Ethics and Gender

Sandra LaFave

• Guy morality values individuals mainly as abstract, faceless, ahistorical agents in the prime of life. Because other men are thought to be free agents who can compete on a level playing field with other men, and are expected to overcome any obstacles to compete in the game of life, a man's individual history (upbringing, material advantage, health, etc.) is simply never relevant. A "real man" can overcome any disadvantage by sheer will and the help of God.
  
  
• Guy morality supposes equality of rational capacity. You make deals with your equals, and never with mere children or women or old people. Guy morality emphasizes the (supposed) equality of all persons considered as autonomous units, who all can make equitable agreements with other equally powerful autonomous agents.
  
  
• Justice, fairness, and liberty are primary values in guy morality. Guy morality particularly emphasizes "liberty" -- the right to be left alone, also known as a right of non-interference.
  
  
• Guy morality emphasizes the contract model -- the model appropriate to public life, dealings with strangers. Even a "guy religion" (like Christianity) is all about the supposed "deal" God makes with Israel; and later, the way Jesus' death somehow settles a debt(!) incurred by original sin.
  
  
• Guy morality uses theoretical, deductive methods: what's moral follows logically from application of general rules and principles. E.g., from "All abortion is sinful" it follows deductively that "Mary's abortion is sinful," and that's the end of the moral analysis. Utilitarianism is particularly problematic here. Utilitarianism dictates that the right action is the one that produces the greatest hapopiness of the greatest number. Utilitarianism initially sounds fine and reasonable, but it means that if you are in a terrible emergency situation -- you can save five strangers or save your own child -- you must save the five strangers, and that's the end of the moral analysis. Your child does not count more than anyone else. There is no room for "special duties": duties owed to some people but not others, e.g., duties to family as opposed to duties to strangers, because guy morality assumes a rigid notion of human equality.
  
  
• Since women do not typically reason about moral matters in this way, "guy morality" usually downgrades women's moral capacity. E.g. both Schopenhauer and Freud (not to mention some versions of Christianity) say that females are morally childlike, inferior, and in need of moral guidance from men.
  
  
• Guy morality emphasizes "clean hands" -- decency vs excellence, casuistry, hair-splitting. The big question is: can I justify my behavior in terms of some rule? If yes, then I've done all I need to do. There's no need to strive for more moral excellence than is required by the rules of my contract with society.
  
  
• In spite of the emphasis on liberty, guy morality sees no problem with interfering in people's lives in order to change/convert people who are "ignorant" or "bad" -- for their own good!

• Morality concerns individuals, no two of which are exactly alike, and all of whom have individual histories and faces. For women, people's individual histories matter when you make moral judgments about them. Because men typically saw domestic matters -- raising children, preparing food, caring for the sick and elderly, etc. -- as "women's work" -- secondary to the real business of life (competition, war, power, deal-making, etc.) -- men tend to be less familiar with the families and life histories of the "invisible" people around them (children, servants, the sick, etc.). On the other hand, because women typically dealt with familiar people -- whose families and life histories are known to them (as they would be in any small-village setting), -- women tend to see more clearly than men the importance of families and upbringing and social circumstances to behavior. Because women are tuned into the daily life of the community, women see clearly how careless upbringing, poverty, and misfortune can produce odd or anti-social behaviors. Women know that as a rule, well-brought-up people in good health and material advantages -- people with "moral luck" -- tend to have better lives, both morally and materially. Guy morality seems blind to this obvious fact.
  
  
• The world is full of disparities of power and rational capacity. Poor people are less powerful than rich people, children are less powerful and less rational than adults, women in many cultures are far less powerful than men, old people sometimes cannot function autonomously, etc. Women see these disparities of power very clearly because women tend to be the ones responsible for taking care of the other less powerful people: children, the sick, the old. These disparities of power mean that women know that you can't just leave some people alone (e.g., babies). So women are apt to find the male obsession with "liberty" -- construed as the right to be left alone -- as laughable. Men seem to conveniently forget that women cared for them when they were babies and women will probably take care of them when they are sick or old.
  
  
• Concepts of rights and equality must therefore be balanced by concerns for those who simply cannot participate fully in contracts. "Gal morality" emphasizes rights of recipience, as opposed to rights of non-interference. I.e., women tend to be more aware of positive duties of care, as opposed to negative duties to leave alone.
  
  
• Moral judgments are not necessarily arrived at deductively: sometimes morality requires creative, integrative responses that preserve relationships, even at the expense of "principle". There are "rules" and duties, of course -- e.g., do the best you can for your parents -- but no definite prescriptions for how to carry out those rules. If your parent has dementia and appears to believe things that are obviously false, what duty applies? The duty to truth? or the duty of kindness?
  
  
• Emphasizes accepting others without necessarily changing them
  
  
• Emphasizes excellences of virtue -- going beyond what is stipulated in the rules of the contract. Think of all the things people do to raise their children well (e.g., go to their sporting events). But going to your child's sporting event is not "commanded" by any ordinary rule.