth pointing out that I didn't mean that. I forget that some people *do* mean that.)
Good to have you back! Great pointings as serious things. I've spent the last year studying alchemy and your frame of the rubedo really resonated.
I’m glad you’re back!