## 1. Moral Motivation



Throughout the history of ethics, many moral philosophers have been
concerned with the agent's psychology, or what motivates an
agent to act. Three stand out as the most prominent foes or friends of
feminists: Hobbes, Hume, and Kant. Hobbes believed that self-interest
motivates all action, including moral action. For Hobbes, all of a
person's actions aim at the person's own good as
determined by that person, and rationality requires acting in ways
that promote one's own good, which, for Hobbes, amounts to
acting in ways that best satisfy one's desires. Each rational
person's strongest desire is for self-preservation, which
rationality dictates should never be sacrificed. Thus self-interest or
desire-satisfaction prompts action, and both morality and rationality
dictate acting accordingly. While Hume agreed with Hobbes that reason
by itself cannot motivate action, he disagreed with Hobbes about the
motive that prompted action, believing that instead of self-interest,
the feeling or sentiment of sympathy or benevolence is necessary for
prompting moral action. Reason's role is to determine the means
to our ends, not set the ends themselves, which are set by sentiment.
Kant believed, against Hobbes and Hume, that not only could reason
itself prompt action, but that it is the source of our moral nature.
Reason, for Kant, needs to master desire, rather than dictate the
satisfaction of desire, in order for the agent to be autonomous (see,
for example, Deigh 1992, 1-2).



Feminists have weighed in on these debates. One main charge made by
some feminists is that emotion has been associated historically with
women, and for this reason moral philosophers, most of whom have been
men, have either ignored it, denigrated it, or included it in moral
theory but only as construed in a typically masculine way (Baier,
1987b; Gilligan 1982 and 1987; Held 1987; Tuana 1992, 1-12 and
113-121). Further, since reason has been associated with men, it
has been valorized by the same theories. These feminists imply that
traditional moral theory is sexist. Kant, by insisting that reason
should master desire, denigrates emotion, and by insisting that reason
alone can prompt action, ultimately leaves out emotion from morality.
Hobbes, by appealing to the motive of self-interest in his description
of persons in a State of Nature from which morality must be derived,
construes emotion in a typically masculine way, as the motive
appropriate for prompting actions with strangers in the so-called
public sphere with which men have traditionally been associated
(Calhoun 1988). Some of the feminists at issue favor Hume's view
that benevolence or sympathy is necessary for prompting moral action
(Baier 1987a). Some of them believe that one step in the direction of
ending women's oppression, a goal they share with all feminists,
is to incorporate into our philosophical theories those things that
have been heretofore excluded precisely because of their association
with women (Baier 1987b; Held, 1987). Such feminists reject both
Kant's view, that reason should master desire, and
Hobbes's view, that self-interest is the motive that prompts
moral action, and favor including in moral theory those motives that
have traditionally been associated with women. These are motives
appropriate to prompting action with intimates in the so-called
private sphere to which (at least white, middle class) women have
historically been relegated. Foremost among them is the motive of
care, exhibited by women who have been charged with the role of
raising children. But feminists are not univocal in their views about
the role of emotion in moral theory. Other feminists caution that
incorporating "feminine" emotions into moral theory risks
perpetuating women's oppression by leaving unchallenged the view
that women are essentially emotional beings, and men essentially
rational beings (Tronto 1993, 241-247; Tuana 1992,
115-116).



Feminists's responses on both sides of the issue have been
multifarious. It is important to note that some philosophers,
independent of feminist motivations, challenge the charge that
traditional moral theory denigrates or ignores emotion, arguing that
it can at least make room for it. For instance, Barbara Herman (1981)
and Marcia Baron (1984) argue that Kant need not, or even should not,
exclude emotion altogether from his theory. Herman argues against the
view that in order for an act to have moral worth, it must be done
without the presence of any inclination, but only from the moral
motive, or, for the sake of duty. Herman agrees that acts having moral
worth must be done from the moral motive, but argues that the received
interpretation of Kant is wrong in assuming that inclination must not
be present. Regarding morally obligatory actions, Herman argues that
inclination may be present as long as the agent's final motive
is the moral one. Regarding morally permissible actions, Herman argues
that the moral motive functions as a limiting condition, screening out
inclinations that take as their object action conflicting with the
Categorical Imperative. In the ordinary case, the agent has both
inclination and the moral motive present, with inclination giving the
moral motive its object. Baron takes the role of inclination one step
further, arguing that inclination *must* be present in the
perfectly moral person. This is because Baron understands the moral
motive in a Kantian way rather than strictly as Kant understood it, as
a commitment to morality instead of something we must hold before our
minds each time we act. Thus it can function either as a primary
motive, motivating the agent without the aid of inclination, or as a
secondary motive, as a commitment to doing what is right, telling the
agent to act as inclination directs. But these modest attempts to
incorporate emotion into a moral theory that at first blush seems to
ignore emotion or makes reason its master do not address the feminist
charge that "feminine" motivation is left out of or
denigrated by traditional moral theory, and is so because of its
association with women.



Other philosophers writing particularly from a feminist view favor
endorsing any traditional moral theory that incorporates
"feminine" motivation. Annette Baier favors a Humean
account over Kant's, arguing that Hume is the
"woman's moral theorist"(1987). While Baier
acknowledges that Hume had less than feminist views since he saw women
as weaker than men in mind and body, she believes that nonetheless
Hume's theory squares with women's moral wisdom, both in
the concept of morality that many women have, and in their experiences
that lead them to have it (38). Baier contrasts Hume's moral
theory with Kant's, specifically in connection to Carol
Gilligan's conclusions about men's and women's moral
reasoning (see below; 1982). Gilligan is a psychologist who set out to
collect data about women's moral reasoning, which she noted was
not reflected in the experiments conducted just on males by another
psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg (see the entry on
 feminist ethics).
 Baier notes the following differences between Kant and Hume, which
she takes to resemble those Gilligan suggested between the women she
studied and Kohlberg's men. Kant makes morality a matter of
obedience to universal law through which we obtain freedom, but Hume
makes it a matter of cultivating character traits directed at peace of
mind and integrity; Kant takes reason to be the fundamental moral
capacity, and Hume takes sympathy, or the heart's responses to
particular persons, to be this capacity; Kant takes the rules of
justice to be morally binding, while Hume emphasizes convention and
eradicating contradictions in the passions of sympathetic persons.
Hume also emphasizes relations between unequals, such as in
parents' love for their children, which he believed to be the
strongest bond the mind is capable of, and from which he builds his
moral theory. Gilligan presented data from female and male subjects
showing that by and large, females made decisions about moral dilemmas
based on concrete situations in which the parties know details about
each other, emphasizing feelings such as care for others, and
preserving relations, while males for the most part decided on the
basis of rule-following and justice while abstracting from the details
of the case. This is not to say that Gilligan's claims are free
from controversy; rather, since she published the results of her
study, her claims have been criticized for perpetuating sexist
stereotypes (Tronto 1993), for being inaccurate both because there are
not significant differences in the reasoning of males and females at
different life stages (Walker 1993), and because any differences in
moral reasoning have more to do with education or general cognitive
development rather than gender (Greeno and Maccoby 1993), for being
false because her sample size and characterizations are inadequate for
drawing the conclusions she does about gendered reasoning (Luria 1993)
and for invoking generalizations that can be used to support racist
views (Moody-Adams 1991, 199). These objections aside, Baier argues
that Gilligan's data about females' moral reasoning is
aligned with Hume's theory, while data about males' moral
reasoning is aligned with other justice-oriented theories such as
Kant's and Hobbes's. Baier endorses Hume's theory as
more amiable to feminism since it speaks more accurately to
women's experiences than Kantian or other justice-oriented
theories, particularly women's experience of care-taking
relationships that require knowing the particularities of the persons
involved.



Since Gilligan's findings were published, some feminists have
gone beyond endorsing Hume's theory by valorizing women's
caring in a new moral theory, the ethic of care, which is grounded at
least in part on acting from the motive of care (see the entry on
 feminist ethics).
 What makes the feminist complaint against traditional moral theories
different from that of philosophers such as Michael Stocker (1976),
who argues that modern moral theories are "schizophrenic"
because they pay attention only to reasons, values, and justification
while saying little if anything about motives, is that it is lodged
for the feminist reason that women's voice has been excluded
from moral theory, and that care, specifically, is the motive left
out. The motive of care is prominent in relations among family
members, particularly of mother to child. Since traditional moral
theories are concerned primarily with mores that ought to govern
relations between strangers in the public sphere, they leave out
discussion of caring that goes on in relations in the so-called
private sphere among intimates, especially the mother-child relation.
And since women historically have been relegated to the private
sphere, much of the moral life as they experience it within the family
gets left out. Feminists who endorse the ethic of care thus aim to
valorize care in moral theory, thereby giving women a moral voice
equal to men's.



Most care ethicists believe that the *motive* of care, not just
acting in a caring way, is central to, and is a distinguishing feature
of, the ethic of care (for example, Ruddick 1980; Noddings, 1984;
Baier 1987b; Calhoun 1988; Held 1990), but at least one suggests that
caring does not require any particular emotion toward the one cared
for (Manning 1992, 64). Some feminists favor incorporating care into
justice theories (Friedman 1987; Tronto 1993; Flanagan and Jackson
1987; Blum 1988), though others suggest that we altogether replace
justice theories with an ethic of care (Gilligan, 1982 and 1987;
Noddings 1984; Ruddick 1980). Those in the latter group believe that
moral action is prompted by the motive of care rather than by reason
itself.



Margaret Little argues that the motive of care plays a significant
role in moral epistemology: it is essential for seeing the moral
landscape, that is, for knowing what is morally called for in a given
situation, and for getting us to moral truths (Little 2007). Little
shares the same suspicion as the feminists cited above that care has
been assigned a "lesser" role than reason because of its
historical association with women. Little argues that when we care
about a person, we have the right background disposition for morally
relevant features to come into our consciousness. Caring makes us
receptive to the particularities of a person, enables us to listen to
their narrative, and makes us respect the person as a responsible
subject. Only when we are so disposed do we know what is morally
called for--caring about persons enables us to pick up on what is
morally salient (424-25). Those who have merely an intellectual
comprehension of the moral landscape but never respond appropriately
have a clouded perception, much like a person who uses the term
"green" correctly but has never seen the color and so
lacks the concept of "green" (427). Little argues that the
moral case is even worse than the color case because those who lack
the appropriate emotions will not get morality right. Such is the case
with the person who sees that certain things are painful and knows
what pain is, yet does not see pain as evil. This person does not get
morality right because, first, nonmoral terms cannot completely
explain morality (e.g., they cannot explain the difference in the
cruelty of kicking a dog, taunting someone verbally, and forgetting to
invite the neighbor's child to one's daughter's
birthday party) (428). A second reason is that whether a feature plays
a role in determining an act's moral status is dependent, in a
way that cannot be codified, on other relevant features. For instance,
an act's being fun may be a reason to do it, but it is also a
feature that makes hunting animals morally problematic (428). Little
concludes that affect, particularly care for persons, is a necessary
component of apprehending moral properties themselves, contrary to
traditional accounts, according to which moral knowledge is acquired
strictly by reason whose verdicts are passed on to motivation which in
turn issues in the appropriate response (420, 428).



Although the ethic of care is still in a fairly developmental stage,
defended more fully in a 2006 book by Virginia Held, it has been
criticized by some feminists as being merely a *feminine*, but
not a *feminist*, moral theory. A feminine ethic gives weight
to the experiences and intuitions of women, but it need not aim at
ending women's oppression; a feminist ethic has as one of its
aims ending women's oppression. If care is a motive that women
experience mainly in connection with their being in a position of
exploitation, then one worry is that valorizing it in moral theory
does not overcome, but may even perpetuate, its role in women's
oppression. Sarah Hoagland, for instance, criticizes the ethic of care
for at least three reasons: that it is grounded in the unequal
relationship of a mother having natural care for her child which may
not, especially in a male child, ever be reciprocated; that it fails
to acknowledge the real conflict that some mothers feel between
resentment and tenderness; and that in appealing to the feminine which
is itself a product of the masculine world, it risks perpetuating
women's oppression (Hoagland 1991, 253, 254, and 256). Marilyn
Friedman critiques the kind of care involved in the ethic of care.
While men's caring, as revealed in earning a paycheck and
providing material goods for the family, has to do with protection and
material forms of help that men control, women's caring, as
revealed in emotional work, has to do with admitting dependency and
sharing or losing control, which contributes to their own oppression
(Friedman 1993, 175 and 177). Lawrence Blum, et.al., argue that
women's caring reinforces the suppression of the self and leads
to a denial of their autonomy, and makes mothers judge their success
solely in terms of the success of their children, making them lose
touch with their own needs (Blum, et.al. 1973-74, 231-32,
235, and 239). Claudia Card argues that sometimes the caring that
women engage in is not virtuous, but instead is misplaced gratitude to
men who either have the power to abuse them or offer women the
privilege of service in exchange for "protection" (Card
1993, 216). Women's caring is often a survival strategy, and so
Gilligan is wrong to think that women's reasoning can deepen and
correct the ethics of the more privileged (207). Card believes that
too often women do not discriminate good from bad relationships, and
end up assuming responsibility for maintaining any relationships they
come to be involved in by trying to satisfy everyone because they are
afraid to say "no." Barbara Houston cautions that if care,
like anything else in ethics, is declared good or right or just, it
had better be so for women (Houston 1987, 261). While Houston agrees
with the feminist intention to reclaim womanly virtues as virtues in
the face of their absence from contemporary moral theory, she cautions
that these virtues, including care, should win the liberation of
women, make women's subordination a primary moral concern, make
it a recognizable moral problem rather than a nonmoral matter,
challenge the status quo of women's social position, and not
further women's oppression (255).



In spite of the vast amount of attention feminists have paid to the
ethic of care, and perhaps in light of the worries about care and
women's oppression, some feminists have turned their attention
away from making the motive of care central in moral theory. Jean
Hampton tries to salvage Hobbesian moral theory, and believes that
feminists should make the motive of self-interest part of their moral
theory because without it women lose themselves in slavish action
(1993). They become just like Amy, a girl that Gilligan describes in
one of her discussions of gendered moral reasoning. Hampton reads
Gilligan's much-discussed case of Amy and Jake in the following
way. Amy reasons from the care perspective, seeing morality as being
responsive to others' needs, not hurting others, and being in
service to them. She loses herself in moral dilemmas, not being able
firmly to assert herself or let her interests count, but always places
the needs of others first. She borders on servility and lacks
self-worth. Jake, on the other hand, a representative male moral
reasoner, reasons from the justice perspective, seeing morality as a
set of traffic rules that amount to pursuing one's own interests
without interfering with the interests of others. Jake is insensitive
to the needs of others, and sees the world from his own self-centered
viewpoint, believing that one's own self ought to come first in
moral dilemmas. Hampton argues that neither is the ideal moral view,
but that Amy suffers more because she is highly exploitable. Hampton
favors a contractarian morality over the ethic of care, since on the
former a person is prompted by self-interest in putting forward claims
with other potential contractors to the hypothetical bargain from
which morality is ultimately derived. A Hobbesian hypothetical
bargainer will not make or keep contracts that do not provide an
expectation of self-benefit. Hampton argues that self-interest, not
care, is the motive women should have if they are to avoid being
exploited, since self-interest ensures that a person insists on her
own worth in bargaining schemes and relations with others. To address
other feminists's worries about contractarianism excluding from
bargains those from whom others do not expect to benefit in
interactions, including typically the disenfranchised, Hampton
modifies contractarianism by building in the Kantian assumption that
all persons have intrinsic value and thus must have their interests
respected.



One important issue relating to moral motivation that feminists have
said only a bit about is the internalism/externalism debate (see the
entry on
 moral motivation).
 Generally stated, internalism is the view that there is a logical or
necessary connection between two concepts, typically reasons, motives,
and obligations. According to one version of internalism, which David
Brink calls "agent internalism," in virtue of the concept
of morality, moral obligations (or moral reasons, on a two-step
internalism linking obligations, reasons, and motives) necessarily
motivate the agent to act morally (see Brink 1986, 28). The
agent's having a reason to act morally, whether or not the agent
recognizes it, entails having a motive to act morally. Externalism is
the denial of the necessity condition. According to another version of
internalism, if an agent judges that it is right for her to ph in
circumstances C, then either she is motivated to ph, or she is
irrational (Smith, 1994, 61; Korsgaard 1996). Motivation is
necessarily present in the rational agent who recognizes a reason to
act morally; having a reason to act morally entails having a
motivation, at least in the rational agent. The corresponding
externalist view is that judging that an act is right either need not
motivate the rational agent (weak externalism) or does not motivate
the rational agent (strong externalism).



Two issues relating to the internalism/externalism debate bear on
women's oppression. First, on agent internalism, if the agent
lacks the relevant motivation, the agent does not have a reason to act
morally (see Brink 1986, 29). Then for agents who lack a motivation to
act in ways preventing women's oppression, they lack a reason to
do so. This means that oppressors who lack the relevant motivation do
not act against reason when they act in ways contributing to
women's oppression. Second, on the other version of internalism
described above, if the agent fails to be motivated by a moral reason,
the agent still has the reason but is irrational (Smith 1994;
Korsgaard 1996). Then agents who recognize that they have a reason to
be self-respecting, for instance, but who fail to be so, are
irrational. This runs the risk of impugning the rationality of
oppressed persons who fail to see their intrinsic worth as persons due
to their social circumstances.



Although feminists have not addressed the problems for feminism
related to agent internalism, at least two feminists have identified
problems with internalism in general, as a logical thesis about the
connection between motives and reasons and/or obligations. Peggy
DesAutels explores the phenomenon of having a moral commitment to the
ethic of care yet failing to follow through on it even when the agent
is competent and does not ignore her moral commitments (2004).
DesAutels approaches the issue of internalism from an empirical rather
than a conceptual point of view, which sets apart her approach from
that of standard internalists. She takes herself to be following
feminist theorists such as Carol Gilligan and Margaret Urban Walker in
examining moral issues, including that of the internalism/externalism
debate, as they present themselves in richly detailed concrete
situations, which, she believes, makes her account feminist (71).
DesAutels argues that moral attentiveness requires "nonpassive
vigilance of thought where we attempt to counter known psychological
tendencies and subtle social influences that prevent us from seeing
and responding to the demands of care" (72). Two interferences
with the demands of care are moral oblivion, or, being completely or
mostly unaware of a moral demand, and being unresponsive to moral
situations. DesAutels urges that we attempt to improve both our own
psychologies and the social contexts in which they are embedded by,
for instance, becoming more receptive to the subtle ways in which
sexism occurs. She is suggesting that, contra internalism, it is
possible to make a moral judgment yet fail to be appropriately
motivated, due to sexist influences; sexism can make us unaware of a
moral demand or unresponsive to it. Attention to the impact of sexism
and other forms of oppression that are revealed in concrete situations
is a lens that reveals a limitation of internalism as a purely
conceptual issue about what it means to have a moral reason.



James Lindemann Nelson argues that internalists who endorse a
necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation fail to
capture the idea that the agent's judgment might come in degrees
of confidence in the correctness of her judgment or the exigency of
the values involved (2004, 84). Nelson argues that the
belief-motivation relationship is more complex in the real world than
internalists admit. He takes internalism and externalism to be points
on a scale registering the relationship between an agent and the moral
understandings considered authoritative in her moral-social world.
Thus contra internalism, it is not the case that if the agent acts
immorally, she simply must not have believed the relevant moral
judgment. Rather, the connection between moral belief and action
should be sensitive to the highly variegated character of the
moral-social world and the different locations within it that real
people inhabit (89). Nelson rejects the standard view of internalism
as a logical connection between belief and motivation, in favor of the
view that internalism reflects the degrees to which a person grasps
moral beliefs and to which she acts on these beliefs. So if one lacks
a strong sense of what one ought to do, this need not mean that one
completely lacks an authentic belief about what one ought to do.
Nelson understands his account to be feminist because it critiques the
forms of social life. That is, it is sensitive to the fact that a
person's own moral beliefs and reasons may not be consistent
with the moral beliefs and reasons held widely in her society,
especially when it is a sexist one. A person might truly believe that
her society takes something to be morally required, but not be fully
motivated by her society's moral requirements because they
dictate sexist behavior. Nelson's account allows a person to
refuse to fully embrace motivating reasons that are endorsed by her
society, and still have moral authority.



Feminists might also question whether the internalist is correct in
thinking that if an otherwise rational person fails to be motivated by
her moral judgment, then she is irrational. Consider an example that I
will return to in Section 2, Thomas Hill's well-known case of
the Deferential Wife, who is utterly devoted to her husband, buying
clothes he prefers, having sex when he is in the mood, and moving
where he wants. She tends not to form her own interests, values, and
ideals, and counts them as less important than her husband's
when she does. She believes that women are mentally and physically
equal, if not superior to men, but that it is women's proper
role to serve their husbands. She does not believe that her rights are
being trampled on because she is glad and proud to serve her husband.
She is confused about her worth as a person, and is servile, or,
lacking in self-respect, despite being glad and proud to serve her
husband (Hill 1973). A legitimate explanation for the Deferential
Wife's confusion about her worth is her socialization in a
patriarchal society which sends her many messages of inferiority. Her
confusion about her worth prevents her from being motivated by a
reason to be self-respecting. An internalist might impugn her
rationality: if she truly recognizes that she has a reason to be
self-respecting, yet remains unmoved, she must be irrational. But the
internalist's judgment that she is irrational seems at odd with
feminist aims, since it fails to acknowledge the role that
socialization plays in whether she is motivated by the reasons she
has. It places the blame for failing to be motivated by a reason
squarely on the victim of such circumstances and her rational
capacities, when it may be the case that the Deferential Wife reasons
correctly, understands what it means to have intrinsic worth, sees
that if a person had intrinsic worth she would respect herself, but
gets the facts wrong about her own worth due to her experiences. The
feminist objection is that a person's social circumstances are a
better explanation of the disconnection between reasons and
motivations than a failure of rationality (Superson 2010).


## 2. Deformed Desires



One kind of motivation that has received and continues to receive a
fair bit of attention from feminists is what they call "deformed
desires," "adaptive preferences," or
"repressive satisfactions." Deformed desires are
significant for issues such as autonomy, agency, and responsibility
(see Section 3).



John Stuart Mill was perhaps the first philosopher to acknowledge the
concept of desires deformed by patriarchy, but Sandra Bartky was one
of the first philosophers to name them (Mill 1861; Bartky 1990a).
Bartky describes repressive satisfactions as those that "fasten
us to the established order of domination, for the same system which
produces false needs also controls the conditions under which such
needs can be satisfied" (Bartky 1990a, 42). Mill, Bartky, and
Martha Nussbaum attribute the cause of such "false needs"
to various factors, including unequal education, indoctrination to
believe that women are fit mainly for domesticity and other
nonintellectual pursuits, psychological manipulation, women's
fear of moving into new positions that remain unequal and unprotected,
denial of autonomy, lack of information or false information about
fact, lack of reflection or deliberation about norms, and lack of
options (Bartky 1990a, 42; Nussbaum 1999a, 149). Jon Elster describes
how a person acquires deformed desires, which is that she adapts her
preferences according to her opportunities and without her control or
awareness. Elster dubs this kind of adaptation the "sour
grapes" phenomenon, according to which the fox's
conviction that he is prevented from eating grapes that are out of his
reach causes him to believe that grapes are sour and so to prefer not
to eat them. Let's apply this phenomenon to the case of women
under patriarchy. The Deferential Wife (described in Section 1) who
lives in a world in which women are routinely denied educational
opportunities and access to the best jobs, and so become economically
dependent on men, is more likely to desire to be servile to her
husband and children. A female student who lives in a patriarchal
culture that teaches women to look to men for protection, security,
and strength rather than to cultivate these traits in themselves, is
more likely to want to date males in power, such as her professor,
because she sees them as exhibiting these traits. One of
Bartky's examples is that of female narcissism, or an
infatuation with the female body, which occurs when women seem
enthusiastically to embrace unachievable, alienating, sexist standards
of femininity that are informed by what Bartky calls "the
fashion-beauty complex." Women living in a patriarchal culture
in which they are judged and objectified according to these standards
are likely to adopt the standards and prefer to fulfill them.



Several features distinguish deformed desires from nondeformed
desires. One is that even though most if not all of our desires are
formed in a social context, deformed desires are formed in response to
*unjust* social conditions such as those found in a patriarchal
society in which men are deemed superior to women. A second feature is
that satisfaction of deformed desires benefits not the subject who has
them as in the typical case of desire-satisfaction, but, according to
Bartky, a social order whose interest lies in domination. For example,
a woman's desire to conform to the "fashion-beauty
complex," when satisfied, leaves her with an inferior body
image, and demands her time and money which in turn stands in the way
of her pursuit of her career goals, while men gain economically. A
female student's desire to date her professor, when satisfied in
the typical case, reinforces the stereotypes that women need to be
with a (powerful) man for self-validation and that they are not
intellectual. Men benefit when they, but not women, are taken
seriously in the pursuit of their careers. One question feminists such
as Bartky have raised is whether women actually do benefit from
satisfying their deformed desires (Bartky 1982; 1990a, 36). While it
is not implausible to think that women do achieve some benefits (e.g.,
narcissistic pleasures from conformity to the fashion-beauty complex,
getting dates with men), feminists typically acknowledge that these
benefits are often merely short-run: conformists to beauty standards
risk self-hatred when they inevitably fall short, and conformists to
dating standards requiring female passivity and submission often end
up in autonomy-denying relationships with men. Some feminists argue
that conformity to patriarchal standards perpetuates women's
oppression by perpetuating stereotypes about them, which harms, rather
than benefits, all women (e.g., Cudd 1988). Thus feminists admit that
while women in some ways benefit from deformed-desire satisfaction,
they are wrong about the harms involved and the "real"
benefits of conformity, which are enjoyed by men. In fact, Bartky
suggests that it is not merely error that is involved, but deception,
since "false needs" or deformed desires are
"produced through indoctrination, psychological manipulation,
and the denial of autonomy" (Bartky 1990a, 42). A third feature
of deformed desires, then, is that typically they involve deception
about what their bearer truly wants, or even what is truly in the
bearer's own interest or will promote her welfare.



One significant issue relating to deformed desires is autonomy, which
is commonly defined as self-determination or self-direction. On the
face of it, an agent's satisfying her deformed desires seems to
stand in the way of promoting her autonomy, for if the satisfaction of
deformed desires in reality benefits the system of domination and the
privileged persons in it, then satisfying deformed desires does not
seem to be an indication of the agent's
*self-*determination, but rather the agent's
subordination to the system and its ends. Another way that deformed
desires are suspect for reasons relating to autonomy is that they are
unchosen, the result of adaptation to one's opportunities and
without one's awareness or control, as Elster's
"sour grapes" phenomenon describes. Moreover, the more
deformed desires an agent has in her total desire set, the greater the
likelihood that she will be under their sway, since they will not be
counteracted by nondeformed desires. And the more likely the agent is
under the sway of her deformed desires, the less likely she will be
self-determining. The issue bears on women's oppression because
if the agent acts mostly from her deformed desires, she is likely to
contribute to her own oppression.



There are differing views on whether women have deformed desires, to
what extent they do, and what their effect is on the agent's
autonomy. On the one extreme, some philosophers deny that women even
have deformed desires, so obviously such desires can have no hold on
women or interfere with their autonomy. Christina Hoff Sommers
believes that since women's preferences are no longer the
product of undemocratic indoctrination and are now taken into account
by women's having the right to vote, they are therefore
authentic and it would be patronizing and illiberal to criticize
women's preferences (1994, 259-260). Many evolutionary
psychologists agree with Sommers that women's preferences are
authentic rather than adaptive ones formed in response to limited
options. According to Catherine Wilson, these evolutionary
psychologists believe further that we live in a just world where
women's preferences match what they receive and that the
distribution of the components of well-being is also just--women
get what they really want (2004, 101-102). So what explains why
women tend not to prefer new experiences, competition, accumulation,
and social rewards to the same extent as men? According to Wilson,
many evolutionary psychologists attribute women's and
men's different traits, values, preferences, and interests not
to discrimination against women, but to differential parental
investment (105). What this means, for these evolutionary
psychologists, is that females invest more than males in nurturing
their offspring since it is more costly for a female than a male to
replace a child. This phenomenon goes hand-in-hand with a greater
competition among males over mating opportunities, since mating with
many partners increases the likelihood of having more offspring.
Wilson attributes these ideas to the evolutionary
psychologists's belief that we are all playing a game that is
won by an individual's having more viable offspring than others
of her or his sex (105). This sets up a "winning human female
strategy," evidenced by thousands of years of evolution, that
consists of the following norms: finding the fittest male to be
one's mate, withholding sex to get commitment, and exchanging
fidelity and domestic service for lifelong sustenance (106). These
female norms, in turn, according to the evolutionary psychologists at
issue, reflect female preferences. Women's lower status is
explained, then, not by discrimination, but by their authentic
preferences. Since women prefer to nurture children, be faithful to
their mate, and avoid making their mate jealous, they do not adopt
male norms and preferences associated with success in the world.



Many feminists reject the notion that women have no deformed desires
but have only authentic preferences. Martha Nussbaum responds to
Sommers by citing plenty of examples of deformed desires in women, and
notes that even conservative economists like Gary Becker, as well as
philosophers from Plato to Aquinas to Kant, acknowledge their
existence (1999a, 152). Catherine Wilson directly takes on the
evolutionary psychologists she discusses who reject the notion of
women's having adaptive preferences. In order to evaluate the
claims made by evolutionary psychologists about women's
preferences, Wilson believes that we can rely on sources such as our
direct personal and social experiences, mediated social experiences
such as impressions from novels, films, and the media, and various
psychological and sociological data. She chooses to rely on novels,
which, she admits, are somewhat unreliable but nevertheless reflect
both the stories of "everywoman" and certain features of
the social world, since they are constrained by plausibility
considerations (110). The novels describe women who initially follow
the standard theory of evolutionary psychology to find a wealthy mate
when they are young and have the greatest bargaining power, but
through their characters suggest that what women really want in a mate
is "youth, good looks, manners, intelligence, a gentle demeanor,
and attentiveness" (110). The novels suggest that those whose
opportunities to achieve wealth and power are restricted end up not
fully using their intellect and emotions, and that they would not make
the choices they make under better conditions, as Elster's
"sour grapes" phenomenon predicts. Wilson concludes that
the view that women have deformed desires is a more plausible
hypothesis than the view that women have different preferences from
men and get what they really value.



But the debate goes on amongst philosophers. Harriet Baber comes close
to suggesting that women do not have deformed desires or adaptive
preferences (Baber 2007). Baber argues against Nussbaum's view
that disadvantaged women who have adaptive preferences might get what
they want when they satisfy these preferences, but they are not better
off because their desires are deformed. In contrast, Baber believes
that adaptation is irrelevant to whether preference-satisfaction
contributes to one's welfare: if I want something, getting it is
good for me regardless of how I acquired that desire (110).
Baber's explanation for the choices that deprived women make is
that they are making the best of a bad situation, choosing not
necessarily what they would prefer all things considered, but rather
what they would prefer given their options. While Nussbaum believes
that Jayamma, who settles for a low-paying job with poor working
conditions because she believes this to be her lot in life, lacks a
conception of herself as a person with rights that can be violated and
a belief that she is wronged, Baber believes that she has just settled
for second best, since she would grab a raise if it were offered to
her (Nussbaum 2000, 113; Baber 111). Similarly, Nussbaum believes that
Vasanti, who stays in an abusive marriage for years, does not see
herself as having rights that are violated, but has a deformed
preference to put up with abuse as part of women's lot, while
Baber denies that Vasanti has such a preference, suggesting instead
that she prefers a bundle that includes putting up with abuse along
with having a home and basic necessities (Nussbaum 2000, 68-69;
Baber 113-114). Baber argues further that when women do, in
fact, acquire adaptive preferences, as is the case with Srey Mom, once
sold into slavery, who now at least partly wants to remain a
prostitute when given the chance to go into the community where she
will be ostracized, we beg the question if we assume that their
choices are uninformed or cooly calculated (121). Baber's view
in the end is that it is an empirical question whether the women in
the cases described are rational self-interested choosers who make the
best of a bad situation, or whether they are damaged by deformed
preferences. She maintains that they, as well as most members of
traditionally disadvantaged groups who succumb to bad treatment, are
rational self-choosers (122).



While most feminists agree that women have deformed desires, they
differ in their views about whether, and to what extent, deformed
desires interfere with their bearer's autonomy. Arguably more
radical feminists, such as Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, and Catharine
MacKinnon sometimes speak as if all of women's desires are
deformed, and that women's autonomy is entirely compromised as a
result (Daly 1978; Dworkin 1987; MacKinnon 1987b and 1987c). One
explanation for why deformed desires take such a hold on women might
be the fact that they are tied integrally to an agent's
identity. Sandra Bartky argues that the norms of femininity, for
instance, are imposed on women during the construction of their
subjectivities rather than when they are fully formed subjects, and
that a woman's conforming to these norms is essential to her
sense of herself as a sexually desiring and desirable subject such
that expecting her not to conform threatens her with at least
desexualization (2002, 25). This explanation aside, in other places,
these same radical feminists cited above join other feminists in
suggesting that only some of women's desires are deformed, and
that women are not entirely under the sway of their deformed desires
since these desires can be outweighed by competing desires women have
for their own welfare. MacKinnon, for one, suggests that victims of
sexual harassment find harassment to be devastating to their
self-respect and health and do not enjoy their harasser's
attention, rape victims who appear disinterested are in reality
silenced and do not have a desire to be raped, and pornography models
operate not from free will and a desire to display their bodies in
pornographic poses, but from constraint and inequality (1987a, 54;
1987d, 114; 1987d, 180 and 194). Writing about date rape, Lois Pineau
suggests that women know which sexual encounters are enjoyable, and
thus consensual, even though they play out patriarchal roles of
coyness and submission and men interpret their desires along these
lines. Although women appear to want to be dominated by men in sex,
what they really find enjoyable is communicative sex where the
partners seek to know and respect each other's desires just like
participants in a good conversation (1989, 239). Deep down, Pineau and
MacKinnon are arguing, women really know what they want and what is
good for them despite patriarchy's influence on them and their
desires; they have competing nondeformed desires for their own
welfare. Many other feminists seem to be assuming this kind of
position when they object to patriarchal practices, since these
practices are at odds, they believe, with what women want. On this
view, then, women have deformed desires, but these desires do not have
such a strong hold on their bearer that they cannot be overridden by
other desires the bearer has for her own welfare. This view holds out
promise that women can exhibit at least some degree of autonomy in
following their nondeformed desires, and thus be motivated to act in
ways that do not contribute to their own oppression.



Indeed, Uma Narayan explicitly acknowledges that women under
patriarchy have both deformed desires and nondeformed desires, and
believes that women can be fully autonomous because they
"bargain" with patriarchy in the context of both the
external constraints it imposes on women and the internal constraints
it imposes in the form of deformed desires (2002). Narayan contrasts
the "bargainers with patriarchy" with both the
"dupes of patriarchy," who completely subscribe to
patriarchal norms and practices of their culture and impose them on
themselves, having none but deformed desires, and the "prisoners
of patriarchy," who are constrained against their will and
consent by external forces imposed by their culture (418, 422). The
bargainers with patriarchy, then, face the external constraints of
patriarchy, and have both deformed and nondeformed desires. Narayan
takes as her case study Sufi Pirzada Muslim women who are expected to
wear a burqua, or, "to veil" (she uses the term
"veiling" to include burqua-wearing), arguing that they
are bargainers with patriarchy who in the face of external and
internal constraints do what they believe is best for themselves. On
this point, her view is similar to Baber's, though Narayan is
less dismissive of the reality of deformed desires than is Baber.
Contrary to the popular Western opinion that these women veil because
they are duped into patriarchal norms associated with veiling, Narayan
argues that the situation is more complex, because veiling women
acknowledge that the burqua is uncomfortable and makes them injury
prone, worry about their reputation with their families and
communities if they do not veil, and are aware of the economic and
political implications of not veiling. Narayan analogizes their
situation to that of Western women who do not want to be seen in
public without makeup--both are bargainers with, rather than
dupes of, patriarchy. Narayan defines autonomy quite liberally, as the
view that a person is autonomous as long as she is a "normal
adult" with no serious cognitive or emotional impairments and is
not subject to literal or outright coercion from others (429). Under
this definition, the presence of deformed desires does not threaten
their bearer's autonomy, even if she is partly under their sway,
so long as they do not seriously impair her. Narayan believes that
bargainers with patriarchy, such as veiling women, are autonomous
because, despite their choices being constrained by patriarchy, they
can make genuine, reflective choices within these constraints. And
even though their critical abilities, which seem to be at the heart of
autonomy, can be distorted by patriarchy, sometimes the starkness of
patriarchal constraints has the opposite effect, causing a person to
face head on the conflict in her desires and to choose to act in ways
that are at odds with patriarchy.



Another account that challenges the position that adaptive preferences
automatically undercut autonomy is defended by Donald Bruckner (2007).
Bruckner objects to Elster's view of the "sour
grapes" phenomenon that the fox's preference change is
irrational because it is not autonomous, occurring merely through a
causal mechanism irrelevant to rationality (307). Bruckner argues that
both adaptive preference change and adaptive preference formation are
often rational. Adaptive preferences are like other preferences in
that they guide a person's deliberation and give her reasons for
action (311). Bruckner gives the example of Veronica, who initially
prefers to become an Olympic competitor in tennis, but after years of
practice realizes that even though she is very talented at tennis, she
will not achieve Olympic status, and so downgrades her aspirations and
comes to prefer to be a local star, a change in preference that might
occur behind her back and thus be non-autonomous (313). Bruckner
believes that she should adapt her preferences thusly, as doing so
would better promote her own subjective well-being. He argues that
there should be a presumption in favor of the normativity of any of
our preferences, even ones caused by factors out of our control, since
any of an agent's preferences are still her own and thus give
her a reason to act (316). The real test, then, for deformed desires,
ones formed in response to unjust social conditions, is whether they
are truly the agent's own, and so autonomously held. On
Bruckner's account, the agent's not endorsing her new
preference upon reflection makes her new preference not fully her own,
and so irrational. Thus while one condition for the rationality of an
adaptive preference for Elster is that it be autonomously acquired,
for Bruckner, it is that the preference be autonomously retained
(319). If the agent reflectively endorses her adaptive preference in a
way that is responsive to her feasible set, and not simply her false
beliefs about her feasible set, even though she limits her potential
and lowers her sights, it is rational for her to retain this
preference (319-320). Bruckner agrees with Nussbaum that certain
moral and political conditions interfere with an agent's
repudiation of her limited desires, and urges that the agent's
adaptive preferences count as her own, that is, as autonomous, only if
certain moral conditions are met, such as those proposed by
Nussbaum's capabilities approach that defends the provision of
certain capabilities, liberties, and opportunities to all citizens
(322-323). Nussbaum's capabilities approach, unlike
Bruckner's view, invokes an objective notion of the good.



Bruckner's account of reflective endorsement foreshadows Andrea
Westlund's procedural autonomy account, one consistent with a
subjective notion of the good (Westlund 2003). Westlund takes up the
case of the Deferential Wife (discussed in Section 1 and earlier in
this section), who tends not to form her own interests, but when she
does, counts them as less important than her husband's
preferences. Westlund's account is "dialogical,"
according to which an autonomous agent has an attitude of
responsibility for her self and her commitments, and is prepared to
engage in a dialogue with herself and (even hypothetical) others who
have different, critical perspectives, in order to offer justifying
reasons for her desires. Westlund argues that the Deferential Wife
fails this test of autonomy because she fails to give good reasons why
she ranks her husband's preferences higher than her own. But
another character, the extreme anti-feminist, who is also deferential,
counts as autonomous because she gives proper uptake to queries about
her deference, even though we might disagree with her reasons for
being so (e.g., the Bible tells her to be subservient to her husband).
The procedure of exhibiting genuine dialogical responsiveness rather
than offering pat answers or remaining tightly gripped by one's
commitments, and not the content of her desires, determines her
autonomy.



In an attempt to bridge the gaps between subjective and objective
good, between seeing women with adaptive preferences as full agents
and as victims, and between respecting women's autonomous
choices and promoting their flourishing, Serene Khader defends a
perfectionist definition of adaptive preferences (Khader 2011).
Khader's definition invokes objective value in the form of basic
flourishing that is defined by some actual (not hypothetical)
cross-cultural deliberative process. She defines adaptive preferences
as those that are inconsistent with basic flourishing, are formed
under conditions nonconducive to basic flourishing, and that we
believe people might be persuaded to transform when they scrutinize
them and are exposed to conditions more conducive to flourishing (42).
This definition is both procedural and substantive, because it
identifies preferences as adaptive according to the conditions under
which they are formed, as well as the content of the preferences
themselves. The underlying premise is the "Flourishing
Claim" that when people have options for flourishing, they tend
to choose in ways that promote their flourishing (51). By
"flourishing," Khader means "basic
flourishing," or flourishing at a minimal level rather than
excellence, since the object is to get cross-cultural agreement.
Beyond this, she keeps the concept vague, intending for it to include
things like adequate nutrition (62-63). Khader also wants to
separate "inappropriately adaptive preferences," which are
harmful to their bearers and adapted to bad social conditions, from
merely adaptive preferences, which may not have these features
(52-53). She cautions that we cannot read off preferences from
behavior, because, in agreement with Narayan and Baber, she believes
that women might simply be making the best of available options.



Unlike feminists who locate the main problem with adaptive preferences
as lying with their obstruction of the agent's autonomy, Khader
rejects the view of adaptive preferences as autonomy deficits. She
agrees that adaptive preferences can block the well-being of those who
have them, but she argues that both procedural and substantive
autonomy accounts either yield results that do not square with our
intuitions, or commit us to invoking policies that are coercive and so
anti-liberal. The general charge against procedural autonomy accounts
is that they inevitably sneak in an objective notion of the good when
they are supposed to be neutral, and that those who fail them are
believed to lack mental capacities to understand or scrutinize their
choices. The general charge against substantive autonomy accounts is
that they inevitably involve disrespect for cultural diversity, with
the result that those who fail them are deemed to have bad values that
render inoperative their capacities to scrutinize their preferences
(105). Either way, autonomy accounts have it that those with adaptive
preferences are unable to make their own decisions, which is false and
condescending (103, 105).



Aside from their connection to autonomy, deformed desires can harm
their bearer by functioning as one factor, possibly the most damaging
one, in psychological oppression. In general, psychological
oppression, as Sandra Bartky defines it, is to be weighed down in
one's mind, to have a harsh dominion exercised over one's
self-esteem, or "to internalize intimations of
inferiority" (Bartky 1990b, 22). Psychological oppression
contributes to a group's oppression in various ways. It can hide
the badness of oppressors and the beneficiaries of oppression by
making them and their actions appear legitimate and by allowing them
to carry on without overt acts of violence that they would otherwise
use to maintain a group's oppression (Bartky 1990b, 23).
Psychological oppression contributes to a group's oppression
also by molding the oppressed and co-opting them so that their choices
and decisions harm them while benefiting the privileged, thereby
sustaining the system of oppression. Women's coming to prefer
the kinds of social roles that tend to subordinate them will make them
less able to choose or give them fewer choices to make (Cudd 2006,
157, 181).



In addition to the role deformed desires play in psychological
oppression, acting on some deformed desires can compromise the
bearer's moral agency. Consider again the case of the
Deferential Wife described above: her deformed desire is that she
wants to be servile to her husband and children. A debate surfaced in
the philosophical literature about how to explain the wrongness of the
Deferential Wife's servility, and each explanation revealed that
servility was problematic for moral agency. Thomas Hill attributes the
problem to confusion about her rights--how they can be waived and
when they can be forfeited--with the result that the Deferential
Wife fails to acknowledge her own moral status and to see her rightful
place in the moral community (1973). Marilyn Friedman attributes the
problem to the Deferential Wife's uncritically deferring to her
husband's preferences by failing to assess them in accord with
her own principles, merely satisfying his wishes and whims taken as
given, and becoming an accomplice to his goal-seeking behavior. Her
lack of effective moral judgment makes her less than a whole person
who exhibits moral integrity (1985, 146-147). Marcia Baron
attributes the problem to the Deferential Wife's lacking a
critical examination of her reasons for deferring to her
husband's preferences (1985, 398). Each of these explanations is
committed to the thought that acting on a desire to be servile can
compromise moral agency. This, too, is significant for oppression,
since those whose moral agency is compromised in these ways are easily
exploitable (see Hampton, 1993).



Feminists have identified other harmful modes of psychological
oppression aside from deformed desires. Stereotyping delivers messages
of inferiority that the stereotyped can come to believe about
themselves and then live up to. Stereotyping contributes to
psychological oppression by threatening a person's
self-determination (Bartky 1990b, 23-24). Philosophers and
others have recently identified the phenomenon of "stereotype
threat," which is the idea that members of subordinate groups to
whom stereotypes are applied, when made aware of the stereotypes prior
to performing a task such as taking a test, underperform on that task
because they are preoccupied by fears of confirming those stereotypes
(Saul 2013, 41). Cultural domination, or being forced to see things
from the perspective of a socially dominant group, cultivates feelings
of incapability and denies the values and experiences of the oppressed
(Bartky 1990B, 25). Sexual objectification psychologically oppresses
women because it splits a woman into two parts, identifying her as a
mere bodily part or function, thereby inferiorizing her (Bartky 1990b,
26). Terror, brought about from violence and the threat of violence,
inhibits coping strategies in everyday living, contributes to
psychoses and neuroses, lessens trust in others, and makes victims
withdraw and become less likely to strike back (Cudd 2006,
159-160). False consciousness, which is the set of false beliefs
formed under and supportive of oppression, such as the belief that a
woman's place is in the home, maintains harmful stereotypes and
thereby perpetuates oppression (Cudd 2006, 178-179). Members of
oppressed groups often experience feelings of humiliation,
degradation, shame, and low self-esteem in response to stereotyping,
unequal treatment, harassment, and social distancing. These feelings
diminish confidence and reinforce stereotypes of weakness,
vulnerability, and inferiority (Cudd 2006, 163-165).
Philosophers such as Samantha Brennan have recently identified another
contributor to psychological oppression, that of microinequities
(Brennan 2013). Brennan defines microinequities as small, unjust or
undeserved inequalities that fall short of full-blown inequities only
on the basis of their size (184). They are ways in which persons, due
to features such as gender and race, are singled out, or overlooked,
ignored, or otherwise discounted (184, citing Sandler 1986, 3). They
are covert, often unintentional, unrecognized by the one who commits
them, and hard to prove (Brennan 184, citing Rowe 2008, 45).
Microinequities have a cumulative negative effect: they affect your
self-value and self-esteem directly as well as indirectly, when few
members of the group make it to the top because of the microinequities
themselves (1880. Thus, feminists have shown that not only deformed
desires, but these and other similar factors operate through
women's own psychology to help sustain their own oppression.


## 3. Responsibility


### 3.1 Responsibility of Oppressors for Oppression



Responsibility for a group's oppression seems to be distinct
from responsibility for other immoral acts that individuals perform.
One reason is that oppression is a difficult concept for many to
grasp, partly because it can take subtle forms, partly because it is
in many ways "normalized" such that participants and even
victims become oblivious to it, and partly because it is
institutionalized and part of the very structure of society, which
means that often it is carried out independently of anyone's
harboring any bad attitudes toward persons in subordinate groups (see
Maybee 2002, for a clear discussion of this phenomenon). Another
reason responsibility for oppression is distinctive is that persons
may contribute to a group's oppression simply by participating
in a system of oppression, but not directly harboring sexist (or
racist, etc.) intentions or even acting in ways that directly harm
others, which are two factors that we ordinarily use to implicate
individuals for immoral actions. On the one hand, holding all men
responsible for women's oppression in virtue of men's
(perhaps unwilling) participation in the system seems to be too strong
a view, but on the other hand, freeing from responsibility all men on
the grounds that they do not harbor ill intentions or cause direct
harm to women seems to be too weak, since it seems that someone is
responsible for maintaining any system of oppression. Charles
Lawrence, a race theorist, notes that "The racist acts of
millions of individuals are mutually reinforcing and cumulative
because the status quo of institutionalized white supremacy remains
long after deliberate racist actions subside" (Lawrence 1993,
61). But even though institutionalization of racism and sexism may
seem to free from responsibility individuals who participate in these
systems because the systems continue without deliberate racist or
sexist acts, it is arguably the case that certain individuals directly
help to ensure that the system is maintained through their actions,
and it is unclear that negligence, ignorance, or self-deception about
the existence of systematic injustice are innocent motives. A
group's oppression is likely to be sustained if no one is held
responsible and no subsequent action taken to end it. Rather than
invoking either extreme position, most feminists argue that
responsibility for sustaining oppression should be determined by
factors such as whether ignorance of or failure to attend to
systematic oppression is excusable, the nature of the indirect harm
caused by mere participation in the system of oppression, and whether
a person's opting out of an oppressive system will have any
impact on that system. Another complication in assigning
responsibility is that it is often difficult to separate an
individual's own sexist behavior from systematic sexism.



The literature reveals a variety of feminist views on the
responsibility of members of the dominant group for the oppression of
members of subordinate groups. Cheshire Calhoun defends one of the
more lenient positions (Calhoun 1989). Calhoun argues that in
"normal moral contexts," where a person has generally good
moral reasoning skills and generally is able to figure out which
actions are right, wrong, or controversial, a person's moral
ignorance is inexcusable. But in "abnormal moral
contexts," those in which a subgroup of society "makes
advances in moral knowledge faster than they can be disseminated to
and assimilated by the general public and subgroups at special moral
risk," a person's moral ignorance is excusable (396). Such
is the case when feminists have moral knowledge that the general
public lacks because the public is not familiar with either
sophisticated analyses of oppression, or the special new terminology
and new categories that are not shared by nonfeminists (e.g.,
"marginalize," "the Other," "marriage as
prostitution"). In abnormal moral contexts where ignorance is
the norm, persons lack a motive to be morally reflective, so it is not
the case that they ought to have known better. Calhoun concludes that
many men are not responsible for their participation in women's
oppression on the grounds that they are not culpably ignorant of the
moral knowledge that feminists have. Nevertheless, Calhoun argues that
we should reproach participants in oppressive systems, since excusing
them has the effect of sanctioning their wrongdoing or letting it
pass. Her hope is to motivate people to act otherwise and to treat
them as capable of self-legislation rather than mere products of
social conditioning. Similarly, Samantha Brennan urges that in order
to motivate change, the appropriate response to microinequities is to
raise awareness about their occurrence, but not to trace back each one
of them to a specific person upon whom sole responsibility falls
(Brennan 2013, 193).



Michele Moody-Adams defends a less lenient view about responsibility
for oppression than Calhoun's, dismissing in many cases the role
of culture as a factor that justifies willful moral ignorance and that
on these grounds exempts from responsibility those who act wrongly
(Moody-Adams 1994). Her target is the view that being from a certain
culture and adopting its practices absolves a person from
responsibility for his actions. More specifically, she questions
whether being unable to know, due to one's upbringing in a
culture, that certain actions are wrong, and being unable to question
the morality of the society's practices, absolves a person from
responsibility for his actions. She defines "affected
ignorance" as "choosing not to know what one can and
should know" (296), as when we "ask no questions"
when we suspect wrongdoing, or when we fail to acknowledge our human
fallibility by hiding behind and blaming our culture for our own
wrongdoing. Moody-Adams believes that moral ignorance is more a matter
of our failings as human beings, and less a matter of "cultural
limitations," than some might believe. She argues against the
moral ignorance position by noting that cultures are both created and
transmitted by the people in them, that people modify or even
radically revise them through their individual actions, and that
people often act against cultural norms and sometimes act on desires
that are in line with these norms but in ways not sanctioned by the
culture (305). In short, cultures persist only because individuals
capable of responsible action persist (292-293). Absolving from
responsibility members of a culture for the wrongdoings that take
place in the context of their culture misunderstands the tight
connection between culture and agency, and denies the humanity of
those who are rationally unimpaired and commit wrongdoing, even when
they are influenced by cultural norms (306).



Tracy Isaacs assumes that persons are all to some extent influenced by
the cultural context in which we live, and agrees with Moody-Adams
that there are times when we should not excuse persons, even when they
are culturally influenced, for their part in wrongs that fit into a
scheme of culturally accepted practices that is not recognized as
wrong, including some sexist and racist practices (Isaacs 2011).
However, contra Moody-Adams, Isaacs argues that not every case of
widespread moral ignorance is a case of affected ignorance, that is,
of choosing not to know whether some practice in which one
participates might be wrong, and in these cases, one's ignorance
may be truly nonculpable (161). According to Isaacs, persons may be
excused for wrongdoings associated with wrongful social practices when
they lack equal access to the full range of actual and possible moral
knowledge, or when moral discoveries are not immediately known or
knowable by everyone because they have not yet become commonplace
(163-164). Isaacs compares advances in moral knowledge to those
about knowledge of the natural world; in either case, there are some
things we can only know given a certain stage in the history of
knowledge (163). Isaacs invokes Calhoun's distinction between
moral knowledge in normal moral contexts as opposed to moral knowledge
in abnormal moral contexts, where only those moral
"experts" such as feminists, and members of disadvantaged
groups who may not be moral "experts" but who have special
moral insights due to their experiences, acquire new moral knowledge
about which outsiders are unaware. Isaacs believes that the root of
the issue of responsibility lies with shifting a society from an
abnormal moral context to a normal moral context, for it is in the
latter where appeals to ignorance are no longer excusable. While
Calhoun argues that the best way for this shift to take place is
through reproach, e.g., labeling as sexist people who use the term
"girl" instead of "woman" to refer to adult
females, Isaacs favors dialogue in which traditional views are
challenged by moral "experts," members of disadvantaged
groups, and the like. The shift in context is achieved, she notes,
when individuals come to see themselves as responsible (174). For
example, our society has shifted sufficiently such that no one who
writes for a living can legitimately claim to be ignorant about gender
neutral pronouns used in place of the male pronoun, and thus no one in
this group is excused for being ignorant about this matter.



But there are other, much less lenient views about responsibility for
the harms of oppression that some feminists and race theorists
advocate. These accounts arguably ground responsibility in features
that are independent of cultural influence, by employing the notion of
humanity, the view that all persons are equal in some fundamental
sense that transcends gender and race. One way to flesh out this view
is to invoke Immanuel Kant's notion of humanity, that all
persons are rational, autonomous beings possessing dignity and
deserving of respect. In short, they have intrinsic value in virtue of
being persons. According to the accounts of responsibility at issue,
members of socially dominant groups, or, "the privileged,"
are responsible for knowing and acting on these basic facts about
humanity that they share with their subordinates (Zack, 1998,
42-43; Superson, 2004). That is, in spite of the fact that
oppression is a difficult concept to grasp, and notwithstanding
Calhoun's and Isaacs's points about feminists having
special knowledge that is not shared by the general public, the
privileged ought to recognize, acknowledge, and respect their
subordinates in virtue of these features common to all persons, even
if patriarchal and racist societies muddle these facts about humanity
by, for example, stereotyping all members of the subordinate group.
Since knowing that all persons are equal in certain basic respects is
a simple matter, defenders of this view do not want to absolve from
responsibility those who disrespect others' humanity. At best,
responsibility ascriptions might be made on the basis of the degree of
difficulty involved in sorting through patriarchal or racist norms and
recognizing that a particular behavior does, indeed, violate a
person's humanity.



A further wrinkle in the debate about moral responsibility in the
context of oppression is evidenced in subtle cases of sexism in which
the agent is unaware of their sexism. An issue that nicely illustrates
this phenomenon is that of implicit bias. This topic in moral
psychology has recently gained a lot of attention and has showcased
one of the ways in which philosophy can be enriched by empirical
studies (see the entry on
 implicit bias;
 and Brownstein and Saul 2016a and 2016b). Jennifer Saul defines
"implicit bias" as unconscious biases that affect the way
we perceive, evaluate, or interact with people from the group that our
biases 'target' (Saul 2013, 40). Saul points to
psychological research that shows that most people, including those
who profess to have egalitarian views and even those who are members
of subordinate groups, harbor implicit biases against women and other
minority groups. For example, Implicit Association tests, now taken by
millions of people, that ask subjects to pair positive and negative
adjectives with pictures of black and white faces, reveal that we are
much quicker to pair black faces with negative adjectives than with
positive ones (Brownstein and Saul 2016b, 1). Implicit biases are
likely to cash out, without the agent's conscious awareness, in
ways that harm members of subordinate groups to which certain
stereotypes are applied. Saul links the phenomenon of implicit bias to
women's underrepresentation in philosophy: in a tradition that
is steeped in associating reason, objectivity, and philosophical
thought with maleness, and emotion, subjectivity, and the
non-philosophical with femaleness, it is likely that philosophers will
display implicit bias against women when it comes to nonanonymous
journal submissions, *cv*s for hiring, service loads, and
classroom incivility (Saul 2013, 41, 43, 45).



Given that implicit biases are largely unconscious and resistant to
the agent's direct efforts to change or control them by force of
will or mere intention (Brownstein and Saul 2016b, 2), can the agent
be morally responsible for having them? Robin Zheng illustrates the
tension between holding and not holding agents morally responsible for
their own implicit biases (Zheng 2016). Zheng notes that, on the one
hand, because we are often unaware of our implicit biases and so
cannot control their influence, we do not seem to be responsible for
them. But on the other hand, because implicit biases are the products
and the perpetrators of social inequality, it seems right to hold
agents responsible for them (62). Zheng's proposal is to have
two accounts of responsibility in cases of implicit bias. One is
responsibility as attributability, according to which we are morally
responsible when our actions reflect who we are as moral agents
because they are manifestations of our ends, commitments, or values
(62). Because we are often unaware of our implicit biases, on the
attributability account of responsibility, we would be off the hook
for behaviors that stem from them. Zheng argues for absolving from
attributable responsibility a person who would not upon reflection
endorse the influence of implicit bias on their action and who has
done what they can reasonably be expected to do to avoid and respond
to the implicit bias once they are made aware of it (72). A second
kind of responsibility is what Zheng calls "accountability
responsibility," according to which we are responsible for our
actions when it is appropriate for others to enforce certain
expectations and demands on those actions (63). In the case of
implicit biases, Zheng believes that we can be attributively not
responsible for our biases while being accountable for them. Zheng is
lenient in the ways that Isaacs and Brennan are in that she urges that
we not hold others attributively responsible for conditions like
implicit bias, at least for the reasons that it is nearly impossible
to determine whether they harbor them in particular cases, and that
people are more likely to do better without accusations of sexism and
the like (78).


### 3.2 Taking Another's Perspective



Another contribution feminists have made to the issue of
responsibility is the notion of taking another's perspective.
Naomi Zack identifies the problem with racists, which, I believe, can
be applied to sexists, as being that a racist "lacks basic moral
or ethical impulses to identify with other living beings [who are not
members of the group with which the racist or sexist
identifies]," and that such identification "rests on the
ability to seriously imagine oneself in the place of another"
(1998, 42-43). Being able to imagine oneself in another's
place allows a person to realize that being the object of racism is a
painful experience, and then to take steps to stop racist behavior
both in themselves and in others. This bears on the issue of
responsibility in the following way: those in the dominant class might
claim that they are unable to take the perspective of the
non-privileged, and since "'ought' implies
'can'," they have no obligation to do so (Superson,
2004, 47).



Feminists have made several suggestions about how the privileged might
come to take the perspective of the non-privileged. Sandra Bartky and
Iris Young have identified the phenomena of "cultural
domination," or "cultural imperialism," according to
which the non-privileged are made to see most things in a culture from
the perspective of the dominant group, which serves to erase the
importance, if not the identity, of those in the former group (Bartky
1990, 25; Young 1988, 285-286). We might think that if the
non-privileged can be made to see things from the perspective of the
dominant group, the latter are capable of seeing things from the
perspective of the former. The first step to take in seeing things
from the perspective of the oppressed might be to disaffiliate oneself
from one's privilege. So argues Marilyn Frye about white
women's disaffiliating themselves from their whiteliness (1995).
Frye argues that white women feminists should stop constantly making
themselves "whitely," which she defines as a character of
persons similar to masculinity whereby a person does not admit to
being prejudiced, biased, and mean, yet at the same time is
pretentious, rude, condescending, overbearing, and patronizing.
Whiteliness interferes with white women's ability to form
alliances with women of other races, and even though
"unbecoming" whitely will not eradicate racism, Frye
believes it is a necessary step to doing so.



Maria Lugones takes Frye's proposal a step further, introducing
the notion of "world-traveling," defined as
"traveling" to the world of others who occupy a different
position in the social hierarchy (1995). Lugones believes that
world-traveling allows the privileged to come to see things from the
perspective of the oppressed and even to come to see how the oppressed
see the privileged: world-traveling will aid in overcoming cultural
imperialism. Lugones notes that white women, for instance, have an
obligation out of friendship to abandon their imperialism and come to
see things from the perspective of Hispanic women. We might apply
Lugones's idea more generally to the privileged and the
oppressed. To understand the notion of world-traveling, Lugones uses
the example of whether she is playful or not: in some worlds she finds
that she is, but in other worlds, she finds that she is serious.
Whether she is playful, or more accurately, *seen* as playful,
is a matter of how the dominant group constructs the concept of
playfulness. Lugones believes that in order to world-travel, one needs
to give up the arrogant construction of concepts from one's own
perspective. We can apply Lugones's notion of world-traveling to
the idea discussed in Section 3.1 of coming to see the non-privileged
as being equal in humanity to the privileged. The privileged would
have to see the non-privileged as likes by directing their attention
away from themselves and toward the nonprivileged, by appreciating the
personhood status of the nonprivileged, and by coming to understand
the complex hurts involved in oppression which requires recognizing
the interconnections between the systematically related barriers and
forces that keep a group oppressed (Superson 2004, 38-49).
Further, in Lugones' words, the privileged would have to
understand not as an observer but as a participant in a particular
world.



But not all feminists believe that the privileged can
'world-travel.' Laurence Thomas, for instance, argues that
the privileged cannot come to know the position of their subordinates
because they cannot even grasp the latter's experiences (1999).
According to Thomas, heterosexual men cannot imagine how a female rape
victim feels, since they cannot imagine the fear of rape that most if
not all women feel, and do not have to deal with social attitudes that
make them targets of sexual violence. By the same token, a white
person does not know what it is for a black person to experience a
feeling of being a second-class citizen when attacked by a group of
whites, nor can a white person come to know it if attacked by a group
of blacks. Thomas believes that in oppressive societies, the
privileged are socially constituted differently from the oppressed,
and so have different emotional configurations, making them experience
things in different ways (186). Being viewed as less than full and
equal members of society, and having painful memories of these
experiences, are necessary conditions for the privileged
person's being able to take the perspective of the oppressed,
which he is simply unable to do given his social condition. Whether
this absolves the privileged from responsibility for oppression is not
something Thomas addresses in the context of this discussion, but he
argues that the privileged have an obligation to engage in
"moral deference," that is, to defer to those who speak in
an informed way about experiences specific to their position of
subordination to which others do not have access. He asserts that any
morally decent, self-respecting person should listen to
another's moral story and acquire sensibility to the way in
which that person lives in the world as a member of an oppressed group
(189).



Some philosophers invoke more traditional philosophical tools such as
analogies to get those in dominant groups to take the perspective of
those in subordinate groups. Judith Jarvis Thomson, in her seminal
article on abortion (1971), offers science-fiction-like analogies that
serve as ways for men and women alike to imagine themselves in the
position of women who are considering the moral status of abortion in
cases of rape, when the mother's life is at stake, and when
contraception has failed. The analogies require men, who do not
experience pregnancy, to imagine what it would be like to have a
kidnapped violinist hooked up to them for nine months, or to be
trapped in a house with a rapidly growing baby that will crush them to
death, or to live in a house with fine mesh screens only to have
people seeds drift in and take root in the carpeting and upholstery
and grow into full-fledged persons for whom they are responsible.
Feminist philosophers who write from a personal perspective attempt to
get those in the dominant group to take the perspective of those in
the subordinate group by describing in detail their experience of
being a victim of a sexist act or practice (see Section 5).


### 3.3 Collective Responsibility



Some feminists have recently introduced the notion of collective
responsibility, which would serve to hold men as a group responsible
for aspects of women's oppression. Writing about rape in
particular, which we can take to be a facet of women's
oppression, Larry May and Robert Strikwerda argue that in some
societies, men are collectively responsible for rape because most if
not all men contribute to its prevalence (1999, 722). According to May
and Strikwerda, rape is a crime perpetrated by men as a group, not
just by the individual rapist. Acts of rape take place in what is
called a "rape culture," in which individual men are more
likely to engage in rape when they are in groups, and men are strongly
encouraged to rape by being socialized to be patriarchal men. May and
Strikwerda cite data that young men in our society engage in more rape
than previously thought, and that rapists are not significantly
psychologically different from other males in our society. They agree
with research suggesting that all-male groups socialize their members
and provide cultural "cues" for violence, which serves as
evidence that rape is not best thought of as an isolated act performed
by just the rapist. They defend what they call "distributive
collective responsibility," which is the view that men form a
group in which there are many features, including attitudes or
dispositions to harm others, common to all or most members of the
group, making what is true for one man true for all other men
(728).



The key to understanding distributive collective responsibility is
understanding patriarchy as being based on common interests and
benefits extended to all men in a given society, and rendering each at
least partially responsible for the harms of patriarchy. All men
benefit from the existence of rape because women are made to feel
dependent on men for protection from rapists. Significantly, May and
Strikwerda argue that some men, in the way they interact with other
men, contribute to a climate in which rape is made more prevalent,
such as when they participate in the practice of "male
bonding" which separates them from women who they deem to be
"other." Moreover, some men would be rapists if given the
opportunity, since they share the same attitudes as rapists about rape
and about women. Such factors make men collectively responsible for
rape, and thus for at least part of women's oppression. In
another article on shared responsibility and racist attitudes, whose
arguments apply equally to sexist attitudes, May argues that
"insofar as people share in the production of an attitudinal
climate, they participate in something like a joint venture that
increases the likelihood of harm" (1992, 47). May expands on
traditional, individualistic responsibility accounts by assigning at
least some responsibility to those who themselves do not commit racist
acts, but who harbor racist attitudes in a climate in which others are
thereby more likely to act on their racist attitudes and cause harm.
Thus a person can share responsibility for harms the person does not
directly cause: men who harbor sexist attitudes contribute to a
climate in which other men who have sexist attitudes act on them, and
are partly responsible for the harmful behavior.


### 3.4 Responsibility of the Oppressed for Immorality



The issue of whether the oppressed are responsible for immorality can
be broken down into two questions: Are the oppressed free from
responsibility for immoral acts unrelated to their own oppression on
the grounds that their socialization plays some role in their acting
immorally? Are the oppressed responsible for contributing to their own
oppression by not resisting it? This section takes up the first
question; Section 3.5 takes up the second question.



While earlier, non-feminist philosophical treatments of an
individual's responsibility for her or his own behavior have
typically focused on the role an individual has played in causing a
certain outcome, more recent discussions, particularly by race
theorists and to a lesser extent feminists, shift away from causation
talk and acknowledge the significance of the influence of social
forces on an agent's actions and the degree to which they might
mitigate the agent's responsibility for her or his actions. It
is striking, however, that feminists have had little to say about
lessening *women's* responsibility for their immoral
actions when the reasons women act are largely influenced by their
treatment under patriarchy. Some race theorists, though, have
discussed this issue. I. A. Menkiti, for instance, explores how social
deviants, or, psychopaths come to be (1977-1978). Menkiti
defines a psychopath as one who is outside morality in the sense that
he does not care about others or accept responsibility, and feels no
guilt, regret, shame, or remorse. Menkiti argues that some psychopaths
have been made into the beings they are by social injustice that
generates economic deprivation for people in their group, which
constantly challenges their self-esteem, causing them to go through a
series of stages from that of resentment, to that of embitterment, to
that of moral death (227-230). Menkiti argues that the community
is at least partly responsible for the behavior of psychopaths who
riot or gang bang in response both to unbearable poverty brought about
by conscious discrimination directed at them in virtue of their group
membership, and to institutionalized racial exclusion. This is because
the community plays a significant role in their becoming psychopaths.
Menkiti believes that it is unfair to blame individuals for primarily
institutional failures (236). He muses that philosophers have shied
away from this kind of collective responsibility because it traces the
causal connection too far, but he urges that it makes just as much
sense to consider society a culprit as it does to say that societies
are victims of crimes and that there are debts owed to society
(237).



The paucity of feminist discussion of this kind of argument as applied
to women may be due partly to the view that women's response to
their oppression typically has been to internalize it by acquiring
deformed desires (see Section 2) and adopting stereotypical traits and
roles such as becoming servile. Such behaviors do not strike many of
us as being as immoral as rioting and gang banging, and if they are
not immoral, then the question about whether women are unfairly held
responsible for them does not even arise. Indeed, feminists have had
to make a special case that, for instance, a woman's adopting
stereotypical traits and roles is immoral because it harms women as a
group (see Section 3.5), or that servility is immoral because it
violates a duty to be self-respecting, as Kant believed. Some
feminists even reject these views. Cynthia Stark argues against
Kant's view that any rational being would on reflection see
himself as an end in itself. Stark points out that characters like the
Deferential Wife have deeply socially (patriarchally) constituted
identities that are often incompatible with a conception of themselves
as persons (1997, 76-77). She argues that Kant's view is
too harsh in not taking into account the agent's circumstances,
expecting everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be
self-respecting.



Paul Benson is one feminist who makes this point about the
agent's circumstances and relates it to women's
responsibility for immoral action (2000, 79-85). Benson argues
for imposing a self-worth condition on responsibility. He argues that
in order for an agent to be morally responsible, it must be the case
that we can hold her responsible for her actions. For this, a person
has to be worthy of a social standing, that of an eligible participant
in moral exchanges that involve, for example, offering reasons,
seeking to be excused, begging forgiveness, and blaming someone. Being
a participant in such moral exchanges requires that the person respond
to moral treatment such as blame, and that she recognize the
legitimacy of this demand. It is appropriate to hold someone
responsible just in case it is appropriate to hold the person to the
demand for a suitable response, but, significantly for feminist
purposes, it requires that the person to whom the response is directed
does not regard herself as unworthy of this kind of moral exchange.
One factor that can interfere with the agent's regard for her
own worth, according to Benson, is the internalization of oppressive
social norms. Not having proper regard for one's own worth may
involve not believing that it is one's place to take
responsibility for one's actions. In such cases, it is not
appropriate to hold these agents fully responsible for their actions.
One feature distinguishing Benson's account from non-feminist
accounts of responsibility that determine responsibility on the basis
of features like having a capacity for critical reflection, being able
to make choices, and knowing what one is doing, is the fact that
Benson's account is sensitive to a person's sense of her
worth as it is affected by internalizing oppressive social norms.



Benson himself believes that his account of responsibility is feminist
because it is relational, which means that it reflects our connections
to others instead of reflecting a view of persons that many feminists
reject, namely, as abstract, individualistic, or atomistic
self-governing and self-sufficient agents. Benson cites several ways
in which his account is relational. One is that it requires that the
agent have a sufficient account of her worth to be accountable to
others, and this requires that there be others. More specifically, the
account expects a person to speak for her own actions to others, which
is necessary for becoming a responsible agent and acquiring the right
sense of her worth. One "makes oneself" in an
interpersonal context, which many feminists take to be necessary for
moral agency. A second reason Benson's account is relational,
and so feminist, is that publicly shareable norms govern the
agent's actions and her own account of them to others.
Subordination and domination threaten this account of norms, Benson
argues, by making it impossible for persons to understand how they
could defend or excuse their own conduct. Third, being responsible is
a matter of having the status of being an eligible participant in a
community of moral dialogue in which the parties regard themselves as
being in a position to speak for their own agency in response to
criticism from others, and can hold themselves responsible. If we
exempt women from responsibility, Benson worries, we fail at least in
some cases to respect their status as equal participants in this
dialogue, which is sexist. So if a woman recognizes herself as having
intrinsic worth and being able to speak for her own agency, it would
be disrespectful and sexist not to hold her responsible.



Benson suggests that mitigating women's responsibility for
immoral action runs the risk of undermining women's moral
agency. This might be another reason for the scarcity of feminist
discussion about the role of socialization in women's
responsibility for immoral action. The worry is that if an agent is
under the sway of her socialization or circumstances, she seems to be
a mere pawn who does not or cannot take control over her actions.
Absolving women from responsibility for their behavior not only risks
denying their agency, but risks perpetuating sexist stereotypes. This
is what worries Wanda Teays about using the excusing model of
self-defense for abused women who kill their abusers (1998,
61-64). Under this model, an abused woman is excused from
killing her abuser either because she did not realize that she was
violating the law, or because she could not prevent herself from
breaking it presumably because she was under the sway of her emotions.
In either case, the focus is on her, the actor, excusing her because
of some characteristic she possesses or her state of mind, implying
that she is mentally impaired or not reasonable. Teays favors the
justifying model, which acknowledges that the woman is reasonable in
the sense that there is nothing wrong with her or her reasoning
skills, and that she responds appropriately, given her circumstances.
This model neither compromises the woman's agency nor
perpetuates sexist stereotypes about women's mental states. It
describes these women not as being under the sway of their emotions,
but as being able to determine in a rational way when self-defense is
warranted. Feminists might apply this model more generally to explain
the relevance of women's circumstances to their responsibility
or blameworthiness for acting immorally.



One such view, though not put forward as a feminist one, is offered by
Sarah Buss in response to Susan Wolf's case of the Victim of a
Deprived Childhood. Wolf argues that such a person, who was given no
love and was beaten by his father and neglected by his mother, is not
responsible for embezzling money later in life (1986). Although he has
features that typically would make him responsible, such as not being
coerced, being in control of his behavior, and having a normal faculty
of reason, he is absolved from responsibility because he *could not
have had reason* to act morally instead of embezzling. This is
because, despite there being reasons for acting morally, the reasons
the Victim of a Deprived Childhood has are *determined* by his
circumstances. That is, there are reasons not to embezzle, but this
kind of agent, due to his circumstances, fails to see, and cannot
reasonably be expected to see, that there are such moral reasons. To
overcome his background and see that there are moral reasons not to
embezzle, he would have to have a certain kind of sensibility and
perception that he lacks. Since we cannot reasonably expect this kind
of agent to see that there is reason not to embezzle, and because the
reasons he does see are determined by his circumstances, Wolf believes
that his actions stemming from these reasons are determined, so he is
neither blameworthy nor responsible for embezzling. However, the view
that one's reasons are determined by one's circumstances
threatens a view of moral agency according to which a person can
freely choose among available reasons. Were feminists to draw the same
conclusion about women who internalize their own oppression such as
the Deferential Wife described above (Section 1), they would run into
the worry about denying women moral agency.



Sarah Buss argues against Wolf's view in a way that is not
agency-denying, because rather than appealing to the agent's
circumstances as determining his reasons, Buss believes that such
circumstances give this kind of agent a justified failure to
"tell right from wrong" (1997). Buss embellishes
Wolf's example of the Victim, who as a child came into contact
mostly with people who either beat him, supported those who beat him,
or ignored his misery. Whenever the victim was beaten, he was first
taunted. Years later, when he is taunted with a threatening comment,
he hits his taunter. Buss believes that the Victim is responsible for
hitting his taunter, since there are moral reasons not to hit one who
taunts you: hitting one's taunter is morally wrong. But Buss
believes that the Victim is justified in hitting his taunter because
he has excusing reasons to act thusly, which are grounded in his
circumstances. Excusing reasons free him and other similar agents from
blame, at least in certain circumstances, depending on the nature of
the wrongdoing, whether there are alternative actions available, and
the details of his background. Generally speaking, he can be absolved
from blame because he has a *justified* failure to tell right
from wrong--anyone in his circumstances has reason to act the way
he does, even though they also have reason not to act immorally. Buss
defends what she calls "the Basic Intuition," according to
which "simply because they have exceptional backgrounds, certain
wrongdoers have a different moral status from that of more
'privileged' wrongdoers who perform the very same type of
acts" (337). A person would have to be truly exceptional not to
see things as the Victim sees them and write off his experiences as
ones not indicative of human nature. Buss offers this analogy: the
Victim no more has good reason for thinking that his taunter is not
like the hostile people he grew up around, than does the person who
has been bitten repeatedly by dogs has good reason to think that the
growling dog in her path will not bite her (350). The Basic Intuition
attributes to the victim not an incapacity for making the correct
moral distinctions, but a justified failure to "tell right from
wrong." He has excusing reasons for acting as he does.
Buss's non-deterministic argument might be employed by feminists
as an agency-protecting way of absolving women from blame for certain
immoral acts. They might also use it to absolve women from
responsibility, if they can show that the acts in question are in
themselves justified, perhaps by showing that they are legitimate
responses to threats to a person's intrinsic value (see Superson
2010).


### 3.5 Responsibility for Resisting One's Own Oppression; Victim-blaming



Are the oppressed responsible for contributing to their own oppression
by not resisting it?



Not only men, but women contribute to women's oppression, not by
directly causing it, but by sustaining it through their attitudes and
behavior. "Right-wing" women are those whose lifestyles
largely reflect right-wing values, and for the reason that they
believe that women belong in stereotypical roles (Superson 1993). They
possess the same attitudes about women as do sexist men. This
conception excludes women who on occasion engage in right-wing
behavior, for reasons other than because they believe women ought to
adopt stereotypical roles. The property of being right-wing can more
or less reflect prevalent sexist stereotypes. Many right-wing women
have deformed desires (see Section 2). Other women who neither endorse
patriarchal values nor have deformed desires choose roles that when
enough other women also choose them, perpetuate sexist stereotypes
about women and thereby contribute to their own oppression. Are such
women responsible and/or blameworthy for contributing to their own
oppression? On the one hand, sexist behavior, no matter who causes it,
sustains women's oppression and harms women, so we might want to
hold responsible and blame these women for their participation in the
system. On the other hand, blaming women for their own oppression
seems to blame the victim.



Feminists are divided over whether women are responsible and/or
blameworthy for contributing to their own oppression. Some believe
that women's strong indoctrination into patriarchal beliefs and
values makes it likely that they would come to have them (Bartky
1999a; Luker 1984; Nussbaum 1999a; Superson 1993). For example, some
religious, particularly Christian, right-wing women adopt and act on
patriarchal values because they believe this is the way things ought
to be as part of God's plan, while some secular right-wing women
adopt patriarchal values because they believe that oppression is
unalterable and that conformity is their best option. Some feminists
believe that such right-wing women fail completely to understand
feminism, and fail to see that their choice of lifestyle limits their
choices even further (Superson 1993). Blaming entails judging the one
blamed as morally remiss. But if women really do not understand
feminism and fail to see that their choice of lifestyle is
non-liberating, these feminists find it as inappropriate to blame or
hold responsible women for their role in their own oppression as it is
to blame or hold responsible rape victims for rape who play no moral
role in their own harm.



Yet other feminists might blame or hold responsible women who do not
resist their own oppression. Some argue that women have an obligation
to resist their own oppression, at least under certain conditions, and
so are responsible for resisting. Carol Hay responds to the view that
women's having an obligation to resist their own oppression
unfairly restricts their choices and blames the victim (2005). Hay
acknowledges that both external and internal forces of patriarchy,
including deformed desires, often restrict a woman's autonomy,
but argues that this is not a sufficient reason not to require women
to resist their oppression. She believes that women under patriarchy
have a fair degree of autonomy, and that autonomy is a necessary
condition for the possibility of moral obligation, which in turn is at
least partially constitutive of moral agency (105). She accepts as a
general principle that we should hold agents responsible only for
actions that are undertaken autonomously: if the agent has no
autonomy, she has no obligation, and if the agent is fully autonomous,
she is fully subject to all possible moral obligations that might
exist in a situation (99). Hay also believes that it is unfair to
require moral obligations of someone who is incapable of fulfilling
them. But she believes that demanding more responsibility of someone
who is capable of fulfilling their moral obligations because they have
at least some degree of autonomy might end up increasing their
autonomy. This is the case, Hay believes, for women under patriarchy.
Hay acknowledges that it may be unfair to burden women with an
obligation to resist their oppression, but believes that women's
fulfilling this obligation is essential to eliminating patriarchy in
addition to increasing their autonomy. Indeed, she believes that this
increased burden is yet another reason to eliminate patriarchy
(104-105). Hay notes that whether a woman is in fact obligated
to resist her oppression in a particular instance of sexism (e.g.,
confronting a sexual harasser) depends on the danger involved in doing
so: when the risk of harm to herself is significant, she is free from
the obligation.



Ann Cudd also argues that women have an obligation to resist their own
oppression. She takes up the case where women understand their
oppression and are not under the sway of deformed desires, and where
oppression is not so pervasive that it is impossible or seriously
risky to resist it (2006). She offers the case of Larry and Lisa, a
couple who agrees that it is best if one of them assumes most of the
childrearing duties. Given the existing gender wage gap, the couple
reasons that it is rational for them to choose that Lisa opt out of
the paid labor force and raise the children. But her doing so, when
enough other women do so as well, lends strength and stability to
women's oppression because it makes employers perceive women as
unreliable wage workers, which feeds the very stereotypical image that
creates the gender wage gap in the first place (199). Further,
Lisa's participating in a sexist division of labor increases the
expectation that other women will do the same. Cudd argues that Lisa
needs to weigh the benefit of the economic gain her family can expect
if Larry is the wage worker against the harm caused by perpetuation of
the stereotype of women as primarily domestic workers and unreliable
wage workers, and then do the least undeserved harm. Women like Lisa
have an obligation to sacrifice their immediate wants for a long-term
vision of a better future (188). Cudd argues further that requiring
the oppressed to resist their oppression is not a case of wrongful
blaming of the victim; rather, it is like the case of a person who
suffers a superficial cut by someone's careless use of sharp
scissors, but who is to blame for some of the harm if he loses his
hand to gangrene because he refuses to wash and care for the cut. Both
victims participate in some way in the harm they suffer, even though
neither is the initial cause of the harm.



In contrast to feminists who defend an obligation to resist
oppression, Daniel Silvermint examines the phenomenon of
"passing as privileged" as a way to navigate one's
oppression so as to promote one's well-being. Silvermint
describes "passing as privileged" as occurring "when
a member of an oppressed, stigmatized, or otherwise
discriminated-against group *x* is passively or actively
perceived to be a member of a privileged group *y*, thereby
escaping the unjust barriers and burdens that come with being
identified as an *x* and/or accessing the advantages that come
with being (mis)identified as a *y*" (Silvermint 2018,
6). He is concerned mainly with "active passing," which is
a strategy used to create or avoid the perception of a certain kind of
person, such as when an immigrant family Anglicizes their last name in
order to hide their naturalized status (3). His concern is whether a
victim of oppression ought to pass as a non-victim when they can
successfully do so.



According to Silvermint, passing and resisting one's oppression
share the aim that they are both ways to improve one's life or
circumstances in the face of oppression (38). The main difference he
sees between them is that persons who resist in various ways attempt
to improve their well-being by undermining, changing, or escaping the
oppressive system that constrains their well-being, while persons who
engage in passing as a member of a privileged group act in ways that
sustain those constraints while attempting to exploit the way in which
they are distributed so as to avoid being constrained by them.
Essentially, the latter make a trade-off between two valuable
constituents of their well-being, both of which cannot simultaneously
be promoted under oppression. For example, a trans woman might pass as
a cis-gender woman in order to avoid physical violence; a victim of
stereotype threat might pass as a confident professional in order to
succeed (31); and a queer femme might pass as a cis-gender woman by
avoiding holding hands with her girlfriend in order to ward off an
insensitive co-worker (11). But unlike classic resisters, persons who
engage in passing leave intact rather than challenge the very system
that harms them. Silvermint likens them to the teenager who is bullied
and comes to school dressed like his bullies and engages in behavior
similar to them and eventually gets accepted by them. Silvermint takes
issue with three main arguments that passing is morally wrong, namely,
that it compromises the agent's authenticity, that it involves
deception, and that it harms fellow victims by reinforcing
stereotypes. He instead defends the view that passing is a permissible
form of self-regarding complicity on the grounds that persons who
engage in passing are not responsible for being victims of oppression
and are navigating their circumstances in the best way they can in
order to promote their well-being (40).


## 4. The Psychology of the Oppressor



While there has been some feminist writing to date on the psychology
of the oppressor, Robin Dillon calls for much more work in this area
(Dillon 2012). In particular, Dillon urges that feminists develop what
she calls "critical character theory," a way of theorizing
character from a feminist perspective (85). Such a theory recognizes
that domination and subordination operate not just at the political
and social levels, but through character. Among the things it asks is
whether certain traits might contribute to or undermine oppression. It
is particularly concerned to speak to vice, which Dillon believes is
for the most part left out of moral theories. Knowing about vice is
not only intrinsically important, but it is important for how we raise
our children and develop their moral characters, especially in regard
to enabling them to combat oppression (91-92). A feminist moral
theory should examine how systematic oppression reflects and
reinforces domination values, and how it normalizes and buttresses
vice in members of dominant groups (94). It should also suggest how we
might repair character damage, not just externally, by making
systematic changes, but internally too. Dillon suggests that it might
be the case that repairing character is a necessary condition or at
least an effective way of transforming unjust social conditions like
oppression.



Dillon agrees with Lisa Tessman that oppression fosters certain vices
in the privileged, including arrogance, self-centeredness,
callousness, indifference, and social irresponsibility, and adds that
it damages the characters of those who perpetrate or are complicit in
oppression, and it does so in ways that the benefits of privilege do
not outweigh (96). Tessman argues that under oppression, the self can
be damaged in such a way that it cannot flourish (Tessman 2005, 4).
She develops the notion of "burdened virtues," virtues one
has that are cultivated in an oppressive context. The privileged,
particularly ones who culpably passively accept their privilege, if
not positively endorse it, exhibit the "ordinary vices of
domination" which prevent them from flourishing in spite of
benefiting. Aside from the vices already mentioned, the privileged
often exhibit a lack of certain moral virtues, including compassion
for others not in their group, generosity, cooperativeness, and
openness to appreciating others (55). While the privileged can
flourish among the privileged, and in this way meet Aristotle's
criteria for eudaimonia, they cannot flourish on a conception of
eudaimonia that reflects the fact of social inequality. Tessman argues
that moral goodness requires not only a pursuit of one's own
well-being and the well-being of others on whom one depends, as
Aristotle believes, but also the well-being of others whose lack of
well-being may have been a condition of one's privilege (76).
Tessman's attention to vice in the context of oppression is
exactly the kind of work that Dillon believes might be essential in
ending oppression, and Dillon's own work on arrogance is likely
to be followed by feminist progress in this area (Dillon 2004).



Both Dillon and Tessman are rejecting ideal theory as an approach to
theorizing character. According to Charles Mills, who also rejects it,
ideal theory represents the actual as a simple deviation from the
ideal that is not worth theorizing in its own right, or it falsely
states that starting from the ideal is the best way of realizing the
ideal (Mills 2005, 168). The problem is that ideal models abstract
away in a problematic way from realities that are crucial to
understanding injustice, such as structural domination, exploitation,
coercion, and oppression (170). In so doing, ideal theory represents
the experiences of the dominant group only, and thus serves their
interests (172). But since ethics is supposed to be about how actual
people act, and since ideal theory does not reflect the experiences of
subordinate groups, it is not the best way of doing ethics.
Tessman's work on "impossible cases" critiques ideal
moral theory on the grounds that it fails to capture moral dilemmas
which involve non-negotiable moral requirements which are grounded in
innate values such as love and life that cannot be unproblematically
compromised (e.g., killing your crying baby in order to protect a
group from the Nazis) (Tessman 2017). We can imagine feminist cases of
this phenomenon, such as killing a rapist in order to protect your
dignity.



Dillon's call for more work in critical character theory
notwithstanding, there is some earlier literature that is either
explicitly feminist or that can be used by feminists that speaks to
the psychology of members of the dominant group, men, who act in
sexist ways, thereby contributing to women's oppression.
Feminists and their supporters have offered explanations for how a
sexist comes to be, examining in particular the role that a bad
society, corrupt socialization, and the adoption of patriarchal values
and beliefs play in his development. They have also attempted to
explain the underlying motivation in a person who engages in sexist or
racist behavior that contributes to the oppression of a group.



Laurence Thomas offers an account of how a society in which there is a
general lack of trust that others will not harm a person can make a
person come to cultivate indifference to harming others, if not worse
(1996). Thomas's account can be applied to sexist forms of evil,
or, immorality. He believes that society is adversely affected by the
wide-scale absence of goodwill among its members, and that
game-theoretic models for social cooperation as offered by
contemporary moral and political theorists that do not acknowledge
motivation cannot accommodate this shortcoming (272). Thomas considers
the Golden Rule, which dictates that you "Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you." He claims that rather than comply
with this rule out of fear, which shows a lack of respect for others,
we should comply in ways the rule was intended, out of the
other-regarding motive of not wanting to cause another harm or
suffering, a feeling that is generated both by our own experience of
being harmed and from the nature of human beings in general. For
instance, those who have this other-regarding motive will know what it
is like to experience the moral pain of being a victim of a racial
epithet, which should suffice to prevent him or her from using a
racial epithet against others. In a moral climate, a person is more
likely to have this other-regarding sentiment, but in a society where
trust that others will not harm us is lacking, we are likely to lose
it and develop virtue-derailing sentiments, first becoming indifferent
to harming others, then morally numb, then eventually evil beings.



Thomas suggests that there is a parallel between the family structure
and society with respect to the failure to develop the moral
sensibilities that the Golden Rule calls for (273). It is only through
parental love (or the love of parental surrogates), Thomas believes,
that self-love is securely underwritten (279). The child who is loved
by his parents can first come to see himself as having intrinsic
value, which is the basis for self-love. Self-love, in turn,
underwrites the other-regarding sentiments. Thomas is not suggesting
that all children who come from abusive homes will lack
other-regarding sentiments and become evil persons, but instead is
saying that other-regarding sentiments have a more difficult time
gaining a secure foothold in children in abusive homes than in loving
ones (281). This is because the abused child is typically consumed
with when and how he will be abused and how he will cope, his own
well-being and survival, and developing virtue-derailing motives, such
as bitterness, rancor, and a desire for vengeance, which are at odds
with other-regarding sentiments. Thomas believes that in a similar
way, a society where trust (that others who can harm us will not) is
lacking impedes a person's having other-regarding sentiments
toward strangers that is called for by the Golden Rule. If we live in
a society in which we lack trust in others that they will not harm us,
our concern with whether our own actions will not harm others will be
substantially weakened, leading to indifference toward harming others,
or, moral numbness. If the moral climate in society becomes bad
enough, it will give rise to bitterness, rancor, and a desire for
vengeance (285). Thomas believes that when we are the object of
systematic hostility, presumably the kind associated with systematic
racism and sexism, a natural reaction on our part is to develop
hostility, bitterness, and rancor. Although Thomas does not link his
discussion to the cultivation of sexists per se, other philosophers
writing about evil, including feminists writing especially about the
evil of oppression, explain the immoral character of members of the
dominant group who act in sexist or racist ways toward those in
subordinate groups, by displaying indifference to their humanity, or,
the intrinsic value they have in virtue of being persons, as will be
discussed later in this section (see also Section 3.1).



Larry May is a feminist who has written specifically about the role of
male socialization in the cultivation of sexist attitudes and
behaviors in men. In one of his articles, May examines the
socialization practiced by formerly all-male military institutions
such as the Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute (1998b). These
institutions practice separatism in order to establish a male culture
and instill traditional male values without pressure from the outside,
particularly from women. They are formed as places for boys to become
men or to prove they are men, perpetuating a form of masculinity
supported by other all-male sports settings, all-male clubs, and so on
(117). In these military institutional settings, the conditions are
stark, the quarters are tight and lack privacy, and the cadets are
considered to be mere "rats," not unique persons deserving
of respect, and are forced to suffer mental stress, punishment, even
beatings. The point of such treatment is for the cadets to develop
self-discipline and spirit thought necessary for leadership skills and
character, to form a sense of bonding with fellow sufferers and former
tormenters, and to channel young male aggression (118).



The problem, though, according to May, is that this training
backfires, and male aggression gets re-directed especially toward
women: when the cadets think of themselves as "rats,"
rather than as persons deserving of respect, it is only a small step
to thinking that women, who are generally portrayed as even less
deserving than themselves, are less than rats and beneath contempt
(129). Men who go through this military training have trouble
containing their aggression in simulated combat situations at least
partly because when aggression is deemed acceptable, this sometimes
makes it more likely that a man will display more and stronger
aggression than would otherwise be the case (132). And sometimes the
fact that this training forbids the cadets to show any aggression
toward the upperclassmen who verbally or physically assault them can
backfire, and they display heightened aggression to their peers or to
women in the context of civilian life (132). May argues that the male
values protected by these military institutions are ones that have
historically produced hatred and abuse toward women (121). Not only in
the military, but in civilian life, male aggression is channeled in
ways that are not necessarily respectful of women, such as intense
pursuit of protection and support for family. This
"breadwinner" role is often linked with a view of men as
dominant over women in family life (133). In another article, May
argues that practices like sexual harassment promote male solidarity
that keeps women in an inferior position and excludes them from full
and equal participation (1998a, 105). Posting a Playboy centerfold in
a common area of a workplace contributes to a form of male bonding
that makes females feel unwelcome; it is a signal to any woman who
enters the room that women are to be viewed as comparable to the woman
in the picture, not welcome in this location as an equal to men. She
is excluded for the reason that she is a woman, not for any
idiosyncratic reason (1998a, 106). Women's exclusion builds male
solidarity. The same kind of bonding and exclusion may go on in the
professions, especially ones where women are currently significantly
underrepresented (see Kaufman 1999, 199-201; Valian,1999;
Superson 2002). These forms of socialization and practices at least
partly explain why some members of the dominant group men develop
sexist characters or act in sexist ways.



Feminists have also attempted to explain what it is about a
person's motivations or attitudes that prompt him to engage in
sexist behavior. Several feminists writing about various explicitly
sexist behaviors attribute the behaviors to the person's
endorsing sexist stereotypes. Kathleen Waits describes the
woman-batterer as endorsing traditional sex roles, believing that the
man should be "the master" of the house and that it is the
woman's job to satisfy all his needs and wants (1993, 193). The
batterer often projects a macho exterior, has a tremendous need to
dominate and control his wife, and believes that he has the right to
use violence against her in order to enforce his will (193). Susan
Griffin cites studies and social data describing the convicted rapist
as having, on a statistical average, a normal sexual personality,
differing from the normal, well-adjusted male only in having a greater
tendency to express violence and rage (1981, 318). The rapist endorses
stereotypical views about male dominance and female submission, which
Griffin notes are the same views erotically expressed in the practice
of heterosexual love in our culture. According to our culture's
heterosexual norms, male eroticism is wedded to power, and the man
must demonstrate his superior strength with gestures of dominance
which are perceived as amorous (317-318). One reason the courts
have had a hard time distinguishing consensual sex from rape is that
the same gender stereotypes that are present in "normal"
heterosexual sex are present in rape, though in rape they are carried
to more violent extremes. The practice of female genital mutilation,
or FGM, also reflects the acceptance of sexist stereotypes about male
dominance and female submission. Although FGM is typically carried out
by female relatives or a midwife, the whole society, particularly its
male leaders, are the ones who set the social norms. We might think of
the women who perform the procedure as vessels through which the real
proponents of the practice act. Semra Asefa argues that FGM has long
been justified by the belief that women are unable to control their
own sexuality in the face of their strong desire for sex (1994 and
1998, 98). The practice of FGM aims to diminish or destroy the
woman's capacity for sexual enjoyment, making her into a
breeding machine to perpetuate her husband's line. Cultures that
practice FGM often also require domestic confinement as another
element of the husband's control, and include severe punishment
of women for adultery, while encouraging males to be polygamous
because it is believed that a man's virility increases
proportionately with the number of children he has (99). The practice
of FGM reflects the view that men are dominant in that they control a
woman's capacity to have sex for pleasure and whether she has a
choice to have sex with men other than her husband (see Nussbaum
1999b).



Central to the stereotypes of male dominance and female submission is
the notion that men are superior in worth, and women, inferior. Jean
Hampton offers a feminist analysis of what goes on with the sexist
immoralist who targets a person in virtue of her group membership
(1999). Hampton defines a wrongful action as one that is disrespectful
of a person's value, conveying the view that the wrongdoer is
superior in value to his victim. A wife abuser sends the message that
his wife has the value of chattel; a rapist conveys the attitude that
women are even lower than chattel, as mere objects to be used whenever
the male feels the need to do so (134-135). Indeed, Hampton
argues, rape harms all women, not just its direct victim, by aiming to
establish men's mastery over women: "As a woman, you are
the kind of human being who is subject to the mastery of people of my
kind," and that "Your kind isn't the equal in worth
of my kind" (135). Rape, on the Kantian view Hampton favors,
attempts to lower, or "diminishes," the intrinsic value
all humans have in virtue of being rational and autonomous beings,
though Hampton agrees with Kant that a person's intrinsic value
can never actually be lowered. Thus, the motivation of the rapist and
other sexists who commit wrongful actions against their victims is
that they lack respect for women as persons having intrinsic
value.


## 5. Conclusion



The topics in feminist moral psychology are motivated by the feminist
aim to end women's oppression. Although what unites all
feminists is that they share this aim, as we have seen, feminists
differ in their views on how best to accomplish this aim.
Specifically, regarding topics in moral psychology, feminists differ
in their views on the following: the role of emotion in moral theory;
whether women have deformed desires and to what extent deformed
desires interfere with women's autonomy; the degree to which
members of the dominant group men are responsible for their
participation in women's oppression; whether members of the
dominant group are able to take the perspective of the non-privileged;
whether the socialization or background circumstances of members of
the subordinate group mitigates their responsibility or
blameworthiness for immoral action unrelated to oppression; and
whether women are responsible for resisting their own oppression. We
should not conclude that these differences suggest that feminist
philosophical scholarship is so divisive as to not be useful. Rather,
we should conclude the opposite, that feminist insights have greatly
enriched the field of moral psychology by bringing philosophers'
attention to issues that have been previously ignored or not
sufficiently examined. The progress feminists have made, and continue
to make, on these issues is essential to eliminating women's
oppression.