This is the effect of a successful political movement, one that sought to replace the use of "he" and "his", as "gender-neutral" pronouns, with the use of something else. The reason was that people thought that the use of "he" and "his", at least in certain contexts, made readers liable to assume that the pronoun referred to a person of the male persuasion, when it need not. One option is to use something that is truly gender-neutral, such as "he or she", but that is rather verbose. Some people therefore use "s/he", but that is ugly. I've taken to using "s'he", but I'm lonely. And there is a case to be made for "she" and "her", unaltered, as well, namely that it makes one conscious of something of which one might not otherwise have been conscious.

I agree with the thrust of your comments -- that there should be uniform physical requirements for anyone who wishes to serve in the military, and these requirements should be based on the physical demands of the jobs recruits will be required to do. But it's this second proposition that should engage our attention. What are the physical demands of a military career? Modern warfare is highly mechanized; that means both that a great many combat roles will not require much in the way of brute physical strength, and that many will require specialized knowledge and mental skills. There are, in short, no uniform physical requirements for serving in "today's army." So it may well be that the relaxed physical standards for women result in no loss of combat readiness whatsoever. In that case, the relaxed standards ought to be the norm for everyone, with more demanding standards imposed only for those who wish to serve in the more physically demanding roles. My guess is that the sexism involved in all this is in the maintenance of gratuitiously high physical standards for men -- the expression of tired old machismo. The obvious thing to do would be to pull out the people with high degrees of upper-body strength and make them the grunts who have to march with body armor and packs, while giving the driving, piloting, and high-tech jobs to the physically weaker people. But you won't see that happening because there are too many high-status jobs in the military that make minimal physical demands, and you can't have women clustered in the high-status positions.

It should be noted, by way of figuring out why things are as they are, that the US military is constantly revising its enlistment requirements, for reasons of political expediency (demands for more opportunities for women in the military) surely, but also in order to get the bodies they need. Without a draft, and with no end in sight to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has been quietly relaxing standards regarding educational attainment and criminal activity in order to meet its recruitment goals. (See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15197832/ for details.)

Just to respond to a few of Jyl's points.

(1) We practice philosophy according to a sort of lawyers-in-court model. This practice has its downside. It encourages aggression, which often impedes rather than promotes progress. And it leads people often to defend views that they do not strongly believe in, and certainly wouldn't, if they reflected honestly and outside of the context of the good fight that they are enjoying. This also can impede progress.

Sometimes we'd do better to admit that none of us understands the subject matter very well - because it is so extremely difficult, not because we are thick - and tried to muddle along together.

(2) The combative nature of the practice, and the aggression that this encourages, have indeed caused very talented philosophers not to enter the profession. Some of these are men. But I strongly suspect that more are women.

If that empirical suspicion of mine were correct, then that would provide one among several good reasons for philosophers to consider adopting different and more co-operative modes of interaction.

(3) I think that women tend to favour co-operative modes of interaction to combative ones and that in that respect women are superior to men.


(4) But then this issue really is very difficult, and, hey, what do I know?

Very little gives me more pleasure than a good philosophical fight, and I suspect that the other women panelists on this site feel the same way. Perhaps we are the exceptions that prove the rule of the womanly cooperative virtues. Yet I also know of many men who have no stomach for a good philosophical argument, and I've never heard anyone suggest that we should change our methods so that more men will feel more "comfortable" in philosophy.

More to the point, I'm not sure that I understand the contrast between adversative and cooperative methods of doing philosophy. The most forceful defense of a philosophical position will often be given by a person who believes that it is true, and correspondingly the most telling criticisms of an argument will often be discovered by those who are skeptical of the truth of its conclusion. But such a give and take between philosophical adversaries seems to me to be the best cooperative means of gaining philosophical insight. As Socrates explained to his adversary Callicles, in Plato's Gorgias:

“ . . .I’m afraid to pursue my examination of you, for fear that you should take me to be speaking with eagerness to win against you, rather than to have our subject become clear. For my part, I’d be pleased to continue questioning you if you’re the same kind of man I am, otherwise I would drop it. And what kind of man am I? One of those who would be pleased to be refuted if I say anything untrue; one who, however, would be any less pleased to be refuted than to refute. For I count being refuted a greater good, insofar as it is a greater good for oneself to be delivered from the worst thing there is than to deliver someone else from it. I don’t suppose there’s anything quite so bad for a person as having false belief about the things we’re discussing right now” (G. 457e-458a).

It's certainly true that many philosophers, men and women alike, can be downright obnoxious when they are arguing, and I don't doubt that some obnoxious behavior is caused by sexism in particular. But this problem seems to me to have little to do with the typical method of philosophy, and everything to do with the character of some who make use of it.

I suggest also that some women simply don't like the argumentative, combative interactions that philosophy typically involves. That might be one among several good reasons for philosophers to consider adopting different and more co-operative modes of interaction.

Really, this is a sociological question about the practice of philosophy rather than a philosophical question. But I think it's interesting and important for all that.

It's hard to say. The safest answer is that it hasn't been very long since women started being professional academics in large numbers in any field, and that we're steadily catching up. This is absolutely true, and important. But it also seems pretty clear that there are proportionally more women working at a high professional level in other disciplines, including closely related disciplines like linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and law; thus, it seems that something more might be going on. Another relevant fact is that there appear to be proportionally more women in some areas of philosophy than others: for instance, in ethics and history of philosophy, as compared to metaphysics (although there are multiple notable women working at a very high level in all of these areas!). I've heard people suggest that women are 'steered', consciously or not, toward more 'people-oriented' topics; I haven't experienced this, although I suppose I do tend to be attracted to more 'people-oriented' topics within the broad fields I am interested in. Finally, we need to consider the possibility that women just aren't taken as seriously as men -- by men, other women, and themselves -- in the argumentative, combatative interactions that philosophy typically involves.

Whether your empirical speculation is correct, it is of course not for philosophers to say. So let's focus on the question. Let's suppose it turns out that women are intrinsically more intelligent than men. Should women then be accorded special treatment as regards education?

To suppose it would be just to accord women special treatment in this situation, one must suppose that it would be just to treat me a certain way simply on the ground that I was a member of a group that, as a whole, had certain characteristics I may or may not myself share. For note that it is consistent with the supposition that women, as a group, are intrinsically more intelligent that men, as a group, that I am the most brilliant person in the world. Why I should suffer some educational disadvantage in this case is very unclear. In short: Unless the differences between the groups are so large as to be essentially exclusive, then differential treatment is unjust, because it results in differential treatment of individuals.

For this reason, I myself find the question whether there are intrinsic differences of the sort you mention of no great interest. There is really no prospect of our discovering that there are differences in intrinsic aptitude for, say, mathematics that are as great as would be required for any policy decision justifiably to take them into account.

(1) Are the psycho-sexual aspects of ourselves fixated from a relatively early age, so that "turn ons" [what we find sexually arousing] are conditioned if not unalterably then in some way that fixes in ourselves certain ideas about what it is for something to be sexual [to be sexual or to be sexually arousing?] in nature?

---Some philosophers argue about this. See Ed Stein's edited book, Forms of Desire, on the "essentialism" vs. "social constuctionism" debate. The question appears to be one for psycholgical theory (see Freud, e.g.). Perhaps what philosophers have been doing is to reflect metapsychologically on the issue. Some experimental research has been done on to what extent and how certain sexual desires can be modified (e.g., in the case of pedophilia and rape). See also Sylvere Lotringer, Overexposed: a study in behavioral modification through overstimulation and habituation. (The idea being, if one gets too much of a stimulus, one gets bored of it. Married couples know this well. Works to some extent on other, nonmarital, sexual interests.)

(2) Should considerations about this act as impetus to revise any aspects of the media and popular culture, including of course, pornography, which is one of the largest domains of media-culture despite being confined to less blatant forms of presentation (than, say, advertisments for "Big Macs")?

---Again, a question dealt with by a bunch of social psychologists, e.g., Malamuth, Dinnerstein, Check, Zillman, and others, although philosophers have contributed by asking questions such as: can psychological science really answer questions about the impact of pornography (and advertising), and what are the normative implications, if any, of the (purported) harmfulness of various types of media?

(3a) Finally, I have the idea that cyber-porn (and to a lesser extent all cyber-sex) is covertly homo-erotic when men use it to get off on "straight" screen sex.

---It is probably true to some extent that some males who watch heterosexual porn are primarily interested in the workings and doings of penises. Whether that means they are covertly (or overtly) homo-erotic (homosexual? gay? bisexual? pansexual? polymorphous? etc.) depends exquisitely on how we understand the concept of "sexual orientation." Further, the unconscious is a funny thing. We also know from Kinsey and other studies that on the scale from 0 to 6 (0 = pure het), many more men are 1 and 2 than we ordinarily think. So why believe that the homoerotic component is always or mainly covert?

(3b) This isn't entirely true, sex is sex and breasts are breasts, but the fact that a machine which could be (not unfairly) called a "boys toy" is being used as the platform for a mathematically constructed system of media exchange (viz. the world wide web) that was developed primarily by men.

---So? What does this have to do with the homoeroticism, latent or patent, of cyberseuxal images and the responses of men to them? I am not seeing the connection here.

(3c) Crucially, the sex scenes themselves are heavily male edited, and in many of them there is little left of female sensuality

Grossly false; take a better, more representative look at pornography-- not just the kind you like. :)

(3d) (and, perhaps not coincidentally, a hugely disproportionate screenage of male/female genitilia as compares [compared] to sex in the flesh).

---Oh? Again you misrepresent porn. Futher, the last time I had sex (years ago, I must admit) the time- or attention- proportion of male/female genitalia was large (including oral sex, mutual masturbation, not only coitus), although not exclusive---as compared with what? Ozzie and Harriet? The perfunctory domestic kiss that Kierekegaard rightly made fun of?

(3e) Doesn't that amount to "getting off on" a male conception of sexuality (or one form of it), and if so, can that count as homoerotic?

---Nah. "Getting off on" a male conception of what sexuality is, or is like, or should be, or would be in ideal circumstances, has nothing to do with the images so constructed being homoerotic or appealing to homoeroticism. Indeed, quite the opposite, if the make makers of porn, employing a male take on sexuality, or male hopes and wishes, are heterosexual. You are reaching, stretching, for something that is just not there. Still, it is good to stretch, as long as we can put our muscles back where they belong afterwards.

I won't endeavor to reply to all of the questions you have asked here. But I am inclined to be quite skeptical about your hypothesis that all cyber-porn is "covertly homo-erotic." I doubt that what most (or even many) of the men who find such material titillating really find interesting is the fact that the medium through which it is conveyed "was developed primarily by men" (as if the images of women conveyed via that medium were somehow incidental to the titillation). Really!

I am also just a bit concerned by the vast generality of expressions such as "a male conception of sexuality." My own experiences and inquiries strongly suggest that such generalities ignore the indefinitely great varieties of sexuality and sexual experience between people of the same gender (as well as ignore the commonalities some have found with one another, despite differences in gender).

There is very good evidence now that "sexual orientation" has a large genetic component. Whether it is genetically determined (or better, to what extent) is not clear, but most "gay" people report having known of their "orientation" at a fairly young age. So even if there are also strong environmental components, that certainly does not imply that one's "sexual orientation" is chosen nor, for that matter, that it could be changed. There is also very good evidence that "sexual orientation" lies on a continuum, and that "gay" and "straight" are just the two ends of that continuum, with most people falling somewhere along it. I therefore doubt very much that people who lie at the "gay" end choose their "orientation" any more than do the people at the "straight" end. And honestly: Do those of us who are "straight" have any sense at all that we chose so to be? If not, why should "gay" folk be any different?

As you'll gather from the scare-quotes, I have a problem with the terminology I've been using. Let me explain why.

People who fall somewhere along the continuum sometimes do have a choice to make about whether to be involved with a person of the same sex or a person of the opposite sex. I've known several such people during my life, and I've seen several of them in relationships of both kinds. Typically, they conceive of their choice not as "With which sex person should I be invovled?" but rather as: With which person should I be involved? One woman I know, for example, has had several more or less serious relationships with men, but only one with a woman. She never thought of herself as gay or even as bisexual before meeting this woman, but she fell deeply in love with her, and they became seriously involved. "Sally" spent a long time coming to terms with her newfound relationship, and she broke up with "Suzy" for a period while she worked out for herself whether she could live as a lesbian, since society was sure to identify her that way, even if she did not identify herself that way. Eventually, Sally returned to Suzy, not because she'd decided to be a lesbian but, quite simply, because she loved her. The two of them are now married (as they can be here in Massachusetts), have two children, and are very happy.

The simple thing people do not seem to understand is that being "gay" and "straight" isn't about SEX. The question whether someone is gay is not the question with which sorts of people he or she wishes to have SEX. The question is to whom he or she is romantically attacted, that is, attracted in the way that leads one to pursue and hope ardently for an intimate, romantic relationship with the object of one's attraction. The term "sexual orientation" is therefore deeply misleading. So-called "sexual orientation" is not about sex but about love, companionship, and whatever else it is we all seek in a life-partner. For most of us, though not for all of us, that sort of relationship finds profound and very beautiful expression in sexual intimacy, and that is no different for gay people than it is for straight people. To think otherwise is simply to be a bigot.

I'm sure there are some people—perhaps there are far too many people—for whom the very idea of a romantic relationship revolves primarily around sex, but those are sad people, in my book. Frankly, I find the very idea that my marriage is primarily a sexual arrangement offensive. And for that reason, I find the term "hetero-sexual" inappropriate in the present context. I'd much prefer to be called "hetero-amorous": I'm the sort of person who is romantically attracted to, and inclined to fall in love with, members of the opposite sex. It should seem very puzzling what could be meant by "choosing to be homo-amorous". None of us chooses with whom to fall in love, and I don't myself think it very plausible that we choose what kind of person to whom to be romantically attracted, either.

Being hetero-sexual is different from being hetero-amorous. Niether form of "preference"—another word that is not obvious appropriate—is likely to be "either-or", but it seems likely to me that amorosity is more either-or than is sexuality: I've known several people who'd describe themselves as "bi-sexual" but who wouldn't be inclined towards a relationship with members of both sexes.