Chapter 12 – Feminism
Chapter 12 – Feminism and the Ethics of Care
1. How was the case of the greedy druggist meant to exemplify Kohlberg’s stages of moral development?
2. How was Amy’s answer different from Henry’s? What was Kohlberg’s analysis?
3. What was Gilligan’s response to this?
4. How do males typically think about ethics? How do women differ? [Keep in mind that even if Gilligan is right, these differences are group differences and that individual men and women may think differently!]
5. What could account for these differences?
6. If the care ethic is embraced, moral judgments will change. In each of these cases, state what the care ethic will decide:
a) obligations to family and friends
b) care for disadvantaged children
c) treatment of animals
7. What is problematic about the treatment of these three cases?
8. Why does JR think that an ethics of care ultimately must rest within a more general ethical framework?
Sexism – Marilyn Frye
1. Notice Frye’s warning that some people will refuse to change their views, regardless of the strength of the opposite argument. Don’t be such a person.
2. Frye’s basic thesis is simple: that the differences between males and females are artificially exaggerated so as to make it clear which sex one belongs to, and that those who are put in the male category gain tremendous advantage over those in the female category.
3. What evidence does she provide to suggest that we actively move to ‘announce our sexes’? Why do we do this?
4. What happens when someone refuses to follow the sex-coded styles we have set up? Why are we so hostile?
5. Frye thinks that this coding system has unfair consequences. Give some examples.
6. What is Frye’s analysis of fashion? How does sex-coding disadvantage women?
7. How does Frye define oppression? How does sex-coding help to oppress women?
8. What is Frye’s response to those who claim that sex differences are natural?
9. What evidence does Frye present to counter the claim that there are significant natural differences?
10. Frye rejects the standard division of ‘nature vs. nurture’. What does she replace this with? [This is a tough question. The most accessible part of the answer can be found in her treatment of ‘habit’.]
11. “But now biological does not mean genetically determined or inevitable. It just means of the animal.” (p. 261) What is the significance of this quotation?
12. How does Frye define ‘sexist’?
Comment Questions
1. If you are sympathetic to the care ethic, try defending it against the following objection: Nel Noddings (in her analysis of caring for Third World children), says that we have no moral obligation to help them. Using her reasoning, it seems that in the case of the Greedy Druggist, the pharmacist has no obligation to help the dying woman. Yet this seems wrong. How can the problem be resolved in a way that is consistent with an ethics of care viewpoint?
2.
What I have been doing is offering observations which suggest that if one thinks there are biologically deep differences between women and men which cause and justify divisions of labor and responsibility such as we see in the modern patriarchal family and in the male-dominated workplace, one may not have arrived at this belief because of direct experience of unmolested physical evidence, but because our customs serve to construct that appearance; and I suggest that these customs are artifacts of culture which exist to support a morally and scientifically insupportable system of dominance and subordination. p. 259
Comment on this passage. Be careful! Make sure you understand Frye’s argument behind this claim before you start writing or else you could end up in trouble. Don’t start writing until you see why she is saying what she is saying.