Solid post. Related to your last post and spending time listening to Cal Newport and Slow Productivity this week I'm wondering what their social media feeds were like. Kidding but these women focused a lot on producing quality (the last pillar of slow productivity) and letting that speak to their excellence. I think Newport is right in claiming that both men and women have lost the focus on quality in exchange for producing more or working in the shallows in ways that inhibit our best work and make it hard to judge if the barriers we are hitting are due to outside forces or that we just aren't that good.
Your definitions reminded me that while Alasdair MacIntyre was worried that we’d lost the language of virtue, we’ve also lost the language of vice. Defining chauvinism and boorishness and tragedy and ordinariness is extremely clarifying. Though I don’t care for the frame that is the catch all “patriarchy,” if everything is patriarchy, then nothing is.
I think you may be attempting to prove too much, here. You note that these women benefited from the absence of men at Oxford; presumably this implies that under ordinary circumstances the paths they followed would have been unavailable to many. I agree that it is important for all of us, at least some of the time, to remember our own agency and focus on our own character and on what we consider to be worthwhile, instead of focusing only on the barriers that might stand in our way. However, the way you have written this comes close to implying that social structures and conventions that can restrict women’s ability to pursue certain types of purposes are simply not worth thinking about in the first place. I can’t agree with that.
You note that “There are certainly occasions where men assume they have more power or competence than women. But in such occasions, an actual display of female power or competence is often enough to correct the record.” What about when it isn’t? What about when the woman in question is still learning, and is reliant on others to be patient with her mistakes and teach her anyway, even if she is not yet particularly powerful or competent? It’s not reasonable to expect that brilliance can always overcome the opposition, or to place higher standards of brilliance on women before they can be permitted to attempt certain kinds of intellectual work.
You say that “Boorishness is bad in both manners and morals but bears no necessary relation to a system called “patriarchy”- there would be boorish men even within an egalitarian landscape, though they may be penalized differently.” The word “necessary” is doing a lot of work, here. Surely you must agree that sometimes the contribution of that system in enabling or excusing boorish behaviour may be worthy of analysis?
I disagree that patriarchy “does not admit of degrees.” Sometimes the word is used in a way that does not admit nuance, and that can be a problem. I agree that it is a word to use with caution, while interrogating what exactly we mean by it. On the other hand, I find your list of sub-categories somewhat inadequate. Did you intend it to be exhaustive?
If “chauvinism” is held to be, by definition, merely bad manners and not bad morals, then I will be obliged to exclude from that category many things that might otherwise belong there. For example, consider that C. S. Lewis wrote a conversion scene in “That Hideous Strength” in which a woman discovers herself to be “a person (yet not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others.” Consider that this realisation comes on the heels of her accepting that her husband might not be very interested in listening to her and that’s okay; consider that the role she is accepting is explicitly written as a sexual one (even though it may not be sex that she particularly enjoys).
The clear implication, here, is that God made (some) women to be, among other things, sexual objects. Fully accepting God requires these women to accept this about themselves: God sees you as an object in some ways and it’s okay when men do that, too.
I do not think this is boorishness; it’s clear in context that this role is restricted to marriage and also that a good marriage should involve love. There may be some tragedy in the elements of marital disregard that this character is expected to take without complaint, but this is not the main quality either. And I suppose you could call it “ordinary” in the sense that this view was, indeed, quite ordinary when this book was written, but I do not think it needs to be ordinary for an otherwise-good man to sincerely believe that some women need to see themselves as (among other things) objects in order to develop spiritually.
No, I think this is chauvinism. It’s an assumption about the role that a woman ought to play and the significance of that role in determining how she ought to relate to others and to God. Moreover, in this spiritual context it is a serious moral flaw. A person who tells other people that God sees them as an object, even with however many caveats about how they are of course also a person, too, has done something morally wrong in making that statement. They have misrepresented the Good in a fundamental way. Even as an honest mistake, this would be something to be deeply repented of, if one were to come to understand that one had done such a thing.
I appreciate much of what you’re saying, here. I especially appreciate the book recommendation! It sounds well worth a read. And if you intended this to be a defence of your own approach to gender issues, then I would wholeheartedly agree that most women should take that approach some of the time and that some women should take that approach all of the time. But analysis of gender is not always just a distraction from more specific or important things. It may not have been the truth that these women were speaking, but I submit that many other women have properly found it to be a truth worth telling.
What a fantastic piece! I recently read and thoroughly loved this book, and found the lives of the four women fascinating in their wild divergences. They each lived their life as they saw fit, embracing the complexities of being women in academia, (seemingly) wasting no time airing frustrations about what today would be seen as limitations to their work. I found their stories both bracing and affirming, and appreciated that you drew that out here.
Murdoch’s ‘The Nice and the Good’ is one (!) of my favourite of her novels, which interrogates these ideas; her thought has always remained with me for many of the reasons you articulate. Thank you. A few years ago I read ‘Metaphysical Animals’ and wonder if I should read Lipscomb’s book for another view.
Solid post. Related to your last post and spending time listening to Cal Newport and Slow Productivity this week I'm wondering what their social media feeds were like. Kidding but these women focused a lot on producing quality (the last pillar of slow productivity) and letting that speak to their excellence. I think Newport is right in claiming that both men and women have lost the focus on quality in exchange for producing more or working in the shallows in ways that inhibit our best work and make it hard to judge if the barriers we are hitting are due to outside forces or that we just aren't that good.
Your definitions reminded me that while Alasdair MacIntyre was worried that we’d lost the language of virtue, we’ve also lost the language of vice. Defining chauvinism and boorishness and tragedy and ordinariness is extremely clarifying. Though I don’t care for the frame that is the catch all “patriarchy,” if everything is patriarchy, then nothing is.
I think you may be attempting to prove too much, here. You note that these women benefited from the absence of men at Oxford; presumably this implies that under ordinary circumstances the paths they followed would have been unavailable to many. I agree that it is important for all of us, at least some of the time, to remember our own agency and focus on our own character and on what we consider to be worthwhile, instead of focusing only on the barriers that might stand in our way. However, the way you have written this comes close to implying that social structures and conventions that can restrict women’s ability to pursue certain types of purposes are simply not worth thinking about in the first place. I can’t agree with that.
You note that “There are certainly occasions where men assume they have more power or competence than women. But in such occasions, an actual display of female power or competence is often enough to correct the record.” What about when it isn’t? What about when the woman in question is still learning, and is reliant on others to be patient with her mistakes and teach her anyway, even if she is not yet particularly powerful or competent? It’s not reasonable to expect that brilliance can always overcome the opposition, or to place higher standards of brilliance on women before they can be permitted to attempt certain kinds of intellectual work.
You say that “Boorishness is bad in both manners and morals but bears no necessary relation to a system called “patriarchy”- there would be boorish men even within an egalitarian landscape, though they may be penalized differently.” The word “necessary” is doing a lot of work, here. Surely you must agree that sometimes the contribution of that system in enabling or excusing boorish behaviour may be worthy of analysis?
I disagree that patriarchy “does not admit of degrees.” Sometimes the word is used in a way that does not admit nuance, and that can be a problem. I agree that it is a word to use with caution, while interrogating what exactly we mean by it. On the other hand, I find your list of sub-categories somewhat inadequate. Did you intend it to be exhaustive?
If “chauvinism” is held to be, by definition, merely bad manners and not bad morals, then I will be obliged to exclude from that category many things that might otherwise belong there. For example, consider that C. S. Lewis wrote a conversion scene in “That Hideous Strength” in which a woman discovers herself to be “a person (yet not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others.” Consider that this realisation comes on the heels of her accepting that her husband might not be very interested in listening to her and that’s okay; consider that the role she is accepting is explicitly written as a sexual one (even though it may not be sex that she particularly enjoys).
The clear implication, here, is that God made (some) women to be, among other things, sexual objects. Fully accepting God requires these women to accept this about themselves: God sees you as an object in some ways and it’s okay when men do that, too.
I do not think this is boorishness; it’s clear in context that this role is restricted to marriage and also that a good marriage should involve love. There may be some tragedy in the elements of marital disregard that this character is expected to take without complaint, but this is not the main quality either. And I suppose you could call it “ordinary” in the sense that this view was, indeed, quite ordinary when this book was written, but I do not think it needs to be ordinary for an otherwise-good man to sincerely believe that some women need to see themselves as (among other things) objects in order to develop spiritually.
No, I think this is chauvinism. It’s an assumption about the role that a woman ought to play and the significance of that role in determining how she ought to relate to others and to God. Moreover, in this spiritual context it is a serious moral flaw. A person who tells other people that God sees them as an object, even with however many caveats about how they are of course also a person, too, has done something morally wrong in making that statement. They have misrepresented the Good in a fundamental way. Even as an honest mistake, this would be something to be deeply repented of, if one were to come to understand that one had done such a thing.
I appreciate much of what you’re saying, here. I especially appreciate the book recommendation! It sounds well worth a read. And if you intended this to be a defence of your own approach to gender issues, then I would wholeheartedly agree that most women should take that approach some of the time and that some women should take that approach all of the time. But analysis of gender is not always just a distraction from more specific or important things. It may not have been the truth that these women were speaking, but I submit that many other women have properly found it to be a truth worth telling.
What a fantastic piece! I recently read and thoroughly loved this book, and found the lives of the four women fascinating in their wild divergences. They each lived their life as they saw fit, embracing the complexities of being women in academia, (seemingly) wasting no time airing frustrations about what today would be seen as limitations to their work. I found their stories both bracing and affirming, and appreciated that you drew that out here.
Murdoch’s ‘The Nice and the Good’ is one (!) of my favourite of her novels, which interrogates these ideas; her thought has always remained with me for many of the reasons you articulate. Thank you. A few years ago I read ‘Metaphysical Animals’ and wonder if I should read Lipscomb’s book for another view.
Kirsten, this here needs to be a book. Thanks again for your always good thinking and incarnating.