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Feminism

Are feminists (who subscribe to the view) right to claim that all men are necessarily sexist? Perhaps it makes sense to limit the scope of the claim to a particular country, say within the UK. Presumably the sexism of men in few examples of matriarchal societies, if indeed they are sexist, would be different from the sexism we're familiar with. As a man, I would not care to insist that I am not sexist in various ways. My morality is egalitarian but it is no doubt at odds with my attitudes and behaviour. That applies to gender just as it applies to other ways we distinguish sets of people (or subjects of moral concern). The problem I have with the assertion is that it seems to take gender (or sex for the transphobic flavours of feminism) as the essential dividing line between people. Aren't there all sorts of predicates that group people into different sets, some more privileged than others? 'Born-in-the-UK' vs. 'Born-in-Malawi'; 'disabled' vs. 'fit'; 'socially anxious' vs. 'charismatic'. In many cases...

I don't know of any feminist writer who would assent to the claim that "all men are sexist." I seriously encourage you to think about where you got the idea that it is common for feminists to think such a thing. Feminists have had always had to contend with people caricaturing or willfully misunderstanding what they say, and so there are a lot of misconceptions floating around. If you are seriously interested in feminist views, I would suggest that you start reading. I'd suggest, as a start, the book *Discovering Reality* by Marilyn Frye. I cannot speak for all feminists, but I do hold views that are pretty common among feminists, so let me tell you my reactions to the claim you mention. First of all, I consider sexism to be a structural, rather than an individual problem. It is not primarily a problem about the false beliefs or malign attitudes of individual men, and much more a matter of an entire system that gives women a much more limited menu of life options than men have. This is...
Feminism

Feminists often oppose "slut shaming" which is when people denigrate women who are perceived to engage in sexual behavior excessively. Does this mean that promiscuity or (so called promiscuity rather) should be condoned or celebrated? Is there any reason to be opposed to (so called) promiscuity?

It's important here to separate issues. One issue is whether there is something morally objectionable in a person's having multiple sexual partners. Another issue is whether the answer to that that question partly depends on the gender of the person involved. Feminist opposition to "slut shaming" has entirely to do with the double standard regarding sexual promiscuity that prevails in our culture: a cultural presumption that there is something more shameful about a woman's having multiple sexual partners than about a man's having multiple sexual partners. In many milieus, it accrues to a man's status for him to have multiple "conquests" to his credit, while it decrements a woman's reputation for her to have had sex with an equal number of men. Why should that be? How could promiscuity be morally different for a man than for a woman? The idea that there is such a moral difference is what feminists are objecting to. Doesn't that seem perfectly reasonable? There are a number of...
Feminism
Gender
Profession

Why does it seem that everything that I read in philosophy always uses "she" or "her" instead of "his" or "he"?

A suggestion: let's use the plural indefinite "they", like we all do when we're talking: "If anyone wanted the last piece of cake, they should have spoken up." That's what I do, but I have to have fights with editors about it.
Feminism
Gender
Language

I have a question concerning the gender of words that exist in many languages, except in English. What does the presence of grammatical gender in a language say about the mentality of its speakers? A different question is whether the features of a language reflect the characteristics of the societies where it's spoken in a largely unconscious and involuntary way. (Modern) Persian, spoken in Iran and Afghanistan, doesn't have the feature of grammatical gender (anymore), just as English. Many say that the languages that do have grammatical genders are sexist, and that they help to perpetuate the conviction that sex is a tremendously important matter in all areas. For Marilyn Frye, this is a key factor in perpetuating male dominance: male dominance requires the belief that men and women are importantly different from each other, so anything that contributes to the impression that sex differences are important is therefore a contributor to male dominance. Societies whose languages do not have...

As a matter of fact, there are some psychologists and psycholinguists investigating the very question you ask. Lera Boroditsky, at Stanford University, has data that suggest that speakers of languages that use broad gender marking do associate more feminine characteristics with things whose names are marked as feminine, and more masculine traits with things whose names are marked as masculine. You can read a summary of that research here: http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/gender.pdf She argues that these and other data show that language shapes thought. However, psycholinguists at U Penn (Lila Gleitman and John Trueswell), and at Delaware (Anna Papafragou) argue against the view that language shapes thought in this way. (Here's a link to a very readable paper by Gleitman and Papafragou on this topic: http://papafragou.psych.udel.edu/papers/Language%20and%20thought.pdf I don't think that Frye's case depends on how this particular debate comes out. Her point is that there are ...
Feminism

Do you believe that the future of feminism lies in downplaying our differences instead of "celebrating" and emphasizing them? It seems to me that bar physical differences, male and female gender roles are largely social constructs, and the marginalization of women is as much due to their own awareness of their "difference" compared with men. A major example of this is the fact that we have a Minister for Women in this country. Is that not basically admitting that to be female is to deviate from a normative male standard, and that issues concerning therefore requires special attention? That is tantamount to admitting, accepting or condoning the fact that female interest is not present in all the affairs dealt with by other ministers (Finance, Health, Education), and it seems a contradiction in terms. It's more than positive discrimination - it's willful marginalization. On the part of women, obviously. It seems by seeking to put ourselves on an equal level with men we have overshot and are now seeking to...

I have a slightly different reaction to your question that Prof. Fosl does. The version of feminism that I subscribe to says that sexism consists in the existence of gender roles -- that is, in the social construction of categories of persons founded on differences in reproductive physiology or morphology. I envision a world in which (as Richard Wasserstrom puts it) there is no social significance assigned to biological sex. Gender categories, because they cover so many facets of life -- intellectual interests, modes of dress, choice of career, aesthetic preferences -- serve to regiment human difference. So if you know that someone likes big trucks and is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you can predict that that person's favorite movie is not Steel Magnolias . In a world without gender, human differences would be much less systematic -- people would thus be more different from each other than they currently are. Thus I think that the question you pose involves a false dilemma. ...
Feminism
Philosophy

I'm a female philosophy student, and I had an argument with my sister about the lack of female philosophers taught in college classes. She claimed that this was because of current sexism in the field of philosophy -- the mostly male philosophy professors disregard many great female philosophers and don't teach them. I thought that it was just a product of past sexism -- there historically haven't been many women in the field of philosophy, and therefore very few great female philosophers. Who's right? And if there aren't great female philosophers, should texts by women be taught anyway, as a kind of affirmative action?

I doubt that philosophy has ever harbored more sexism than any other academic discipline, now or in its history. But sexism has nonetheless played a role in keeping women from doing philosophy, and from being taken seriously when they tried. And this is still true, to a discouraging extent. I work in the philosophy of mind, and in epistemology, sub-fields where women are less well represented than in ethics or history. The main thing I do to combat sexism -- including my own -- is to work hard at "microenvironmental" issues that are known to have a negative effect on women's participation in intellectual activities. I take care to notice if women have their hands up, to acknowledge and follow up on their comments, to attribute their good points to them by name, and to see that they have as much time to develop their points in discussion as men do. I try to get women, in other words, to see philosophy as belonging to them as much as it does to men. As for readings: they are still...
Feminism
Knowledge

What is feminist knowledge?

I'm not completely sure what you are asking. Presumably you do not want to know what it is that feminists know that others don't, though I could write you a book on that. I suspect what you're curious about is feminist theories of knowledge , or feminist epistemology . This is a book-length topic, too, but I'll try to say enough in a short space to give you an idea what is going on. Feminist epistemology -- really, feminist philosophy generally -- begins with a simple observation: virtually the entire body of our received philosophical thought has been developed by men, and by socially privileged men at that. The question then arises whether this homogeneity among philosophers has resulted in some kind of bias or distortion in the theories produced. In philosophy, suspicion is heightened by the fact that our methodology relies heavily on "intuitions" that theorists presume are universally shared. What if they're not? (And by the way, there's excellent evidence, apart from...