2.2.1 The Ethic of Care

Given the worries about sexism in traditional moral theory, some feminists remain skeptical about the possibility that the theories can be modified in line with feminist aims. In response, they propose an entirely different moral theory, the ethic of care, which has roots in the work of moral psychologist Carol Gilligan (Reference GilliganGilligan, 1982). Gilligan studied Lawrence Kohlberg’s work on male subjects and moral reasoning and was curious about whether female subjects used the same reasoning. Kohlberg identified six stages of moral reasoning, with stage one representing selfishness, stage three representing attending to needs and relations, and stage six, the highest stage, representing abstract rules for governing behavior. From her data, Gilligan concluded that for the most part, females used what she called “the care perspective,” which emphasizes caring for others, situatedness and attention to details about each other, preserving relations, and satisfying needs, while males largely used “the justice perspective,” which emphasizes justice, abstraction from the details of the case, and rule-following (Reference GilliganGilligan, 1982). Females, in other words, were largely at Kohlberg’s stage three, while males were largely at stage six. Gilligan’s conclusion was not that males were more morally advanced than females, but that there were two perspectives, neither of which is better than the other but is best understood to function like the “duck/rabbit” picture, with each perspective having its own moral concepts and forms of reasoning. Gilligan’s work met with a variety of criticisms, including that the differences in male and female reasoning were not significant (Reference Walker and LarrabeeWalker, 1993), that they were more likely due to education or general cognitive development than gender (Reference Greeno, Maccoby and LarrabeeGreeno and Maccoby, 1993), that the sample size and characterizations were inadequate for her conclusions (Reference Luria and LarrabeeLuria, 1993), and, most important, that they perpetuated sexist stereotypes about women’s reasoning (Reference Tronto and LarrabeeTronto, 1993).

These criticisms aside, feminist philosophers seized upon Gilligan’s findings to develop a moral theory that would be more in line with (at least white, middle class) women’s experiences than men’s and that would defeat most of the objections raised about traditional moral theories. Although the details of the ethic of care remain vague, it emphasizes acting in caring ways, but mainly it requires acting from the motive of care, in contrast to traditional theories that favor reason over emotion (Reference BaierBaier, 1987; Reference CalhounCalhoun, 1988; Reference HeldHeld, 1990; Reference NoddingsNoddings, 1984; Reference Ruddick and PersallRuddick, 1980). The emphasis on the motive of care reflects the motive appropriate for raising children, a historically women’s role, thereby reflecting women’s experiences. Caring lies in contrast with the motive of self-interest that governs interactions with strangers in the public domain with which men are associated. Caring makes us see persons in terms of their particularities and needs, rather than as abstract, independent individuals whose history is unknown and irrelevant to morality and whose value is merely instrumental. The ethic of care is situationist because it enjoins us to use the mother–child relationship as a model for how to respond in terms of another’s particularities; it does not codify our obligations in the way that justice theories do. These differences between care and justice theories are radical and led some feminists to believe that we should altogether replace justice theories with an ethic of care (Reference GilliganGilligan, 1982, 1987; Reference NoddingsNoddings, 1984; Reference Ruddick and PersallRuddick, 1980), while others favored incorporating care into justice theories because they saw the importance of each (Reference BlumBlum, 1988; Reference Flanagan and JacksonFlanagan and Jackson, 1987; Friedman, 1987; Reference Tronto and LarrabeeTronto, 1993).

The ethic of care was in its nascent stages of development when it came under heavy criticism from feminist philosophers themselves. The most damning criticism was that the theory might perpetuate women’s oppression by leaving unchallenged, or even valorizing, the view that women are essentially emotional beings, and men, rational (Reference Hoagland and CardHoagland, 1991: 256). The paramount goal of a feminist moral theory is to end, not perpetuate, women’s oppression (Reference Tronto and LarrabeeTronto, 1993: 241–47; Reference TuanaTuana, 1992: 115–16). This remains a point of controversy among feminists. Care ethicists believe that including women’s experiences in moral theory is essential for the goal of ending women’s oppression. They believe that we need to recognize women’s experiences to see what has gone wrong and how to right the wrongs. Critics agree that including women’s experiences in moral theory is important but insist that feminists have a critical eye about doing so since the goal is to have a moral theory that aims to end women’s oppression. Other objections to the ethic of care include the following: it is grounded in an unequal relationship of a mother caring for especially a male child when the care is never reciprocated (Reference Hoagland and CardHoagland, 1991: 253–54); it admits dependency and sharing or losing control, thereby perpetuating women’s oppression, in contrast to male caring that has to do with material forms of help (Reference Friedman and FriedmanFriedman, 1993: 175, 177); it can be autonomy-denying for women by making women judge their success in terms of the success of their children and lose touch with their own needs (Reference Blum, Homiak, Housman and SchemanBlum et al., 1973–74: 231–32, 235, 239); and that women’s caring is misplaced gratitude to men who either have the power to abuse them or to offer women the privilege of service in exchange for “protection” (Reference Card, Flanagan and OksenbergCard, 1993: 216).

Worry about such criticisms quelled excitement about a promising new moral theory and replaced it with abundant caution. Indeed, it is fair to say that these concerns almost halted its development in its tracks. Aside from a few feminists (e.g., Reference KittayKittay, 1999; Reference HeldHeld, 2006), most feminists have turned away from the theory at least as a wholesale replacement of traditional justice theories, with the result that it has remained relatively underdeveloped. Yet this is not to say that feminists have abandoned some of the insights of the ethic of care. Some, together with nonfeminists, have insisted that morality pay much more attention to emotions than it has (Reference RailtonRailton, 1984; Reference StockerStocker, 1976). Some believe that rules in morality cannot capture all the moral situations we face or offer conflicting or nonintuitive guidance (Reference McDowellMcDowell, 1978, Reference McDowell1979) and they might laud the ethic of care for moving morality in this direction. Section 4.3 highlights an important lesson we can draw from the ethic of care, which is that emotion, particularly the motive of care, plays a significant role in how we come to know our moral duties.

2.2.2 Revising Traditional Moral Theories

While some feminists turned to the ethic of care in response to the criticisms made against traditional moral theories, others sought to revise these theories with an eye toward ending women’s oppression. Feminists have made two main kinds of revisions: (1) amending the theory itself to make it responsive to women’s oppression, and (2) using insights from the theory for feminist aims.

3.2.1 Domination and Character Traits

One answer to why some men act in sexist ways lies with how oppression distorts a person’s character traits. As we have seen, feminist virtue ethicists argue that oppression fosters certain traits in the privileged, including arrogance, self-centeredness, callousness, indifference, social irresponsibility, and denial of responsibility (Reference Dillon, Crasnow and SupersonDillon, 2012; Reference SupersonSuperson, 2004; Reference TessmanTessman, 2005). The privileged might have ordinary vices of domination and burdened virtues.

How does privilege distort character? Recall the “wild card” quality of privilege, which is that a privileged person can cash in on their privilege in any situation. Because of this, privilege can open the door to many other benefits, such as being connected to others in a vast network of relationships (Reference HarveyHarvey, 1999). This makes privilege cumulative. These features of privilege undergird its omnipresence. Its omnipresence, in turn, allows the privileged to believe that their advantages are owed to them because they earned them by their hard work or natural smarts. These facts facilitate arrogance in many privileged persons (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2004: 36–37). Additionally, privilege is generally unrecognized by the privileged because they fail to see the connections between their unearned advantages and the harms of oppression. Privilege is seen as the status quo, it is accepted in society and even by victims who are indoctrinated into complicity, and it is hidden in structures. Complacency about one’s privilege is a mark of arrogance (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2004: 38). Self-centeredness is facilitated by cultural domination, which is the idea that a culture expresses the experiences, values, goals, and achievements of the privileged group and interprets events from the perspective of the privileged group as “the truth” (Reference YoungYoung, 1988: 285–86). Privileged persons who see their own values and experiences repeatedly and exclusively expressed in the culture can become self-centered and exclude the needs, values, and interests of the oppressed. For instance, men in the paid workforce did not, until recently, recognize the need for maternity and childcare leaves. When the privileged stereotype members of the subordinate group, which is to differentiate themselves from the oppressed in ways that make the privileged seem superior, they facilitate blaming the oppressed for their fate. This in turn facilitates arrogance, indifference to their victims’ suffering, and denial of responsibility for their role in the maintenance of their victims’ oppression (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2004: 38).

The character traits that some men develop due to their privilege can issue in sexist acts. The arrogance of a misogynist who believes that he, but no one outside his group, deserves his privilege can lead him to make his victim suffer for the sake of suffering (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2004: 39–40). Indifference can cause a man who knowingly participates in a system that advantages men at women’s expense not to use his position of privilege to bring about change (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2004: 41). This explanation for sexism is a systematic one since it shows how the system of oppression and domination can distort a person’s moral traits in ways that can issue in sexist behavior. But there is a more specific answer about what can happen at the individual level. It is that of male socialization. Where privilege can give males license to act in sexist ways by distorting their character, male socialization is one of the factors that sustains privilege itself. Male socialization, on a feminist analysis, is mainly about enforcing traditional male stereotypes to the behest of traditional female stereotypes. We can think of female stereotypes as a line on the cage of oppression, that is, a force that helps to keep women down. Since privilege is the flipside of oppression, we can think of male stereotypes as a factor of privilege that serves to keep men in the dominant group.

3.2.2 Male Socialization and Stereotypes

One feminist analysis of male socialization emphasizes the role of violence in the “making of manhood.” According to this view, there is a code of honor among males requiring them to inflict violence against mostly other males, and dishonoring and shaming those who fail to do so (Reference GilliganGilligan, 1997). When men are shamed, they develop hatred toward others. Shame also causes a “horror of dependency,” which is that it is unacceptable for a man to be dependent on anyone. The horror of dependency causes violence (Reference GilliganGilligan, 1997: 237). Men constitute the lion’s share of the number of victims of lethal violence, and we have come to see men as objects toward whom it is more acceptable to be physically violent. This is not to say that women are not victims of men’s violence; rather, men’s violence toward other men gets expressed in lethal ways. A patriarchal society, on this view, equates manhood with violence and the associated stereotypical traits of aggression, strength, and independence, which in turn can issue in sexist acts.

Another feminist analysis of male socialization emphasizes what is referred to as “compulsive masculinity,” which is defined as “the compulsion or need to relate to, and at times create, stress or distress as a means of both proving manhood and conferring on boys and men superiority over women and other men” (Reference BenekeBeneke, 1997: 36) The idea is for males to conquer stress and pain in ways that women allegedly cannot, making males into “real” men. For instance, training for being a pilot, a traditionally male role, requires having to endure high G’s and intense physically induced anxiety while remaining cool and competent. Some societies have encouraged war out of fear that males would otherwise become effeminate. Rites of passage into manhood for boys are cross-cultural, including spear fishing in shark-infested waters of the South Pacific, enduring insults in Latin America, and being subjected to bloody circumcision rites without flinching in East Africa (Reference BenekeBeneke, 1997: 44–47). Male bonding occurs in men who successfully pass these tests, and they dominate and degrade women, who are seen as being unable to pass such tests, to bolster their masculinity. But why such resistance to anything womanly? One explanation is grounded in psychoanalysis, particularly, Nancy Chodorow’s theory (Reference BenekeBeneke, 1997). According to this view, infants in a stereotypical family identify with their mother because she is the one who spends time with them. But young boys come to realize that they will grow up to be men but cannot identify with their father because he is absent from the home. Instead, boys identify with the role of masculinity and repress and resist what they take to be feminine. Whatever we think of this psychoanalytic view, clearly boys are socialized in many societies to conform to male stereotypes that are different from female stereotypes. Sexism is at the base of male socialization since it enjoins males to be anything but womanly (Reference DigbyDigby, 2011).

Some feminists compare male socialization to the more intense kind of socialization that is used to train people for the military, especially at prestigious institutions such as the Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute (Reference May and MayMay, 1998). The training aims to instill traditional male values and to establish a male culture where boys become or prove that they are men. It takes place in stark conditions with a lack of privacy and even beatings, which are believed to engender self-discipline and the right spirit for leadership, character, bonding with fellow sufferers, and to rein in young male aggression. However, when the cadets are led to think of themselves as “rats,” not unique persons deserving of respect, their training can backfire and they come to think of women, who are generally portrayed as even less deserving than themselves, as less deserving than rats and beneath contempt (Reference May and MayMay, 1998: 129). Since they are forbidden from displaying aggression toward the abusive upperclassmen, their aggression can intensify and be directed at their peers or to women in civilian life (Reference May and MayMay, 1998: 132). Male aggression can also be channeled into intense pursuit of protection and support for family, leading to a “breadwinner” role that is associated with male dominance (Reference May and MayMay, 1998: 133).

Male stereotypes play out in harmful sexist behavior, as many feminists have noted. The woman-abuser endorses traditional sex roles, believing that the man should be “the master” of the house and that it is the woman’s job to satisfy all his needs and wants (Reference Waits and SmithWaits, 1993: 193). He has a tremendous need to dominate and control his victim and believes that he has the right to use violence against her to enforce his will (Reference Waits and SmithWaits, 1993: 193). The rapist, who comes out on various studies as having a “normal sexual personality” that differs from the normal, well-adjusted male only in having a greater tendency to express violence and rage, endorses stereotypical views about male dominance and female submission (Reference Griffin, Vetterling-Braggin and EnglishGriffin, 1981: 318). The practice of female genital mutilation, or FGM, which, though typically carried out by female relatives or a midwife, is a norm set by male social leaders. The goal is to diminish or destroy the woman’s capacity for sexual enjoyment, making her into a breeding machine to perpetuate her husband’s lineage (Reference Asefa, French, Teays and PurdyAsefa, 1998: 98). Even the practice of men’s having to open doors for women no matter how burdened men are and how unburdened women are, has the sexist stereotypes built into it that women do not know their own needs and that they are weak (Reference Frye and FryeFrye, 1983). These sexist stereotypes have at their base the idea that men are superior in worth, and women, inferior, which explains the separatism that male socialization encourages.

A pressing question is why stereotypical traits run so deep. Have men always been socialized in ways that perpetuate sexist stereotypes and sustain their dominance? Why is it that males and females seem to have been separated into distinct groups since the beginning of time? The answer perhaps lies with the origins of oppression. Why do persons form groups, and why do they identify with them? One account comes from social psychologists who explain the formation of stereotypes which are generalizations we make about persons based on characteristics we believe they share with an identifiable group (Reference CuddCudd, 2006: 69). One feature of stereotypes is that they group people usually by visible characteristics (e.g., color of skin), which are then used to make inferences that go beyond what is visible and often, the truth, about all members of the group (Reference CuddCudd, 2006: 69). Cognitive psychologists believe that stereotyping is essential to efficient information processing and that more attention to detail would cost us in terms of survival and propagation. Commonly, stereotypes favor “in-groups,” that is, groups to which an individual belongs, and disfavor “out-groups,” that is, groups to which an individual does not belong. Apparently, according to experiments in social psychology, it takes very little for persons to identify with a group (e.g., their agreement about the number of dots on a screen), to be motivated by discrimination against those in the out-group, and to positively evaluate the in-group (Reference CuddCudd, 2006: 71). Consider how we pit people against each other: Northerners versus Southerners, rural versus urban, and Democrat versus Republican. People want to believe good things about themselves and their group, so they stereotype those in the out-group, separating them from the in-group which is made to look superior. Moreover, there have always been human social groups (e.g., tribes) (Reference CuddCudd, 2006: 73). Gender stereotypes are socially learned at an early age, especially from one’s parents (Reference CuddCudd, 2006: 75). In addition, there is an abundance of evidence that stereotypes are self-fulfilling, thereby making it difficult for the oppressed to fight back. Their internalization, together with the violence and threat of violence that men direct against women, leads feminists to claim that this is why “we have not succeeded in ending the longest standing case of oppression on the planet” (Reference CuddCudd, 2006: 96).

This is not to suggest that gender is binary, nor that there is no violence against transgender individuals. Indeed, such persons are frequently the targets of violence. According to at least one feminist explanation, violence against transgender persons whose gender presentation or appearance misaligns with their sexed body or concealed reality has its roots in sexist and racist violence and oppression at large (Reference BettcherBettcher, 2007). Transphobic violence, when part of a heterosexual and sexist context where a woman’s dress is taken to indicate both her genital status and sexual willingness, might even be seen as justified as a way of putting women back in their place – deceivers about their gender deserve bad treatment, a belief that is intensified by racist stereotypes of black women as “Jezebels” (Reference BettcherBettcher, 2007: 56–57).

3.2.3 Can Sexist Men Change?

These explanations for why the privileged come to act in sexist ways raise the questions of whether the privileged are able to change their characters, and what it would take for them to see the force of their beliefs about and actions directed at the oppressed. Is it a matter of a failure to understand something about those they oppress, or is it that they lack certain emotions? This is a complicated issue that bears on at least three deeper issues. First is the issue of ideal or full moral agency – what it consists in and how we achieve it. Many traditional moral theories depict morality as a set of rules and regulations such that if a person learns these and follows them strictly, they will achieve full moral agency. Morality is purely cognitive. When persons act immorally, their doing so is a failure of cognition: the person did not understand the rules, suffered from weakness of will, did not know the facts of the situation, deliberately flouted the rules, and so on. Feminists who take a lesson from the ethic of care suggest that matters are not so simple. They believe that full moral agency is bereft without emotion, and that emotion is necessary for knowing one’s moral duties (Reference Little, Shafer-Landau and CuneoLittle, 2007). Other philosophers writing without feminist aims believe that emotion is necessary for a full comprehension of morality in all its nuances. A description of the psychopath is useful for seeing what is missing. The psychopath is someone who can understand only simple moral rules and can at best only mimic them because he lacks emotions such as love that are necessary for seeing the complexities of morality (Reference DuffDuff, 1977). For example, to understand how it is wrong to hurt someone, you have to know what it is to hurt someone, and for this you need an understanding of the kinds of interests and concerns people can have (Reference DuffDuff, 1977: 196). On this latter view, the ideal moral and rational person is not one who merely meets the criterion of the expected utility theory by acting in ways that are best for them but is one who can understand the complexities of morality, sees that her own and others’ values give them reasons for action, and sees the emotional and moral significance these aspects of life have for others and for himself (Reference DuffDuff, 1977: 192–93). Ideal moral agency on these views has an emotional component alongside a cognitive component. Failures of morality are not merely failures of cognition; cognition and emotion inform each other and are each necessary for a full comprehension of morality.

A second issue is what the privileged need to do to not act in sexist ways. Is there any hope of fixing what patriarchal socialization instills? A common view is that if we present a person with an argument showing that they are irrational about how others should be treated, or show them that some of their beliefs about others are wrong (e.g., the belief that head and jaw size in African Americans is different from that of Caucasians and justifies different treatment, or that women’s having a uterus makes them hysterical), this is sufficient for their becoming better moral agents since once they understand the argument, they will be appropriately motivated. Just explain feminism to the uninformed, and they will be on board, is the view. A theoretical issue lurks here, which is that of internalism versus externalism. Internalists about obligations or reasons, and motivations, believe that there is a necessary connection between obligations or reasons, and motivations, such that if one has (or acknowledges that one has) an obligation or a reason to act a certain way, one necessarily has a motivation to act that way. This is just one version of internalism. Externalists deny that there is a necessary connection between these concepts. There is a lot of literature on the internalism/externalism debate in metaethics showcasing the various versions it takes as well as its significance for other issues in ethics (see, for example, Korsgaard, 1986; Reference SmithSmith, 1994; Brink, 1986; Reference HarmanHarman, 1975; Reference CoppCopp, 1982) and the standard debates are independent of how this bears on feminism (but see Reference DesAutels, Des Autels and WalkerDesAutels, 2004; Reference SupersonSuperson, 2009). The point here is that in this version of internalism, understanding that one has an obligation or reason to act necessarily entails that one is motivated to act, and we might think that to change an oppressor, we need simply to give him an argument, and that would generate the right motivations, at least if he truly understands (and some would say, “accepts”) the argument. Still, a weak version of internalism would say that the person has the right motivation, but only a strong version of internalism would say that this motivation was overriding among his other motivations. And the internalist would have to show that this motivation, even if it is the strongest a person has, must issue in the relevant action. Externalists deny these necessary connections and believe that giving the oppressor an argument would be insufficient for issuing in a change in their actions; reasons can, but do not necessarily, motivate.

Feminists generally have not cast the issue in terms of the internalist/externalist debate. Instead, they move the debate to a practical level, suggesting ways to make the privileged understand the position of the oppressed. One suggestion is to become aware of one’s privilege as a knapsack of benefits unjustly bestowed upon one (Reference McIntosh and MinasMcIntosh, 1993). Another suggestion is to take the first step of disaffiliating from one’s own privilege (Reference Frye and KoggelFrye, 1995). Websites such as “Teaching Privilege” are available to make the privileged see their own privilege and to access the position of the oppressed. Another tactic feminist philosophers employ is to write from “a personal voice.” The reasons they do so are varied but include engaging the moral imagination or feelings of empathy and motivating philosophers to recognize and understand the gravity of harms relating to oppression that were previously ignored or treated superficially. Consider a feminist philosopher’s description of the humiliation she experienced when she was the recipient of street sexual harassment, where she is happily bouncing down the street, watching the birds in the trees, when the air suddenly fills with catcalls and whistles that freeze her, make her face flush and her motions become stiff and self-conscious about her body, being made to feel as her harasser wants her to feel (Reference Bartky and BartkyBartky, 1990b: 27). Another feminist philosopher attempts to distinguish those who make unwelcome sexual advances from those who are gender bullies – the real sexual harassers – by describing her experience in graduate school of her professor who patted her on the rear end in front of her (mostly male) colleagues before class began (Reference BordoBordo, 1997). Perhaps the most graphic and horrific example comes from a feminist philosopher who describes her own experience of being raped and almost murdered by a stranger in another country, during an hour-and-a-half encounter where she was “grabbed from behind, pulled into the bushes, beaten and sexually assaulted” while on a walk in the peaceful countryside. She was strangled until she lost consciousness, dragged by her feet into a ravine, smashed in the head with a rock, and left for dead (Reference Brison and MeyersBrison, 1993). In writing from a personal voice, feminists address philosophers, who, in discussing moral theories, write as if they know how being harmed in grievous ways feels and the role this kind of harm should play in deciding our moral obligations, which is an arrogant stance that silences victims (Reference Brison and MeyersBrison, 1993: 11). Others who do not write from a personal or even feminist perspective use more traditional tools such as analogies to get the privileged to take the perspective of the oppressed. A famous paper on abortion, for instance, uses science-fiction-like examples to get a nonpregnant person to imagine himself or herself to be in the position of a pregnant woman who is considering abortion in the cases of rape, when the mother’s life is at stake, and when contraception has failed (Reference ThomsonThomson, 1971). They involve being kidnapped and having a famous violinist hooked up to their kidneys for nine months, being trapped in a house with a rapidly growing baby that will crush them to death if no one interferes, and living in a house with fine mesh screens on the windows only to have a people seed drift in and take root in the carpeting and upholstery and grow into a full-fledged person for whom they are responsible.

These feminists are proposing what has been called “world-traveling,” defined as “traveling” to the world of others who occupy a different position in the social hierarchy (Reference Lugones, Mehuron and PercesepeLugones, 1995). To world-travel, one needs to give up the arrogant construction of concepts from one’s own perspective. To explain the notion of world-traveling, the notion of playfulness is employed: a person finds that in some worlds, she finds that she is playful, but in other worlds, she finds that she is serious. Whether she is playful, or more accurately, is seen as playful, is a matter of how the dominant group constructs the concept of playfulness. Perhaps the privileged can use world-traveling to come to see the nonprivileged as equal in humanity by directing their attention away from themselves and toward the nonprivileged, by appreciating the personhood status of the nonprivileged, and by coming to understand the complex hurts involved in oppression (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2004: 38–39). World-traveling has the traveler understand not as an observer, but as a real participant in a particular world.

World-traveling, perhaps, is easier said than done. Consider that the oppressed live their lives with omnipresent stereotypes held about them. Practices such as enforced pregnancy, for example, contribute to the image of women as breeders, much like the practice of rape makes us see women as potential rape victims in need of protection (Reference CuddCudd, 1990). Stereotypes are difficult for an individual to overcome, and even women whose behavior flies in the face of them are often deemed to be exceptions to the rule. How could someone who has not lived in the shadow of negative stereotypes come to understand what it is to go through life with the stereotypes about the oppressed applied to them, and then change their own behavior? Some feminists are skeptical about whether the privileged are capable of world-traveling, or stepping into the shoes of the oppressed, as it were. One explanation is that the privileged cannot imagine how a victim feels because the privileged have different social, and so different emotional, constitutions due to their socialization that makes them experience things differently from the oppressed (Reference Thomas and KoggelThomas, 1999). Thus, for example, a heterosexual man cannot imagine how a female rape victim feels, since he cannot imagine the general fear of rape that most women have, and he does not have to deal with social attitudes that make women targets of sexual violence (Reference Thomas and KoggelThomas, 1999). To step into the shoes of women, men would have to be viewed as less than full and equal members of society and have painful memories of these experiences. This is unlikely, according to these feminists. On this view, although we can know the particular instances of sexism as the women philosophers discussed above have graphically related, and we can understand oppression on an intellectual level, if we do not ourselves live it, we will have a different social and emotional constitution which affects our ability to world-travel. Compare being stereotyped to having a serious, chronic illness or disease that affects every aspect of your life and your being. Unless you live with the impairment, it is hard to see the impact it makes on a person’s life.

A third issue is what bearing the ability to take another’s perspective has on the agent’s moral responsibility for not acting in ways that contribute to women’s oppression. I address this in the next section.

3.3.1 Responsibility of Oppressors for Oppression

Typically, when we speak about moral responsibility for one’s actions, we are talking about an agent who performs an act that has consequences that are clearly the result of the act. For example, Jill gets mad at Jack and shoots him in the leg and he suffers an injury to his leg. We can identify Jill, Jack, and the harm to Jack’s leg and determine Jill’s moral responsibility by examining details such as her motives, Jack’s role in making Jill mad, and so on. Things are murkier when it comes to responsibility for oppression due to the difficult nature of oppression – it takes subtle forms, it is often normalized which makes contributors and even victims oblivious to it, and it is institutionalized and part of the structures of society which means that it can be carried out independent of anyone’s harboring bad attitudes toward the oppressed or acting in ways that directly harm them but by merely participating in the system. On the one hand, a system of oppression can continue without deliberate sexist acts, and without acts done by any particular individuals, which might seem to absolve oppressors from responsibility. On the other hand, certain individuals directly help to ensure that the system is maintained through their actions or inaction. Being ignorant, negligent, or self-deceived are not innocent motives. An additional problem is that separating a person’s own sexist behavior from systematic sexism can be difficult. Nevertheless, if no one is deemed responsible for a group’s oppression, it is likely to continue.

Feminists have defended a wide range of positions about the responsibility of oppressors for their role in oppression. One of the more lenient positions is that we should excuse a person for moral ignorance when they are in an “abnormal moral context” where only those in a subgroup of society, such as feminists, make advances in moral knowledge faster than they can be disseminated to and assimilated by the general public and groups at risk (Reference CalhounCalhoun, 1989: 396). Feminists come up with new terminology (e.g., “marginalize,” “the Other”) and sophisticated analyses of oppression that the general public cannot be expected to know until these become commonplace. Nevertheless, if we merely excuse those in the dominant group for their ignorance, we seem to condone their behavior, but if we want to motivate them to act in feminist ways, we should reproach them.

Other feminists are less lenient. Why should we absolve from responsibility a person who is influenced by their upbringing in a sexist society when in reality they choose not to know what they can and should know? The suggestion is that it is our moral failings as human beings rather than “cultural limitations” that best explain the role of the privileged in oppression. On this view, the privileged have “affected ignorance.” Feminists who hold this view cite as evidence the fact that people often act against cultural norms and even radically revise them through their actions (Reference Moody-AdamsMoody-Adams, 1994: 296, 305). Cultures persist only because individuals capable of responsible action persist, and though we can be influenced by cultural norms, we can also act against them (Reference Moody-AdamsMoody-Adams, 1994: 292–93).

Still other feminists believe that not every case of widespread moral ignorance is a case of affected ignorance. Sometimes we lack equal access to the full range of actual and possible moral knowledge, and sometimes moral discoveries have not yet become commonplace (Reference IsaacsIsaacs, 2011: 163–64). In these cases, we should be excused for acting immorally when our actions are linked with wrongful social practices. Feminists might have certain moral knowledge that they acquire through their experiences, but privileged persons might lack this knowledge since they do not have the same experiences. This view echoes the belief that the privileged are constituted differently from the nonprivileged due to their experiences. Does a lack of experience absolve the privileged from responsibility for knowing and acting in feminist ways? Some feminists suggest that the privileged should practice moral deference, that is, defer to those who speak in an informed way about experiences specific to their social position to which the privileged lack access, and acquire sensitivity to the other’s position (Reference Thomas and KoggelThomas, 1999: 189). Other feminists add that the moral knowers with blind spots due to their privilege have an obligation to become aware of their blind spots and to defer in a way that is epistemically responsible. This involves not simply deferring on the grounds that those in oppressed groups are better positioned to perceive sexism, but attempting to understand the morally salient features that are blocked from one’s perceptions (Reference Grasswick, Crasnow and SupersonGrasswick, 2012: 326). Granted, the nonprivileged often have difficulty articulating exactly why someone comes across as sexist since sexism can be expressed in subtle ways. It is not uncommon to hear a woman say: “I don’t know how to explain it, he just strikes me as sexist.” Since the privileged lack the perception and sensitivity especially to subtle sexism, the morally and epistemically required response for them is not to be a lazy knower who simply defers to others but to investigate what they are missing by listening to the testimony of others, engaging with them, and reading about the experiences of others who are situated differently (Reference Grasswick, Crasnow and SupersonGrasswick, 2012: 323–28).

Other feminists have much less lenient views about responsibility for the harms of oppression. This is because they believe that even though oppression is a difficult concept to grasp and the privileged might lack the special knowledge that feminists and the oppressed have, the privileged should know the Kantian “basic facts about humanity.” This is to say that all persons are equal in some fundamental sense that transcends gender, race, and so on. Immanuel Kant describes the notion of humanity, that all persons have the capacity for rationality and autonomy, and so possess dignity and are deserving of respect. They have intrinsic value in virtue of being persons. This is not a difficult concept to grasp, which leads some feminists to hold responsible those who disrespect others’ humanity (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2004; Reference ZackZack, 1998). Of course, patriarchy attempts to disguise these facts about women through stereotyping, dissemination of false beliefs, and so on, rendering it difficult to recognize that a particular behavior or practice violates a person’s humanity. Responsibility ascriptions might be made on the basis of the degree of difficulty involved in sorting through patriarchal norms to uncover whether a particular behavior or practice violates a person’s humanity, but feminists who hold this less lenient view about responsibility likely believe that many of us know when we are disrespecting another’s humanity.

Whatever one’s view about the moral responsibility of oppressors for oppression, these feminist debates highlight the fact that feminism has presented a more complex view of moral agency than that found in traditional morality. A responsible moral agent must attend to the social position of others that they may have been previously ignorant of, they must become aware of their moral blind spots, listen to the oppressed to grasp their experiences, and tune in to whether they are letting gender stand in the way of respecting someone in virtue of their humanity. In this way, feminism has broadened our understanding of our moral obligations as well as of our moral agency.

3.3.2 Collective Responsibility

As we have seen, oppression is explained by interrelated forces that jointly function to keep a social group subordinate. The nature of oppression raises the possibility that responsibility for oppression may not fall completely on individuals and their direct actions. Women’s oppression is maintained not only by individuals who act in sexist ways but systematically through the forces of oppression that have sexism embedded in them. Under patriarchy, economics, religion, cultural and social practices, political and legal systems, and stereotypes all have sexism embedded in them, and sorting out how these forces are interrelated can mask the role of the individual in sustaining oppression. A person who has never been guilty of sexual harassment, rape, or discrimination might insist that he is not responsible for the existence of these practices. Feminists, however, have seized on the notion of collective responsibility, according to which all men are responsible for aspects of women’s oppression (Reference May and StrikwerdaMay and Strikwerda, 1994). Consider the practice of rape. Some feminists argue that men are collectively responsible for rape because most if not all men contribute to its prevalence (Reference May and StrikwerdaMay and Strikwerda, 1994). A patriarchal society promotes a “rape culture,” in which men are not strongly discouraged from rape and in which there is an attitude about women that may make many men view rape as unremarkable. Aside from direct perpetrators of rape, who most of the time are responsible for their acts of rape, other men share some responsibility for the prevalence of the practice of rape on this view. These feminists want to hold responsible men who interact with other men in ways that make rape more prevalent in society, such as when they participate in the practice of male bonding. Men who would rape were they given the opportunity where their inhibitions were removed, as well as men who could have prevented other men from raping, share responsibility with actual rapists (Reference May and StrikwerdaMay and Strikwerda, 1994: 146). Even men who merely benefit from the existence of rape share some responsibility, since they gain strength from male bonding against a highly sexualized stereotype of the “female,” they enjoy freedom of movement that females do not, and they enjoy being in the role of protector while females are made to feel dependent on men for protection against potential rapists (Reference May and StrikwerdaMay and Strikwerda, 1994: 147–48). This account shows how a person can share responsibility for harms they do not directly cause. It expands the traditional view of moral agency beyond a person’s individual actions: robust moral agency calls for the agent to consider their role in social practices from which they merely benefit but in ways that harm members of oppressed groups, and to respond accordingly.

3.3.3 Responsibility of the Oppressed for Immorality

While social privilege can burden men with collective responsibility, does oppression free women from responsibility for acting immorally? Some race theorists have discussed this issue in terms of racial minorities. One race theorist who aims to free in part individuals from responsibility for immoral actions such as rioting and gang banging argues that social injustice generates economic deprivation for racial minorities, which constantly challenges their self-esteem, causing them to go through stages of resentment, embitterment, and finally moral death (Reference MenkitiMenkiti, 1977–78: 227–30). Blaming individuals for primarily institutional failures, on this view, is unfair. Though parsing out the causal connection between social injustices and individual immoral actions is difficult, at least this race theorist believes that it makes as much sense to say that society is a culprit as it does to say that there are debts owed to society (Reference MenkitiMenkiti, 1977–78: 237). Compare this to attributing responsibility to a corporation for its role in climate change or a plane crash. Still, the difficulty lies in tracing responsibility for a person’s actions to the social conditions under which the person lives.

The kind of immoral behavior that women tend to engage in, which might be caused by their oppression, is to internalize their oppression, acquire deformed desires, and adopt stereotypical traits and roles such as becoming servile that either violate a duty of self-respect or harm women as a group (see Section 3.3.4). These harms, of course, are different in nature from the harms of gang banging. Feminists need to juggle the notion of absolving women from responsibility due to their social condition, with granting them full moral agency which on the face of it seems to recognize holding women responsible for immoral acts regardless of their social condition. Feminists have proposed agency-protecting ways of absolving women from responsibility when clearly their social condition plays a significant causal role in their actions.

Consider again the case of the Deferential Wife, whose complete devotion to her husband and belief that she is fulfilling her proper role as a woman makes her servile. Kant famously believed that servility is immoral because it violates a duty to be self-respecting. Any rational being, Kant thought, would see himself as an end in itself, which flies in the face of servility.

Feminists complain that Kant’s view is too harsh because it does not recognize that the identities of persons like the Deferential Wife have been largely constituted by patriarchy and are incompatible with a conception of themselves as persons (Reference StarkStark, 1997: 76–77). One feminist proposal is to impose a self-worth condition on responsibility, according to which to be responsible, a person must be and see herself as an eligible participant in moral exchanges involving offering reasons, seeking excuses, begging forgiveness, and blaming (Reference Benson, Mackenzie and StoljarBenson, 2000: 79–85). If a person internalizes oppressive social norms, this can interfere with her regard for her own worth and her sense of responsibility or her accountability to others. She might not see herself as an eligible participant in a community of moral dialogue that requires that she be able to speak for her own agency in response to criticism from others and recognize her own intrinsic worth. When she does not see herself as such, then we should exempt her from responsibility for, say, being non-self-respecting.

Feminists acknowledge that mitigating women’s responsibility for behaviors like being deferential risks undermining women’s agency. They are loathe to contribute to the damage to women that patriarchy has done in this regard. This might explain why feminists have generally shied away from absolving women from responsibility for certain immoralities. Excusing a person for wrongdoing suggests that she was mentally impaired, not reasonable, or overcome by emotion. Feminists have argued for justifying reasons, rather than excusing reasons, to defend a woman’s seemingly immoral actions when they are directly tied to patriarchy. For example, when a woman who is severely and repeatedly abused kills her abuser, we can defend her actions by showing that she responded appropriately given her circumstances and her being able to determine rationally that self-defense was warranted, rather than showing that she was in some way out of her mind (see Reference Teays, French, Teays and PurdyTeays, 1998: 61–64). Justifying reasons are empowering to agency.

A feminist attempt to offer justifying reasons to defend the Deferential Wife’s servility has been offered in response to a well-known, not specifically feminist, attempt to defend the Victim of a Deprived Childhood who was given no love and was beaten by his father and neglected by his mother and later in life embezzles money (Reference Wolf and FischerWolf, 1986). On the latter view, there are reasons for the Victim of a Deprived Childhood not to embezzle, grounded in “the True and the Good,” but such a person could not have had reason to act morally since his circumstances made him not be able to see that these moral reasons exist. His reasons, in short, are determined by his circumstances. Since his reasons are determined, so are his actions stemming from these reasons. Thus, he is neither blameworthy nor responsible for his immoral actions.

This way of defending a person who is the product of their upbringing has been criticized for being agency-denying, and thus feminists would be cautious in defending a character like the Deferential Wife who is the product of patriarchal socialization on these grounds. An initial, agency-protecting response, one not given in the context of feminism, argues that the Victim of a Deprived Childhood has a justified failure to tell right from wrong – anyone in his circumstances has reason to act the way he does, even though they also have reason not to act immorally (Reference BussBuss, 1997). To support this conclusion, the case is fleshed out as follows: the Victim as a child came into contact mostly with people who either beat him, supported those who beat him, or ignored his misery. Whenever he was beaten, he was first taunted. Years later, when he is taunted, he hits his taunter. The Victim is not determined by his reasons, and he has a moral reason not to hit his taunter, but he would have to be truly exceptional not to take his past experiences as representative of human nature, much like a person who has been bitten repeatedly by dogs would be truly exceptional to think that the growling dog in her path will not bite her (Reference BussBuss, 1997: 354). Whether the Victim is justified in hitting his taunter depends on whether he has available alternatives, how unacceptable his action is, and the details of his background. Since he has always been beaten after being taunted, he is justified in hitting his taunter, though hitting is itself morally wrong. We could apply this reasoning to the Deferential Wife: were her circumstances – her socialization – so bad, perhaps because she met up with mostly sexist people who tried to undermine her worth throughout her life, we might say that she is not responsible for her servility, though servility itself is wrong.

A stronger, more agency-empowering response would show that the Deferential Wife’s servility is itself justified, not merely that she is justified in being servile, though servility is itself wrong. It would justify her actions themselves, and not offer excusing reasons dependent on either the agent’s psychology or her circumstances but would offer justifying reasons that free her from responsibility for being deferential considering her circumstances (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2010). This account uses the case of Aileen Wuornos, a Florida prostitute who was convicted of and executed for killing seven men who sought sexual “services” from her, and whose story is the subject of the 2003 movie, Monster. Wuornos was sexually abused at the age of eight by her father’s friend, and when she told her father, he beat her. After years of sexual abuse, she turned to prostitution. When one of her “clients” brutally raped her, she shot him dead, and then shot and killed several other men during attempted acts of prostitution, whether she feared they would rape or kill her. Her first killing was clearly an act of self-defense: she could fight back only by killing him since she was handcuffed to the steering wheel of his car during the attack. She knew that killing in general is wrong, but was furious about the attack, felt helpless about her situation and the way she had been treated all her life and how she expected to be treated were she to file a legal charge, and felt remorse after killing her attacker. Like the gang banger, she has experienced a death of sorts and cries out for self-defense and acts in a way to protect and assert her dignity. When she kills her first “client” in self-defense, her act of killing is itself justified because it is a way of protecting and asserting her dignity and asserting that the attacker has no right to try to take her out of the moral community. In the cases where she kills her other clients, she doubts her dignity and status as a full member of the moral community that grants and protects rights due to the repeated attacks on her dignity. These clients in her mind serve as stark reminders that she is a mere object that can permissibly be sexually abused, and she is unable to separate them from the rapist (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2010: 268). She is much like the Victim of a Deprived Childhood who believes that taunting will always be followed by a physical assault. Viewed in this way, her acts of killing can be re-described as acts of asserting her worth in defense of a persistent attack on it. They too are acts of self-defense, of defending her worth as a person, and it is from this perspective that such acts are themselves justified. This is what absolves her from responsibility. This account is agency-preserving since it defends the agent with justifying reasons rather than excusing or deterministic reasons (Reference SupersonSuperson, 2010: 26).

Let us apply the reasoning in this case to that of the Deferential Wife. Like the case of Wuornos, she was sent strong social messages of inferiority causing her to believe that women should serve their families, and that it is self-respecting to do so. Instead of acting in ways that assert her dignity, she acts contrary to this since she is confused about her worth. She acts in ways that she mistakenly believes assert her worth since she believes that the self-respecting way to act is to be servile to her husband and family. She is happy and proud to be servile and thinks she confirms her worth by being servile and believes that all women should be like her. Servility itself is morally wrong, according to Kant, because the servile person treats herself merely as a means to her own ends. Kant believes that the servile person acts out of inclination, but the Deferential Wife acts out of confusion about her worth. Her servility is justified in the sense that it is a legitimate response to her confusion about her worth that results from social messages of inferiority. In both cases, the person’s dignity has been attacked and it is not reasonable to expect her not to act to try to assert it and reestablish herself in her own eyes and in the eyes of her attacker and the moral community at large. Their acts of asserting their worth are themselves justified since they are acts of self-defense. This feminist analysis of responsibility for seemingly immoral acts adds complexity to traditional accounts of responsibility because it is responsive to the agent’s social context. It is another element in robust agency.

3.3.4 Responsibility for Resisting One’s Own Oppression

A topic that has attracted a lot of attention from feminists and is a source of controversy is whether women are responsible for resisting their own oppression, since if they do not, they might contribute to it and harm themselves and women as a group. Consider the phenomenon of “right-wing women,” who believe that women belong in stereotypical roles like that of a housewife and stay-at-home mother even if they prefer other roles, who generally harbor the same attitudes about women as do sexist men, and whose lifestyle largely reflects right-wing values (Reference SupersonSuperson, 1993a). To be sure, ascertaining whether a woman is a right-wing woman from her behavior and dress is difficult since she might be constrained in her choices or be complicit in patriarchy to get ahead. The question of responsibility arises when we know a person’s attitude. Some right-wing women have deformed desires, others simply choose roles that, when enough women choose similarly, perpetuate sexist stereotypes about women which contribute to women’s oppression. Are they responsible for not resisting their oppression?

The answers feminists give to the question about responsibility for resisting one’s own oppression are responsive to the issue of what best promotes women’s agency. Many feminists fully acknowledge women’s strong indoctrination into patriarchal beliefs and values and the fact that this makes women likely to endorse them (Reference Bartky and BartkyBartky, 1999b; Reference LukerLuker, 1984; Reference Nussbaum and NussbaumNussbaum, 1999a; Reference SupersonSuperson, 1993a). For example, many Christian women believe that part of God’s plan is for women to be subservient to men and their families, and secular right-wing women who understand women’s oppression to some extent believe that oppression is unalterable and conformity is their best option. Others simply do not understand, due to strong indoctrination, that women are oppressed, nor do they see how their lifestyle plays a role in their own oppression – consider the Playboy bunny. Some feminists respond that it would be unfair to blame or hold responsible these women: it would be agency-destroying to do so, much like kicking a person who is already down or blaming the victim (Reference SupersonSuperson, 1993a). Ignorance exonerates them.

Other feminists believe that a more agency-preserving response is that women have an obligation, at least under certain circumstances, to resist their own oppression, even if it is unfair that they do. Perhaps it is true that having deformed desires restricts a woman’s autonomy, but that is insufficient reason for not requiring women to resist their own oppression (Reference HayHay, 2005). On this view, we can increase women’s autonomy when we demand more responsibility of them. In addition, when women carry out their obligation to resist their own oppression, they act in ways that eradicate patriarchy. But we should caution that having an obligation to resist depends on the danger involved, and when the risk of harm to a woman is significant, then she does not have an obligation to resist.

Yet other feminists believe that holding women responsible for resisting their own oppression is not a case of wrongful blaming of the victim, but more like the case of a person who suffers a superficial cut by someone else’s careless use of sharp scissors, but who is to blame for some of the harm if he refuses to wash and care for the cut and then loses his hand to gangrene (Reference CuddCudd, 2006). Both victims are not the initial cause of the harm, though both participate in some way for the harm they suffer. This holds for the case of Lisa and Larry, discussed in Section 2.2.2, where it may be said that Lisa has an obligation to forgo financial benefit for her family, so long as enough other women do the same, to help to overcome the stereotype of women as primarily domestic workers and unreliable wage workers, which causes employers to pay them less than men for the same work. Taking steps to eradicate women’s oppression would be agency-affirming.