Week 5: Gender

Question 1

What is permissibility?

Answer 1

Permissibility is one of the roles of ethics to determine what we are allowed to do, what we are obligated to do, and what we are forbidden to do - regardless of what the law/society says.

Question 2

What are the different degrees of moral permissibility?

Answer 2

• Morally wrong or impermissible: prohibited, i.e. bad to do.
• Morally right: allowed or required, i.e. right to do.
  a. morally permissible or neutral: allowed.
  b. morally obligatory: required, i.e. good to do, bad not to do.
  c. morally supererogatory: beyond requirement, i.e. good to do, not bad not to do.

Question 3

What is causal responsibility?

Answer 3

Causal responsibility is being the cause for x to happen.
E.g. the teacher being causally responsible for their presentation.

Question 4

What is moral responsibility?

Answer 4

Moral responsibility is not merely causal, but connected to x in a fact that can be morally assessed.
E.g. being morally responsible for harm deriving from an action.

Question 5

How do we often express moral responsibility?

Answer 5

We often express moral responsibility in terms of praise and blame.
E.g. you can be praiseworthy for moral progress that stems from an action, or blameworthy from harm that stems from it.

Question 6

What are the classical conditions for moral responsibility?

Answer 6

1. Awareness: one has to know that one is performin the action which is potentially blame-/praiseworthy. E.g. the drunk driver knows they are driving and know they have drunk.
2. Control: one has the ability to choose to (not) perform the potentially praise-/blameworthy action. E.g. the drunk driver has chosen to drink and drive.
3. Freedom: one has to perform the potentially praise-/blameworthy action without coercion. E.g. the drunk driver is not being forced to drive at gunpoint.

Question 7

What are the two types of responsibility?

Answer 7

• Forward-looking responsibility: We have responsibilities in the future - things that we have a duty to do.
  E.g. You can be responsible for your personal CO2 emissions in the future (and have a duty to restrict them).
• Backwards looking responsibility: We can also be responsible for things that went well or wrong.
  E.g. You can be responsible for your personal CO2 emissions in the past (and be praise- or blameworthy for them).

Question 8

How is implicit bias different from explicit bias, taking into account moral responsibility?

Answer 8

Implicit bias seems different since we have no awareness of them.

Question 9

What is Saul’s view on having implicit bias?

Answer 9

People are not morally responsible for having implicit bias due to the lack of awareness of them and **lack of control/freedom **over them.

Question 10

What is Saul’s view on acting on the basis of implicit bias?

Answer 10

People are morally responsible for acting on the basis of implicit bias because they have the control/freedom to obtain awareness of the knowledge of the likelyhood of biases (on their behalf) - e.g. by investigating and implementing remedies to deal with the biases.

Question 11

What is Holroyd’s view on having implicit bias?

Answer 11

People are morally responsible for having implicit bias because of one’s responsibility for lack of awareness.

Question 12

How does Holroyd argue that people have a responsibility for their awareness of biases?

Answer 12

When one’s observations are blocked by motivated ignorance - the avoidance or ignoring (perhaps subconsciously) of evidence that serve’s one’s goals - or self-deception, or excessive weight given to misleading introspective evidence. Failing to have this awareness is culpable to some degree.

Question 13

What is Holroyd’s view on acting on the basis of implicit bias?

Answer 13

People are responsible for acting on the basis of implicit bias. But it is possible to intervene through ‘ecological control’, which is to manipulate one’s environment or one’s cognitions in order to secure desirable patterns of thought and behaviour.

Question 14

Summary of Saul and Holroyd

Don’t test, just read.

Answer 14

• According to Saul, we can exempt people from responsibility for implicit bias if they are not aware of them, especially since their environment (a sexist/ racist/ homophobic society) fosters such biases.
• In that view, people performing harmful actions influenced by implicit bias may still be blameworthy (foward-looking responsibility), even if the person is not blameworthy for having the biases themselves (backwards-looking responsibility).
• According to Holroyd, people are responsible for their own awareness of biases and for controlling their environment for controlling their biases (backwards-looking responsibility) and thus avoid harmful actions influenced by implicit bias (forward-looking responsibility).

Question 15

What is slut-shaming?

Answer 15

Slut-shaming is that sexual promiscuity tends to be rewarded for men but disapproved for women. Resultingly, women who have multiple sexual partners are labelled as sluts.

Question 16

In the context of slut-shaming,

What is to be understood as shaming?

Answer 16

Shaming is to be understood as something that is directed and others in connection to moral fault. It is not only pointing at the responsible party but allocating negative traits and labels; ‘name and shame’.
The shamed person may feel shame themselves or not, but being shamed by others is nevertheless a negative feature of one’s life.

‘Others’ is used as a verb here.

Question 17

Explain ‘master narratives’.

Answer 17

So far, we’ve been treating stereotypes as simple propositional beliefs (e.g. Southern Europeans are lazy). However, we can understand stereotypes in a more complex way; not as a simple belief but a series of beliefs.
Stereotypes take the shape of stories or narratives: A series of expectations about a person in virtue of the group they belong to or the experience they are going through.

A theory from Lindemann.

Question 18

Explain the social scripts of master narratives.

Answer 18

There are certain kinds of practices that come with a social script; a series of “material and mental practices” that are not only social expectations but also guide social interaction.
E.g. the restaurant narrative tells that you that when you finish your meal, you must not leave without paying.

Question 19

How can master narratives enact and reinforce oppression?

Answer 19

Some master narratives enact and reinforce oppression by pretending to justify them. The problem is, when a group is stereotyped, the stereotyping find it normal and natural to treat members of that group accordingly. That puts restrictions on how the group members can act.

Question 20

What are examples of gendered master narratives?

Answer 20

Slut shaming and toxic masculinity.

Question 21

How can oppressive narratives be fought against?

Answer 21

Oppressive narratives can be fought with counterstories that replace oppressive master narratives and replace them with more accurate narratives.

Question 22

What effect do counterstories have on bystanders?

Answer 22

Counterstories place forward-looking responsibility on bystanders: Whether it succeeds is a question of uptake, meaning enough people in the dominant group must accept the new story and treat members of the group accordingly.

Question 23

What is the problem with the dominant group and counterstories?

Answer 23

People in the dominant group deploy several techniques to avoid the implementation of counterstories.
For example, make the language pretty, play devil’s advocate, play ‘what about me?’, require victims to be blameless, change the subject.

Question 24

How does, according to Lindeman, #MeToo relate to slut-shaming?

Answer 24

Lindeman thinks the counterstory for slut-shaming is partially succeeding through #MeToo.
E.g. think of the media treatment Christine Blasey Ford: “no one said she was a slut, or deserved what she got because she had been drinking.

Question 25

In what way does Mann portray shame?

Answer 25

Mann portrays shame as an extraction of value: like master narratives, it is a social script that diminishes a person’s autonomy and self-perception.

Question 26

What kinds of shame does Mann identify, and what is the difference?

Answer 26

Mann discussed ‘unbounded shame’ and ‘ubiquitous shame’ as inescapable features of women’s experience. The difference is that one can be remedied and the other cannot.

Question 27

What is ubiquitous shame?

Answer 27

• Ubiquitous: it’s everywhere.
• Ubiquitous shame is an inevitable part of a girl’s existence as part of her future as woman (which is itself tied to her sexuality).
• There is a possibility of redemption, escaping ubiquitous shame, by minimizing the self.

Question 28

What does Mann say about redemption from ubiquitous shame?

Answer 28

“Stories of redemption are an ever-present counterpoint to the background of shame. Redemption in a masculinist economy of desire is concentrated around three events: the provocation of male desire; the marriage proposal; the wedding day—nearly every cultural coming of age story, for girls, is organized around the sorts of words and images that collect affective energy around these three moments. These are the events in a woman’s life in which ubiquitous shame is relieved, in which both power and dignity are restored”

Don’t focus on the exact wording. Get the overall idea.

Question 29

What is unbounded shame?

Answer 29

• Unbounded: it is shame without limits.
• Shame’s scope for women’s sexuality and behaviour expanded even further with social media.
• No possibility of redemption; inescapable.

Question 31

What must we do, according to Mann, to remedy unbounded shame?

Answer 31

Unless there are fundamental changes we must “create the conditions for active investments in other kinds of self-justification for both women and men, so that self-worth and social recognition are not negotiated so intesively or exclusively through gendered practices of risk, extortion, extraction, and depletion.”

Don’t focus on the exact wording. Get the overall idea.