Phil 327
Jacob Hale: “Are Lesbians Women?”
Hale responds to Wittig’s view that lesbians are NOT women. He thinks that she holds this view for two reasons. (1) We say that lesbians are not real women. (2) A woman is defined in terms of having a relationship to a man, so a lesbian is not a woman. Hale points out that when we use the word ‘real’ we don’t mean to suggest that lesbians aren’t actually women. Rather, we mean that they are not good women. Hale criticizes the second argument by pointing out that nuns don’t have sexual relations with men. He then shows how both nuns and lesbians do have various different types of relationships with men that would seem sufficient to denominate them women.
Hale then argues that the category ‘woman’ has thirteen different features. A person doesn’t have to have all of the features in order to count as a woman. According to Hale, some lesbians qualify as women, and others do not. He give what philosopher's call "a family resemblance" account of a concept. The notion, introduced by one the great philosophers of the 20th Century (Ludwig Wittgenstein), is that not all things belonging to a category have exactly one thing in common which makes them that thing. Instead, there are a host of similarities which are overlapping.
Definitions
Hale provides an analysis of ‘our’ concept of woman in the U.S. This concept has 13 characteristics – it’s a rather complicated analysis.
Question: Why can’t we just use the following, simple definition?
‘Woman’ = ‘adult, female, human being’
Instead of answering this question, and instead of examining Hale, let’s go off on a related tangent and accept this proposed definition.
Sex and Fuzzy Categories
Note that ‘adult, female’ specifies the feature (or set of features) in virtue of which human beings count as women. In this way, it satisfies a Socratic demand for a definition.
‘Adult’: This concept is fuzzy. This means that the line between teenager and adult is not sharp. What is the age? 16? 17? 18? 21? Notice that for different laws (sexual consent, voting, selective services) there are different cut-off points. IMPORTANT: There is no absolute, objective cut-off between teenager and adult. The line is variable and determined differently on different occasions for various different political and practical purposes.
‘Female’: Generally this is taken as the magical feature which makes humans into girls or women. It looks like the kind of feature Socrates might have wanted. However, there are actually different features connected to ‘female’: (a) karyotype (i.e. chromosomes as XY); (b) genitalia (vagina); (c) reproductive organs (ovaries, uterus, etc.). Question: WHICH of these three features determine whether a person is female? Usually there is no problem since these features are usually aligned. But there are people (‘intersexuals’) who are born such that these features do not always line up. What do we do in a case of conflict? Consider a person who looks like a woman, has a vagina, no reproductive organs, and is XY karyotype. What is the sex? The point is that different people will probably give different answers. So how do we decide? Which feature is the right one? It seems that there is no absolute, objective way to determine this (by examining the concept). Which feature counts is determined differently on different occasion for various different political and practical purposes. This means: The borders of womanhood are permeable and partly politically determined. Additionally each of the features mentioned are themselves complicated. (a) More than just XX, XY. Also: X0, XXY, as well as ‘mosaic’ cases in which each cell has a different karyotype; (b) indeterminate phallic tissue. Is it a penis or a clitoris? Surgeons often use the following rule of thumb: a neonate clitoris should be less the 3/8 of an inch, a penis should be at least one inch; (c) people born with both, or mixed organs. So again: There is no absolute, objective cut-off with respect to these features. The lines are variable and determined differently (usually by surgeons).
The Natural Attitude about Sex
Ethnomethodologist, Harold Garfinkel claims that people (whom we call ‘normals’) had a kind of ‘common sense’ view about sex. The view is naïve (and it is refuted by the existence of intersexuals as well as scientific views). Nonetheless, most people persist in believing it.
The following is a summary:
(1) Genitalia are the essential signs of sex;
(2) There are two mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories (male and female);
(3) This distinction is “natural”;
(4) Membership in a particular sex is “natural” and can’t be changed;
(5) Any exceptions to the preceding claims may be dismissed as “unnatural’ or “abnormal.”
(6) The only transitions from one sex to another are masquerade/ceremonial
We know that (1) is false. Rather, there are several features to determine sex and sometimes it is not clear what to do in case of conflict. (2) Is false since some people are either sexes or neither sexes. (3) Is false. The distinction is blurry, and made more rigid through cultural and surgical means. (4) Is false if transsexual ‘sex-change’ is possible. (5) One can’t simply ignore cases that go against one’s own view. These cases are real. Notice that dismissing people as ‘unnatural’ or ‘abnormal’ is an evaluative move. It is not grounded in biology, but culture.
Hale
In addition to listing five biological characteristic, Hale list additional features which seem more ‘cultural’ such as the following: Having the right occupation, engaging in the right leisure pursuits, having the right sexual/affectional relationships, the right physical self-presentation and behavior, using the right textual cues, having the right overall history, self-identifying with the category ‘woman’.
Question: Are all of these things really a part of ‘our’ concept woman? Why isn’t the preceding definition good enough? One worry is that Hale’s account would make the concept of woman relative. (Perhaps that is a good thing!?).
Notice that we can use expressions such as ‘manly’ and ‘womanly’. When we call somebody ‘manly’ we do not mean to say he is an adult male. Rather, we attribute various cultural features (such as behavior, textual cues, etc.). Does this show that these cultural features are part of the concepts of woman and man? (I’ll leave this up to you to think about).
Even if these cultural features aren’t part of the concept of woman, they do play an important role in terms of how women are viewed and expected to behave. Consider the following analogy:
The concept of ‘student’ includes the notion of behavior that is expected from students (students go to class, study, write tests, etc.). Moreover, students can be evaluated as good, mediocre, and so forth. Similarly, one might think that the concept of ‘woman’ contains certain expectations of how women are supposed to behave (and they can be evaluated accordingly). For example: She’s a bad girl (perhaps because promiscuous). Or: She’s not a real woman (because she dates women, acts like a guy, etc.). NOTE: Evaluations and Rules are not found in nature. They are cultural (or, possibly, divine).
While some behavior of males and females seems to flow from something biological (e.g., hormonal), it is also clear that much has to do with gender rules and evaluations. e.g., ‘She’s not an attractive woman’; ‘Women aren’t supposed to have facial hair.’ Note that it is natural (biologically speaking) for women to have some facial and body hair. It is true that statistically speaking men tend to have more than women. But how does it follow that women aren’t supposed to have facial hair? That’s an evaluative claim!!
According to Hale, because the concept of woman includes these rules and evaluations, it is normative. He also argues that the concept is inconsistent on the grounds that the rules are often conflicting.
He draws on the notion of a ‘double-bind’ (introduced by feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye as a characteristic of oppression) in order to elucidate his point. Consider: On the one hand, women are supposed to take special care in their appearance. On the other hand, women are sometimes ridiculed for taking so long to get ready, for applying make-up (etc. being false, deceptive). So it’s a no-win situation. Either a woman is sloppy or vain. If these evaluative features are part of the concept woman then, argues Hale, it is an incoherent concept.
Criticism of Hale: Hale places all of the thirteen characteristics on a par (they are weighted differently, but they are the same in kind). One might worry, however, that only some of these characteristics play a decisive role in determining category membership. For example, a person who is regarded as female (because of genital status) may be so regarded as a woman despite the fact that they have none of the other characteristics. Doesn't this suggest that the other features play virtually no role in determining category membership?